Drug-addled yard workers. Black-marketeering militiamen. Aimless celebrity impersonators. Narcotized puffer fish. And at the center of it all, a pair of glue-huffing cousins who attempt to cope with the relentless disasters of their lives by building giant trash monuments that attract their own strange fanatics. Welcome to The Great American Suction, a frenzied portrait of struggle and collapse - and occasional resuscitation - in the ruts and nooks of a beleaguered heartland.
Praise for The Great American Suction...
“A celebratory comic romp from a big-hearted writer.” - George Saunders
"The Great American Suction is a glorious, glittering heap of astonishing prose and devastating human shenanigans. It’s also an example of truth in advertising because it’s great, it’s American, and it sucks the pettiness right out of you. What a beautiful and hilarious novel! Every sentence is a new adventure, and another chance at life.” - Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask
“David Nutt’s hilarious debut novel is written in energetic, witty, wonderfully inventive prose. His perfectly timed riffs and set pieces skewer American conceits, but his characters are shot through with an eccentric kind of joy. Nutt’s voice is truly new, a marvel or wry tenderness.” - Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Stone Arabia
“Life has burned a hole in the pockets of Shaker, the aptly named up-and-at-’em down-and-outer wambling his way through the full spread of our present squalor in this ultravivid, live wire of a debut novel. Page after page, David Nutt shocks the language into a killingly original blaze.” - Gary Lutz, author of Stories in the Worst Way
"In David Nutt’s luminous debut novel, the perennially put-upon protagonist’s existence consists of a daisy chain of half-baked calamities. A brain-damaged post-postmodern anti-hero, Shaker’s a not-so-innocent Josef K. for the culture that births precocious meth chefs and celebrity impersonator wannabes. Dystopian, and by that, I mean contemporary, this debut ratchets up the possibilities of prose with its stylistic virtuosity while laying bare the toxic underbelly of the garbage art crowd. If you’re a fan of David Ohle’s Motorman or Sam Lipsyte’s Venus Drive, The Great American Suction awaits you." – Christopher Kennedy, author of Clues from the Animal Kingdom and Ennui Prophet
