Pieces of Payne

by Albert Goldbarth

"How is Eliza's divorce connected to the rise of twentieth-century quantum physics? Why does the steamy promise of "a key unlocking a door at a cheap motel along I-35" lead us to a consideration of Moby Dick? What does one physician's fake appointment book have to do with Columbus, with werewolves, with Fanny Burney's famously excruciating nineteenth-century mastectomy? Goldbarth sets his story of love's daily pleasures and griefs upon a foundation of ever-branching footnotes - from the strange worlds of supermarket tabloids and the Legion of Super-Heroes to more contemplative forays into gender politics, Dickens scholarship, and medical anomalies. By taking us on this mind-bending journey, he shows us how our lives are both confused and empowered by the multilayered universe around us."--BOOK JACKET.