NVSQVAM nowhere edition by Ann Sterzinger Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : NVSQVAM nowhere edition by Ann Sterzinger Literature Fiction eBooks 
What’s next? Male cervical cancer?
Somebody said that alienation was a disease of the middle class. Probably Marx, but Lester Reichartsen doesn't have time to look it up. A decade ago, Lester was kicked out of the biggest punk band in Chicago. Since then he's been party to an accidental pregnancy, talked into marrying the other party, and roped into an academic career in Classical Letters, so time won't allow him to be curious about much of anything outside his "discipline." But if whoever said that was right, Lester is middle class for sure. The island of college-town academics he lives on now is almost as alien as the Bible Belt wasteland that surrounds it. So why is it that when some meth heads break into his little family's cramped apartment, the only thing they find of value to steal is his seven-year-old computer? If this is the middle class, then Lester doesn't want to know what lies beneath.
Praise…
If Celine and Hamsun weren’t fascists, they’d be Ann Sterzinger. And finally, a book where the footnotes aren’t a twee affectation. —Nick Mamatas
Dark, tragic, and hilariously funny, Sterzinger’s third novel will likely resonate differently with everyone, and should be considered a sound addition to your reading list. —Treason and Treachery
This is an absolutely must-real novel. . . . NVSQVAM succeeds in part because despite being a woman, Sterzinger absolutely nails the hopelessness and listlessness of the average middle-aged American man. It sounds condescending to write that, but being able to write convincing characters of the opposite sex is a tough job for any novelist, and Sterzinger accomplishes it with aplomb. —Matt Forney
Deft satire, intermingling comedy and tragedy in a manner reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s early works. —Paul Bingham
If I had a voice in the fawning, compliant corporate media, I’d advise readers everywhere to defenestrate Jonathan Frazen’s Freedom or whatever other mass-marketed, safe, suburban faux “edgy” book they’re reading right now, and snap up a copy of NVSQVAM (nowhere) instead. Not because I think all of those readers would truly enjoy what this novel has to offer, but because I secretly relish the thought of them hurting their little whitebread minds on this book’s razor-sharp edges. —Anonymous
Lester Reichartsen is a self-absorbed, largely useless asshole but he’s our asshole, my generation’s asshole. You can’t hobble large segments of a generation and then hold them completely responsible for limping. —Anita Dalton, Odd Things Considered
I admire aesthetic integrity and appreciate literary talent, and Ann Sterzinger has both of these in spades. —Andy Nowicki
NVSQVAM (nowhere) is a very funny and tragic novel of not just the horror of living in the early 21st century, but of being alive at all. Lester Reichartsen is an excruciatingly human character whose life makes you laugh to keep from crying at how awful and pathetic it is. Between this and The Talkative Corpse, I’m convinced Ann Sterzinger is one of the most underrated writers working today. The attention she receives is far too sparse for someone who can write this well. —Ben Arzate
Ann Sterzinger’s writing is electric. —Frank Marcopolos
Some books keep you at arms’ length from their characters misery. Ann Sterzinger shoves your nose in it, like you’re a misbehaving dog and the book is your mistake. In one sense, it’s very funny. In another sense, it’s not funny at all. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re made of carbon, SOMETHING in this book will hit too close to home. —Empty World
NVSQVAM nowhere edition by Ann Sterzinger Literature Fiction eBooks
This is a book I happened with no real idea what it was about or where it was going. Quickly I got sucked into the life of the protagonist, Lester Reichartsen, and could not put it down. The book is written with such high intensity, I kept reading just to find out what would happen next.Set in a seedy area of Illinois (a bad place for a Wisconsin guy to be apparently) Lester is a guy that wakes up one morning, and realizes just how rotten his life is. Mistakenly believing himself to be mentally ill and falling apart, we are given a psychotic ride through the rough and tumble world that makes up his life, along with glimpses into his tormented past.
Lester was once an up and coming musician well on his way to becoming the next big thing at the time when Punk was riding high, Flash forward to his mid-30s, stuck in a loveless marriage, with an utter brat for a son (who happens to be a genius) trapped writing a dissertation for a job that he never wanted, surrounded by idiot students, it is fair to say that Lester is having a bit of a mid life crisis.
While Lester embarks on a journey where he constantly marvels at the utter insanity his reality has become, we begin to sense that underneath the surface, Lester is actually on a soul searching journey to find a part of himself long lost. Can Lester unravel all the factors for his deep depression high anxiety and utter inability to find contentment in life? Is it even possible?
Loaded with cultural references and observations about the world we live in, this book quickly reveals there is much multi-layered drama underneath the surface. A rather scathing indictment in its social commentary about life and the people who simply give up to be "normal" I actually see more existential depth at work than simply a humorous black comedy that many may mistake it for.
Quite an interesting page turner. The book also holds a mirror up to us older Generation X'ers like myself and dares to ask, "Isn't there a little bit of Lester in all of us? "
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NVSQVAM nowhere edition by Ann Sterzinger Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Five stars for the quality of writing and the storytelling. Reader beware - this is a depressing story. It is about an unhappy family man who is facing success in his career, but seems to find any reason to fail. Some reviewers say it is a story about mid-life regrets, but the series of failures are mostly self-inflicted. So I'd say this is a story about bad choices made on purpose.
This is an absolutely must-read novel.
NVSQVAM trods familiar ground for me, as it's a tale of middle-class male ennui in the suburbs. The novel concerns Lester Reichartsen, poster boy for middle-aged white male failure, and his exile in a dull college town in southern Illinois (the town is not named, but I suspect Carbondale, based on geographical descriptions and the fact that Sterzinger herself is an alum of the school there). Kicked out of a punk band and guilted into marrying his girlfriend Evelyn after she gets pregnant, Lester resorts to grad school, last refuge of the middle-aged loser, while despising everything about his life.
NVSQVAM succeeds in part because despite being a woman, Sterzinger absolutely nails the hopelessness and listlessness of the average middle-aged American man. It sounds condescending to write that, but being able to write convincing characters of the opposite sex is a tough job for any novelist, and Sterzinger accomplishes it with aplomb. In fact, she arguably does it a little too well.
Lester is basically a mash-up of Ferdinand Bardamu and Walter Mitty, with a dash of Eduard Limonov in It's Me, Eddie (namely the parts where he's having gay sex with homeless black men). The defining theme in his life is his utter powerlessness over everything and everyone he encounters. Bossed around by his wife and son Martin, the latter of whom reminds me of Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (in that Sterzinger depicts how annoying a kid like that would be in real life), Lester constantly fantasizes about Martin meeting a grisly end. Too effete for the Bible Belt bubbas who dominate Carbondale, he hides out in the town's only gay bar, and his escapades with a teenage girl he meets wearing one of his old band's T-shirts is almost Pleasant Hell-esque in its patheticness.
Sterzinger's lurching, Celinean prose is both descriptive yet economical, fleshing out every detail of the Reichartsens' wretched world. While the book is fairly long (over 300 pages with cramped, small font), it never feels like she's padding the length out or wasting time, and there are laugh-out-loud moments every other page. NVSQVAM is augmented by snarky footnotes from the narrator--who dictates the story like it's happening in the distant past--explaining various pop cultural references we take for granted.
The first part of NVSQVAM concerns Lester's attempts to deal with his terminal depression, his consistent failure to obtain quality antidepressants from his psychiatrist (who cites his constant drinking as proof that he'll just get addicted), and his visits to his father and in-laws for Christmas, the latter of which ends in a surreal reunion with his former bandmates. Throughout the novel, Lester desperately pines to return to Chicago, land of his youth, with his actions and those of the people around him dragging him further and further away from his goal. I won't spoil the second half of the book, only to say that Lester's dreams come true... in a twisted, Monkey's Paw fashion. And even in this, Lester is completely impotent, his life dictated by everyone else around him.
That, if anything, is the defining theme of NVSQVAM the lingering unease that Generation X has with American culture and themselves. Sterzinger's writing is shot through with GenX tropes punk rock, David Letterman, Nirvana, and anti-consumerism among them. Lester constantly finds himself in conflict with everyone younger or older than him, whether it's his overly serious, domineering father or his ditzy pseudo-hipster paramour Cyndi. Sterzinger's writing reminds me of a secular, more stridently anti-natalist version of her friend Andy Nowicki; indeed, Nowicki once characterized Sterzinger's canon as "anti-life fiction." And despite this religious gap, Nowicki's and Sterzinger's work is more similar than different; both feature self-immolating loser protagonists who spiral into mental illness in response to the world rejecting them.
Generation X was both with one foot in the old world and one in the new. They were eyewitnesses to the final collapse of the traditionalist West and its usurpation by cultural Marxism; anti-white multiculturalism, feminism and consumerism. Pretty much every work of literature or art that came from GenX is defined by this discomfort and alienation from the world, whether it's the existential nausea of Kurt Cobain or the rudderless hedonism of Mark Ames.
As a Millennial, I'm never going to be able to understand this alienation in anything more than an abstract sense. Millennials are alienated, that much is obvious, but the particular kind of alienation in Heart Killer and NVSQVAM (Nowhere) is GenX's alone. It's a generational gap that will never be traversed.
Nonetheless, I can gaze into the abyss of GenX with riveting, hilarious novels like NVSQVAM (Nowhere). As a comic yet poignant expression of an entire generation's angst, NVSQVAM is top-notch and an absolute necessity for your collection.
This is a book I happened with no real idea what it was about or where it was going. Quickly I got sucked into the life of the protagonist, Lester Reichartsen, and could not put it down. The book is written with such high intensity, I kept reading just to find out what would happen next.
Set in a seedy area of Illinois (a bad place for a Wisconsin guy to be apparently) Lester is a guy that wakes up one morning, and realizes just how rotten his life is. Mistakenly believing himself to be mentally ill and falling apart, we are given a psychotic ride through the rough and tumble world that makes up his life, along with glimpses into his tormented past.
Lester was once an up and coming musician well on his way to becoming the next big thing at the time when Punk was riding high, Flash forward to his mid-30s, stuck in a loveless marriage, with an utter brat for a son (who happens to be a genius) trapped writing a dissertation for a job that he never wanted, surrounded by idiot students, it is fair to say that Lester is having a bit of a mid life crisis.
While Lester embarks on a journey where he constantly marvels at the utter insanity his reality has become, we begin to sense that underneath the surface, Lester is actually on a soul searching journey to find a part of himself long lost. Can Lester unravel all the factors for his deep depression high anxiety and utter inability to find contentment in life? Is it even possible?
Loaded with cultural references and observations about the world we live in, this book quickly reveals there is much multi-layered drama underneath the surface. A rather scathing indictment in its social commentary about life and the people who simply give up to be "normal" I actually see more existential depth at work than simply a humorous black comedy that many may mistake it for.
Quite an interesting page turner. The book also holds a mirror up to us older Generation X'ers like myself and dares to ask, "Isn't there a little bit of Lester in all of us? "
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