Hi kids!
So today is an exciting day because now you can officially purchase John Grochalski’s first novel The Librarian.
Here’s what smarter people than me have said about it:
Grochalski has done it. He’s taken the wry wit and tenderness of his poetry and transformed it into a lyrical, biting, and at turns incredibly humorous first novel. Welcome to the world of Rand Wyndham, a former librarian and misanthrope extraordinaire in his late 30s who suffers through temp work and other horrors to retreat nightly to the safe haven of Rooney’s Pub, where he has proudly earned his stripes as a regular. In well-crafted prose, Grochalski keenly captures the inane ritual of the daily workplace routine but also the ridiculous and entertaining scuffles, drunken chatter, and other misadventures of bar life. For Rand, having to deal with bleary-eyed hangovers in cubicles under the glare of fluorescent lights is worth every minute of boozing with the other regulars of Rooney’s until last call. And I didn’t want to leave the bar either—I had a hard time putting Grochalski’s book down. A great read and a rousing success.
—Scott Silsbe, Editor, The New Yinzer
And:
John Grochalski aims straight for the heart of things. With equal measures of acid and awe, he lights out for territory originally assayed by the legendary Charles Bukowski. Roll down the windows, fire up the imagination, and pass the bottle this way: you’re in for one helluva ride.
—Don Wentworth, Editor, Lilliput Review
AND:
John Grochalski is that rarity in literature these days—an honest man. In his poems, stories and novels Grochalski eschews artifice in favor of something grander and more immediate; he strives to show the world as it is in all its mortifying desperation. Here is the real grit of lives eked out in the trenches of a culture and country in steep decline. To read Grochalski is to know America.
—Kristofer Collins, Editor, Low Ghost Press
See? Now you’ve got no reason NOT to pick it up.
And if you’re in the Pittsburgh area on December 23rd, come down to Modern Formations Gallery (4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa) for the book launch. Doors open at 8pm and there is a $5 cover charge. It’s a joint book launch so the always fantastic Mr. Scott Silsbe will be there too promoting his new book The River Underneath the City out via Low Ghost Press.
Exciting stuff!
Happy Holidays kids. And remember as you struggle through another season of holiday malaise, ask yourself What Would Rand Do?
(…..More than likely he’d be at the bar!)
Peace, Love and Starbursts,
Ally
Ally Malinenko 