Today, New Noise are doing something a little different. Instead of bringing you another excellent single to jam along with or an exciting video to feast your eyes on, we’re bringing you an excerpt from the latest book from fiction writer and musician Adam Gnade. Check out the video passage below:
The video was created by Elizabeth Thompson, and features an excerpt of Adam’s book, released February 14 by Three One G Records/Pioneers Press.
From Adam’s publicist:
Adam Gnade’s third novel is held up by a Springsteenian sense of hope and a desire for redemption, of finding glory and escape, friendship and love in hard times. Like Dickens‘ David Copperfield, Ferrante’s Neapolitan tetralogy, and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, this is the story of a human life, kindergarten to adulthood, ratty beach apartment to bohemian party house, feverish basement to ramshackle farmhouse.
Through the eyes of Gnade’s protagonist, James Jackson Bozic, we see how life scars you, changes you as you fight to find a safe place for yourself. It is, in turn, a murder mystery, a love story, and a vast, sweeping, panoramic look at America on the edge of collapse.
It’s a story of displacement, strange shores, new mornings. As James says in the book, “I thought of how sometimes in the midst of survival, life will jerk you away from your home, how it will push you out across the map, away from the people you love, or into the path of others.” This Is the End … is about scratching and clawing for a better, safer, more satisfying life, even as the sky comes crashing down.
And now a word from Adam himself …
“These seven or so minutes from my novel This is the End of Something But It’s Not the End of You were everything I wanted to say to the world when I was writing the book. I say “novel,” but as you can see from this excerpt, it’s more of a speech or maybe a letter from me to everyone on the planet.
“It’s personal, but it’s meant to apply to anyone who reads it because we’ve all felt like the world is ending at some point. The idea is basically: ‘Our world is chaotic and troubled and everything feels tentative at best. At worst, it’s a total calamitous End Times shit-storm joke. BUT. you’re still here, and SINCE you’re still here, you should stick around and fight. You stay alive, and I will too.’ That’s what this book is: a pact of survival and defiance pretending to be a novel.”
Order a copy of This Is the End of Something But It’s Not the End of You here.
