Overview

The narrator of each love story is not a hero or an antihero, but one of us; flawed, ambivalent, obsessive, trying to make it through the day, through his relations, with some poise. He is poignantly immersed in a pilgrimage not only to come to understand his own nature and the nature of his fixations, but the immense, unstable space between, a byzantine riddle. Communion seems impossible; to be struck dumb is often his only response. Being inside John Mandel's brain is an intoxicating experience, similar to a Dostoyevsky Notes From Underground encounter or something closer to American gothic master, John Hawkes. Mandel's genius is high satirical narcissism, wounded, giddy, desperately comedic, a man at the end of one's rope, every sentence pressured, sweated over, pleasurable. Sexual anguish, lusciously rendered: it is fiction as self-induced trauma, and it is beautiful. - Benjamin Weissman John Mandel's writing is twisted in the ways that most of us are twisted. It is also brilliant in the ways that most of us are not. A Goddamn Infinite Emergency is a groundbreaking collection of stories, recalling the work of Milan Kundera. - Michael Schiffer Writer of Colors, Lean On Me, and Crimson Tide John Mandel tangles the longing for others into a longing for the right word. His stories are told in a vivid first person that oscillates between grand erudition and a madly compressed singularity. LThe intimacy of this voice bristles with intelligence and startling humor as it explores the disorienting complexity of being a person. - David Humphrey, Artist & Author Blind Handshake, an anthology of his art writing

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John Mandel was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended art school there and subsequently began a studio practice as a painter. He has had an extensive record of showing and lecturing in the U.S. and Europe. He quit his painting practice and began to write in the nineties. He has taught at Pratt Institute, Art Center College of Design, Otis Art Institute, and currently teaches at California Institute of the Arts. He lives and writes in Los Angeles.

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