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Stengrow's Dad

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Stengrow on his journey in search of his One True Dad, meets and falls in love with the beautiful Daphne, becomes a master of subliminal advertising, and almost loses his life. Reynold Stengrow just wants to be a good son. Not easy when you have 36 possible Dads, geniuses all, donors to Dr. I. Lord Genius Sperm Bank. So, until he finds his One True Dad, Stengrow must honor his Black Muslim father at the same time he's honoring his neo-nazi father, while immersing himself in the ancient traditions of his Jewish TV-producer Dad. Not to mention all the other citizens, millionaires, politicians, poets and failures who may possibly be Stengrow's Dad. In the course of his innocent, comic, ultimately tragic pilgrimage, Stengrow becomes an American Everyman, seeking his own identity, seeking a way of life he can believe in, as he makes his way through a nation that has become, here at the end of the millennium, a maze of conflicting truths, often - like Stengrow himself - at war with himself. Hallmark makes no card for Stengrow's situation.

"Katz's writing has the Orwellian feel of being dead right."— Russell Baker, The New York Times

Boson Books also offers Armed Love by Elia Katz. For an author bio and photo, reviews and a reading sample, visit bosonbooks.com.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 29, 1995
      A young man's search for his ``true dad'' leads him on a series of bizarre and comic misadventures in a nightmarish American landscape of greed and menacing consumer manipulation. When Reynold Stengrow discovers that his biological father was an anonymous donor from a controversial sperm bank (``fine, high-class individuals... with at least a 150 IQ,'' claims the doctor), he grabs the doctor's secret records and sets off to find the True Dad. Gullible Reynold is easily swayed by each genius/potential progenitor: a neo-Nazi, a black separatist (he distributes flyers for both), a presidential candidate and an eccentric poet are among the paternal possibilities. He's also influenced by a professor who uses subliminal advertising to manipulate the nation as easily as Reynold is swayed by each new dad. On this odyssey, Reynold wonders, ``If I'm so intelligent, how come I never meet anyone stupider than I am?'' Katz (Armed Love) has a way with clever lines, though as satirical comment on the follies of modern America, it is not entirely successful. Consumerism, demagogues and the novel's ``Church of Marilyn'' are too-easy targets. But in its deadpan, cynical way, it does divert and amuse.

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  • English

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