Book Description
Hayward Theiss is on the lam, hiding out in a Malibu beach house that is not his and trying to figure out how he got there. A car crash, a bag of dope, a sinister producer, and his best friend's strange escape from rehab all complicate matters further. But in trying to understand his circumstances, Hayward begins to untangle the convoluted affair and subsequent estrangement between his great-grandfather, the massively ambitious robber baron Finn Theiss, and sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The author, a relative of Annie Oakley himself, weaves in beautiful excerpts from Oakley's autobiography that have never appeared in book form. Brumbaugh writes with the exquisite, tossed-off precision of a master chef preparing an early dinner for friends. Readers of Michael Cunningham, Rick Moody, Leonard Michaels, and Jeffrey Eugenides will be thrilled at the arrival of this new voice-and this new take on coming-of-age while fervently reckoning with the past. Goodbye, Goodness is a simultaneously hopeful and bleakly realistic, hilarious, and devastatingly sad book about the American dream coming to the end of the line.
Goodbye, Goodness FROM THE PUBLISHER
Hayward Theiss is on the lam, hiding out in a Malibu beach house that is not his and trying to figure out how he got there. A car crash, a bag of dope, a sinister producer, and his best friend's strange escape from rehab all complicate matters further. But in trying to understand his circumstances, Hayward begins to untangle the convoluted affair and subsequent estrangement between his great-grandfather, the massively ambitious robber baron Finn Theiss, and sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The author, a relative of Annie Oakley himself, weaves in beautiful excerpts from Oakley's autobiography that have never appeared in book form. Brumbaugh writes with the exquisite, tossed-off precision of a master chef preparing an early dinner for friends. Readers of Michael Cunningham, Rick Moody, Leonard Michaels, and Jeffrey Eugenides will be thrilled at the arrival of this new voice-and this new take on coming-of-age while fervently reckoning with the past. Goodbye, Goodness is a simultaneously hopeful and bleakly realistic, hilarious, and devastatingly sad book about the American dream coming to the end of the line.
FROM THE CRITICS
Baltimore City Paper
Sam Brumbaugh's semiautobiographical Goodbye, Goodness has scenes set in
Georgetown, Malibu, and the Wild West, but its real location is the
whooshing vacuum left behind in the wake of failed American
optimism...Goodbye, Goodness beautifully captures the wrung-out feel of a
depleted American century.
Kirkus Reviews
Drugs rule, in another ho-hum study of contemporary anomie. Dazed and bleeding, a guy stumbles along the California beach toward Malibu. He makes his way deliberately to an empty beachfront house and enters through the crawlspace and a wooden panel. This might be an okay hook, except there's no follow-through. We return periodically to the guy in the house, but not until the end do we learn what brought him there. Instead, we get his history (most of it recent). His name is Hayward Theiss, he's in his late 20s, and he's just driven cross-country after breaking up with his girlfriend Helen, who's been in and out of mental hospitals with an unspecified illness. Hay stopped off in Tucson to attend a concert of Kimmel's, Kimmel being a songwriter/guitarist and Hay's old college roommate: he has talent but also a bad attitude, willing himself to fail. Also at the concert is Will, who was in middle school with Hay back in 1980. Will is a freelance journalist with a book coming out, and he too is self-destructive (and enjoys needling strangers). As for Hay, he's driving to LA to produce a show for public television about new American music. These three are the story's principals, though none is well defined. Hay puts away astonishing amounts of liquor while the other two, Hay slowly realizes, have become heroin addicts. Nothing much happens, though every so often, first-novelist Brumbaugh, a music industry veteran, cuts away to memorialize Annie Oakley, the legendary sharpshooter and an old flame of Hay's great-grandfather (and one of Brumbaugh's ancestors). What a wrong move. The writing about Annie, based on the historical record, is clear and to the point, much in contrast to the foggy limboinhabited by the present-day characters. Further, the remarkable Annie underscores the smallness of Hay, Will, and Kimmel, making it a case of Annie and the three dwarves. Eventually, there's a drug-related death, and Hay emerges from that house. Disappointing.
Art & Photography
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