"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." —George Saunders
"Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate’s wide open.” —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book Review
The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.
Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.
At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.
In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.
Genre: Science Fiction
"Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate’s wide open.” —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book Review
The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.
Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.
At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.
In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.
Genre: Science Fiction
Praise for this book
"A book may be said to be a kind of fist, and the readers of such a fist-book as Bubblegum can surely not predict or prepare for the ecstatic bewilderment of the encounter, particularly when they are greeted in the depths of it by long-form theoretical analysis of their plight." - Jesse Ball
"With Bubblegum, Adam Levin has created a cubist painting about consumerism, fetishization, and the increasingly blurred line between life and advertisement in a hyper-materialist, post-IRL society. Levin masterfully creates a world without the internet to examine the impact and insanity it has sewn into the American project, and he does so while gleefully skewering our unraveling vernacular. A freaky marvel of a tome." - Catherine Lacey
"Bubblegum is startling. Ingenious in its form and meaning-making. Levin gives you everything. A hilarious and serious meditation on what we might become. To paraphrase one of its characters, the novel makes me feel understood." - Salvador Plascencia
"Levin is the new Mailer. Think The Naked and The Dead, remove World War II, insert the war we are in now; up the introspection, lower the Nobel posturing (Bubblegum!) and the pontificating of the self, keep the outsized ambition, make the damned book even larger. One wonders how the Mailer vacuum went empty this long. This is ambition and large-statement talent. The precision of the errancy is thrilling. This son of a bitch is perfect." - Padgett Powell
"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." - George Saunders
"Adam Levin’s brilliant, inventive, fully imagined alternative world gives us insight and clarity about the actual world we live in. We are implicated, warned, but what a hilarious ride. Bubblegum is a wild, ambitious, and original novel. Levin is a wonder." - Dana Spiotta
"With Bubblegum, Adam Levin has created a cubist painting about consumerism, fetishization, and the increasingly blurred line between life and advertisement in a hyper-materialist, post-IRL society. Levin masterfully creates a world without the internet to examine the impact and insanity it has sewn into the American project, and he does so while gleefully skewering our unraveling vernacular. A freaky marvel of a tome." - Catherine Lacey
"Bubblegum is startling. Ingenious in its form and meaning-making. Levin gives you everything. A hilarious and serious meditation on what we might become. To paraphrase one of its characters, the novel makes me feel understood." - Salvador Plascencia
"Levin is the new Mailer. Think The Naked and The Dead, remove World War II, insert the war we are in now; up the introspection, lower the Nobel posturing (Bubblegum!) and the pontificating of the self, keep the outsized ambition, make the damned book even larger. One wonders how the Mailer vacuum went empty this long. This is ambition and large-statement talent. The precision of the errancy is thrilling. This son of a bitch is perfect." - Padgett Powell
"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." - George Saunders
"Adam Levin’s brilliant, inventive, fully imagined alternative world gives us insight and clarity about the actual world we live in. We are implicated, warned, but what a hilarious ride. Bubblegum is a wild, ambitious, and original novel. Levin is a wonder." - Dana Spiotta
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