Auggie's Revenge
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Down and out in America, with absurdity all the way. In the city of brotherly unemployment, Michael Vittinger shares an adjuncts' office far removed from any real or imagined full-time, tenure-track position. After more than a decade of teaching, Michael still lives paycheck-to-supermarket in a small studio apartment. Trapped between insomnia and omniphobia, Michael drifts into late-night, supermarket friendship with Auggie, an offensive pick-up artist, and Jonny November, a one-legged con man. Through their lessons on how to survive at the bottom rungs of Capitalism, Michael realizes the promise of working longer and harder to earn a position with health benefits and a 401k security blanket is nothing but a Ponzi scheme - a shell-game run by the Capitalist-Education Complex to fill the prerequisite teaching positions with cheap, disposable, contract labor. Unable to face such a precarious future, Michael joins Auggie and Jonny in a revenge-robbery plot in the hopes of justice for Auggie and a pile of cash for each of them. Aided by Michael's significantly younger girlfriend, and former student, they set out to murder and plunder Auggie's abusive stepfather, who stole Auggie's inheritance and never served time for beating and molesting him. An eccentric "guys gone bad to do good" book, "Auggie's Revenge" is both a comic literary novel and a gritty crime thriller from the writer of the award-winning "Fight for Your Long Day," America's major novel on the pay-per-course adjunct issue.
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I don't often read comedies (or watch them for that matter. I haven't watched a sitcom in years). I'm much more drama oriented. That being said, this book was wonderful. Dark humor is my favorite style of comedy, and this book certainly fits into the dark humor genre. This is a much different book than [b:Fight for Your Long Day 8612461 Fight for Your Long Day Alex Kudera https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1279743920s/8612461.jpg 13482868], which shares the same protagonist. In fact, I enjoy this book quite a bit more than the first novel (which is saying something, because I liked that book a lot). I started out reading slowly because my schedule didn't allow much time to read, but by the middle, I couldn't stop. I kept staying up late to get further and further into the very engrossing tale. Watching Michael's life unfold in the way that it did was morbidly fascinating. There's a bit of absurdity to the humor, especially as the novel progresses. Michael's situation, already bad because of his job as an adjunct, spins somewhat out of control. It is all of his own making, of course. No one can undo a life better than the person living it. There's a fair bit of philosophy imbued within the novel (relevant because Michael is a professor of Philosophy). In a way, Michael's path in the novel follows a philosophical path, from simple existentialism to an almost Dada like life near the end of the book. All in all, I would highly recommend reading Auggie's Revenge.This is very much a book about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. They are both characters in this novel. Fairly current events, though fictionalized, play a large role in the novel, especially near the end. As someone who has made Pennsylvania his home, and who loves Philadelphia, I was glad this was the case.
