Trophy: A Novel

by Michael Griffith

Overview

Vada Prickett is a 29-year-old Hose Associate at a car wash in South Carolina, and Darla, the woman he loves, is about to marry his friend, rival, and life-long neighbor, Wyatt Yancey. Vada has “spent his life waiting for the thing to get a proper start.” But it will never get that start, for Vada, as this wildly original novel opens, is being crushed to death by Wyatt’s latest animal trophy, a stuffed grizzly bear Vada has been helping him to smuggle—against Darla’s wishes—into Wyatt’s house. 

It turns out that the cliché is true—at the moment of death, your life does flash before your eyes. Trophy, the account of a man’s final, fleeting instant on earth, joins Vada as he attempts to make that flash last as long as possible. As he lies dying, too soon and too absurdly, Vada tries to unravel the mysteries of his life. He first bargains with God, then rages against the dying of the light. Exhausted, Vada proceeds to prolong, in every way available to a man in his dire circumstances, the time he has remaining. 

Just beneath Griffith’s dark humor and witty take on our present-day culture lies a meditation on memory and identity and the power of language over both.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810152182
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	05/04/2011
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL GRIFFITH is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Spikes: A Novel (2001) and Bibliophilia: A Novella and Stories (2003).

Editorial Reviews

A rare thing: brilliant, moving, hilarious, one of the smartest, funniest books I’ve read in ages, as well as one of the most complicated.” —Elizabeth McCracken, author of An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

"Trophy is a brilliant novel; I can’t think of another book like it, another book that loves its characters so much that it can’t allow them to die, even when one (Vada, the novel’s beautifully written sad sack car washing “hose associate”) has been crushed by a stuffed bear. Trophy is powered by Vada’s desperate attempts to stay alive, and you can’t blame him: you wouldn’t want to die, either, if you were part of this wickedly funny, allusive, word happy, tender novel. Think of this book as the best kind of life support; while I was reading it, the world seemed like a much more brilliant place, a place worth living in, a place I didn’t want to leave. You won’t want to leave it, either." —Brock Clarke, author of Exley and An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England

From the Publisher

Vada Prickett is dying, pinned under a stupendous stuffed bear, thinking about his short life and a fond-of-puns God enjoying the "Moon over My Hammy" breakfast at the local Denny's.

With word play sparkling and crackling across the pages, Griffith cuts and polishes his story with esoteric Bob Dylan–like references and Stephen Wright's sometimes piquant and sardonic observations. Vada, not quite 30 and "waiting ... for his life to start," was helping his neighbor and best friend, Wyatt Yancey, slip one final trophy into his house before Yancey's marriage to his taxidermy-hating fiancée, Darla. Vada too loves Darla, which adds to the fun. In the minutes between bear-crush and death, Vada recalls his youth, son of a wildlife agent father and a homemaker with the moxie to use a ballpoint pen in an emergency tracheotomy. Vic Prickett's friendship with the rich and fun-loving Reid Yancey led to the Pricketts enjoying a ritzy lake-side development home near Columbia, S.C. A decent student, Vada reached his first year of college in pursuit of his dream, becoming a large-animal vet. And then his parents were killed by an errant poultry truck while hauling the household trash to the dump. Always a half-beat off in the social dance and all matters practical, Vada, sans parents, has floundered aimlessly as a "Hose Attendant" at the Caw-Caw Car Wash, domain of an admirer of Mussolini,Il Duce. Told in the third-person, the author also often addresses the reader directly: "reader, we are donkeys who pin on our own tails."The novelis a surrealistic meditation on, and a send-up of, the American dream, consumerism, God, the modern family and assorted other human foibles, complete with a semi-pro evangelical Christian baseball team, theRisen,with a mascot named "Pablo the Bible-believing Possum." Griffith's word wizardy, his facile puns, his insight into the human heart and his topsy-turvy sardonic approach make for a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

A quirky, imaginative, dazzling black comedy.

Kirkus Reviews