Stephen Florida

by Gabe Habash

Overview

"In Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he's created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study."
—Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life

Foxcatcher meets The Art of Fielding, Stephen Florida follows a college wrestler in his senior season, when every practice, every match, is a step closer to greatness and a step further from sanity. Profane, manic, and tipping into the uncanny, it's a story of loneliness, obsession, and the drive to leave a mark.

Gabe Habash is the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. He holds an MFA from New York Universityand lives in New York.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566894647
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Gabe Habash: Gabe Habash is the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. He holds an MFA from New York Universityand lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

Stephen Florida is not some Hollywood sports story. First, Stephen's drive is reinforced or curated not by his coaches but by himself, and second, the novel doesn't present his grandiose ambitions and unrepentant will as heroic or necessary or even good. Rather, it tries to understand the kind of person who would be attracted to such a vocation in the first place…Habash has created a fascinating protagonist in Stephen, a hard-driven athlete with a convincingly thoughtful mind—though an erratic one, too. Just when you think you've got Stephen pegged, he surprises you…But most important, I think, is the way Habash understands the limits of his subject matter. He does not try to extrapolate Stephen's narrative into some all-encompassing portrayal of ambition and hubris, but remains firmly in the realm of this particular boy in this particular moment.

The New York Times Book Review - Jonathan Russell Clark

★ 03/27/2017
PW reviews editor Habash’s finely rendered, dark, and funny debut novel follows Steven Forster (known as Stephen Florida, due to an enduring clerical error) as he wrestles for Oregsburg College in Aiken, North Dakota. A senior, it’s his last season to win the championship, a goal on which he’s obsessively staked everything. But his turbulent friendship with a talented younger teammate, his budding romance with an aspiring gallery director, his lingering grief over his parents’ death, a hostile coach, and a possibly homicidal professor all threaten to distract and derail him. He must also face his demons: a lack of direction, a deep intolerance for boredom, a reckless despair that verges into suicidal ideation, and a loneliness so vast it becomes a potent feature of the dramatic landscape. The student-athlete’s world comes alive with crisp, unflinching prose: “Suicide sprints, jump rope, rope climbing, five times, arms only... I brush the vomit out of my teeth and get my backpack.” Habash also balances his protagonist’s most harrowing episodes and questionable behavior with genuine humor. There are riffs on everything from death to jazz to God to liberal arts degrees. A striking, original, and coarsely poetic portrayal of a young man’s athletic and emotional quest. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (June)

Publishers Weekly

In Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he’s created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study.”—Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life

“Stephen Florida is an unforgettable addition to the canon of great literary eccentrics. At once a chronicle of obsession, a philosophical treatise, and a deeply affecting love story, this singular novel is perhaps most profoundly an anatomy of American loneliness. Gabe Habash is a writer of powerful gifts, and this is a wonderful book.”—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

“Habash has created something bizarre, comic, and truly engrossing in Stephen Florida. Florida’s first-person interiority, painted in masterful, jagged brushstrokes of insight and narrow-mindedness, gains in understanding, and selfish short-sightedness, does a remarkable job of mirroring the thought patterns of young males while creating the most gripping eccentric protagonist since Confederacy of Dunces. Through Florida’s unique lens, Habash provides a fascinating, fresh look at estrangement, competition, isolation, the American Midwest and West, and devotion to a cause. I already can’t stop talking about this one!”—Annie Harvieux, Magers & Quinn

From the Publisher

★ 04/15/2017
Stephen Florida wrestles for tiny Oregsburg College in North Dakota. The loss of his parents has left him lonely and guarded. His obsession with wrestling becomes a way of trying to control one of the few things he can, and the hard work he puts toward realizing his desire propels him to a level almost beyond his talents. His only distraction during senior year is Mary Beth, a young woman he meets in art class, who falls for him as hard as he falls for her and who unfortunately leaves for Michigan partway through the year to take a job at a gallery. A late-season knee injury will sideline Stephen until just before the national championship and cause additional concern when he reinjures it before the tournament. VERDICT Habash's debut is a memorable portrait of obsession to the edge of madness and the loneliness that follows so single-minded a pursuit. Yet readers will gladly accompany the complex, thoughtful, not-always-likable Stephen through the season as he battles his own dark fears as much as any opponent.—Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Library Journal

2017-03-21
A college wrestler is driven to win, to the detriment of his mental health.The captivating narrator of Habash's debut novel is a sinewy senior at a small North Dakota college on a last-ditch effort to win the Division IV championship in his weight class. To do so, he takes easy-A classes ("Drawing II, Meteorology I, Basic News Writing, and What Is Nothing?") and works out like a fiend ("I'm skin and gristle and little water"). But it's clear early on that something is off. He mentions his childhood as an orphan only to deny its impact, and his macho rhetoric takes bizarre turns: "It's my job to make other people upset and sad," "Everything outside of wrestling is devoid of mystery and deep faith," "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha." In short, Stephen is a classic unreliable narrator, which makes him as fascinating to experience—Habash plainly glories in his hero's digressions and non sequiturs—as he is difficult to root for. He's a bully with opponents, alienating with his teammates, and clumsy in a budding relationship. Once a meniscus tear threatens to keep him out of competition, his angry, obsessive nature ("I gargle discontent") drives him to investigate dark rumors about coaches and teachers. That's a canny provocation to the reader: recognize he's unhinged or respect his sense of justice? Either way, Habash writes about the raw physicality of wrestling better than anybody this side of John Irving ("I push his far shoulder like I'm crowbarring open Tut's tomb or I'm Lazarus moving aside the rock for the big reunion"), and though the story is overlong given Stephen's straightforward trajectory, the novel's grim, intense mood is admirably sustained. For this well-intentioned but troubled man, every victory is a pyrrhic one. A lively, occasionally harrowing journey into obsession.

Kirkus Reviews

Narrator Will Damron turns in a mesmerizing performance and, for better or worse, immerses listeners inside the twisted mind of Stephen Florida. Stephen’s senior year at a small North Dakota college marks his final chance at a wrestling championship, a goal he pursues with frightening intensity as he also comes to terms with the uncertainties of post-college life. Damron doesn’t strain to make Stephen likable; instead he delivers the stream-of-consciousness narrative with such openness that he seems to revel in Stephen’s darkness and physicality. This is top-notch narration, even if the bizarre and disjointed story isn’t for everyone. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Will Damron turns in a mesmerizing performance and, for better or worse, immerses listeners inside the twisted mind of Stephen Florida. Stephen’s senior year at a small North Dakota college marks his final chance at a wrestling championship, a goal he pursues with frightening intensity as he also comes to terms with the uncertainties of post-college life. Damron doesn’t strain to make Stephen likable; instead he delivers the stream-of-consciousness narrative with such openness that he seems to revel in Stephen’s darkness and physicality. This is top-notch narration, even if the bizarre and disjointed story isn’t for everyone. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile