The More You Ignore Me

by Travis Nichols

Overview

Praise for Travis Nichols:

"A rewarding experience. [Nichols'] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates throughout the book."—Chicago Sun-Times

"Nichols pulls the readers in . . . with breathtaking immediacy. . . . Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting."—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Charli and Nico's wedding blog has an uninvited guest: a commenter convinced the bride is being romanced by the brother of the groom. To save her from a terrible mistake he adopts multiple identities on multiple message boards, sharing his fears for Charli, his outrage at being thwarted, and the romance, years ago in his analog past, that first attracted his meddlesome care.

Cranky, hilarious, and incisive, The More You Ignore Me takes on Internet etiquette, the distortions of voyeurism, and the incessant, expansive flow of words that may not be able to staunch loneliness, but holds out the hope of talking it to death.

Travis Nichols was born in Ames, Iowa. He attended the Universityof Georgia and the Universityof Massachusetts, where he earned an MFA in poetry. He is the author of the novel Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder (Coffee House Press) and two collections of poetry, Iowa (Letter Machine Editions) and See Me Improving (Copper Canyon Press). From 2008 to 2012 he was associate editor of the Poetry Foundation's website and editor of its blog, Harriet. He now works at Greenpeace in Washington, DC.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566893213
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	05/28/2013
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Travis Nichols was born in Ames, Iowa. He attended Universityof Georgia and the Universityof Massachusetts, where he earned an MFA in poetry. He is the author of the novel Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder (Coffee House Press) and two collections of poetry, Iowa (Letter Machine Editions) and See Me Improving (Copper Canyon Press). From 2008-2012 he was associate editor of the Poetry Foundation’s website and editor of its blog, Harriet. He now works at Greenpeace in Washington DC.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The More You Ignore Me is a novel that will not be ignored. Travis Nichols channels the energies of such exemplary screeders past as Gogol’s Poprishchin, Nabokov’s Kinbote, Lish’s Lish, and Nicholson Baker's woe-beset anthologist, Paul Chowder. Lynksys181, a kind of latter-day Gollum, cries out: ‘I know I have love to give! Who will dare to take it?’ Reader, you should be the one."
—Justin Taylor

“With this hilarious and tragic novel, Travis Nichols has captured the menace and pathos and ridiculousness and dead-seriousness of the Internet so well that now I feel a little bit concerned for him. This narrator's voice will resonate in your mind in unexpected ways forever. You've been warned!”
—Emily Gould

Editorial Reviews

"The More You Ignore Me is a novel that will not be ignored. Travis Nichols channels the energies of such exemplary screeders past as Gogol’s Poprishchin, Nabokov’s Kinbote, Lish’s Lish, and Nicholson Baker's woe-beset anthologist, Paul Chowder. Lynksys181, a kind of latter-day Gollum, cries out: ‘I know I have love to give! Who will dare to take it?’ Reader, you should be the one."—Justin Taylor

“With this hilarious and tragic novel, Travis Nichols has captured the menace and pathos and ridiculousness and dead-seriousness of the Internet so well that now I feel a little bit concerned for him. This narrator's voice will resonate in your mind in unexpected ways forever. You've been warned!”—Emily Gould

“An experimental novel of obsession and violation that makes Nicholson Baker and Mark Leyner look positively banal.”—Kirkus

"The unhinged narrator of Nichols’s amusing second novel . . . is a self-styled 'online justice-seeker and truth-teller.' . . . Nichols writes brawny prose and has an easy touch with humor."—Publishers Weekly

"The More You Ignore Me, beyond being a farcical joyride of a read, also serves as a critical study of the monopolizing role the internet plays in both fostering and sating the human appetite for connection. . . . In an age in which social life can be lived through a screen entirely, to what extent to we indulge?"—KGB Bar Lit Magazine

"In linksys181, Nichols has engaged in a flabbergasting act of literary ventriloquism . . . The More You Ignore Me is a Notes from Underground by way of the Huffington Post."—The Seattle Stranger

"Nichols is brilliant in capturing the wheedling tone, aggravating escalation and stultifying self-involvement of Internet trolls. . . . [R]aw enough to bring the dark laughter of recognition."—Star Tribune

“I had never read a novel so innovative, and Nichols wrote a character that still haunts me. I realized I loved it, and recommended it to anyone who came into the bookstore looking for an unconventional read.”—Lit Reactor, "I Hate You...No, Wait, I Love You! 5 Literary 180s"

"Travis Nichols' The More You Ignore Me features two of my favorite literary devices, an unreliable narrator and ambitious, experimental form (the novel is one long blog comment) in one of the year's most ambitious and thought provoking novels."—Largehearted Boy: A Music and Literature Blog, "Book Notes"

"What Mr. Nichols does brilliantly is examine the inner workings of a delusional and grandiose individual . . . on the darker side of the internet: the disconnect that longs deeply for connection, the disparate cry for acknowledgement."—New York Journal of Books

"Want a reminder what you can do with fiction? Told entirely as a blog post comment from the perspective of a dude crashing a wedding website, this psychologically-driven novel is what you're looking for."—Bustle

"Nichols' prose especially shines when relating the narrator's ambitious project . . . Linksys181 may only have found his voice in the digital realm . . . but the ultimate roots of his discontent is something altogether understandable: a desire and passion for meaningful human connection."—NYZZYVA

"[T]he Ignatius J. Reilly of the Internet age. Prepare yourself for an entertaining read that is funny, creepy, unsettling, sad, and super entertaining.”—WORD Bookstore Tumblr

"Imagine, for a moment, an Internet troll who writes in complete sentences. Who melds the political fire of a revolutionary with the linguistic precision of a poet. Who peppers his rants with references to Norman Mailer, Buster Keaton, and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Do that and you might be able to anticipate the spectacular, deranged protagonist of Travis Nichols' very funny second novel, The More You Ignore Me."—Fanzine

"[T]here's something admirable about the way Nichols allows his character the indignity of his prickly tendencies without validating them via sympathetic flashback. . . . The More You Ignore Me reminds us that exploring this sense of failure can itself become the basis for art that is as alive as it is bleak."—Bookforum

"Nichols . . . actually gets the tone and pitch of the troll down pat. This is a stunning book."—The Volta, "The Volta Picks"

"Addressing the internet's ability to unite and divide us at once, magnified by the emboldening power of anonymity and the persuasive gravity of voyeurism, Nichols presents one more serious consideration of personal bias assisted and afflicted by technology."—Denver Examiner

"The novels's narrator, ably fashioned by Nichols . . . possesses all of Ahab's obsessiveness but none of his courage, can best be imagined as Dostoyevsky's Underground Man with Internet access. . . . Nichols's book is a contribution to the body of obsessive literature."—The Philadelphia Review of Books

From the Publisher

A deeply unreliable narrator takes the form to the next level when he foists himself on the owners of a schlocky wedding blog. Stalker novels are nothing new in the world of thrillers, but posing one as a shrill, fey experiment in comedy may well be a tough sell for sophomore novelist Nichols (Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder, 2010). The poet-turned-novelist deeply indulges his love of the clipped, erratic style of poetry as well as a penchant for the epistolary device, last seen in the letters that make up his debut. Moving into the Internet age has opened up a new vein of satire for Nichols, who makes not-so-subtle jabs at the twin demons of self-promotion and personal privacy. For starters, his unnamed narrator is batshit crazy--not necessarily a bad thing in characters ranging from Patrick Bateman to Tyler Durden--but his lead's protracted screeds about conspiracy theories and personal slights quickly become wearying. Our guy, trying to track down a beloved ex, MFL ("My First Love"), spends his days trolling the Web looking for pictures of her. That's when he unfortunately runs across a picture of Charli Vistons, bride-to-be. He quickly breaks into her public blog at Charlico.com and learns of her impending nuptials to Nico Novtalis, brother to the blog moderator, Chris. Naturally, our stalker's logic isn't always easy to follow. "The personal is absolutely political, after all," he practically seethes. "Of course blog comments in general, dear readers, are revolutionary because they allow for point X, which dilates our triangular perception from simple A, B, and C into the pyramidal realms." And so on, and on, and on as our lunatic host opines that Chris is trying to pluck his brother's prize. We also get some background in memories of related adolescent hijinks, but whether readers have the stamina to finish the ride is a fair question. An experimental novel of obsession and violation that makes Nicholson Baker and Mark Leyner look positively banal.

Kirkus Reviews