The Portable Veblen

by Elizabeth McKenzie Narrated by Julia Gibson

Overview

An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its pages, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage-the charming Veblen and her fiance Paul, a brilliant neurologist-find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tete-a-tete with a very charismatic squirrel. Veblen (named after the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term "conspicuous consumption") is one of the most refreshing heroines in recent fiction. Not quite liberated from the burdens of her hypochondriac, narcissistic mother and her institutionalized father, Veblen is an amateur translator and "freelance self"; in other words, she's adrift. Meanwhile, Paul-the product of good hippies who were bad parents-finds his ambition soaring. His medical research has led to the development of a device to help minimize battlefield brain trauma-an invention that gets him swept up in a high-stakes deal with the Department of Defense, a Bizarro World that McKenzie satirizes with granular specificity. As Paul is swept up by the promise of fame and fortune, Veblen heroically keeps the peace between all the damaged parties involved in their upcoming wedding, until she finds herself falling for someone-or something-else. Throughout, Elizabeth McKenzie asks: Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals? And what is that squirrel really thinking? Replete with deadpan photos and sly appendices, The Portable Veblen is at once an honest inquiry into what we look for in love and an electrifying reading experience.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Patricia Park

A literary novel with a squirrel subplot may sound improbable, yet McKenzie adroitly skirts the line between the plausible and the absurd. Veblen, the book's heart and spirit, wins us over with her sense of wonder about the natural versus the man-made world—a wonder that suffuses the entirety of this quirky, engaging novel.

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

One of the great pleasures of reading Elizabeth McKenzie is that she hears the musical potential in language that others do not—in the manufactured jargon of economics, in the Latin taxonomy of the animal kingdom, even in the names of our own humble body parts (who knew about the eye's "zonule of Zinn"?). Her dialogue has real fizz and snappity-pop. It leaves a bubbled contrail. Ms. McKenzie's ear is not her only asset. There is also her angled way of seeing things. The hats on all of her characters sit slightly askew. The Portable Veblen, Ms. McKenzie's second novel, may be her most cockeyed concoction to date…It's a screwball comedy with a dash of mental illness; a conventional tale of family pathos; a sendup of Big Pharma; a meditation on consumption, marriage, the nature of work…The Portable Veblen is a novel of such festive originality that it would be a shame to miss.

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/21/2015
A marriage proposal opens this offbeat and winning novel by New Yorker contributor and author McKenzie (Stop That Girl). Thirty-year-old Veblen Amundsen-Hovda, “independent behaviorist... and freelance self,” has only known Paul Vreeland, a 34-year-old neurologist, for three months. This might explain Veblen’s feeling of trouble, “as if rushing toward a disaster,” when she says yes to his marriage proposal. Veblen, a Palo Alto resident, is named for Thorstein Veblen, an economist from the beginning of the 20th century, popularly known for coining the term conspicuous consumption; our heroine Veblen shares some of his concerns and critiques about modern capitalism. Paul, who is finding his footing as a scientist of note and growing ambition (his device for treating traumatic brain injury is fast-tracked by a powerful pharmaceutical company), is anxious to cast off his hippie upbringing and live a life with all the traditional hallmarks of success. We learn the differences between these two at the same time as they do, meeting their eccentric and dysfunctional families for the first time (including Veblen’s mother, Melanie, a narcissist to end all narcissists), and seeing how they respond to situations that grow increasingly out of their control. McKenzie writes with sure-handed perception, and her skillful characterization means that despite all of Veblen’s quirks—she’s an amateur Norwegian translator with an affinity for squirrels—she’s one of the best characters of the year. McKenzie’s funny, lively, addictive novel is sure to be a standout. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

A literary novel with a squirrel subplot may sound improbable, yet McKenzie adroitly skirts the line between plausible and the absurd. Veblen, the book’s heart and spirit, wins us over with her sense of wonder about the natural versus the man-made world — a wonder that suffuses the entirety of this quirky, engaging novel.” —The New York Times Book Review

“McKenzie has crafted a story that beneath an entertaining, clever surface, is deep and wise and complicated….With so light a touch and yet more serious and beautiful and relevant than many a weightier novel, The Portable Veblen has the feel of an instant, unlikely classic.” —Jeff VanderMeer in the Los Angeles Times

“Riotous …A delightfully knotty synthesis of psychological study, philosophical inquiry, romantic page-turner, and economic critique.”—Electric Literature
 
“A delightfully cockeyed love story that enfolds two splendidly dysfunctional families and a winningly persistent squirrel.”—More Magazine
 
“‘Funny and engaging and imbued with a very particular sensibility that might be described as ‘quirky’ if that term had not become trivialized by its overuse; despite being full of jokes and turns of phrase that make a reader laugh out loud…The Portable Veblen is a serious and, at times, sad book. And there is a talking squirrel.”—Chicago Reader

“Full of vibrant passages that practically leap off the page and twirl around the room. Veblen and Paul become richer, more nuanced characters as the book continues, thanks in part to McKenzie’s deft and amusing exploration of the conflicts between them and their parents. She also unleashes her satirical powers on Big Pharma and the defense industry.”—Dallas Morning News

“[Veblen] is a rich, well-rounded character…McKenzie…weaves in historical and cultural factoids about the Bay Area that truly make the novel zing…Satirical, funny, and satisfyingly clever, The Portable Veblen weaves multiple narrative threads into a seamless whole.”—KQED

“Irresistibly comedic…McKenzie…has an appealingly light, playful touch…‘The Portable Veblen’ is about how very squirrelly family dysfunction can be — and about how, as many of us never get tired of reading, love sometimes can conquer all.”—Seattle Times

“Modern romance, Big Pharma, and one very intuitive squirrel collide in McKenzie’s clever, winningly surreal novel…McKenzie has a pitch-perfect ear for a certain kind of California kookery…It’s hard not to be charmed by Veblen’s whimsy. Grade: A–.”-Entertainment Weekly  

“A sweet, sharply written, romantic comedy about the pitfalls of approaching marriage… McKenzie imbues her characters with such psychological acuity that they, as well as the off-kilter world they inhabit, feel fully formed and authentic…With its inspired eccentricities and screwball plot choreography, McKenzie’s novel perceptively delves into that difficult life stage when young adults finally separate—or not—from their parents.  In the end, The Portable Veblen is a novel as wise as it is squirrely.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“One of the great pleasures of reading Elizabeth McKenzie is that she hears the musical potential in language that others do not…Her dialogue has real fizz and snappity-pop. It leaves a bubbled contrail. Ms. McKenzie’s ear is not her only asset. There is also her angled way of seeing things. The hats on all of her characters sit slightly askew…For all its charm, bounce, radiant eccentrics and diverting episodes involving drug companies and squirrels, that is what ‘The Portable Veblen’ is about: shaking the demented ghosts of our youth so that we can bind with clean spirits to someone in our adulthood…A novel of such festive originality that it would be a shame to miss.”—Jennifer Senior, The New York Times

“A winning satire of contemporary mores…McKenzie has written a funny, deeply critical book with the heart of a cynic and the texture of a soufflé.”—Boston Globe

“A smart charmer about a brainy off-center couple who face up to their differences — and their difficult, eccentric families — only after they become engaged…[The Portable Veblen] is ultimately a morality tale about the values by which we choose to live…McKenzie’s delightfully frisky novel touts…a world in which ‘underdogs and outsiders’ like Thorstein Veblen, her appealing cast of oddballs and nonconformists, and even bushy-tailed rodents feel ‘free to be themselves.’”—NPR.org

“Clever…This novel is like vegetables cut on a bias: slightly skewed, pleasing to look at, and, thanks to its skilled chef, a joy to consume…A funny and well-written novel about family, love and the perils of misplaced ambition.”—BookPage

“Ambitious…[McKenzie’s domestic scenes] accurately and funnily capture the complexities of modern families, made knotty by the work we’re encouraged to do in our individual lives. Think The Corrections meets The Wallcreeper—where the warring wants of career-centric success and familial harmony converge, tension and comedy emerge.”—Huffington Post

“[A] funny, philosophical novel…Oddball characters and plot turns abound, including talking squirrels and bureaucratic ironies worthy of ‘Catch-22.’ But a sober question occupies its core: Do our parents' best intentions do us harm?”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A wild ride that you will not want to miss… rambunctious and sober, hilarious and morbid, [with] strong echoes of Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut…This unforgettable novel offers a heartfelt and sincere investigation into the paradoxical nature of love, familial as well as romantic.”—Elizabeth Rosner, San Francisco Chronicle

“No matter how many novels you’ve read, it’s safe to say you’ve never read a novel like The Portable Veblen. The Portable Veblen brings together its disparate themes and worlds with confidence and dexterity, making the standard well-made novel seem as timid as—well, as a squirrel.”- Slate

“McKenzie skewers modern American culture while quoting from a panoply of voices, with Frank Zappa, Robert Reich, and, of course, Thorstein Veblen among them. The result is a wise and thoroughly engaging story in a satirical style comparable to the works of Christopher Moore and Carl Hiaasen.”—Library Journal (starred review)

"Will these kind, if somewhat confused, young people find their ways out of the past and to each other and a happy shared future? The reader can't help rooting them on. McKenzie's idiosyncratic love story scampers along on a wonderfully zig-zaggy path, dashing and darting in delightfully unexpected directions as it progresses toward its satisfying end and scattering tasty literary passages like nuts along the way." —Kirkus, starred review

“Offbeat and winning…McKenzie writes with sure-handed perception, and her skillful characterization means that despite all of Veblen’s quirks—she’s an amateur Norwegian translator with an affinity for squirrels—she’s one of the best characters of the year. McKenzie’s funny, lively, addictive novel is sure to be a standout.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A clever morality tale set against the verdant paradise of Palo Alto.  McKenzie’s story of an ambitious young neurologist and the seductions of the darker side of the medical economy is both incisive and hilarious.” -Abraham Verghese, New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone 

“Man oh man, do I love this book! I have never read anything like it. I can't believe how funny it is given that we're dealing at times with pharmaceutical fraud, irreparable brain injury, and comatose veterans. (Family dysfunction, on the other hand, is always funny)… Audacious, imaginative, and totally wonderful: The whole books zips and zings.”-Karen Joy Fowler, PEN Faulkner winner for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselve 

“The Portable Veblen is the squirreliest novel I ever read.  I enjoyed it completely.”-Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness
 

"Wildly entertaining and overflowing with piercing emotional truths, this audacious novel gives us an irresistible portrait of a sensitive young woman navigating the kaleidoscopic freakscape we call modern America. With casual aplomb, Elizabeth McKenzie tosses off sentences that will delight and bowl you over with their insight and hilarious truth-telling....An elegy for our dying empire, full of wisdom and finely tuned grace notes about the secrets of the human heart."-Gabe Hudson, author of Dear Mr. President

“The Portable Veblen is an authentically strange—and genuinely funny—depiction of how the dysfunctions of childhood stubbornly follow us into adulthood.”-Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine and Kapitoil 

"Only Elizabeth McKenzie could make a novel—a great novel—with such weird and wonderful ingredients. The Portable Veblen gives us squirrels, love, family dysfunction, sex, marriage, medical science, and something called the Pneumatic Turbo Skull Punch, all swirled into a funny, beautiful, heartbreaking story. The Portable Veblen is about all of these things but mostly it’s about that most important of subjects: what it is to be human."-Christian Kiefer, author of The Animals and The Infinite Tides

"A deeply observed universe where heroines are named for economists and the high stakes of capitalism are set to collide with the chatter of small wild animals. In a work both humorous and wrenching, everything casts multiple shadows while McKenzie tracks the distance between individuals, measuring the wildly human hope that love, might in the end, conquer all." —Samantha Hunt, author of The Invention of Everything Else and Mr. Splitfoot

 “In scalpel-sharp prose, The Portable Veblen's gleefully perverse narrator seduces us with the story of a charming young woman soon to wed a handsome doctor. But strange shadows flicker just off the page and then begin to bleed into the story of the romance. The ethics of parenting, the disasters of war, corporate greed, the essential meanings of translation and invention, and the sacrifices of self to wedlock: these are some of the themes that surface in this extraordinary book. Oh, and also—what really is the soul of a squirrel? I was knocked out, giddily so, by The Portable Veblen.”-Nelly Reifler, author of Elect H. Mouse State Judge and See Through

“The Portable Veblen is a funny, modern love story, but also the story of everything that comes before love, its dark prerequisites and murky prequels…A wonderfully insane novel with talking squirrels and lunatic parents and comedic plot twists…populated by some of the most real, fully written characters I've met on any page. Don't miss it.”-Lydia Netzer, author of How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky 

Praise for Elizabeth McKenzie's Stop That Girl

"Vibrant and clear, these connected stories present a portrait of a family whose members are funny and hurtful and real, and watching them touched by time and change is very affecting. There is a lovely expansiveness here; surrounding the humor is the recognition that life is a serious deal."-Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteredge 

“McKenzie is an accomplished humorist and a developed stylist, and she wastes no time dazzling the reader with her clean direct language, her simple but searing use of metaphor and her unflinching eye.  The paragraphs are put together with razor sharp concision, and the book is rich in both narrative and linguistic surprise.  An original."-The New York Times Book Review 

Praise for Elizabeth McKenzie

"A wonderful talent."-Jane Hamilton, author of The Book of Ruth and The Map of the World 
 

"McKenzie has a wonderful eye – and a relishing appetite – for the craziness that is everywhere in ordinary things if you know how to look."-Tessa Hadley, author of Married Love and Accidents in the Home 

Library Journal

★ 01/01/2016
An endearing young woman arrives into adulthood intact, despite a histrionic mother who chose to name her daughter after a somewhat obscure social scientist. Veblen's coping skills involve a love of typing and of the natural world, especially the squirrels that live near her cottage in Palo Alto, CA. Paul, the neurologist to whom she is engaged, has family issues as well: he grew up in a commune where behavioral boundaries were lax and where his disabled brother commanded attention. In Paul's lab at Stanford University, he invents a device that minimizes brain trauma in combat situations, and a large medical corporation entices him to join its ranks. From there, everything goes awry. Amid all the craziness, Veblen's innate sweetness and relative groundedness keep this large cast of characters from spinning out of orbit. VERDICT McKenzie (MacGregor Tells the World) skewers modern American culture while quoting from a panoply of voices, with Frank Zappa, Robert Reich, and, of course, Thorstein Veblen among them. The result is a wise and thoroughly engaging story in a satirical style comparable to the works of Christopher Moore and Carl Hiaasen. [See Prepub Alert, 7/13/15.]—Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2015-10-28
On the brink of her marriage, a charmingly quirky, unassumingly intelligent, and winningly warmhearted young woman forges an unusually strong bond with a squirrel. It's easy to understand why everyone in Veblen Amundsen-Hovda's life adores and depends on her. The heroine of McKenzie's (MacGregor Tells the World, 2007, etc.) disarmingly offbeat novel is the sort of person who not only sews her own clothes and fixes up her own tumbledown bungalow (in ultrapricey Palo Alto, California), but supports herself working temp jobs while performing the unappreciated yet worthy task of translating texts from Norwegian, especially those pertaining to maverick economist, anti-materialist, and leisure-class critic Thorstein Veblen, after whom she was named. Veblen—whom the author describes as an "independent behaviorist, experienced cheerer-upper, and freelance self"—has just gotten engaged to Paul Vreeland, an equally charming yet outwardly more conventional young neurologist, whose academic research has led to a device that's captured the attention of industry and the Department of Defense. Paul and Veblen are in love, betrothed, and planning their wedding and life together, but Paul is tempted by the kind of "conspicuous consumption" Veblen's economist namesake and hero railed against. Meanwhile, Veblen's heart has been stolen by a squirrel, who she suspects understands her in a way no one else may. Paul is struggling to calibrate his ethical compass—and to come to terms with his issues surrounding his hippy parents and his intellectually disabled brother, Justin. Veblen is laboring to free herself from the demands of her narcissistic, hypochondriacal mother (not to mention the mentally unstable father who was mostly absent from her childhood) and stake her claim to her own healthy identity and future. Will these kind, if somewhat confused, young people find their ways out of the past and to each other and a happy shared future? The reader can't help rooting them on. McKenzie's idiosyncratic love story scampers along on a wonderfully zig-zaggy path, dashing and darting in delightfully unexpected directions as it progresses toward its satisfying end and scattering tasty literary passages like nuts along the way.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170447442
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	01/19/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Portable Veblen

---

By Elizabeth McKenzie

Penguin Press

Copyright © 2016 Elizabeth McKenzie
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59420-685-6

---

CHAPTER 1

End the Attachment!

Huddled together on the last block of Tasso Street, in a California town known as Palo Alto, was a pair of humble bungalows, each one aplot in lilies. And in one lived a woman in the slim green spring of her life, and her name was Veblen Amundsen-Hovda.

It was a rainy day in winter, shortly after the New Year. At the end of the street a squirrel raked leaves on the banks of the San Francisquito Creek, looking for pale, aged oak nuts, from which the tannins had been leeched by rain and dew. In muddy rain boots, a boy and a girl ran in circles, collecting acorns, throwing them, screaming with delight in the rain. Children did this every day, Veblen knew, scream in delight.

The skin of the old year was crackling, coming apart, the sewers sweeping it away beneath the roads. Soon would come a change in the light, the brief, benign winter of northern California tilting to warmth and flowers. All signs that were usually cause for relief, yet Veblen felt troubled, as if rushing toward a disaster. But was it of a personal nature, or worldwide? She wanted to stop time.

The waterway roared, as frothy as a cauldron, a heaving jam of the year's broken brambles and debris. She watched the wind jerk the trees, quivering, scattering their litter. The creek roared, you see. Did water fret about madness? Did trees?

With her walked a thirty-four-year-old man named Paul Vreeland, tall and solid of build, branded head to toe in a forge-gray Patagonia jacket, indigo cords from J. Crew, and brown leather Vans that were showing flecks of mud. Under her raincoat, Veblen wore items of indeterminate make, possibly hand- cobbled, with black rubber boots. She was plain and mild in appearance, with hair the color of redwood bark, and eyes speckled like September leaves.

They stopped at a mossy escarpment in a ring of eucalyptus, redwood, and oak, and a squirrel crept forward to spy.

"Veb," the man said.

"Yes?"

"I've been insanely happy lately," he said, looking down.

"Really?" She loved the idea of spending time with someone that happy, particularly if insanely. "Me too."

"Tacos Tambien tonight?"

"Sure!"

"I knew you'd say sure."

"I always say sure to Tacos Tambien."

"That's good," he said, squeezing her hands. "To be in the habit of saying sure."

She drew closer, sensing his touching nervousness.

"You know that thing you do, when you run out of a room after you've turned off the light?" he said.

"You've seen me?"

"It's very cute."

"Oh!" To be cute when one hasn't tried is nice.

"Remember when you showed me the shadow of the hummingbird on the curtain?"

"Yes."

"I loved that."

"I know, it was right in the middle, like it was framing itself."

"And you know that thing you do, when telemarketers call and you sort of retch like you're being strangled and hang up?"

"You like that?"

"I love it." He cleared his throat, looked down at the ground, not so much at the earth but at his footing on it. "I am very much in love with you. Will you marry me?"

A velveteen shell came up from his pocket, opening with a crack like a walnut. In it gleamed a diamond so large it would be a pill to avoid for those who easily gag.

"Oh, Paul. Look, a squirrel's watching."

But Paul wouldn't even turn, as if being watched by a squirrel meant nothing to him.

"Oh my gosh," she said, examining the alien stone, for which she'd never yearned. "It's so big. Won't I smash it into things, won't I wreck it?"

"Diamonds can't be smashed."

"I can't wreck it?" she asked, incredulously.

"You can't wreck anything. You only make things great."

Her body quickened, like a tree in the wind. Later, she would remember a filament that passed through her, of being glad she had provided him happiness, but not really sure how she felt herself.

"Yes?" the man said.

The squirrel emitted a screech.

"Is that a yes?" Paul asked.

She managed to say it. Yes. Two human forms became as one, as they advanced to the sidewalk, the route to the cottage on Tasso Street.

Behind them, the squirrel made a few sharp sounds, as if to say he had significant doubts. As if to say, and she couldn't help translating it this way: There is a terrible alchemy coming.

Such was the engagement of Veblen Amundsen-Hovda, independent behaviorist, experienced cheerer-upper, and freelance self, who was having a delayed love affair with the world due to an isolated childhood and various interferences since. At thirty she still favored baggy oversized boy's clothes, a habit as hard to grow out of as imaginary friends.

That night in her cottage the squirrel paced the attic floor. Rain pelted the rooftop and a low- pressure system whipped the tall trees the town was named for. When his acorn lost its flavor, the squirrel hurled it in a fit of pique, and Paul banged on the wall from below.

You want a piece of me? Only bottled–up jerks bang on walls from below.

The squirrel had his resources. All he had to say was End the attachment and the leaves would fall. It was an important job in autumn to visit all the ones he'd planted and stare down their boughs. End the attachment. The trees went bare. The days grew short and cold.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie. Copyright © 2016 Elizabeth McKenzie. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos