The Price of the Haircut: Stories

by Brock Clarke

Overview

From an acclaimed and original writer comes a new collection of stories bursting with absurdist plot twists and laced with trenchant wit. Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and Exley, among other novels, now offers up bite-sized morsels of his trademark social satire that will have readers laughing, and perhaps shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

The title story delivers a cringingly biting dissection of racial attitudes in contemporary America, and Clarke also turns his eagle eye to subjects like PTSD, the fate of child actors, and, most especially, marital discord in stories like “Considering Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife” and “The Misunderstandings.” In “The Pity Palace,” a masterful study in self-absorption and self-delusion, a reclusive husband in Florence, Italy, who believes his wife has left him for a famous novelist, sells tickets to tourists anxious to meet someone more miserable than they.

It’s a distinctly Clarkean world, in which readers find themselves reflected back with the distortion of funhouse mirrors—and swept up on a wild ride of heart-wrenching insight and self-discovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616208240
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Brock Clarke is the author of four novels, including the bestselling An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. He lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches at Bowdoin College.

Table of Contents

The Price of the Haircut 1

The Grand Canyon 20

What Is the Cure for Meanness? 25

Concerning Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife 59

Good Night 79

Our Pointy Boots 81

The Misunderstandings 108

That Which We Will Not Give 131

Cartoons 161

Children Who Divorce 165

The Pity Palace 192

Editorial Reviews

01/22/2018
In his third short story collection, Clarke (An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England) offers 11 satirical, sometimes surreal, tales that investigate broken individuals and flawed societal expectations. In the title story, emotionally fragile middle-class white men suffering from bad haircuts debate whether to patronize a racist but affordable barber. In “The Misunderstandings,” a family’s dysfunctions inadvertently challenge the local restaurant community and its patrons to rethink their assumptions and beliefs. “The Grand Canyon” airs a woman’s breathless grievances against her new husband after they honeymoon in a tent near the famous national park. In “What is the Cure for Meanness?,” a teenage son attempts to differentiate himself from his abusive father by giving his mother a series of gifts that only make things worse. The narrator of “Good Night” struggles to accept affection without caustic commentary. In “Our Pointy Boots,” soldiers on leave search for relief from the horrors of war in a distant, fond memory they all share. Clarke’s disquieting, droll work reflects humanity like a dark fun house mirror. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Price of the Haircut:

“Parts Donald Barthelme, Richard Powers, and George Saunders, Brock Clarke has distinguished himself as a writer fully in control of his ideas. Clarke's The Price of the Haircut is an impressive collection of stories . . . Clarke's created an impressive world here that's well worth visiting.”
—Popmatters.com

“For those readers missing the regular output of Tom Robbins, this writer seems to be his natural heir. Clarke observes his characters with brutal attention to their weaknesses that borders on cruel, but he mitigates that look with outright funny and true observations. Take this book on vacation so everyone can wonder why you are laughing out loud.”
—Tulsa Book Review

“Full of sharp left turns and unexpected narrative choices, Clarke’s bleak yet hilarious collection constantly mixes the seemingly mundane with the profound . . . these stories often echo the absurdities of Donald Barthelme, Nikolai Gogol, Joshua Ferris, and David Foster Wallace. In trying to illuminate how we discuss race, war, and family dynamics, Clarke shows he is constantly willing to push boundaries. The resulting tales are hilarious, haunting, and original.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Clarke’s disquieting, droll work reflects humanity like a dark fun house mirror.”
—Publishers Weekly

“In these stories, Brock Clarke dissects human nature in a way even a casual reader would understand and enjoy. These profound short stories are highly entertaining and enjoyable.”
—The Washington Book Review

"There aren’t enough superlatives to praise Brock Clarke’s extraordinary new collection. . . Clarke is outrageously inventive. He has a masterful command of voice, style, and character, and an off-key humor which is often mind-boggling . . . the stories in The Price of the Haircut are a series of unexpected, rewarding pleasures. They are the finest products of an accomplished writer with a unique mind.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books

“The characters that populate these acerbic stories have made a fine art out of self-delusion and self-sabotage—and their various unspoolings are equal parts blistering and riveting. The Price of the Haircut is Brock Clarke at his satiric best.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me
 
“Brock Clarke is such a funny writer you might make the mistake of thinking these stories are pure, light fun. You'd be wrong about that. The Price of the Haircut kept catching me by surprise with the depth of its insights and the depths Clarke was willing to plumb. There's a savage soul in each of these wonderfully constructed tales. Brock Clarke wields his wit like a sword."
—Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling

“Brock Clarke's superb stories—exemplars of tragicomic voice and escalation—move ever forward on the tracks of his characters' rigorous but self-delusional logic. What a pleasure it is to read an artist who is in such complete control of talent and technique.”
—Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special

“Absurd and astonishing . . . [Clarke] wields this tool masterfully, bringing the strangeness of mankind to the forefront in a bid to expose the ridiculous nature of our society and the things we value. By the end of this collection, Clarke has dedicated his eccentric combination of absurd comedy and gut-wrenching tragedy to a range of contemporary themes.”
—Harvard Crimson


Praise for Brock Clarke:

“Another literary high-wire performance by a novelist who is establishing himself as a unique voice in contemporary fiction.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred and later chosen as one of the year’s best)

“Heart-rending and comically absurd.”
—The New York Times

“[Clarke] creates books that taste like delicious cuts of absurdity marbled with erudition.”
—The Washington Post

From the Publisher

2017-12-12
This collection of short fiction features writing as straightforward as the perspective is askew.Readers might find themselves asking a couple of questions when reading Clarke's (The Happiest People in the World, 2015, etc.) latest story collection. The first is What is this story about? The second, Why would anyone write a story about this? These are mostly first-person narratives featuring hopelessly deluded protagonists who live in a world where the usual principles of human behavior don't seem to apply. The title story, which opens the collection, proceeds from this premise: "On Monday, an unarmed black teenage boy was shot in the back and killed by a white city policeman. On Tuesday, there was a race riot." A simple statement of cause and effect, until the mayor determines that the explanation is too easy, that the riot had in fact been sparked by a white barber who offered cut-rate haircuts and allegedly made a racist remark while giving one. The explanation satisfies the narrator and his white cohort but leaves them in a quandary. Should they go protest at the barber shop? Or should they get one of those discount haircuts that are such a better value than their expensive ones? They expect black protestors when they arrive at the barber shop, but all they see is a long line of white customers wanting their own bargain haircuts. A parable? Then there's "Concerning Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife," in which a mystified husband finds himself invited without explanation to join his wife—who had recently kicked him out of the house—at a B&B in the former home of the notorious ax murderer, where he joins other equally confused guests. For pure literary pleasure, the concluding "The Pity Palace" shows a masterful command of tone on a number of different levels. Though written in the third person, it focuses on an Italian man, Antonio Vieri, despondent because his "wife had left him for the famous American author who wrote those best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York." In other words, Mario Puzo, whose name Vieri can't bear to hear spoken and who happens to be dead. And was dead at the time Vieri suggested to his wife that if she liked those novels so much, like the one whose translated title was The Patriarch of the Gangster, she could just leave him for the author. If he ever actually did that. If he ever actually had a wife. If any of this signifies anything more than words on a page in a book. Vieri's dialogue seems to have been inspired by idiomatic English translated into the Italian vernacular and then back into English, a virtuosic feat.Where Clarke's novels veer toward social satire, often hilariously so, this uneven collection ranges from the inscrutable to the astounding.

Kirkus Reviews