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Mr. Eternity
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Published:
Bloomsbury Publishing 2016
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Description
An Indie Next Pick

"Mr. Eternity will be sizzling in my brain for a long time." -Lauren Groff
A Thurber Prize Finalist of exuberance and ambition, spanning one thousand years of high-seas adventure, environmental and cultural catastrophe, and enduring love.
Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It's here that two young filmmakers find something to believe in: an old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe and claims to be five hundred and sixty years old.
In fact, old Dan is in the prime of his life—an incredible, perhaps eternal American life. The story unfolds over the course of a millennium, picking up in the sixteenth century in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and continuing into the twenty-sixth, where, in the future Democratic Federation of Mississippi States, Dan serves as an advisor to the King of St. Louis. Some things remain constant throughout the centuries, and being on the edge of ruin may be one. In 1560, the Spaniards have destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations. In 2500, we've destroyed our own: the cities of the Atlantic coast are underwater, the union has fallen apart, and cars, plastics, and air conditioning are relegated to history. But there are other constants too: love, humor, and old Dan himself, always adapting and inspiring others with dreams of a better life.
An ingenious, hilarious, and genre-bending page-turner, Mr. Eternity is multiple novels in one. Together they form an uncommon work—about our changing planet and its remarkable continuities.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
08/09/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781632860941
ASIN:
B01DM9Q716
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Aaron Thier. (2016). Mr. Eternity. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Aaron Thier. 2016. Mr. Eternity. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Aaron Thier, Mr. Eternity. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Aaron Thier. Mr. Eternity. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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d5ac4660-2209-6844-0caa-128dcfa3beae
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:33:42
Date Updated:
Jun 12, 2018 18:33:42
Last Metadata Check:
Apr 21, 2024 10:15:04
Last Metadata Change:
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      • bioText: Aaron Thier is the author of the novels Mr. Eternity, a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and The Ghost Apple, a semifinalist for the Thurber Prize. A contributor to the Nation and a graduate of Yale University and the MFA program at the University of Florida, Thier received a 2016 NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing. He lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
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title
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fullDescription
An Indie Next Pick

"Mr. Eternity will be sizzling in my brain for a long time." -Lauren Groff
A Thurber Prize Finalist of exuberance and ambition, spanning one thousand years of high-seas adventure, environmental and cultural catastrophe, and enduring love.
Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It's here that two young filmmakers find something to believe in: an old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe and claims to be five hundred and sixty years old.
In fact, old Dan is in the prime of his life—an incredible, perhaps eternal American life. The story unfolds over the course of a millennium, picking up in the sixteenth century in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and continuing into the twenty-sixth, where, in the future Democratic Federation of Mississippi States, Dan serves as an advisor to the King of St. Louis. Some things remain constant throughout the centuries, and being on the edge of ruin may be one. In 1560, the Spaniards have destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations. In 2500, we've destroyed our own: the cities of the Atlantic coast are underwater, the union has fallen apart, and cars, plastics, and air conditioning are relegated to history. But there are other constants too: love, humor, and old Dan himself, always adapting and inspiring others with dreams of a better life.
An ingenious, hilarious, and genre-bending page-turner, Mr. Eternity is multiple novels in one. Together they form an uncommon work—about our changing planet and its remarkable continuities.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: San Francisco Chronicle
      • content: [A] sharp, inventive and compassionate novel . . . to be savored and heeded.
      • premium: False
      • source: The Wall Street Journal
      • content: Mr. Thier's dizzying time-travels will inevitably call to mind David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," and the danger of such books is that they tend to grow solemn and sanctimonious as they peer into the future. Happily, "Mr. Eternity" remains playful even as it relates catastrophe.
      • premium: False
      • source: Kirkus Reviews
      • content: With symbolism and analogy, surrealism and fantasy, Thier deftly reflects on and explores the human condition through 'the lavender light and sweet scented dust of history.' Erudite. Imaginative. A work to be read slowly and savored.
      • premium: False
      • source: Publishers Weekly
      • content: Thier uses his deathless protagonist to chart the rise and fall of the American empire, and also those certainties—love, trade—that afflict every age . . . The moral imagination behind Defoe's adventures rivals that of his namesake, begging comparison to the best literature has to offer.
      • premium: False
      • source: "Reading Recommendation" Newsletter
      • content: Only a writer as wickedly smart as Aaron Thier would think to write such a twisted and wild story about Florida and climate change and time-battered Daniel Defoe; only Aaron Thier could pull it all off with such aplomb and in such gleeful and spiny language. Mr. Eternity will be sizzling in my brain for a long time.
      • premium: False
      • source: "Books & Beats," KUER
      • content: The end of the world has never been so much fun as in Aaron Thier's brilliant cavalcade of a novel. Careening back- and forward while staying peacefully centered, offering absurdities and heartbreaks in equal measure, Mr. Eternity is a moving exploration of our past, present, and future discombobulations.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        June 27, 2016
        In Key West, two budding documentarians find a willing subject in the “ancient mariner” Daniel Defoe, who claims to be 560 years old, in Thier’s second novel (after The Ghost Apple). Not only is Defoe telling the truth about his longevity, his life has only just begun. We flash back to 16th-century Granada, where Defoe is a conquistador searching for the fabled El Dorado, then forward into our future (approximately 2216) and Defoe’s quest for his long-lost love Anna Gloria among the ruins of America. In 1750, he is a guest on a plantation in the Bahamas with his faithful companion Quaco (who plays Sancho Panza to the adventurer Defoe’s Quixote), and in the year 2500 he is advisor to the ruler of the Mississippi States; each story line follows a different narrator and a different style, but Defoe himself is constant, voyaging through the echelons of power, sometimes a servant, occasionally a pirate, always a raconteur. Defoe regales his documentarians with recollections of Christopher Columbus; in the future, he recalls a 20th century long forgotten. Thier uses his deathless protagonist to chart the rise and fall of the American empire, and also those certainties—love, trade—that afflict every age. The novel can be jarring in its narrative jumps, but the moral imagination behind Defoe’s adventures rivals that of his namesake, begging comparison to the best literature has to offer. Agent: Cynthia Cannell, Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        June 15, 2016
        Thier (The Ghost Apple, 2014) sends Daniel Defoe, a 560-year-old Spaniard, wandering across centuries as the world wages wars, civilizations are raped, and human societies are swamped by global warming.A simple fellow who tells folks that the secret to eternal life is not dying, Defoe lives as a mirror rather than a narrative-driving hero. All he desires in his millennial-long quest is to find his true love, Anna Gloria, again. In 1560, Defoe joins explorers guided by a Pirahao aboriginal girl, trapped as a colonial mayor's mistress, into Amazon-like wilds in search of treasure. In 1750, he becomes Dr. Dan on Little Salt, a Caribbean island, where John Green, a mulatto intent on passing as white, lurks on a failed sugar plantation. In 2016, two young filmmakers, propelled by drugs and irony, set out to make a documentary about the ancient mariner. In 2200, Defoe becomes a guide to buried treasure, a roguish tale narrated in rambling Faulkner-ian exposition by a young fellow called Jam. In 2500, where once stood St. Louis, now land "hot enough to fry an ape," Defoe encounters Jasmine St. Roulette, daughter of the hereditary king and president of the Democratic Federation of Mississippi States. The tales explore the ugliness of slavery, the genocide of aboriginal peoples, and the ubiquity of greed. Throughout, Thier riffs on multiple themes: the evolution of history from fact to legend--"imagination and memory were all confounded one with the other"; how language constructs reality; and how, as the protagonists in our own stories, we "struggle with the meaning of story." With symbolism and analogy, surrealism and fantasy, Thier deftly reflects on and explores the human condition through "the lavender light and sweet scented dust of history." Erudite. Imaginative. A work to be read slowly and savored.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        July 1, 2016
        Thier's follow-up to his acclaimed debut, Ghost Apple (2014), whimsically surveys man's relationship with history and the environment. By the year 2500 in America, automobiles and plastics are relics of the past, slavery has been reinstitutionalized, Mississippi is a tropical kingdom-state, and New York City is underwater. An ancient mariner named Daniel Defoe, alive for over 1,000 years, inspires his fellow travelers with adventurous tales about witnessing the world change and change back again. In 1560, he races against Christian conquistadors to find El Dorado, accompanied by a girl from a remote Brazilian tribe. In 1750, he helps liberate the offspring of a slave and her master in the Bahamas. And in 2200, he journeys from Boston to Florida seeking his estranged girlfriend, alongside an orphan who craves now-extinct conveniences like bug spray and air conditioning. Caught in the middle, in 2016, are two college dropouts who hope capturing Old Dan in a documentary film will jump-start their futures. As Thier's story lines entwine in Faulknerian brilliance, the past, present, and future become indistinguishable, making for an enchanting, humorous, and visionary experience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

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An Indie Next Pick

"Mr. Eternity will be sizzling in my brain for a long time." -Lauren Groff
A Thurber Prize Finalist of exuberance and ambition, spanning one thousand years of high-seas adventure, environmental and cultural catastrophe, and enduring love.
Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It's here that two young filmmakers find something to believe in: an old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe and claims to be five hundred and sixty years old.
In fact, old Dan is in the prime of his life—an incredible, perhaps eternal American life. The story unfolds over the course of a millennium, picking up in the sixteenth century in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and continuing into the twenty-sixth, where, in the future Democratic Federation of Mississippi States, Dan serves as an advisor to the King of St. Louis. Some things remain constant...
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