The God-Damn Fool

by L.B. Deyo

Losing a high-school basketball game shouldn't be the end of the world.

The book is about students, parents, and teachers dealing with the ordinary challenges of academic life: Homework, tuition, athletics, superintelligent computers, the disposition of the planets, submarine warfare, the probable extermination of life on earth, and lousy cafeteria food.

Set in present-day Newburyport, Massachusetts, The God-Damn Fool tells the story Dr. John Harriman of Garrison Academy private boarding school. Budget cuts at the school have gotten so severe that Harriman, a pretentious Latin instructor, is forced to become coach of the school’s basketball team. Had the old man not already enough troubles dealing with his gout, his Vietnam War wound, mild Tourette’s Syndrome, three failed marriages, bursitis, psoriasis, morbid obesity, the disrespect of his peers, the insolence of his over-bright students, the steady rise of politics in the academe, and his outlandishly aggressive dog? Now he must lead an undermanned, spastic team of incorrigibles in a sport he knows nothing about, and try to stay on the good side of his best player’s father, the mayor of the city.

293 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2019

Reviews

[Kathryn Rogers]

The God-Damn Fool is a remarkable achievement, the kind of wide-reaching story that keeps the reader turning pages, wondering whether and how author L.B. Deyo is going to fulfill the book's accumulating ambitions for plot, character, and theme. And fulfill them he does.

Will humanity be saved? (SHOULD it be?) And will Garrison's impossibly unlikely basketball team somehow prevail against Newburyport? Small and large failures and victories hang in the balance, creating and maintaining suspense throughout the story.

Strange (another reviewer called it "deeply weird"), hilarious, and erudite without being precious or stuffy, it is a new Confederacy of Dunces, with Vonnegutesque plot and Wallacian voice. It is a heartfelt farce that balances satire with sincerity and slapstick with social comment.

[W. Joe]

There is A LOT going on in L.B. Deyo's debut novel. Yes, there is a high school basketball team made up of misfits and a coach who comes across as Ignatius P. Riley's much better educated and Vietnam veteran cousin, but more importantly there is serious conjecture about sentient planets manifesting as Greek gods, predictable systems, free will, and tribalism. There's a lot of depth that will award a thoughtful reader, as well as some flat-out gorgeous writing. So please enter into the experience of reading this book with a mindset open to thought and wonder.

We have met the God-Damned Fool, and he is us.