Pieces of Payne

by Albert Goldbarth

How is Eliza's divorce connected to the rise of twentieth-century quantum physics? Why does the steamy promise of "a key unlocking a door at a cheap motel along I-35" lead us to a consideration of Moby-Dick? What does one physician's fake appointment book have to do with Columbus, werewolves, and Fanny Burney's famously excruciating nineteenth-century mastectomy? Albert Goldbarth sets his story of love's daily pleasures and griefs upon a foundation of ever-branching footnotes—from the strange worlds of supermarket tabloids and the Legion of Super-Heroes to more contemplative forays into gender politics, Dickens scholarship, and medical anomalies. By taking us on this mind-bending journey, he shows us how our lives are both confused and empowered by the multilayered universe around us.

Pieces of Payne is the first novel by Goldbarth, a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Genres: Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Albert Goldbarth is an American poet born January 31, 1948 in Chicago. He is known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive 'talky' style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only poet to receive the honor two times. He also won the Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Foundation, in 2008.

Goldbarth received his BA from the University of Illinois in 1969 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1971. He is currently distinguished professor of Humanities at Wichita State University, and he teaches in the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Converse College.

Reviews

[SomePig · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely defies description and classification. Goldbarth takes his audience on a mind-bending journey that manages to bounce between breast cancer, quantum physics, shamanism, Moby Dick, astronomy, Willard Wigan, and so so much more. Despite the author's many digressions, this book maintains a common thread. The author makes the reader believe that, of course atomic structure and dismemberment, do bear a natural relativity to one another. He also manages to convince the reader that underwear made of second-hand parachute fabric may be sacrosanct.

Ultimately, Pieces of Payne is about bifurcation and the various lives we all lead as different people in different roles. The book itself is structurally bifurcated: the footnotes bearing as much importance as the main body of text. Goldbarth leads the reader to consider the vastness of the cosmos and its relevence to the quark. Even the role of Goldbarth himself serves as another bifurcation: the author and the character.

I have always admired Goldbarth as a poet and I rank him with Robertson Davies as a novelist. Goldbarth is truly underrated, but I feel fortunate to be one of the people who gets that about him.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pieces of Payne is a book about the duality of the human stem cells that can become any functional part of the body, but sometimes become cancer. There is a lot about breast cancer specifically, including a history of mastectomies, an overview of fundraising for diseases, and a discourse on pink ribbons and breast cancer awareness. This book is also about the dualities of human beings and how our lives end up fragmented and compartmentalized. There is a history of lycanthropy related to this, but also a list of numerous synonyms for breasts, a discussion of super-heroes, of regular heroes, and of the way that a people divide their lives and attitudes into work compartments and familial compartments, and sometimes second familial compartments. Pop culture runs through the work, but so does history, philosophy, literary references, and some pretty dry humor. This book is awesome!

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally, I don̕t like the basic game that Albert Goldbarth plays in this novel: moving back and forth between text and footnotes, where the footnotes become as important as the basic text. However, Goldbarth manages to make this work, and even though the physical motion of reading this novel is awkward, the novel itself works smoothly.

Essentially, this novel is about our split-ness. Not about our split personality, although that too, but about all the ways in which we are divided, everything from spiritually to physically, including from parts of our bodies, and in all sorts of bizarre circumstances. It is thoughtful, but more fun than profound.