Tetched: A Novel in Fractals

by Thaddeus Rutkowski

Quirky, offbeat tale of a biracial young man eager to escape his dysfunctional family and feelings of alienation. His travels to the city, where his troubles follow him. After a series of frustrating, obsessive/compulsive, half-comic encounters, he meets Ms. Right and vows to fashion an enduring relationship with her - provided he can find the meaning of normal.

Genres: Fiction

175 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2005

About the author

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution’s fiction best-seller list. All three books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and at the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York. His writing has appeared in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Fiction and Fiction International. He received a 2012 fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Reviews

[Norah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a completely bizarre novel told from the perspective of a loner growing up in a family that makes no sense. Thus his narrative makes no sense. I read this in a grad class on Bicultural Writing and it was assigned because the narrator's mother is Chinese and his family is American. He is stuck between cultures, between worlds, but even more than that it seems that he lives in a world where it is very hard to connect. He spends the whole book trying to forge connections with the people around him.

If you are into experimental narratives, you should check this out.

[Pablo]

It reads more like stanzas from a poem (or rather individual poems) than a novel, Tetched is the story of a boy who grows up in an almost charmingly dysfunctional family and copes with his own dysfunctional inclinations in his relationships. It's funny, sad, pretty weird, and sometimes kind of fucked up, blurring the boundaries between poems and novels in a unique, staccato style.

I recommend it to anyone who appreciates poetry and who's looking for something different.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been known to take a completist approach to the authors I most enjoy: Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, George Eliot, Doris Lessing... Not all of my deep dives concern writers commonly seen on college syllabi, however. For I've also spent endlessly satisfying hours reading Rochelle Owens, Monica Drake, R.K. Narayan, and Thaddeus Rutkowski, too. Like their better-known counterparts, these later writers have distinctly rewarding POVs that let me see our complex world anew. Rutkowski -- a seriocomic novelist and a whimsical poet -- has a disarmingly charming touch: His deadpan prose especially reflects an offbeat way of moving through the world, first as a half-Asian/half-white adolescent growing up in small town America then as an adrift college kid searching for meaningful relationships with his peers then finally as a young adult attempting to balance sexual kinks with serious romance. His ability to mine this same terrain over and over ("Haywire," "Safe Colors," "Tetched") underscores that any life worth examining closely is also worth re-examining too and that memory can never be reconstructed from one single definitive swoop.

[Jl]

start/stop/ start/ stop. i need to finish this book.

[Gay Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thad's books are all brave--this is the bravest.