Superworse: The Novel

"Greenman’s mind may contain 'a Russian short story writer, a slap-stick gag writer, an art critic, a literary critic, a cultural commentator, a cowboy, a satirist, a scientist . . . a surrealist, a nut, and genius . . . a child prodigy . . . and a poet' (Susan Minot).

The original McSweeney’s, Superbad comprised more than two dozen pieces in various genres from serious fiction to post-modern satire to lyric. This Soft Skull edition will reconceive Superbad with an eye toward its overall architecture, emphasizing that the individual pieces are intricately related to one another, as movements in a symphony or gears in a clockwork. Onge, the [fictitious] editor who introduced Superbad, will oversee the paperback, allowing a clear set of themes and characters to emerge from the welter of styles. The book is tightly constructed, with a mirror-image arrangement and many characters, not all human, threaded throughout. Rather than conceiving this project simply as a paperback edition, the release is more like a remix, in the fashion of popular music. Superbad was a humor collection in the finest McSweeney’s tradition; Superworse is a novel in the spirit of Borges and Barthelme.