04/21/2014
While preparing to compete in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Stanford water polo star Owen Burr is struck in the face by another player, losing an eye, along with any hope of a medal. So Owen, the son of a respected classics professor, slips away to Berlin to try his hand at making art. There, he falls in with the world-famous—and slippery—artist Kurt Wagener and disappears. While Owen’s father launches a new career as a social theorist to facilitate a trip through Europe during which he can search for his missing son, Kurt offers to promote Owen as an “outsider artist” at Art Basel, one of the world’s premier art expos. In the lead-up to the show, Kurt keeps Owen in seclusion at his Berlin studio. Owen discovers too late that his new collaborator cannot be trusted, after Kurt tricks him into giving up his intellectual property rights and feeds him dangerous drugs. Meanwhile, his father—branded a terrorist after making an explosive speech in Athens—hunts for clues to his boy’s whereabouts. Chancellor’s debut is a twisting, globe-trotting affair that unfortunately suffers from poor pacing and frequently dwells on the mundane. The result is a mixed bag, unsure of its own identity, like many of the book’s characters. (July)
I fell in love…remind[s] me of the potential of literature… It is a novel that could only be written by one person, at one particular time…the most ‘alive’ book I’ve read this year.” — John Warner, The Chicago Tribune
“Chancellor pulls you into his universe, and even if you could get out, you wouldn’t want to.” — Interview
“Delightfully bizarre and myth-drunk…A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall’s unflagging energy and dramatic battiness make it irresistible. Mr. Chancellor would probably call it Dionysian, and I wouldn’t disagree.” — Wall Street Journal
“A strong new voice in fiction.” — Timeout New York
“Bracingly rich...the author maintains an almost thrillerlike pace while taking well-aimed shots at academic and art-market fads and helping two lost souls through essential transformations.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“To compare a debut novel to Infinite Jest is likely either too flippant or too generous, but consider the bona fides...Will Chancellor’s wonderful debut novel...more than merely promising, is one of the best of the year.” — Daily Beast
“Wry, smart, tender, huge-hearted, Will Chancellor strides onto the page in the spirit of Bellow with writing poised like poetry. A dauntless debut.” — Paul Lynch
“A globetrotting, witty, powerful and wildly ambitious novel that is at once a psychological journey and a terrific page-turner. Will Chancellor has an electrifying, deeply original voice, and his book is so full of depth and heart that it’s impossible to put down.” — Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
“Owen Burr is a character unlike any you’re likely to meet in contemporary literature. Watching him move through the world, and negotiate with his own dreams, is both powerful and revelatory.” — Daniel Alarcón
“Simply one of the year’s finest books.” — Largehearted Boy
“Chancellor shows great poise and command with this elegant and highly enjoyable first novel, which suggests that he has even more greatness to offer us.” — Flavorwire
“Chancellor writes in the established tradition of the American absurd, from Pynchon and Gaddis to DeLillo and Foster Wallace. Chancellor may be swinging for the former pair, but lands firmly, and thereby accessibly, in the latter.” — BookPage
“A wild ride.” — Dallas Morning News
“Elegantly intertwines the spiritual and geographical journeys that father and son take in pursuit of fulfillment. This fusion succeeds in enriching both characters, as their trials and aspirations often run parallel. Chancellor has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and a keen understanding of how insecurity and ambition intersect.” — Ploughshares
“Wonderful passages of vivid prose and pungent dialogue occur throughout “A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall,” … The marvelous Iceland chapters — earthy and ruefully funny, warm yet coolly aware of absurdity — suggest that [Will Chancellor] is already on his way [to growing up].” — Washington Post
“A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall...immediately asserts Chancellor as a promising new voice with the ambition and talent to take him anywhere.” — Tweed's
A strong new voice in fiction.
Delightfully bizarre and myth-drunk…A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall’s unflagging energy and dramatic battiness make it irresistible. Mr. Chancellor would probably call it Dionysian, and I wouldn’t disagree.
Chancellor pulls you into his universe, and even if you could get out, you wouldn’t want to.
A globetrotting, witty, powerful and wildly ambitious novel that is at once a psychological journey and a terrific page-turner. Will Chancellor has an electrifying, deeply original voice, and his book is so full of depth and heart that it’s impossible to put down.
Owen Burr is a character unlike any you’re likely to meet in contemporary literature. Watching him move through the world, and negotiate with his own dreams, is both powerful and revelatory.
I fell in love…remind[s] me of the potential of literature… It is a novel that could only be written by one person, at one particular time…the most ‘alive’ book I’ve read this year.
Wry, smart, tender, huge-hearted, Will Chancellor strides onto the page in the spirit of Bellow with writing poised like poetry. A dauntless debut.
Simply one of the year’s finest books.
To compare a debut novel to Infinite Jest is likely either too flippant or too generous, but consider the bona fides...Will Chancellor’s wonderful debut novel...more than merely promising, is one of the best of the year.
A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall...immediately asserts Chancellor as a promising new voice with the ambition and talent to take him anywhere.
Elegantly intertwines the spiritual and geographical journeys that father and son take in pursuit of fulfillment. This fusion succeeds in enriching both characters, as their trials and aspirations often run parallel. Chancellor has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and a keen understanding of how insecurity and ambition intersect.
A wild ride.
Chancellor writes in the established tradition of the American absurd, from Pynchon and Gaddis to DeLillo and Foster Wallace. Chancellor may be swinging for the former pair, but lands firmly, and thereby accessibly, in the latter.
Wonderful passages of vivid prose and pungent dialogue occur throughout “A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall,” … The marvelous Iceland chapters — earthy and ruefully funny, warm yet coolly aware of absurdity — suggest that [Will Chancellor] is already on his way [to growing up].
Chancellor shows great poise and command with this elegant and highly enjoyable first novel, which suggests that he has even more greatness to offer us.
Delightfully bizarre and myth-drunk…A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall’s unflagging energy and dramatic battiness make it irresistible. Mr. Chancellor would probably call it Dionysian, and I wouldn’t disagree.
Wonderful passages of vivid prose and pungent dialogue occur throughout “A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall,” … The marvelous Iceland chapters — earthy and ruefully funny, warm yet coolly aware of absurdity — suggest that [Will Chancellor] is already on his way [to growing up].
Owen Burr is a character unlike any you’re likely to meet in contemporary literature. Watching him move through the world, and negotiate with his own dreams, is both powerful and revelatory.
★ 2014-05-17
A father searches for his vanished son in this edgily comic first novel, which has fun with the worlds of art and academia.California athlete Owen Burr loses an eye in a college water polo match and his berth in the Athens Olympics. He impulsively goes to Berlin to become an artist and gets embroiled in the drug-fueled machinations of an art-world star. Back in the U.S., Owen’s widowed father, classics professor Joseph Burr, has heard nothing from or about Owen until he receives a disturbing hospital report. His efforts to rescue his son start with a lecture he gives near the site of the games that is meant to signal Owen. But when a provocateur runs onstage and hands Joseph a Molotov cocktail, the stunned academic's effort to throw it safely away from the audience ends in a fiery explosion, and a riot ensues. More violence at Art Basel, a hungry polar bear in Iceland, the theories of Laminalism and Liminalism, and a helpful Siren named Stevie are part of the Continental odyssey during which Burr père et fils manage to constantly stay out of touch with each other. Yet sometimes, unknowingly, they’re in sync: Each finds himself challenged by camping equipment in separate, humorous scenes. Chancellor, in a rare misstep, has Owen kick down a 60-pound German door the same day he leaves a hospital barely able to walk. That aside, the author maintains an almost thrillerlike pace while taking well-aimed shots at academic and art-market fads and helping two lost souls through essential transformations. It’s a bracingly rich mélange of a novel in which scholarship spotlights Al Pacino’s Scarface and plain exposition suddenly turns into prose that might be noirish or downright strange: “Everything of value stretched and shrapneled, lapping the circular walls in lethal vorticity.”Some readers may stumble over the Latin, argot and allusions, but these are minor challenges in Chancellor’s polymorphous entertainment.
