The New and Improved Romie Futch

by Julia Elliott

Overview

From the author of The Wilds, which Publishers Weekly called “a brilliant combination of emotion and grime, wit and horror,” comes a debut novel that is part dystopian satire, part Southern Gothic tall tale: a disturbing yet hilarious romp through a surreal New South where newfangled medical technologies change the structure of the human brain and genetically modified feral animals ravage the blighted landscape.

Down on his luck and still pining for his ex-wife, South Carolina taxidermist Romie Futch spends his evenings drunkenly surfing the Internet before passing out on his couch. In a last-ditch attempt to pay his mortgage, he replies to an ad and becomes a research subject in an experiment conducted by the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, Georgia. After “scientists” download hifalutin humanities disciplines into their brains, Romie and his fellow guinea pigs start debating the works of Foucault and hashing out the intricacies of postmodern subjectivity. The enhanced taxidermist, who once aspired to be an artist, returns to his hometown ready to revolutionize his work and revive his failed marriage. As Romie tracks down specimens for his elaborate animatronic taxidermy dioramas, he develops an Ahab-caliber obsession with bagging “Hogzilla,” a thousand-pound feral hog that has been terrorizing Hampton County. Cruising hog-hunting websites, he learns that this lab-spawned monster possesses peculiar traits. Pulled into an absurd and murky underworld of biotech operatives, FDA agents, and environmental activists, Romie becomes entangled in the enigma of Hogzilla’s origins.

Exploring the interplay between nature and culture, biology and technology, reality and art, The New and Improved Romie Futch probes the mysteries of memory and consciousness, offering a darkly comic yet heartfelt take on the contemporary human predicament.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941040164
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	09/14/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Julia Elliott is the author of the story collection The Wilds, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch (both from Tin House). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, and the New York Times. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter, and five hens.

Editorial Reviews

Elliott…is working with great love and understanding of her literary traditions. Romie Futch is imbued equally with the loopy lyricism of Barry Hannah and the wacked-out paranoia of Philip K. Dick, the joyous farce of John Kennedy Toole and the digital dystopia of William Gibson. On the sentence level, Elliott's prose showcases an exuberant mash-up of modern diction. Romie and fellows mix the language of hip-hop, tech jargon, postmodern theory and "Star Wars" in a way that is refreshingly original yet also true to life…The art of taxidermy is turning dead flesh into a facsimile of life, and the art of fiction is turning ink on wood pulp into something terrifyingly alive…Elliott's rambunctious tale snarls and growls on every page, aiming to plunge its lovely, gnarled tusks right into the reader's heart.

The New York Times Book Review - Lincoln Michel

08/10/2015
Displaying the same dark whimsy of her acclaimed short story collection, The Wilds, Elliott’s first novel is a farce about a South Carolinian taxidermist hunting a mutant boar. Turning to the bottle and neglecting his business after his wife leaves him, Romie Futch answers an ad looking for subjects willing to receive “pedagogical downloads” consisting of the OED, Thomas Bernhard, and Derrida, and a number of other abstruse works. Like most liberal arts educations, Romie’s comes at an exorbitant cost: putting himself at the mercy of Biofutures, the sinister “mega-conglomerate” running the experiment. Upon his release, the “new and improved” Romie tries his hand at art, constructing a series of “postnatural taxidermic dioramas” that feature mutated animals he captures in the vicinity of a toxic waste dump. He soon develops an Ahab-like obsession with a monstrous, genetically altered pig known as Hogzilla, “winged and bald, nightmare beast of the future.” Though there is never a dull moment, the bursting narrative generates a sense of fatigue as we follow Romie’s mock-epic quest, desultory attempts to throw light on the shady Biofutures, and foray into conceptual art. The novel’s neatest trick is aligning Romie’s distress over his own future, which once seemed so boundless, with broader anxieties about what environmental and technological monstrosities the 21st century may bring. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"The New and Improved Romie Futch not only marks the arrival of one of the funniest, smartest, and most unnerving novels you’ll read this year, but also a vision for Southern literature that could only have sprung from Julia Elliott’s wild, devastating, and wholly original imagination. Consider me a fan for life."

Laura van den Berg

"Julia Elliott may be a wizard, and I don't throw that term around with abandon. She proved to us with her short story collection, The Wilds, that her prose is like nothing you've ever read: sharp, hilarious, dark, and, expansive all at once. With Romie Futch, a book about a divorced South Carolina taxidermist who is haunted by his ex-wife, and arguably isn't taking the best steps to get his life back on track, Elliott has gone above and beyond with an eye-opening gothic satire that pushes the boundaries of dystopia."

Best October Reads Bustle

"Julia Elliott’s debut novel, The New and Improved Romie Futch, zips between various genres, from Southern gothic to sci-fi satire, in a clever, wildly imaginative romp through the landscape of the South and the neural pathways of one man’s brain. At times heartbreaking and at times hilarious, The New and Improved Romie Futch announces Elliott as an undeniably original voice."

BookPage

"[Elliott] blends heady reflections on futuristic biotechnology with lowbrow goofiness and lots of good, old-fashioned Gothic strangeness. The speculative stuff may be fun and freaky, but the book hits its most authentic notes in describing the anxieties Gen Xers face when middle age approaches."

Atlanta Journal Constituion

"Romie Futch is imbued equally with the loopy lyricism of Barry Hannah and the whacked out paranoia of Philip K. Dick, the joyous farce of John Kennedy Toole, and the digital dystopia of William Gibson . . . .Elliott's rambunctious tale snarls and growls on every page, aiming to plunge its lovely gnarled tusks right into the reader's heart."

New York Times Book Review

"In The New and Improved Romie Futch, debut novelist Julia Elliott punches above her weight class, which is not to say that she can’t pull off the crackling inner life of a middle-aged, divorced, biologically enhanced taxidermist, but to say with admiration, she has."

Rumpus

"The New and Improved Romie Futch romps wildly through a land of feral mutants and monsters of a more civilized kind. But at the story’s core is a heartsick man who believes he can be better. In this exceptionally imaginative and funny novel, high culture collides with low, the future torments but also soothes, and the grotesque beauty of our humanity shines through it all."

Diane Cook

"The New and Improved Romie Futch is a wildly inventive first novel which not only contains some of the most genuinely funny scenes I’ve read in recent memory, but also contains some truly evocative, poetic prose that will make word nerds swoon when they read it. Simply put, The New and Improved Romie Futch easily ranks as one of my favorite reads of 2015, and I guarantee you’ll read this exceptional debut novel in one sitting."

LitReactor

"Author Julia Elliott is awesome, and readers will cheer on both Romie and Hogzilla and then Google the author to discover her other books and her cool band."

The Brooklyn Paper

"Surprising and spiky and thoroughly enjoyable. Romie Futch is a wry delicacy of a novel, but also a wild boar—crashing and thrashing and swerving through unexpected twists."

author of THE SHINING GIRLS Lauren Beukes

"In her debut novel, South Carolina author Julia Elliott takes us on a freewheeling, Pynchonian adventure through the American South. Recently divorced and mortgaged to the hilt, taxidermist Romie Futch is a real mess. When a shadowy research institute offers to expand his mental capacity—and pay him a stipend for the privilege—Romie skims the paperwork and signs his name. But will cerebral downloads of art and literature help him win back his beloved Helen? Can Romie revive his taxidermy career by slaying the mythical mutant razorback nicknamed Hogzilla? And what about the side effects from all those downloads? With vibrant prose, quirky characters, and pointed commentaries on contemporary American life, Julia Elliott answers all those questions, and many more. Read Romie Futch, and you, too, will find yourself newly improved."

Annie Bloom's Books Michael

"A sad-sack taxidermist joins an intelligence experiment and instantly becomes a certified genius in this frenetically surreal novel. "

Oprah's Editor's Pick

★ 11/01/2015
Divorced from beautiful Helen and barely clinging to his business, washed-up South Carolina taxidermist Romie Futch hangs out mournfully with other loser friends. Then he answers an ad placed by the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience, located in Atlanta, which is seeking research subjects willing to have humanities data downloaded into their brains. In a bid to remake his life, Romie signs up and is soon using language that might stump a Ph.D. But all does not go as planned, starting with his homecoming blackout. Then there's the 1,000-pound hogzilla, another victim of lab intervention now marauding through the countryside, that Ronnie aims to bring down. VERDICT A send-up of self-improvement schemes and self-serving science, this wise and funny book by Elliott (The Wilds) treats its characters tenderly and glimmers at the end.

Library Journal

2015-07-15
This first novel from Elliott (The Wilds, 2014) blends dystopia and Southern Gothic. Taxidermist Romie Futch has spent his life with deadbeat dudes who like to drink—you know, people like him. Still smarting from the breakup of his marriage and needing some money, Romie signs up for a medical experiment at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta: he and his fellow subjects get all of the humanities uploaded to their brains. Soon, Romie and his new pals are discussing the highfalutin in the only vernacular they know: "Fuck that punk Derrida. Got game in his flow but no heat." This, essentially, is the joke of the novel's first third, and it wears a little thin. But when Romie leaves the center, Elliott tells a bizarre (and bizarrely moving) story about how he tries to put his life back together. Dreaming of an art career, Romie hunts squirrels, stuffs them, and makes them into dioramas illustrating Foucault and Bentham's concept of panopticon. Soon, he's hunting bigger animals, using the head of a wild swine to dress himself as "Lord Tusky the Third, a lean and refined gentleman with the head of a boar." (This is Elliott at the height of her absurdity.) Eventually, Romie becomes obsessed with killing a mutant hog nicknamed "Hogzilla" (with, yes, plenty of Ahab references). How does all of this hang together? Surprisingly well, mostly because Elliott uses Romie's heartbreak to underpin all the action, no matter how silly it gets. It's not a perfect novel, but it's always energetic. At its worst, it feels like an author showing off, in love with her central concept like a parent who can't stop talking about her kids on Facebook. Then again, as this novel reminds the cynical, seen-it-all reader, sometimes strangeness is enough. Elliott's work, in its own snarling and unruly way, contains brilliance.

Kirkus Reviews