In this biting satire, Matthew Binder takes surreal aim at the poses and pretensions of high art and fashion. With ruthless wit, Binder chronicles the struggles of Paul, an eccentric artist, and his companion dog, a disabled, quiche-obsessed terrier-mix named Blanche. Together they negotiate hilarious scenes of bad parties, bizarre couture, deranged friends, shady deals, unrequited love, sabotage, and inscrutable art. But there may be a way out for Paul when he meets James, a New Age guru and leader of a secretive cult: the Pure Cosmos Club. Yet, every time Paul believes he’s ready for the “Ultimate Level,” James raises the price of entry. Just how far will Paul go for love, for art, and to attain cosmic oneness?
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Here’s what she fine writers have said:
“Pure Cosmos Club is an inventive, antic picaresque with a satirical eye trained on spiritual and aesthetic hucksterism. Matthew Binder sets them up and knocks them down in this witty, energetic novel. Long live Blanche the dog!” – Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask
“Binder is our American Murakami. He takes tragic themes and makes them hilarious but also mind-blowing, cosmos erupting. Binder’s enormous delight in language and life is irresistible.” Clancy Martin, author of How to Sell
“In the world of Pure Cosmos Club, art is a vain posture, enlightenment is an elaborate con, and delusion is a way of life. Matthew Binder’s ingenious satire
captures the absurdities of our fraught moment with a startling mix of laugh-outloud hilarity and subtle melancholy. It’s a novel you won’t shake anytime soon.” – Jeff Jackson, author of Destroy All Monsters
“It’s like Houellebecq but good-natured.” – Forever Magazine
“This absurdist send-up of the haute art world features a struggling iconoclast and the best canine sidekick in literature navigating a Palahniukian landscape of poser blowhards and sky-high art deals. There’s not another novel out there like this one.” – Courtney Maum, author of Costalegre
“Matthew Binder’s novelistic dream of our collapsing times is 100% pure!” – Jon Lindsey, author of Body High
“Pure Cosmos Club is a zany, intelligent romp through the art world that made me laugh out loud just as often as it made me squirm. Playfully skewering the absurd world we live in with energetic, effortless prose, Binder’s satire often feels painfully real.” Caitlin Barasch, author of A Novel Obsession
“Binder writes with a humorous heart and an uncanny gift to resonate poignantly while you’re laughing. It’s like Malamud in the 21st century.” – Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life
“This laugh-out-loud novel is a fresh take on spiritual ascension, told in language so propulsive and gorgeous it announces Binder as a master stylist of prose.” – Amanda Stern, author of Little Panic
“A novel of high comedy as absurd as our present-day reality. A joy of a ride, gleefully bonkers!” – Paula Bomer, author of Inside Madeline
“A dazzling, often surreal, laugh-out-loud portrait of the unheralded artist getting onto the middle years of life.” - Julian Tepper, author of Between the Records
“Reading Matthew Binder’s Pure Cosmos Club, one is overwhelmed by the sheer power of his imagination, his capacity to conjure into being not only characters but an entire universe that is as full as ours but in some essential way very different. What’s best of all is the way that, ultimately, it’s through the eyes of these characters we begin to see ourselves in ways we never had.” – Celeste Marcus, Liberties Journal
