On the HahaFiction shelf
My Search for Warren Harding
by Robert Plunket
Elliot Weiner hopes Warren Harding’s love letters will make his academic career. A research grant takes him to Hollywood, where the former president’s mistress, Rebekah Kinney, may still be guarding a valuable archive. Getting close to her household requires a degree of manipulation that Elliot is quite prepared to supply.
From the publisher’s blurb
“An exhilarating, brutal, comedic masterpiece”Read the full description at New Directions, publisher description
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What makes it funny?
Elliot prides himself on noticing everyone else’s shortcomings. His own precautions against sweating involve cut-up diapers strapped under his arms. Danzy Senna’s introduction points out how Plunket keeps humiliating this merciless judge of other people.
The comedy at work
The first-person narration lets Elliot condemn himself without realizing it. Scholarly ambition gives him a respectable explanation for chasing gossip, status and private sexual correspondence, while the reader can see how little his self-portrait deserves to be trusted.
Try this if…
Readers who like literary satire told by someone vain, dishonest and difficult to defend. Hollywood celebrity and academic prestige offer plenty of targets, with Elliot’s own insecurity always close by.
Good to know
Set in early-1980s Hollywood, this is a comic novel about pursuing a president’s papers. The narrator expresses racist, homophobic and fat-shaming views. Sexual material and intimate-partner violence make the cruelty more consequential than a string of cutting remarks.
More funny picaresque
Sources & further reading
- Review
Review
- Publisher
Publisher
- Publisher sample and introduction
Reading sample
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