{"product_id":"golk","title":"Golk","description":"In midcentury America, the golden age of television, a man named Golk is wreaking havoc with the medium. Through a devastating series of exposures—\"You're on Camera\"—Golk manipulates the high and mighty, the lowdown and dirty, and the outrageous weird; all are within the compass of Richard Stern in this early novel, a comedy with as many inspired maneuvers as its rambunctious protagonist has for taking the measure of a profligate world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eGolk\u003c\/i\u003e is a rich and marvelously detailed novel by a man with a cultivated intelligence; it is also the first really good book I have read about television.\"—Norman Mailer \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An original: sharp, funny, intelligent, rare. . . . Working in a clean, oblique style reminiscent of Nathanael West, Mr. Stern has written in\u003ci\u003e Golk\u003c\/i\u003e a first-rate comic novel, a piece of fiction that is at once about and loaded with that kind of recognition that junkies call the flash.\"—Joan Didion,\u003ci\u003e National Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eGolk\u003c\/i\u003e is fantastic, funny, bitter, intelligent without weariness. Best of all Golk is pure—that is to say necessary. Without hokum.\"—Saul Bellow \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eGolk\u003c\/i\u003e (like Golk himself) is a wonderous conception. Its world responds to personification, not analysis, and personify it Mr. Stern has done. A book in a thousand.\"—Hugh Kenner \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What I like about Mr. Stern's fantasy is that it has been conceived and written with so much gaiety. Far from a political melodrama, it reminds me of a René Clair movie, and even the surrealist touches needed to bring out the power and pretense of the television industry are funny rather than symbolically grim.\"—Alfred Kazin, \u003ci\u003eReporter \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A mighty good book, altogether alive, full of beans and none of them spilled.\"—Flannery O'Connor \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"The University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54218558472536,"sku":"9780226773193","price":26.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780226773193.jpg?v=1769751916","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/golk","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}