Indecision - Vendido!

by Benjamin Kunkel
Random House, August 2005
256 pages
Translation: Sanford J. Greenburger Associates

*** Rights sold *** 11/10/2005
Brasil: Rocco
Dutch: Rothschild and Bosch (preempted)
Italy: Rizzoli (auction - 7 bidders)
UK: Picador (auction - 4 bidders)


*** Movie deal!!*** 26/08/2005
This morning, Elyse closed a major film deal for Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel. The movie rights were sold to Scott Rudin who is notable for his work as producer on The Hours, Cormac McCarthy’s books, Michael Chabon’s books and the upcoming movie version of The Corrections.
***

Benjamin Kunkel’s brilliantly comic debut novel concerns one of the central maladies of our time–a pathological indecision that turns abundance into an affliction and opportunity into a curse.

Dwight B. Wilmerding is only twenty-eight, but he’s having a midlife crisis. Of course, living a dissolute, dorm like existence in a tiny apartment and working in tech support at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer are not especially conducive to wisdom.

And a few sessions of psychoanalysis conducted by his sister have distinctly failed to help with his biggest problem: a chronic inability to make up his mind.

Encouraged by one of his roommates to try an experimental pharmaceutical meant to banish indecision, Dwight jumps at the chance (not without some meditation on the hazards of jumping) and swallows the first fateful pill. And when all at once he is “pfired” from Pfizer and invited to a rendezvous in exotic Ecuador with the girl of his long-ago prep-school dreams, he finds himself on the brink of a new life.

The trouble–well, one of the troubles–is that Dwight can’t decide if the pills are working. Deep in the jungles of the Amazon, in the foreign country of a changed outlook, his would-be romantic escape becomes a hilarious journey into unbidden responsibility and unwelcome knowledge.

How to affirm happiness without living in constant denial of the ways of the world? How to commit, and to what? At once funny and poignant, gentle and outrageous, finely intelligent and proudly silly, Indecision rings with a voice of great energy and originality, while its deeper inquiries reflect the concerns and style of a generation.

Quotes:
“A comico-philosophico-socialist-engagé-coming-of-age love story? A post-9/11 cri de coeur? Dobie Gillis with drugs and advanced degrees in philosophy and public policy? The Marx Brothers allowing Karl to sit in for a spell? Whatever the genre, Indecision is a wonderful novel, and Benjamin Kunkel is able to provoke deep thought and deep laughter in equal measure.”
–Arthur Phillips, author of Prague and The Egyptologist

“Benjamin Kunkel is a truly original thinker whose ideas keep pace with the astonishing dexterity of his language. He also has the rare ability to be hilarious about serious things. In the hapless, charming Dwight Wilmerding, he has created one of those narrators whose voices you can hear in your head long after the book is finished.”
–Nell Freudenberger, author of Lucky Girls

“I read Indecision in one sitting, with much admiration and continuous pleasure. I expected it to be a comic novel, but its deep seriousness came as a surprise. The narrator is a real achievement, and the sinuous but fluent prose Kunkel gives him is perfectly matched to his perceptions: always tentative yet precise and alert, witty in the best, most spontaneous way, and also tender and generous.”
–Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics and An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“There is nothing indecisive about Benjamin Kunkel’s ability to conjure the singular voice of Dwight Wilmerding in all its savvy innocence and thorny charm. Indecision is a wise, frank, funny, and deceptively big-themed novel, and Benjamin Kunkel is a writer to be reckoned with, or, better yet, read.”
–Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

About the author:

Benjamin Kunkel grew up in Colorado. He has written for Dissent, The Nation, and the The New York Review of Books, and is a founding editor of n+1 magazine.