Fuccboi
A Novel
-
-
4.2 • 5 Ratings
-
-
- $3.99
-
- $3.99
Publisher Description
“Terse and intense and new...I loved it.” —Tommy Orange, author of There There
“Fuccboi is its generation’s coming of age novel…Utterly of its moment, of this moment.”—Jay McInereny, Wall Street Journal
A fearless and savagely funny examination of masculinity under late capitalism from an electrifying new voice.
Set in Philly one year into Trump’s presidency, Sean Thor Conroe’s audacious, freewheeling debut follows our eponymous fuccboi, Sean, as he attempts to live meaningfully in a world that doesn’t seem to need him. Reconciling past, failed selves—cross-country walker, SoundCloud rapper, weed farmer—he now finds himself back in his college city, trying to write, doing stimulant-fueled bike deliveries to eat. Unable to accept that his ex has dropped him, yet still engaged in all the same fuckery—being coy and spineless, dodging decisions, maintaining a rotation of baes—that led to her leaving in the first place. But now Sean has begun to wonder, how sustainable is this mode? How much fuckery is too much fuckery?
Written in a riotous, utterly original idiom, and slyly undercutting both the hypocrisy of our era and that of Sean himself, Fuccboi is an unvarnished, playful, and searching examination of what it means to be a man.
“Got under my skin in the way the best writing can.” —Sheila Heti
“Sean Conroe isn't one of the writers there's a hundred of. He writes what's his own, his own way.” —Nico Walker, author of Cherry
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Conroe delivers a striking and hyper-stylized debut about a young male writer, also named Sean Thor Conroe, whose lexicon reflects Drake lyrics and the scrolls of Reddit and Twitter. In Conroe's linguistic world, every love interest is a "bae," every shine of glory is a "flex," everything subtle is "lowkey," and every suspicion is merely "sus." Sean, having graduated from Swarthmore but still yet to establish himself in the literary world, works as a messenger for Postmates, indulges in Adderall and Molly, and nurses a broken heart over a girl he calls "ex bae." His life, though, slowly falls apart as he develops an intensely debilitating skin condition almost akin to leprosy. Along the way, Sean demonstrates a passion for Nietzsche, Bolaño, and Wittgenstein, and offers credible insights on their work, sometimes by comparing it to hip-hop or vice versa. He also reveals some self-reflection by discussing the "rape-y" elements of his work with "editor bae" ("the whole point is to look at those impulses, to understand where they come from, that we all have em, so that they don't manifest in real life"), which adds a bit of depth. Some will find Conroe's prose fresh, others annoying, but he's landed on an undeniably rich mix of ingredients for autofiction.
