Every Bloomsday, six male writer reader drinker friends gather at a bar to talk about life and literature and to celebrate the idea of the masterpiece more than the masterpiece itself. All are frustrated to the point of desperation. But this Bloomsday will prove different: one of the most celebrated younger writers in the world, with the power to potentially unlock their careers, is expected to join them.
Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel is about ambition, creation, delusion, success, failure, submission, acceptance, rejection, idiocy, anger, idealism, persistence, and the excessive consumption of exceptional beer. It’s also about walking and reading, the gestation of literary and literal offspring, and the joys and sorrows of writing with intent to publish.
Unnotices
“Forges in the smithy of its soul the uncreated conscience of the disillusioned fiction writer.”
—Lao Guardian, author of One with Nature
“Sui generis! Condenses, in an expansive way, a lifetime’s reflections on reading, writing, drinking, and being stuck in one’s head while out in the world.”
—Addison Oates, author of Death by Jacaranda
“Riffage FTW. Almost funny at times. Surprisingly loveable characters (especially that poor boy from the Great Northeast).”
—Kevin Snare, author of Shattering Windows with Rocks
“Audacity, authority, execution, oomph, and—when it comes to the bit about quitting writing—maybe even some heft.”
—Francis Gibson, author of A Birth at Home
“Undiscourageably diffuse.”
—John England, author of Restoration Road
“Not much happens until the end but it’s worth the wait.”
—Jonathan David Grooms
Lee Klein is the author of Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus), as well as The Shimmering Go-Between (Atticus Books), Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters from the Eyeshot Outbox (Barrelhouse Books), and Incidents of Egotourism in the Temporary World (Better Non Sequitur). He is also the translator of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador (New Directions), for which he received a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and daughter, and can be found online at litfunforever.com.