Dean Bakopoulos reads from his novel My American Unhappiness--7:30, Wednesday, June 8, at M&Q.“Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives--a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint--create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a women’s magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”).
"Dean Bakopoulos is our next great Midwestern writer."--Davy Rothbart, founder and editor of Found Magazine, contributor to public radio's This American Life
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.
Author of the award-winning debut novel Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon ("This is a wonderful book.”--Charles Baxter), Dean Bakopoulos is the founding director of the Wisconsin Book Festival and a creative writing professor at Iowa State University. He's online at www.deanbakopoulos.com.
Details on this and all our events are here.--David E
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