CULDESAC - Mike Nagel
ABOUT THE BOOK
Mike Nagel has no idea what’s going on around here. Fresh out of the duplex, he and J have rented a house in a fantasy-themed neighborhood where people walk backwards, his neighbors weedwack constantly, and mysterious arrows have begun appearing on all the sidewalks. In this follow up to his surprise smash hit, Duplex, Culdesac once again finds Mike contemplating the joys and absurdities of modern life against the looming backdrop of the American suburbs.
PRAISE FOR CULDESAC
“Mike Nagel’s Culdesac is a compact, heartfelt essay about getting sober, getting older, and finding a place to call home. Interspersing looping, offbeat imagery with black-and-white photographs of the suburban landscape, Nagel admirably explores this challenging terrain with humor and unexpected depth.”
— Amy Fusselman, author of The Means
“Exquisite, deadpan comedy. Broken-glass syntax. Anti-recovery anti-memoir. An utterly serious ode to brief, meaningless existence in Plano, TX/on planet Earth. A minor masterpiece.”
—David Shields, author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead
“‘Cul-de-sac is a fancy name / for a dead-end street. It’s insane,’ sings Christian Lembach. ‘I’m the one that’s alive. You’re all dead,’ says Glen Runciter in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik. Put them together and you’ve got Mike Nagel’s deceptively casual new book, in which the sacred is disguised as the profane: ‘We’re eating at Ascension, this soup and sandwich place near my office.’ Life is a dream: you can’t make this stuff up, and you don’t have to. But you do have to be able to endure it, and be able to mine clarity from its relentless absurdity. That’s what Nagel can do.”
—J. D. Daniels, author of The Correspondence
“Culdesac is a cosmic-poetic exploration of the American suburbs, a profound meditation on the meaning of life while sipping Jamba Juice and assembling IKEA furniture. In a world where too many writers are pushed on us as ‘hilarious,’ Mike Nagel is the real deal. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say he’s the funniest writer alive.”
— Kevin Maloney, author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex (Autofocus Books, 2024). His essays have appeared in apt, Hobart, Split Lip, Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere around the internet. He lives in Plano, Texas.
BOOK INFO
Pub Date: January 2, 2024
Print Length: 98 pages
Dimensions: 5 x 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-957392-27-1