The End of the World Book
A Novel
Publication Year: 2008
This is no ordinary novel. An encyclopedia of memory—from A to Z—The End of the World Book deftly intertwines fiction, memoir, and cultural history, reimagining the story of the world and one man’s life as they both hurtle toward a frightening future. Alistair McCartney’s alphabetical guide to the apocalypse layers images like a prose poem, building from Aristotle to da Vinci, hip-hop to lederhosen, plagues to zippers, while barreling from antiquity to the present.
In this profound book about mortality, McCartney composes an irreverent archive of philosophical obsessions and homoerotic fixations, demonstrating the difficulty of separating what is real from what is imagined.
Finalist, Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, The Publishing Triangle
Finalist, PEN USA Literary Award for Fiction
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press

C
As a boy, when I used to go with my mother to the Museum of Western Australia, my favorite part was the reconstructions of rooms from the days of the early settlers. There was a parlor of a wealthy family, which was all dark and velvety. There was a dentist’s office, full of monstrous...

R
As a boy I thought about rabies quite a lot. I was convinced that any day a rabid dog who had wandered a great distance just to find me would come up and bite me on the inside of my left thigh, giving me rabies. I would run home and go into the kitchen, where my mum would be peeling potatoes, and there...

S
As a kid, I loved those old black-and-white movies set in the Sahara. I don’t remember much about their storylines except that in every one of them there was a mute character, whose tongue had been cut out of his head. This character always knew everything that was going on but was unable to...

T
I like those small teardrops gang members sometimes have tattooed beneath the corners of their eyes. Some say it’s meant to indicate that the individual has killed someone and represents tears he is unable to cry, while others say that it means someone the gang member loved has died. I knew a boy...

U
My Aunt Joan’s decline was gradual and took place over a period of fifty years, but after the death of her daughter, Robin, my Aunt broke her hip and became utterly housebound. She spent the rest of her days in bed, beneath her mauve polyester eiderdown, watching daytime soap operas and reading women’s...

V
Every now and then I feel a pressing need to flee the alphabet. So I put on a jacket, pack a suitcase full of razors, and stow away on a silver rocket. It’s a long journey to the moon, but I clench my teeth and try to be patient. When I finally arrive, it’s always cold, and I’m glad my jacket has a zipper. I take out the first...

Y
I have never been interested in yachts; in fact, I have always felt a certain hostility—at times a hatred—toward those relatively small vessels used mainly for pleasure, along with a hatred for the men who sail them, and a deep dislike for anything even vaguely associated with yachting, for example, navy blue...

Z
When I think of Gaëtan Dugas, the French-Canadian flight attendant who paid his first known visit to a New York City bathhouse on October 31, 1980, the man to whom all the city’s initial cases of AIDS would be traced back—hence the moniker he was given: patient zero—I start off thinking about big...
E-ISBN-13: 9780299226336
Print-ISBN-13: 9780299226305
Publication Year: 2008
OCLC Number: 608684538
MUSE Marc Record: Download for The End of the World Book