Patchwork

Tom Comitta returns with a novella that is at once a picaresque quest for a stolen snuffbox and a marvel of literary découpage, equal parts love story, old-fashioned thriller, and absurdist romp.

To whom does a story belong? Who is its author? What is an author? Does it matter? These questions and more populate the subversive and audacious Patchwork, a comical tragedy that highlights the connective tissue that joins stories to themselves as well as to the grand history of storytelling itself. Celebrating the tropes and clichés of classical novels while simultaneously forging them into an original narrative, Patchwork ultimately shows us that the stories produced by hundreds of writers past--celebrated or obscure, reverent or hilarious, factual or fantastical--may, in the hands of a master, become a single, seamless whole.

Tom Comitta is the author of The Nature Book (Coffee House) and People’s Choice Literature: The Most Wanted Novel and The Most Unwanted Novel (Columbia University Press), a two-book project written with the results of a national public opinion poll about literary taste. Their fiction and essays have appeared in WIRED, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, and BOMB. Comitta works as a book designer and lives in Los Angeles with their partner, child, and pooch.