{"product_id":"the-ecstatic-isbn-9780375713316","title":"The Ecstatic","description":"   Anthony James weighs 315 pounds, is possibly schizophrenic, and he’s just been kicked out of college. He’s rescued by his mother, sister, and grandmother, but they may not be altogether sane themselves. Living in the basement of their home in Queens, New York, Anthony is armed with nothing but wicked sarcasm and a few well-cut suits. He intends to make horror movies but takes the jobs he can handle, cleaning homes and factories, and keeps crossing paths with a Japanese political prisoner, a mysterious loan shark named Ishkabibble, and packs of feral dogs. When his invincible 13-year old sister enters yet another beauty pageant—this one for virgins—the combustible Jameses pile into their car and head South for the competition. \u003cbr\u003e   Will Anthony’s family stick together or explode? With electrifying prose, LaValle ushers us into four troubled but very funny lives.“A compassionate mystery of madness . . . gritty and funny, both smart-alecky and dark.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Bristles with visionary energy.” —\u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of our most talented young writers.” —Charles Baxter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“His characters remind one of Chester Himes and Charles Wright, but LaValle is special.” —Ishmael Reed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eProves that Victor LaValle is a voice to be reckoned with for years to come.” —Ernesto Quiñonez, author of \u003cb\u003eBodega Dreams\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“[The] characters are as beautifully rendered as they are bizarrely believable. . . . LaValle . . . writes prose that hums in your ear and appeals to your intellect.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eVictor LaValle is the author of the short story collection \u003cb\u003eSlapboxing with Jesus\u003c\/b\u003e, winner of the PEN Open Book Award. He has also been awarded the key to Southeastern Queens. He lives in California, where he is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College.\u003cb\u003e1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They drove a green rented car into central New York State to find me living wild   in my apartment. Wearing shattered glasses and my hair a giant cauliflower-shaped   afro on my head. I was three hundred and fifteen pounds. I was a mess, but the house   was clean. They knocked and when I opened the front door there were three archangels   on my stoop. My sister rubbed my ear when I cried. She whispered, \u003ci\u003eWhy don't you   go put on clothes?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My family took me home to Queens and kept me in the basement.   When I tried to go outside alone, they discouraged it. My sister led me by the hand   when walking to the supermarket. Mom cut my meat at the dinner table. They treated   me like what some still refer to as a Mongoloid. A few days of this is tenderness,   but two weeks seems more like punishment. The spirit of blame stooped in a corner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Their concern was wonderful, but the condescension was deadly. And surprising. Before   opening the front door to them I really thought my life was full of pepper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Three   weeks after coming back to Rosedale I cooked a big, red breakfast for my family just   to prove that I could. Not only to them, but to myself. It was September 25th, 1995.   I remember certain dates to organize and understand my disaster. Without them my   mind is a mass grave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was a red breakfast because I added ketchup to the eggs   when scrambling them. And to the bacon as it curled in the pan. Call me tasteless,   but ketchup is the only seasoning I need.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I was so nervous that I even dressed up   that morning. This bright purple suit that was loose on me and hid my tits. Made   me look like a two-hundred-fifty-pound man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Our oven was so hot I had to watch I   didn't sweat into the food. Wiped my forehead with my tie. I pulled butter from the   fridge to set next to a plate of toast and if this didn't make them happy then I   was out of ideas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But they didn't appear. I waited a long time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even though I heard   their beds creak then footsteps on the floor, they never came around the corner.   It was like they turned to dust. I prodded the bacon, but without enthusiasm. There   was no sizzle yet. With my left hand in my pants pocket I hoped to look cool. I counted   numbers to keep from fidgeting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I turned the gas flames lower. I washed dishes left   in the sink overnight and put them in high cabinets. Sunlight addressed the windows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Worst of all fears is abandonment. Eventually I had to know where they'd gone. The   white linoleum tiles ticked against the undersides of my dress shoes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I was silent   in the hallway. There weren't any windows here so the place was dark and the ceiling   seemed far. My hands tapping the walls was the echo inside a hollow bomb.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They'd   hid in the bathroom. Mom leaned against the sink while Grandma rested on the toilet   and my sister, Nabisase, sat on the rim of the tub. Three versions of the same woman-past,   present and future-huddled in one room. With the door partway shut I was unseen and   apart from them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mom whispered, \u003ci\u003eWe should go to him.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eYes.\u003c\/i\u003e Grandma agreed, but   they stayed there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My family was afraid of me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I expected more sympathy, actually,   because I sure wasn't the first one in my bloodline to go zipper-lidded. You should've   seen when my mother tobogganed naked through Flushing Meadow Park in 1983. Four police   carried her to the hospital wrapped in their jackets. Parents on the hill thought   Mom was a hump-starved fiend out to abduct their children. Her illness often made   her frenzied sexually. Whenever she relapsed the woman was an open-womb, but Haldol   had stabilized Mom's mind for years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was my Uncle Isaac, too, who walked from   New York to the Canadian border in 1986, and emptied out his brain pan with a rifle.   So when they discovered me in that Ithaca apartment Mom and Grandma recognized the   situation. Their boy had become a narwhal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I pushed in the bathroom door to surprise   them, but instead of shuddering they only sighed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eGood morning,\u003c\/i\u003e Grandma murmured.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eI made eggs.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nabisase smiled. \u003ci\u003eThat's very good of you!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She was confused and   angry. She was thirteen and thus only partially human when it came to compassion.   Call me her older brother, by ten years, but Nabisase practically had to tie me down   to cut my hair that first week back. I kept saying that I looked fine. No kid is   going to enjoy that. Sarcasm was her mild revenge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mom and Grandma were earnestly   complimentary; anything I did earned praise. If I'd taken an especially heavy boweling   they would have bought me a squeeze toy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nabisase asked, \u003ci\u003eIs the fire oven still   on?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFire oven?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe place where you cook,\u003c\/i\u003e Nabisase explained slowly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIt might   be,\u003c\/i\u003e I admitted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They ran past me. Forget that. Right over me. Even Grandma, a ninety-three   year old, vaulted my doughy shoulders and sped into the kitchen. Where Mom was turning   the burners' dials straight off, to six o'clock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eI wouldn't have started a fire,\u003c\/i\u003e I told them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow do you know?\u003c\/i\u003e Nabisase asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neville Chamberlain believed Hitler   would be satisfied to taste only a jigger of Czechoslovakia. My family knew I wasn't   retarded, but the idea of one more paranoid schizophrenic in our fold f***ed with   their common sense so much that they never mentioned medication, hospitalization,   examination. For what? They wished that I was fragile instead of berserk, so that's   what I became. They handled me with cushy mitts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Grandma's English was slightly   twisted. She was from East Africa. Uganda, specifically. My mother had also been   born there, but Nabisase and I were from Queens. Grandma said, \u003ci\u003eWell we should have   nice dresses then.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor breakfast?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Grandma said, \u003ci\u003eYou are wearing a suit. We should   put on long pants.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While they changed I finished with the food. I got the frying   pans going again; the smell of pig meat warmed my heart. The eggs were solid; not   dry, just firm. So much grease on the skillet that they floated pretty as kids in   a wading pool. I wasn't fat because of any thyroid condition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We lived in Rosedale,   at the southeastern end of Queens. A suburb of New York complete with the growls   of cars leaving driveways. The sound of engines was pleasant to me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Grandma came   back first wearing a yellow housedress and black flat shoes. She walked down the   hallway, into the living room, then sat on the sectional couch waiting to be served.   Across the street a husband backed his RV into the yard of a home he shared with   his wife. My family was middle class and I liked that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then, loud as the Devil in   his best pink shoes, my sister attacked my mother. A blitzkrieg; bomb blasts and   shouting. Lightning behind Mom's bedroom door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My mother came down the hallway chased   by her daughter, who was swinging a hair dryer and yelling Mom's name. Nabisase hammer-slammed   Mom across the back of the skull and the dryer's nozzle shattered into plastic chips   around the room. Nabisase took two handfuls of Mom's hair and used them as handles   for pulling our mother, face first, to the ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Grandma tried to stand, but the   couch was shaking too much because Mom had pushed Nabisase backward across it. My   mother might even have strangled Nabisase if my sister weren't scratching the skin   from Mom's hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nabisase pulled the television from our gray entertainment unit.   It would have made a louder crash but my mother's foot stopped the fall. Maybe a   toe was broken. I bet my sister wished that was true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My mother had dabbled with   art-dress making and sculpture to name two. The only proof of this was a horrendous   statuette on top of our entertainment unit. A tiny bust meant to resemble Sidney   Poitier except that both ears were on the same side of the poor man's head. With   the television crashing the small bust wobbled about to fall so my mother set it   safely on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then there was a broom against the wall, so Mom took it and   gave Nabisase two baton shots in the ribs. This put my sister on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And   I was the one with a problem?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Grandma yelled, \u003ci\u003eAnthony! Come. Anthony! Please.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When I stood between my sister and mother they went around me. My sister threw couch   cushions over my head hoping they'd hit Mom. Not to hurt, but to annoy, which was   a fine alternative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mom whipped a small picture frame under one of my outstretched   arms and it plunked against a wall, chipping the paint. \u003ci\u003eI'm getting a lock for my   bedroom, \u003c\/i\u003eMom promised.\u003ci\u003e I'm getting it today.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At which point Grandma raised her voice.   The old lady climbed on the couch. \u003ci\u003eYou crazy three bitches!\u003c\/i\u003e she yelled. \u003ci\u003eYou stake   my heart!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She fell backward, but caught herself. The yellow housedress hung down   between her thighs. With her spindly old arms and legs visible she became a giant   wiry spider. Gnashing and screaming and the yellow fabric gathered below her like   a dangling silk line. Loom of the dead. She scared us away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There really were worse   situations than mine. Mothers and daughters are war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Not to seem monomaniacal, but   there was still the matter of nine eggs, eight slices of toast, six pats of butter,   four glasses of orange juice, two cups of tea, six sausage links and thirteen strips   of bacon awaiting an eating. How could they forget that?","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305049477349,"sku":"NP9780375713316","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375713316.jpg?v=1767739131","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-ecstatic-isbn-9780375713316","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}