{"product_id":"calf","title":"Calf","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePart Appalachian gothic, part science fiction, part Norwegian western, \u003cem\u003eThe Calf\u003c\/em\u003e is a darkly comic backwoods phantasmagoria that bends genres until they break in a feat of linguistic experimentation.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a subterranean office labyrinth somewhere in Hadeland, Norway, a mechanical barn gnome with a metal bucket for a head spends his days shredding paper, brewing coffee, and trying to forget a certain late summer night in the woods sometime in the 1980s. That night-hazy, mythic, traumatic--centers on the Mare Cooter Canyon and a ragtag bunch of teenage boys calling themselves \"the cowboys.\" As the narrator's memory crackles and sputters, we encounter grotesque archetypes: a resurrected Christ-like figure called the Dead Feller, a mysterious, moon-faced woman who may be an employment caseworker, and a strange, amorphous alien called the Calf. What happened out there, and who--or what--is telling the story? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on the linguistic inventions of Twain and Faulkner, translator David M. Smith boldly reimagines the rural dialect of Leif Høoslash;ghaug's original, bringing it into a lush, inventive Appalachian English. The result is a voice that's as haunted, broken, and unforgettable as its narrator. \u003cem\u003eThe Calf\u003c\/em\u003e is a howl from the margins, a cracked hymn of language under pressure--conceived and written alongside the author's Norwegian translation of \u003cem\u003eFinnegans Wake\u003c\/em\u003e, and unmistakably charged with that book's spirit of dream logic, doubleness, and rapturous musicality.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"David M Smith, Leif Høghaug","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47286607773932,"sku":"9781913744243","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1791\/3068\/files\/9781913744243.jpg?v=1770453196","url":"https:\/\/intl.allstora.com\/products\/calf","provider":"Allstora","version":"1.0","type":"link"}