Hey Ahadadians!

In anticipation of the impending launch of Jon Paul Fiorentino’s Theory of the Loser Class (Coach House Books, 2006) I had the opportunity to conduct a quick interview via email for the Small Press Exchange. Fiorentino discusses the practices of a conspicuous loser, PlayStation and Margaret Christakos—among other things.

Check it out here.

Here’s the promotional copy from Coach House:

In 1899, Thorstein Veblen recalibrated North America’s class system with The Theory of the Leisure Class. Introducing terms like ‘conspicuous consumption’ and ‘nouveau riche,’ he identified a new demographic: the leisure class, a caste of the elite who could afford to spend all their time in pursuit of fun.

Fast-forward a century, and the leisure class has given way to the loser class: geek gangs and rec-room rabble, a landscape of videos, drugs and late-night talk shows. Find your own inner nerd as Fiorentino maps the psychic territory of abjection across the shopworn spaces of suburbia, where losers lurk against a backdrop of aging strip malls, burned-out houses and living rooms littered with video game consoles.

By turns compassionate, funny and filled with self-loathing, The Theory of the Loser Class is poetry for the socially inept and culturally vexed.

Theory of the Loser Class will launch April 6, 2006. For more details, click here.