The Grand Tour
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A bitingly funny, smart, and moving road novel about two hapless lost souls—an alcoholic Vietnam veteran turned bestselling author, and his awkward, shy college-student superfan—who form an unlikely connection on the world’s most disastrous book tour.
Richard Lazar is advancing in years but regressing in life. After a career as a literary novelist that has ground to a halt and landed him in a trailer in Phoenix, Richard is surprised to find sudden success publishing a gritty memoir about his service in Vietnam. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest (and really only) fan: an awkward, despondent student named Vance with issues of his own—an absentee father, a depressive mother, his own acute shyness. Soon Vance has volunteered to chauffeur Richard for the rest of the book tour, and the two embark on a disastrous but often hilarious cross-country trip. When things go wrong, Richard and Vance forge an unlikely bond between two misanthropes whose mutual insecurities and disdain for the world force both to look at each other, and their lives, in a more meaningful way.
As they reach the end of the book tour, The Grand Tour ultimately becomes a moving tale of unlikely friendship that should catapult Adam O’Fallon Price into the company of such masters of all-American dyspepsia as Sam Lipsyte, David Gates, and Walter Kirn.
Kuhusu mwandishi
Veteran country music critic, journalist, and historian Rich Kienzle is the author of Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz and Great Guitarists: The Most Influential Players in Blues, Country Music, Jazz and Rock. A contributing editor and columnist at Country Music magazine for nearly twenty-five years, he also edited their history publication The Journal. He was formerly a contributing editor at No Depression and Guitar World and is now a regular contributor to Vintage Guitar Magazine. His work has appeared in Fretboard Journal, Guitar Player, Request, The Journal of Country Music, and the Austin American-Statesman. The author of liner notes for almost four hundred reissue albums, Kienzle is among the few country journalists profiled in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. He received the International Country Music Conference’s Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism in 2012.
Adam O’Fallon Price was born in California but grew up in the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia before attending high school in Tennessee. He first found success as a screenwriter and author of short stories, having published a story in the Paris Review that made it to the Other Distinguished Stories list in the Best American Short Stories 2014 anthology. He spent time teaching English and creative writing at Cornell University before moving to Iowa City, Iowa.
John Pruden is a professional voice actor who has recorded audiobooks, PSAs, Indie films, documentaries, video games, radio dramas, corporate and online training narrations, and radio and TV commercials. An Earphones Award winner, his audiobook narrations include Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, which was chosen by The Washington Post as the best audiobook of 2011.
R.C. Bray has performed Off-Broadway, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and many stages in between. An accomplished producer and voiceover artist, R.C.'s voice can also be heard in countless TV and radio commercials. He lives with his gorgeous wife and two beautiful daughters in New England.
