{ "item_title" : "Pan", "item_author" : [" Michael Clune "], "item_description" : "Nominated for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize - A Washington Post Notable Book - Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME and SlatePan is saturated with a grand, psychedelic spirit . . . For those who wonder if the American novel has anything new to offer . . . Pan is exhilarating, a pure joy--and a sheer, nerve-curdling terror--from end to end. --Matthew Spektor, The Washington PostDeliciously observed, ferociously strange . . . Reading his experience of these raptures is invigorating and often hilarious . . . Like a great painter, Clune can show us the mind, the world, with just a few well-placed verbs. --Kaveh Akbar, The New York Times Book ReviewA strange and brilliant teenager's first panic attacks lead him down the rabbit hole inthis wild, highly anticipated debut novel from one of our most distinctive literary mindsNicholas is fifteen when he forgets how to breathe. He had plenty of reason to feel unstable already: he's been living with his dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs since his Russian-born mom kicked him out. Then one day in geometry class, Nicholas suddenly realizes that his hands are objects. The doctor says it's just panic, but Nicholas suspects that his real problem might not be a psychiatric one: maybe the Greek god Pan is trapped inside his body. As his paradigm for his own consciousness crumbles, Nicholas; his best friend, Ty; and his maybe-girlfriend, Sarah, huntfor answers why--in Oscar Wilde and in Charles Baudelaire, in rock and roll and in Bach, and in the mysterious, drugged-out Barn, where their classmate Tod's charismatic older brother, Ian, leads the high schoolers in rituals that might end up breaking more than just the law. Thrilling, cerebral, and startlingly funny, Pan is a new masterpiece of the coming-of-age genre by Guggenheim fellow and literary scholar Michael Clune, whose memoir of heroin addiction, White Out--named one of The New Yorker's best books of the year--earned him a cult readership. Now, in Pan, the great novel of our age of anxiety, Clune drops us inside the human psyche, where we risk discovering that the forces controlling our inner lives could be more alien than we want to let ourselves believe.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/383/442/0593834429_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.00" } }

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We humans are so constantly stressed out, we may as well be gazelles being endlessly chased by lions on the savanna. A therapist might tell us that there are ways to control our anxiety, to train our thoughts, but these fixes can’t cure us of asking the big philosophical questions like, why is the world like this? and where do thoughts come from? Thankfully, it’s literature’s job to tackle these existential anxieties. Michael Clune’s new novel, Pan, does exactly that, but don’t think that this book will settle your mind. Reading the overwhelming stream of thoughts that runs through the teenage narrator Nick’s head is claustrophobic: His intense focus on his body, his paralyzing self-awareness and his habit of leaning vertiginously over the edge of his own consciousness are both a wonder to read and skin-crawling. When Nick controls his panic attacks by breathing into a paper bag, readers, too, can calm down, and in these moments, anxiety ceases to be terrifying and starts to seem like something universal, something to ponder and feel. Though Pan is set in the 1990s (demonstrated through the characters’ taste for Michael Jordan, slackerdom and rock music), the novel’s encyclopedic references invite exploration from contemporary readers. Nick, narrating from a future point in time, even asks readers to “google” his object of interest several times, whether a photograph or painting. At the center of Nick’s personal mythmaking is the god Pan, who his friend and love interest, Sarah, thinks may be the key to understanding his panic attacks. Through classic literature like Ivanhoe, Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and the poetry of Baudelaire, Nick and Sarah seek out ways to live, think, feel and see beauty. Clune is writing in the tradition of other writers whose work considers anxiety, particularly David Foster Wallace. Nick and his panic attacks recall similar characters from Wallace’s work who are unable to stop sweating or touching doorframes. The obsessively referential nature of Pan adds to the resemblance, giving the impression of great genius, or at least great passion, driving the narration. Like Wallace’s, Clune’s brilliance isn’t in the obscure connections he draws, but in his uncanny ability to remind us how human we all are.