The Paper Man

by Gallagher Lawson

Overview

Michael was only 15 when a mysterious accident changed his life forever. He was rebuilt out of paper by his father, and ten years later he is still trapped in the paper version of his teenage body. To escape his stagnant life at home, he runs away to the city by the sea, which promises art and adventure. Instead, Michael discovers the city is tearing at the seams.

With rumors swirling that a militarized north will annex the city, newcomer Michael has more to worry about than the unpredictable seaside weather. After being rescued from a rainstorm by Maiko, an unemployed fur model, Michael’s cruel high school sweetheart Mischa suddenly reappears. Michael becomes torn between loyalty to Maiko and Mischa's decadent underground art world. But when he finds himself drawn to the city's most notorious artist, David Doppelmann, Michael begins another dangerous transformation, one that will either lead to uncovering his true self, or destroy him and everyone he cares about.

Part fable, part surrealistic journey, Gallagher Lawson’s impressive debut is a gripping narrative about the nature of artistic identity and its tenuous relationship to the greater good, Lawson has created a visionary, allegorical novel of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939419224
Publisher:	The Unnamed Press
Publication date:	05/19/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Gallagher Lawson is a graduate of U.C. Riverside's Palm Desert M.F.A. program. He has worked as a travel writer and technical writer, and plays classical piano. He lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

06/08/2015
In Lawson's strange and brilliant debut novel, a young man made of paper moves to an unnamed city to escape his overprotective family. After Michael suffered an accident when he was a teenager, his father rebuilt his physical body out of paper. He arrives in the city with dreams of being an artist and an overwhelming feeling that he can finally be free and accepted. But with the first unexpected rainfall—water being dangerous for his paper limbs—he finds that life in the city is more difficult than he had imagined. He is saved by a lonely woman named Maiko, who takes him in and helps him to find work. Complicating matters is the budding civil unrest in the city, making it hostile to newcomers. When Michael meets the famous artist Doppelman, his life takes on a different angle, as Doppelman whisks him into the art world, showing him off as an art piece. It is through Doppelman that Michael is reunited with his high school love, Mischa. With these three peculiar characters, Michael navigates life in an increasingly dangerous city and tries to find himself. Lawson has created a bizarre world that incorporates ideological and political problems without ever losing its empathy and feeling for his characters. Beautifully written and finely wrought, this novel is a surreal coming-of-age story that considers the boundaries between art and life. (May)

Publishers Weekly

“This bizarre, compelling debut combines the darkness and political intrigue of Kafka with the eerie hyperrealism of a Magritte painting. Michael, the Paper Man, is a highly unconventional and persuasive hero, and David Doppelman among the strangest—archnemeses? father figures? manifestations of the self?—I’ve ever seen in a novel. Gallagher Lawson is a weird and wonderful writer.”
—J. Robert Lennon, author of Familiar and See You in Paradise

"The Paper Man is one of the most inspiring and original books I've read in years. Gallagher Lawson has written a lustrous fable comprised of loneliness, blood, and love. The Wizard of Oz on laudanum, a Bjork musical in letters, this devastatingly powerful debut challenges us to imagine what it would be like to be made of nothing more than paper, to live in a world where mermaids are murdered and art is the only path to actualization, a world, in many ways, not unlike our fragile own."
—Samuel Sattin, author of League of Somebodies and The Silent End

"Gallagher Lawson belongs to the new wave of writers using fantastical elements to mine deeper into realist territory. A strong debut from a promising writer of agile talents." —Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes and Crystal Eaters

"Lawson has created a bizarre world that incorporates ideological and political problems without ever losing its empathy and feeling for his characters. Beautifully written and finely wrought, this novel is a surreal coming-of-age story that considers the boundaries between art and life." —Publishers Weekly

"Gallagher Lawson’s debut novel, The Paper Man, has a striking, gutsy premise: A young man named Michael — who is, as the result of a dreadful accident, made of paper — navigates a mysterious, unsettling city by the sea. In addition to inhabiting the existence of this paper man and the peculiar world he moves through, the novel also delves beautifully into thorny philosophical questions about art, identity and transformation." —The Los Angeles Times

"In the book’s subtle allusiveness you can catch glimpses of the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, David Lynch films, Miyazaki’s anime fairytales, The Velveteen Rabbit, Eyes Wide Shut, and Jose Saramago’s fables. No one influence predominates. Days after reading it, certain deeply weird scenes, erotic scenes and destructive scenes featuring paper, are still playing in my mind, still worming through my subconscious, like a waking dream." —The Rumpus

"The Paper Man is a rare narrative, announcing the arrival of an outstanding new voice that comfortably inhabits the strange place where literary fiction, surrealism, and gritty fantasy converge." — Gabino Iglesias, Electric Literature

"In this allegorical tale, Michael’s corporeal form is a stand-in for art itself. Lawson gives voice to the artistic yearning to define creative existence." —Heather Scott Partington, Electric Literature

"A bizarre but engrossing tale about a boy who suffered a childhood accident and was rebuilt out of paper by his father. A decade later, the boy longs to escape from the paper version of his teenage body." —Houston Chronicle

From the Publisher