Craig Clevenger in conversation with Claire Phillips
celebrating the re-publication of
The Contortionist’s Handbook
By Craig Clevenger
with an introduction by Jordan Harper
Published by Datura Books
With a new foreword from bestselling and Edgar award-winning author Jordan Harper, this reissue of the cult classic The Contortionist’s Handbook follows a talented forger who continually reinvents himself to escape the authorities.
Following a near fatal overdose of painkillers, Daniel Fletcher is resuscitated in a Los Angeles emergency room and detained for psychiatric evaluation. Through a series of questions and tests, the psychiatrist must ascertain whether the patient intended to kill himself, or whether he can walk free. What the psychiatrist doesn’t know is that ‘Daniel Fletcher’ is actually John – Johnny – Dolan Vincent, a brilliant young forger who continually changes his identity to save himself from a lifetime of incarceration. Johnny has done such assessments before – many, many times.
As he creates an elaborate bluff for the evaluator, Johnny reveals the true story of his traumatic past – a broken family, descent into the sinister world of forgers and criminals, and his one chance of salvation in the beautiful and elusive Molly. But time is running out; as his underworld clients lose patience and the psychiatrist’s net closes around him, Johnny has to negotiate the escape act of his life.
Evoking the boulevards and strip bars of 1980s LA with cinematic intensity, The Contortionist’s Handbook is a darkly hypnotic and stunningly original debut.
Craig Clevenger is the author of three novels, The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria, both originally released by MacAdam/Cage, and Mother Howl, published by Datura. His short fiction has appeared in Barrelhouse, Black Clock, San Francisco Noir Vol. 2, Warmed and Bound, and The Sunday Rumpus. His non-fiction has appeared in Huffington Post, Occupy Writers, and LitReactor. A short film was produced based upon his short story “Smoke and Mirrors.”
Claire Phillips is the author of the memoir A Room with a Darker View: Chronicles of My Mother & Schizophrenia and the fantastic novella Black Market Babies. Her writing has appeared in Black Clock, The Brooklyn Rail, Joyland, Largehearted Boy Blog, Los Angeles Review of Books, Motherboard-Vice, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn among other places. Her awards include the American Academy of Poets, First Prize, a nomination for the Pushcart Prize, and a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2015. Phillips teaches writing at CalArts, SCI-Arc, and U.C. Irvine, and is director of the Los Angeles Writers Reading Series at Glendale College.
Praise for The Contortionist’s Handbook
“I swear to god, this is the best book I have read in years.”
– Chuck Palahinuk
“A dazzling and highly original debut […] one of the most interesting writers to emerge in years. This book deserves to be massive and I think it will be.”
– Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
“What sticks out about this remarkable debut are its pitchperfect shock ending and John Vincent himself – his complex, conflicting mind, original voice and unnervingly self-defeating existence.”
– Time Out
“Craig Clevenger’s The Contortionist’s Handbook is a brilliant fever dream of a novel that packs as much punch as it did twenty years ago, with sentences that bite like a piranha’s teeth, a melancholy character study for the ages, and a notebook on how to disappear from a cruel world. Read it, read it again, and prepare to be transfixed.”
– Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of The Mentor and The Great Gimmelmans
“A very impressive debut. The reader sees it from the conartist’s perspective, delivered in a snappy, first-person voice that Clevenger writes with assured flair. This is a tightly controlled piece of work with an intriguingly original approach to the genre that marks the author out as one to watch.”
– Metro
“Clevenger has created a manic monologist whose paranoia-inducing world pulls you in completely.”
– Seattle Times
“Clevenger’s talent is revealed in his ability to create a true testament to the resilience of the human spirit.”
– USA Today
“Immaculately detailed and emotionally explosive: this is rolling, riveting stuff.”
– Kirkus Reviews, starred review
This event made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation