Description
Book SynopsisPart cultural critique, part parental confessional, Delusions of Grandeur embraces the notion that the personal is always political and reveals important, if sometimes uncomfortable, truths about our American obsessions with race, class, religion, and family.
Trade Review"Before opening
Delusions of Grandeur, I was certain I was fatigued of ruminating on these large ideas. Upon closing it, I understood something new about myself: I didn’t want to step away from these topics. In fact, I craved discussion on them—but I needed a thoughtful, reflective voice to wade with me through my own comfortable delusions. I needed a calm, self-critical, and genuinely funny voice that helped me to see myself."—Kate Madsen,
Brevity“Franklin writes like a novelist, reasons like a theologian, and reminds us that getting it
right, in both language and life, is all that matters in the end.”—Dennis Covington, author of
Salvation on Sand Mountain“I’m a serious admirer of Joey Franklin’s work, and this book gathers some of his very best and most culturally and politically relevant, nuanced, balanced, and penetrating essays—which, properly and widely read, might actually deepen and widen the conversation, at least a little.”—David Shields, author of
The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power"With candor, modesty, and a leavening of humor, he ponders sexual shame, dysfunctional families, class divisions, apocalyptic religion, and other difficult issues, inviting the reader to join him in the search for understanding."—Scott Russell Sanders, author of
The Way of Imagination“Over the course of these ten essays, Franklin does not simply dig into the classic pillars of the self, like gender or family; he also interrogates myriad other influences that contribute to his reality with an unflinching clarity, including class, intergenerational wealth and trauma, faith and fear, ambition and envy.”—Elena Passarello, author of
Let Me Clear My Throat and
Animals Strike Curious Poses “Removing the veil of his own misconceptions and training a floodlight on those of our shared society, Franklin unpacks notions of goodness, nakedness, perception and—with a true vitality of language—confronts the myths we both inherit and perpetuate. All delusions aside, this is a work of greatness, grand in spirit and faith, willing to upend artifice and invention for the sake of empathy. This is a writer concerned with truth and healing, alive with a sober and dazzling sense of hope.”—Jericho Parms, author of
Lost Wax“With certainty undergirded by fact, and wisdom that never overreaches, these essays are grand (and not at all delusional).”—Debra Monroe, author of
My Unsentimental Education“In the excellent essays of
Delusions of Grandeur, Joey Franklin perfects, ages, then, cures, perhaps, the genre’s full extension and expression, engineering whole new worried and weathered precincts of prose genius. Here, the maturation of the micro-memoir. Here, the fine calculus of the personal essay. Here, the literal reinvention of literary journalism. These big-shouldered essays are riveting, I-beams bolted and bolting, hither and yon, spot lit and spot on.”—Michael Martone, author of
The Moon Over Wapakoneta and
Brooding“Joey Franklin dives into difficult topics—poverty and wealth, masculinity, race, whiteness, privilege, parenting, linguistic and regional bias, and what it means to be and do good in the world—with thoughtful grace. This book is a Montaignian mash-up relevant for twenty-first century readers, each essay braided with equal parts fascinating research and deep vulnerability, an admirable union of brain and heart.”—Sonya Huber, author of
Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous SystemTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Delusions of Grandeur: An Introduction
Toy Soldiers
Girl Fight
Good Enough
Stuck
White Trash
Not in My Backyard
Thursday Night Lights
The Full Montaigne
Worry Lines
Apocalypse, Now?
A Note on Notes
Notes
