This Is Where My Life Went Wrong — C. Bard Cole

In his first novel, C. Bard Cole weaves a delirious web of invented fragments of American literature with the language of nursery rhymes, school books, encyclopedias, advertisement, pop music lyrics and TV listings. A frantic field guide to a mental landscape shaped by literary allusion and littered with pop culture detritus, This is Where My Life Went Wrong is autobiography as anti-novel, placing the universal story of an artist's coming-of-age in the context of American history, politics, and culture at the beginning of a new century.