Kirby Olson is an assistant professor at SUNY-Delhi, teaching philosophy, mythology, and literature. He has been a freelance writer, publishing art and literary criticism, poetry and translations from the French in Partisan Review, Exquisite Corpse, Second Coming, American Book Review, Pacific Northwest Magazine, and other journals. Temping is his first novel.
"A comedy in quest of the nature of comedy. This is serious madcap.
An intense and surprisingly realistic voyage into the light and the
fantastic." -- Willie Smith, author of Oedipus Cadet
"Anyone who spent time after college as a temp must have wondered
at least once if they were doomed to temp forever. That is exactly
what happens to 38-year-old Milhouse Moot. Milhouse has made
temping a lifestyle. He refuses to have permanent relationships
with jobs, women, friends, or places. When a bizarrely honest
therapist talks the virginal Milhouse into attending graduate
school, he finally gets a career and falls in love with a Finnish
circus performer. The two marry and Milhouse winds up teaching
humor in famously humorless Finland. From Seattle to Hong Kong to
Finland and back to Seattle, this absurdist fable follows
Milhouse's search for a life. The black comedy is by turns
frustrating and enjoyable." -- Booklist Reviews (Reviewed November
15, 2005)
"Imagine Bukowski as a funny-as-hell teetotaler and the Beat
Generation as a congregation of Lutherans and you'll end up with
the narrator and cast of Kirby Olson's Temping." -- Brian Evenson,
chair of Brown University Creative Writing Department and author of
Altmann's Tongue
"Kirby Olson has answered that fundamental age-old question: what's
inside Finland? The answer is: love and the circus. Before you say,
Why Finland?, read this tale and delight in its midgets, send-ups
of academia, real-life angst, and a myriad of quips a la Queneau.
All in all, a romp, deftly executed." -- Andrei Codrescu, NPR
commentator and author of Wakefield and Casanova in Bohemia
"The story of an emotionally stuck intellectual who finds true
love, Kirby Olson's first novel mixes absurdly believable
characters with philosophical rantings and graces it all with
enough far-fetched literary resonances to enliven any cocktail
party. Like the work of David Sedaris, Irvine Welsh, and T.C.
Boyle, this book is laugh-out-loud funny, emotionally gritty, and
psychologically raw. A deliciously ripping story that will appeal
to anyone who ever contemplated murdering their shrink." -- Mark
Haskell Smith, Hollywood Screenwriter and author of Moist and
Delicious
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