Famous Builder

"This book shows all the vital signs of genius. In Famous Builder, Paul Lisicky asks the tragic American question: who are you if you recreated yourself? And he answers it: you are alone, vulnerable and fully loaded."—Edmund White

"How difficult it is to make the familiar fresh again! Yet that's exactly what Lisicky does in this wise and unusual memoir, gently rotating our perspective on suburbia until a truly New World—as peculiar, obsessive, and utterly marvelous as his younger self's miniature housing developments—shimmers before us. In the neighborhood you might also find Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse, and some of Rick Moody's work. But the structure Lisicky has built for us is sturdy, and all his own."—Andrea Barrett

"Paul Lisicky writes with red-blooded realism about the mysteries of subterranean New Jersey, both its sunny burbs and dark corners. Deliciously wacky and lyric, these charged essays explore the warring powers of youth, of family, and of the writer's imperturbable emergence as a artist. A charmed love letter to American life."—Maria Flook

"By recalling the people and events that have shaped him, Lisicky brings to light the forces that shape each of us. As a boy, Lisicky dreamed of building an intricate and habitable world; with Famous Builder, he's done just that."—Bernard Cooper

"Stunning and revealing . . . Famous Builder is a rare feat of imagination, forming an exquisite architecture of the self."—Out magazine

"A refreshingly affectionate book . . . An endearing, often amusing story about a quirky boy's coming of age."—Kevin Riordan, The Courier-Post