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Eugene Marten was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to European parents, emigrated to the U.S. before the age of two, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he now lives again after stints in Oregon, New York City, Costa Rica (where the germ for Pure Life originated), Texas, South Dakota, and Los Angeles. In 2014, an excerpt from his novel Layman's Report earned him an NEA Fellowship.
“A relentless and vivid story of a retired football player who has gladly sacrificed his mind and body to the sport. ... Marten brilliantly [captures] the 'Dadaist poetry' of play calls, the blur of moving bodies, and the numbing catalog of injuries ... Messy and fascinating, [Pure Life] blitzes the reader with a disorienting stream of language and genres.” —Publishers Weekly “Pure Life is a grim, dazzling thriller, a stunning allegory, and the precisely rendered portrait of a washed-up jock hero of a dissipated empire jarred in the most dangerous way imaginable from his numbed-out American dream. Reminiscent at times of Don DeLillo and the late great Robert Stone, Eugene Marten brings his unique, powerful cadences to this bruising, unforgettable epic.” —Sam Lipsyte “A compelling trip into the heart of darkness … Marten has a rare ability to cut to the bone—which leads to some stunning passages, evocative of Cormac McCarthy with more punctuation.” —Chicago Review of Books
