Predator

The novelist and critic weaves together scene-by-scene commentary on the 1987 sci-fi horror film 'Predator' with personal recollections and musings as he contemplates masculinity, fandom and their relationship to violence. --The New York Times Book Review [Predator] is an extremely unexpected book in every way . . . Totally delightful. --Dan Kois, Slate's Culture Gabfest A vibrant piece of social criticism that seeks to connect the dots between autobiography and something larger: the way an artifact or a piece of art can get inside us, shaping not only personality but also perspective, a way of thinking about and moving through the world. In pretty much every way that matters, it's an effort that succeeds. --David Ulin, Alta Journal Written in loose-jointed yet elegant prose that guiltily savors Predator's pleasures, Monson's subtle, twisty appreciations and critiques . . . transform the movie into a penetrating commentary on the contradictions of manhood. Movie buffs will want to snap this up. --Publishers Weekly In a country where incomprehensible, violent tragedies are becoming commonplace, Monson finds clarity processing the new American way against the backdrop of his favorite movie. . . . Monson finds a cracking pace that imbues [Predator] with an improbable resonance, at once lowbrow and mesmerizingly cogent. . . . An unlikely treatise on manhood with the charm of a late-night movie marathon. --Kirkus Reviews I haven't seen Predator or any other action movie, for that matter--am I a man?--but this is my favorite book of Ander Monson's. It's the most sustained, the most lucid, the most serious (the funniest), the most complicit, the most heartbreaking/discomfiting, the most 'relevant' to our 'moment.' Quite simply, a great book. --David Shields A maze of riffs with the Predator franchise in the center, always allusive and illusive. One of the more fascinating and eccentric books I've read this decade. --Jeff VanderMeer This is a book about the movie Predator and also a book about the country and the era and the culture that produced the movie Predator. It's a book about that time and about this time right now, and many points in between. This is a book filled with ideas and also an intensely personal book, one that only Ander Monson could have written--with his wit, honesty and considerable powers of insight. Heavy and light, serious and funny, and above all deeply original. --Charles Yu