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WORK TITLE: Things I’m Seeing Without You
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://peterbognanni.com
CITY: St. Paul
STATE: MN
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2009036198
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2009036198
HEADING: Bognanni, Peter
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100 1_ |a Bognanni, Peter
670 __ |a The house of tomorrow, 2010: |b ECIP t.p. (Peter Bognanni)
953 __ |a rg03
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Iowa Writers’ Workshop, graduated.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, assistant professor.
AWARDS:Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and Alex Award, American Library Association, both for The House of Tomorrow.
WRITINGS
The House of Tomorrow was adapted for film and released in 2017 by Shout! Factory.
SIDELIGHTS
Peter Bognanni made his debut as a novelist in 2010 with the publication of The House of Tomorrow. It tells the story of Sebastian Prendergast, a young man in training to redeem the world. “Having homeschooled Sebastian in the teachings of futurist philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller,” wrote Jonathan Fullmer in Booklist, “his grandmother deems Sebastian humanity’s next savior.” Those plans change after Sebastian’s grandmother suffers a stroke. “Sebastian becomes enmeshed with the Whitcomb family as the newly separated Janice recruits him to draw out her son Jared,” stated Ellen Wernecke in A.V. Club, “a teenage heart-transplant recipient pushing back against his inevitable return to high school.” “Sebastian and Jared form an unlikely bond via the great teenage tradition of punk rock,” reported a Publishers Weekly reviewer.
Critics recognized Bognanni’s novel as a meditation between Fuller’s view of the future and punk rock’s nihilism. “As for the dome—the title’s ‘house of tomorrow’—it is of course yesterday’s version of the future, as quaint now as the Jetsons,” declared Wesley Stace in the New York Times Book Review. “Punk, on the other hand, proclaimed ‘No Future,’ which was always liable to seem dated. But the ideals of both remain, and the book does not cast a verdict on the positivism of Fuller versus the nihilism of punk. Indeed, as Sebastian learns, there are more convergences between the two than he could have expected.” “The House of Tomorrow is a rollicking book that explores the passion and joy thrashing on a bunch of musical instruments brings, even poorly,” concluded Zachary Houle in Pop Matters, “and does so with a lot of heart, intelligence and literary precision.”
Bognanni’s second novel, Things I’m Seeing without You, was based on the author’s personal experience. “In his first young adult novel,” declared a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “Bognanni … tackles several serious issues—including depression, suicide, and digital privacy.” “A few years ago, someone I only knew online committed suicide,” Bognanni said in an interview with Lauren Wengrovitz in Young Folks. “I didn’t know her well. She was an acquaintance more than a friend, but when she died, I felt a strange kind of absence that I didn’t quite know how to process. And I didn’t immediately think I would write about it. But a year or so later this idea of digital grief, and how well you really know your online friends, was something I felt compelled to explore.” “I did some research. But I also have a long history of dealing with anxiety and depression myself,” Bognanni told Verity Harris in United by Pop, “so some of what I did was try to think about a version of myself who didn’t make the choice to get help.”
The novel’s suicide is a boy named Jonah; his story is told through the voice of Tess, who has been in a long-distance relationship with him for some time. Tess drops out of school and moves hundreds of miles away to live with her father. Her view of Jonah and her understanding of herself are changed significantly when she makes contact with Daniel, who knew Jonah much better than Tess did. “The author’s portrayal of Tess and Daniel, Jonah’s roommate, struggling to discover who they are without Jonah,” wrote Marla Unruh and Ty Johnson in Voice of Youth Advocates, “is spot on. Their voices are the authentic voices of grieving teens.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 1, 2010, Jonathan Fullmer, review of The House of Tomorrow, p. 48.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2017, review of Things I’m Seeing without You.
New York Times Book Review, April 1, 2010, Wesley Stace, “Under the Dome.”
Publishers Weekly, November 16, 2009, review of The House of Tomorrow, p. 33; August 14, 2017, review of Things I’m Seeing without You, p. 80.
Voice of Youth Advocates, August, 2017, Marla Unruh and Ty Johnson, review of Things I’m Seeing without You, p. 54.
ONLINE
A.V. Club, https://aux.avclub.com/ (March 25, 2010), Ellen Wernecke, review of The House of Tomorrow.
Peter Bognanni Website, https://www.peterbognanni.com (May 16, 2018), author profile.
Pop Matters, https://www.popmatters.com/ (March 4, 2010), Zachary Houle, review of The House of Tomorrow.
TeenReads, https://www.teenreads.com/ (March 1, 2011), review of The House of Tomorrow.
United by Pop, https://www.unitedbypop.com/ (January 18, 2018), Verity Harris, “Peter Bognanni Talks Things I’m Seeing without You.”
Young Folks, https://www.theyoungfolks.com/ (October 2, 2017), Lauren Wengrovitz, “Interview: Peter Bognanni on Things I’m Seeing without You.”
Peter Bognanni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His debut novel, The House of Tomorrow, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the ALA Alex Award and has been adapted into a feature film. He teaches creative writing at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
BOOKS
Interview: Peter Bognanni on THINGS I’M SEEING WITHOUT YOU
LAUREN WENGROVITZOCTOBER 2, 20170 3
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Welcome to the blog tour for Things I’m Seeing Without You by Peter Bognanni. I’m thrilled to be sharing a Q&A with the author of one of the most simultaneously grief-filled-and-laughter-inducing books I’ve ever read:
Where did the idea for Things I’m Seeing Without You come from?
It came from two different places, one personal and one coincidental. The personal thing was that, a few years ago, someone I only knew online committed suicide. I didn’t know her well. She was an acquaintance more than a friend, but when she died, I felt a strange kind of absence that I didn’t quite know how to process. And I didn’t immediately think I would write about it. But a year or so later this idea of digital grief, and how well you really know your online friends, was something I felt compelled to explore. A couple years later, I was in a dentist’s office, looking at a magazine when I saw an article about trying to make a living in the funeral industry. It was written in this very upbeat, entrepreneurial way, and I found it both funny and slightly disturbing. I ultimately tried to combine the real grief of what I had experienced with the more satirical aspects I discovered in that article.
Do you consider yourself a pantser, plotter, or something in between? What was your process while writing Things I’m Seeing Without You?
I certainly was not a plotter for this book. At least, not in the first draft. The initial version of this book was 500 pages and in the third person. The 2nd draft was 330 pages and in first person. So, clearly I’m not really an outline guy. Sometimes it can take me awhile to find the right way into a story. Yet, even though it’s more work, I never feel good going in with a clear outline. I don’t want to lose the ability to surprise myself.
Things I’m Seeing Without You is centered around some pretty heavy topics. What did you find most difficult as you wrote?
So, writing a book about death and grieving was, as you’d imagine, kind of depressing at times. I read more than anyone ever should about funerals. And because most books on this subject have a certain solemn feel, the tone was the hardest thing to get right. I knew I didn’t want this book to be completely serious, but I also didn’t want readers to feel like I might be laughing at grief. In the first draft I had two funeral planners who made offensive death jokes all the time. They were the first to get cut when I started revising. It was a step too far. I think there are unavoidably funny things about the death business, but above all, I never wanted to lose the humanity of the story.
At the same time, there were plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud. What did you enjoy most about telling this story?
The burlesque funeral. How many times do you get to write about aging exotic dancers at a funeral service?
If you could spend a day with a character from Things I’m Seeing Without You, who would it be and why?
This is a hard question. I love my main character, Tess, even though I think she makes it hard at times. But I think I would choose Jonah, the boy who Tess is mourning. As someone who has experience with depression and anxiety, there’s a part of me I recognize in his character. I wish I could take a long walk with him and calmly explain how everything is eventually going to be okay.
Things I’m Seeing Without You is very much a story about grief and learning to somehow move on. What do you hope readers take away from your book?
I know this is a big thing to ask, but I hope it makes readers think about their own mortality in a way that is honest but not terrifying. I also hope they view Jonah’s suicide as a tragedy that could have been avoided. There’s no room left in our society for the stigma surrounding mental illness. It has real consequences on the lives of those who deal with it. It has to go.
I have to ask… if you could have Tess and her dad plan your funeral, what is one crazy thing you would want them to do?
Oh man. So many options. The first thing that comes to mind is that I used to be an ice cream man for about 3 years in high school, and though I no longer work with it professionally, I’m still a big fan. Would it be too weird to have an ice cream themed funeral? I’m imagining my hearse as an ice cream truck, playing the little song and everything.
What were your favorite books when you were a young adult? Did that influence your own writing at all?
The novels of Cynthia Voigt were the first ones to really pull me into a story emotionally. I had mostly been into adventure books before that, but when I read Homecoming, I remember being invested in those characters completely. Nothing else mattered except what was going to happen to them. There were no bells and whistles in that book. No spaceships or end of the world scenarios. Just real people in compelling circumstances. She changed my taste entirely.
About the book:
Seventeen-year-old Tess Fowler has just dropped out of high school. She can barely function after learning of Jonah’s death. Jonah, the boy she’d traded banter with over texts and heartfelt e-mails.
Jonah, the first boy she’d told she loved and the first boy to say it back.
Jonah, the boy whose suicide she never saw coming.
Tess continues to write to Jonah, as a way of processing her grief and confusion. But for now she finds solace in perhaps the unlikeliest of ways: by helping her father with his new alternative funeral business, where his biggest client is . . . a prized racehorse?
As Tess’s involvement in her father’s business grows, both find comfort in the clients they serve and in each other. But love, loss, and life are so much more complicated than Tess ever thought. Especially after she receives a message that turns her life upside down.
Funny, heartbreaking, hopeful, and wondrous, in the vein of Six Feet Under and I’ll Give You the Sun, Things I’m Seeing Without You is a beautiful examination of what it means to love someone, to lose someone, and to love again.
About the Author:
Peter Bognanni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut novel, The House of Tomorrow, won the LA Times award for first fiction and the ALA Alex Award and has been adapted into a feature film. He teaches creative writing at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Giveaway
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HomeInterviewsPeter Bognanni talks Things I’m Seeing Without You
Things I'm Seeing Without You
INTERVIEWS
Peter Bognanni Talks Things I’m Seeing Without You
By Verity Harris On Jan 18, 2018
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Seventeen-year-old Tess Fowler has just dropped out of high school. She can barely function after learning of Jonah’s death. Jonah, the boy she’d traded banter with over texts and heartfelt e-mails… In the market for a grief-filled yet laughter-worthy read? Peter Bognanni’s ‘Things I’m Seeing Without You’ is exactly what you need, we caught up with the author to speak about capturing mental health within fiction and more.
Thanks for taking the time to speak to us! First up, for those who haven’t heard of ‘Things I’m Seeing Without You’ how would you entice them to pick up a copy?
This is a book about heavy topics. It might be kind of depressing sometimes, but it comes at life with humour, emotion, and enough hope to keep you going. Tess is a funny, if difficult, main character, but I think she’s one worth following. Her dad owns a quirky funeral business. She has dropped out of a Quaker prep school. And all she wants is to figure out if the online relationship she was in meant anything at all. On her way to finding out this answer, she takes on big questions about death, mourning, identity, and the possibility of love after a loss. It will make you laugh. It will break your heart. It will, hopefully, piece it back together again.
Where did the idea for the novel come from?
A few years ago, a person I knew only through social media committed suicide. She was a fan of my first book, and we just exchanged a few messages. But I continued to follow the events of her life with interest. She was a songwriter and occasionally, she would post videos of performances or some lyrics she was tinkering with. I didn’t know her well, at least in a traditional sense, but when she died I felt an absence that I didn’t know how to process. I wanted to explore this feeling in writing, and this book is what eventually came of that exploration.
Grief, suicide, romance and internet relationships are all weaved into the book – what part did you find most difficult to write about?
Honestly, the hardest part of writing this was breaking through my main character’s shield of sarcasm. It can be hard to get Tess to say what she really believes, but as the book develops, she has to break down some of her walls in order to deal honestly with her grief. I felt like I was doing the same thing when I was writing her final scenes.
Mental health plays a large role in the book and it’s written in a way that avoids the stigmas and pitfalls that are usually associated with them. Did you do a lot of research into this topic?
Yes, I did some research. But I also have a long history of dealing with anxiety and depression myself, so some of what I did was try to think about a version of myself who didn’t make the choice to get help. I started experiencing all of this when I was eighteen, and it took me awhile to set aside my shame and talk to someone about it. I couldn’t help wondering: what if I hadn’t done that? What if I had stayed silent? The depiction of the character of Jonah came from this thought experiment. I hope that readers see the dangers of believing the worst about yourself and how much further we have to go as a culture in normalizing mental illness.
Mental Health
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How did you capture the authenticity in Tess’s voice?
Long story short: I cheated. I teach a lot of 18-year-old students at Macalester College, where I work. Without those daily interactions with brilliant, funny young women, I’m not sure I would have been able to pull it off. A lot of the insecurities, jokes, and frustrations in the character came from my own experiences of being a teenager, but I had to be sure to filter them through the voice of a modern teen girl. Also: I tried to avoid too much slang. There’s no quicker way to out yourself as a fraud.
Tess is a sarcastic funny character, what’s your favourite joke that she says in the book?
I’m kind of in love with Tess. Or at least, the teenage boy in me is. There are a lot of lines of hers I like. But I think my favourite is a kind of understated joke when she’s describing a guy her own age who doesn’t seem very bright. She says:
“The problem with Skip, I decided, was that he said things.”
What does a typical writing day look like for you?
It’s very possible that I once had such a thing as a “typical writing day,” but now I’m the father of a two-year-old and all of that is out the window. On a day when I’m not teaching, it might go something like this:
1) Wake up earlier than anyone should ever have to wake up.
2) Take some notes for the day’s writing on my computer while my son eats a waffle with his bare hands and watches Paw Patrol on an iPad.
3) Convince my son it is a good idea to go to daycare and not to stay home eating waffles all day.
4) Spend the morning reading about how Donald Trump is eroding the foundations of democracy, and being anxious about how I’m wasting my valuable writing time.
5) Finally, write a few pages in the early afternoon that I don’t hate.
6) Pick up my son and play with fire trucks on the floor until we both fall asleep.
What advice would you give to young people looking to start a career as an author?
Read books twice. That’s right. Two times. Read them the first time for pleasure, but then, if you really love a book, read it a second time as a writer, trying to figure out how it works. What choices did the writer make to fill you so full of wonder? Peek behind the curtain and be open to what it has to teach you. Books are usually the best teachers; you just have to put the work in to find the lessons.
Also, don’t be in a rush to get published. Students are usually resistant to this comment. “Easy for you to say” I can see them thinking, “you’re already published.” But it took me a while to get here, and before it ever worked out, I had to figure out who I was as a writer. It takes a while to get to know your voice, your strengths and interests. Be patient with yourself. Work hard, but be patient.
Lastly, if Tess and her Dad were to plan your funeral, what weird things would you request them to do?
I love this question, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m 90% sure I want an ice cream party. I was an ice cream scooper all through high school and I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur. I think right when things are getting depressing, I’d like an ice cream truck to show up and start making people sundaes. Life is fleeting. Eat more ice cream. That would be the message of my funeral. I might even consider that for my tombstone.
‘Things I’m Seeing Without You’ by Peter Bognanni is out now, buy now in the UK and US.
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Print Marked Items
Bognanni, Peter. Things I'm Seeing
Without You
Marla Unruh and Ty Johnson
Voice of Youth Advocates.
40.3 (Aug. 2017): p54.
COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
4Q * 4P * J * S
Bognanni, Peter. Things I'm Seeing Without You. Dial/Penguin Random House, 2017. 336p. $17.99. 978-0-
7352-2804-7.
Just before graduation, Tess Fowler drops out of the Quaker Academy. Classes, friends, nothing matters
since Jonah's suicide. Tess and Jonah had met once at a party, but their sense of connectedness was instant.
Their long-distance romance continued through emails and Facebook. Now, with Jonah gone and her
mother overseas, Tess drives five hours to move, unannounced, into her dad's bachelor pad. He wants to
help but is distracted with problems in his business of unconventional funerals.
Through it all, Tess continues a one-sided dialog with Jonah through his still-active Facebook page, until
she gets a message that changes everything.
The author's portrayal of Tess and Daniel, Jonah's roommate, struggling to discover who they are without
Jonah, is spot on. Their voices are the authentic voices of grieving teens who want to understand what love
is. In their search for a way forward, their decision to give Jonah an unconventional funeral in Sicily seems
a slightly improbable yet believable move toward closure. The adult characters, too, are complicated and
sympathetic. Tess's father turns out not to be as one-dimensional as Tess first thought. With dialog that rings
true and just right pacing, the author crafts an original, well-told story that ties together strands of love, loss,
and coming of age. Readers will not want to put down this sometimes hilarious, always affecting novel.--
Maria Unruh.
This is an engaging love story, not only because Tess falls in love with Jonah at their first and only face-toface
meeting, but also because she is grieving the loss of someone she knew primarily from messaging and
email. Through flashbacks and old messages, Tess remembers the young man she thought she knew. A turn
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of events hits her hard when she realizes that what she thought she knew was not what it seemed to be.
Things I'm Seeing without You is a well-written, captivating, and relatable story. 5Q, 4P. --Ty Johnson, Teen
Reviewer.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Unruh, Marla, and Ty Johnson. "Bognanni, Peter. Things I'm Seeing Without You." Voice of Youth
Advocates, Aug. 2017, p. 54. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502000770/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cbe18ea0.
Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502000770
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Bognanni, Peter: THINGS I'M SEEING
WITHOUT YOU
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bognanni, Peter THINGS I'M SEEING WITHOUT YOU Dial (Children's Fiction) $17.99 10, 3 ISBN: 978-
0-7352-2804-7
When Tess Fowler discovers that Jonah, her online boyfriend, is dead, she escapes her Quaker boarding
school for her father's home, where she finds him once again consumed by one of his harebrained schemes.
Whether it's a fireworks-studded funeral for a beloved dog or a no-holds-barred celebration of a
prizewinning racehorse, Tess' father is the guy to call for alternative end-of-life celebrations. But even
though she's surrounded by funerals, the white teen still tries to hold on to Jonah. She haunts his Facebook
page and emails him lists of things she is seeing without him. She knows he is dead and that it is just a
matter of time before his page is taken down. Then one day she finds something online that changes
everything. While Tess' loss feels genuine, it is unclear why she has fallen so hard for someone she barely
knows. References to her anxiety feel more spliced-in than organic to her character development. Tess' selfdestructive
behavior--lying, hooking up with strangers, sexting, drinking, and drug use--has minimal
consequences. Further, her unpredictability and lack of true self-awareness make her an unsympathetic and
untrustworthy narrator. The attempt at tackling grief gets lost in a storm of bigger issues. Meandering,
ineffectual, and misdirected. (Fiction. 15-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bognanni, Peter: THINGS I'M SEEING WITHOUT YOU." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572574/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2cddbc30. Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572574
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Things I'm Seeing Without You
Publishers Weekly.
264.33 (Aug. 14, 2017): p80+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Things I'm Seeing Without You
Peter Bognanni. Dial, $17.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-735-22804-7
Seventeen-year-old Tess Fowler's life comes apart when her online boyfriend, Jonah, commits suicide. She
drops out of school to live with her estranged father, who has started a (not terribly successful) business
putting together unusual, life-affirming funerals for animals. Tess begins to help her father with the
business, and she realizes that a funeral for Jonah is exactly what she needs to move on. When Tess is
contacted by Daniel, Jonah's college roommate and best friend, she learns several surprising things,
including that Daniel is in love with her. In his first young adult novel, Bognanni (The House of Tomorrow)
tackles several serious issues--including depression, suicide, and digital privacy--in a book disguised as a
quirky love story. While he's successful at building a romantic relationship between Daniel and Tess as they
face the aftermath of Jonah's death, the more difficult subject matter, such as the guilt they both carry, is
only touched upon. And Bognanni's adult characters are largely one-dimensional, particularly Tess's father,
who never moves beyond being a kooky, clueless dad. Ages 14-up. Agent: Julie Barer, Book Group. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Things I'm Seeing Without You." Publishers Weekly, 14 Aug. 2017, p. 80+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501717213/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=82f6a423.
Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
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The House of Tomorrow
Jonathan Fullmer
Booklist.
106.13 (Mar. 1, 2010): p48.
COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The House of Tomorrow.
By Peter Bognanni.
Mar. 2010. 368p. Putnam/Amy Einhorn, $24.95 (9780399156090).
In this heartbreakingly funny and deeply compassionate story of self-discovery and family bonding, debut
novelist Bognanni explores the unlikely friendship of two social outcasts and their desperation to be heard.
Since his parents' untimely death, 17-year-old Sebastian Prendergast has lived in semi-rural Iowa with his
eccentric grandmother in a geodesic dome. Having homeschooled Sebastian in the teachings of futurist
philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller, his grandmother deems Sebastian humanity's next savior. But when she
suffers a stroke, Sebastian must leave the comfort of his bubble world to save her from her obsessive, selfdestructive
plans. Sebastian soon comes under the care of the Whitcombs--the downtrodden, husband-less
mother, Janice; the beautiful but bratty Meredith; and sickly, sarcastic Jared, who introduces Sebastian to
punk rock and brutal honesty. As Sebastian pieces together the perplexities of domestic life, he discovers
the nature of family trust, love and heartache, and healing friendship. Tightly plotted, and as fun and lively
as a Ramones tune, Bognanni's timely novel perfectly captures teenage angst in all its raw and riotous
discomfort.--Jonathan Fullmer
YA: High-schoolers will especially relate to Sebastian's awkwardness and his discovery of life and self
through music. JF.
Fullmer, Jonathan
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Fullmer, Jonathan. "The House of Tomorrow." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2010, p. 48. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A221202554/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=05948a91.
Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
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The House of Tomorrow
Publishers Weekly.
256.46 (Nov. 16, 2009): p33.
COPYRIGHT 2009 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The House of Tomorrow Peter Bognanni, Putnam/Amy Einhorn, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-399-15609-0
Sebastian Prendergast, the teenage narrator of Bognanni's funny and unique debut, lives in Iowa's first
geodesic dome with his grandmother, a devout follower of futurist philosopher Buckminster R. Fuller. But
when Nana has a stroke, Sebastian is thrown together with Janice and teenage Jared Whitcomb, who were
touring the home when Nana was stricken. Soon, Sebastian and Jared form an unlikely bond via the great
teenage tradition of punk rock, starting their own band despite the objections of everyone around them and
Sebastian's lack of musical ability (holding a guitar for the first time, Jared says, "Strum," and Sebastian
asks, "What do you mean?"). And while Jared succeeds to some degree in socializing Sebastian--teaching
him about music, smoking, and curse words--Sebastian ends up getting more than he bargained for when
the two get caught up in Whitcomb family drama. The boys here don't come of age--girls are just beginning
to exist and lifelong struggles are only taking root but their connection is an honest, noisy, and raucous look
at friendship and how loud music can make almost everything better. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The House of Tomorrow." Publishers Weekly, 16 Nov. 2009, p. 33. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A212585396/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7de77771.
Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A212585396
Under the Dome
By WESLEY STACEAPRIL 1, 2010
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One of the paradoxes of punk is that a movement based on nihilism led to such a wealth of creativity. This dichotomy is at the heart of Peter Bognanni’s first novel, “The House of Tomorrow,” which unexpectedly pits the teaching of R. Buckminster Fuller, architect, philosopher and futurist, against the misanthropy of punk. There’s only going to be one winner, but it is a measure of Bognanni’s empathy that his narrator’s decision is never an easy one.
This promising premise begins on promising premises, under the great pellucid roof of the first geodesic dome constructed in Iowa. That’s where Sebastian Prendergast, a 16-year-old orphan, lives with his quirky grandmother Nana, who considers Fuller (with whom she studied and may have had an affair) “the most unappreciated genius in all of human history.” Nana conducts guided tours to this “moderate-to-marginal tourist attraction” and encourages Sebastian, whom she has home-schooled, to believe he is being groomed to lead a Fullerian social revolution.
But the dome is far from the utopia of Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth,” wherein the philosopher envisioned a harmonious crew working toward the greater good. It doesn’t take long for Nana to reveal herself as a delusional Big Brother, a tin-pot Pol Pot. Her censorship of books (portions of Fuller’s biographies “entirely redacted . . . with a thin black magic marker”) and the Internet (Sebastian can visit only sanctioned sites, mostly about design science) would send Google scurrying from the dome in protest. Her paranoia is Stalinesque: when the local newspaper paints her as the eccentric she is rather than the visionary she imagines, she accuses the innocent Sebastian of sabotage. Both reader and author want him to get out of the house, if only for his own sanity.
And then he does. When Nana suffers a stroke while guiding a family around the dome, Sebastian accompanies them all to the hospital and begins the transformation from Bucky Fuller to Bobby Fuller of “I Fought the Law” fame. Talking to the other family’s 16-year-old son, Sebastian, with his stilted Fullerisms, barely resembles a teenager. “You’re not some kind of annoying . . . genius, are you?” the other boy, Jared Whitcomb, asks him. “Autistic?” (“I don’t think so,” Sebastian answers.) But the boys become friends and, within pages, Sebastian is choking on cigarettes, drinking cola, listening to the Misfits and telling lies.
Sebastian’s wide-eyed innocence — “I had only drunk soda twice before” — leads to awkward moments of Mork-like discovery, which rely on a sliding scale of naïveté. Would Sebastian’s first exposure to punk yield anything like the considered response he gives it here? He calls it “a new species of sound” but is able to parse the instruments astutely. By contrast, when I first heard “New Rose,” by the Damned, at age 11, I found it inexplicable and nearly unlistenable. And I’d been into David Bowie for weeks.
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Credit Illustration by Ted McGrath
The “tenuous” structure of the Whitcombs’ modest suburban house could not be more different from the “tensegrity” of the Prendergasts’ dome. Likewise, Sebastian describes a photograph of his dead father with a nice bit of spare characterization: “He was in a house with right-angled walls.” Sebastian has a tendency to spell things out. When two-thirds of the way in he discovers that “pigs” are in fact “officers of the law,” we may hear the wistful sigh of an author regretting the demands he has made of himself.
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With the Whitcombs, Sebastian — part Candide, part Christopher Boone from “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” — has landed deep inside the world of Rick Moody’s “Ice Storm”: an absent father, a nervous mother barely keeping her clan together, a snide, sexually aware daughter who may be a prostitute, and a chain-smoking, punk-rocker son who is unsurprisingly touchy about the scar caused by his recent heart transplant and whose body is forever trying to reject the replacement heart. Punk has always been the “sound of the suburbs” (as the Members sang in 1979), and to Sebastian, Jared and his sister are definitely teenagers from Mars (in the words of the Misfits), as alien to him as he is to them. Even their food looks as if it is “from another planet.”
Ironically, or not, it is the bile of punk, its supposed negativity, that helps Sebastian acclimatize. He and Jared form a band, excellently named the Rash. Many fine novelists have discovered that it takes more than enthusiasm to describe music, its creation and its performance. The problem is often too much virtuosity rather than too little. Bognanni’s version is appropriately stripped down.
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Punk supposedly offers liberation, but Jared, in a nuanced echo of Nana, does not see the Rash as a democratic collective: “I get to have the ideas. Don’t argue.” His ideals are pure 1976: “Punk songs,” he explains, “are not about hurt, O.K.? That’s country. Punk is about anger . . . and living how you want to and catching an awesome buzz from some beers.” Sebastian learns to play A minor (the same trick he’s trying to pull off in his prematurely mature real life) and discovers that Jared is a born front man, writing believable gems like “Stupid School” and the promising “I Wanna Fondle Your Chests.” All rehearsals lead to a climactic talent show at the local church.
“The House of Tomorrow,” which doubles usefully as a “Buckminster Fuller for Dummies,” is a coming-of-age story that gets nearly as far as sex but not quite. Both Whitcomb kids are likened to vampires, but there is no notable biting. This is not the only level on which the book, which often resembles a sympathetic young adult novel, fails to deliver on its promises. Bognanni offers many good observations about the boys’ world, but they generally sound more like Bognanni’s observations than his hero’s. Noticing the food-themed beauty products on the sister’s dresser, for instance, the sheltered Sebastian wonders: “Was the idea to slather yourself in sweet sauces and fruity relishes? To prepare yourself for consumption?”
As for the dome — the title’s “house of tomorrow” — it is of course yesterday’s version of the future, as quaint now as the Jetsons. Punk, on the other hand, proclaimed “No Future,” which was always liable to seem dated. But the ideals of both remain, and the book does not cast a verdict on the positivism of Fuller versus the nihilism of punk. Indeed, as Sebastian learns, there are more convergences between the two than he could have expected. Fuller taught people to be free, and so did Joe Strummer: “Punk rock is meant to be our freedom. We’re meant to be able to do what we want to do.” Fuller’s philosophy is amply represented here, but it’s never a fair fight, since Nana isn’t as lovable as the book or Sebastian believes. When Sebastian feels a “clairvoyant” connection with her, imagining he can read her thoughts from afar, the reader can only assume he’s suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Ultimately, Fuller’s ideals have more in common with Sebastian’s punk soul than Nana’s totalitarian one.
In the last paragraph, Sebastian claims to be “only on the first chapter” of his life story. “I was barely out of the prologue.” And this is how the book feels: like a prologue to Sebastian’s future — and to the author’s.
THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW
By Peter Bognanni
354 pp. Amy Einhorn Books/G. P. Putnam’s Sons. $24.95
Wesley Stace’s third novel, “Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer,” will be published this year. He is also known as the musician John Wesley Harding.
A version of this review appears in print on April 4, 2010, on Page BR17 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Under the Dome. Today's Paper|Subscribe
BOOKS
The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
ZACHARY HOULE 04 Mar 2010
WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU COMBINE THE FUTURISTIC TEACHINGS OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER WITH THE PROTO-PUNK/METAL MUSIC OF THE MISFITS?
THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
Length: 356 pages
Author: Peter Bognanni
Price: $24.95
Format: Hardcover
PUBLICATION DATE: 2010-03
AMAZON
What do you get when you combine the futuristic teachings of R. Buckminster Fuller with the proto-punk/metal music of the Misfits? Author Peter Bognanni seemingly has the answer, and offers it up in his debut novel for young adults, The House of Tomorrow.
The book is a coming-of-age tale about 16-year-old orphan Sebastian Prendergast, who lives with his grandmother in a geodesic dome on the fringes of a small town in Iowa. Sebastian’s existence is a very isolated one as he is homeschooled in Fuller’s philosophies by his Nana. He has never made contact with other people except when tourists come to visit the dome, and whenever he makes the infrequent trip into town on his bicycle to pick up supplies. He has almost never consumed a soft drink, and grilled cheese sandwiches are a mystery to him.
Things change, however, when the town-dwelling Whitcomb family comes to visit Sebastian’s home when his grandmother suddenly collapses from a stroke. Sebastian winds up befriending Jared Whitcomb -- a leather-jacket wearing teenager with a penchant for the Misfits, and a chronic cigarette smoker despite the fact that he has received a heart transplant only two years before. Before long, Sebastian finds himself leading a double life: torn between living up to the leadership plans Nana has set him up for as he matures to an adult, and the ragtag punk band called the Rash that he and Jared form with the intensions of electrifying a church-based talent show.
If the geodesic dome is the House of Tomorrow of the book’s title, then the Whitcomb family home is certainly the House of Yesterday. Jared only listens to classic punk music predating about 1985 or so, and his mother Janet is a devout conservative Methodist grappling with a marriage separation. His older sister Meredith is the epitome of the Catholic school girl: inviting strange boys into her room, but never progressing with them beyond some heavy petting sessions. This dichotomy between the two homes forms the pillars of the novel that Sebastian must navigate as he suddenly finds himself thrust from the sacred world of the dome into the somewhat secular and pop culture-riddled world of the Whitcomb household.
This ping-pong act would be a tremendous undertaking for any novice writer, but Bognanni has earned his chops based on his résumé. He is a 2008 Pushcart Prize nominee, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his short story “The Body Eternal” was chosen by Stephen King as one of the “100 Most Distinguished Stories of 2006” in The Best American Short Stories (2007). His talents clearly extend to longer form storytelling, as The House of Tomorrow is a novel both richly rewarding and compellingly propulsive.
The main reward of the novel comes in the friendship between the two main characters. Sebastian is both suitably erudite beyond his years -- he has an advanced vocabulary full of $50 words -- as well as startlingly naïve; he knows very little about interacting with his peers, and knows next to nothing about girls. Jared, on the other hand, is both a gruff and brusque teenager, but one with a sensitive heart who is constantly afraid that he is about to lose his new best friend. That the two could get along and create a two-man punk band of guitar and bass is a testament to the charm of this book.
The House of Tomorrow shares some similarities to D.C. Pierson’s recently published The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To, in that both books were written by young authors, both are aimed at young adults, and both feature two best friends trying to make sense of a world where they are treated as outsiders. But where The Boy Who lapses into the world of science fiction and is unintentionally offensive, The House of Tomorrow is a more mature and touching book, and is certainly the better of the two. It makes some acute observations about the nature of punk music (“Punk bassists don’t really need to learn chords. Those are for bands that try too hard,” says Jared at one point), and is, on the whole, a more joyous and life-affirming novel.
Granted, there are minor problems with The House of Tomorrow. For one, it’s hard to buy the fact that Jared and Sebastian only explore punk music from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, bypassing emo and other divergent strains of punk that have emerged in recent years. It might have been better if Bognanni had simply set his story back 30 years ago, rather than the present day for that reason. The burgeoning love Sebastian feels for Meredith often feels contrived, considering that she takes on a big sister role for much of the latter half of the novel, making this aspect creepily incestuous. Plus, the novel dips into cloying sentimentality in its closing 50 pages, and the big climax is a little hokey.
Still, the novel is a pleasant and engaging read, and, while it won’t set cities aflame with rock ‘n' roll, it’s the kind of book that adults can enjoy as much as the older teenaged audience it shoots for. (There is some foul language in the book, mostly on Jared’s part, and there’s a sensual scene in which one of the main characters gets his hands on the breast of a half-naked lady.) The House of Tomorrow is a rollicking book that explores the passion and joy thrashing on a bunch of musical instruments brings, even poorly, and does so with a lot of heart, intelligence and literary precision.
Rating:
The House of Tomorrow
by Peter Bognanni
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Sebastian Prendergast lives in a geodesic dome with his eccentric grandmother. But when his grandmother has a stroke, Sebastian has to make it on his own. Which is how he meets Jared --- a chain-smoking, teenage heart transplant recipient --- who teaches him the ways of rebellion. Wholly original, THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW is the story of a young man's self-discovery, a dying woman's last wish, and a band of misfits desperate to be heard.
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The House of Tomorrow
by Peter Bognanni
Publication Date: March 1, 2011
Genres: Dystopian
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Berkley Trade
ISBN-10: 0425238881
ISBN-13: 9780425238882
REVIEWS
Peter Bognanni: The House Of Tomorrow
Ellen Wernecke
3/25/10 12:00amFiled to: BOOKS
BOOK REVIEW
Lead
B-
The House Of Tomorrow
AUTHOR
Peter Bognanni
PUBLISHER
Amy Einhorn
There are already too many Holden Caulfields in the field of teenage narration. Books that ably capture the tone J.D. Salinger pioneered are homages; every substandard imitator is an insult. The sheltered teen who is the subject of Peter Bognanni’s debut, The House Of Tomorrow, couldn’t spot a phony at 40 paces, but his quirks stay novel because they don’t have to bear the plot’s weight.
Since his parents were killed in a plane crash, Sebastian has lived with his grandmother in Iowa’s only geodesic dome, promoted on billboards along the highway as a tourist attraction whose admission fees help make ends meet. A former disciple (and possibly lover) of Buckminster Fuller, Sebastian’s grandmother home-schooled him for years with the vague premise of grooming him for a special role in her plan to show the world the error of its ways, but their solitary idyll is breached the day she has a stroke while giving a tour to a local mother and son. While his grandmother recuperates, Sebastian becomes enmeshed with the Whitcomb family as the newly separated Janice recruits him to draw out her son Jared, a teenage heart-transplant recipient pushing back against his inevitable return to high school.
Given Sebastian’s background and intelligence, it would be easy to make him a kind of tuneless know-it-all—a role his new friend Jared often performs, to his consternation—or else give him a Mark Haddon-esque reason for his behavior once he leaves the dome. Instead, his particular blend of erudition and innocence of the ways of the world carries his story out of the range of cliché for most of The House Of Tomorrow. As he attempts to integrate himself into a “normal” American household, his spikily incorrect vocabulary and alarming willingness to ask questions makes his observations fresh. Every encounter with an embittered record-store clerk or diner waitress is an object to be studied under a microscope.
Only at the end does Bognanni drop the strong case that this oddball is unsuited to join in with town life after so many years of being groomed as a savant; he’s endeared to his adoptive family in a scene that could have been lifted wholesale from any ’80s teen comedy. This act of resolution drags down The House Of Tomorrow, upsetting the balance between Sebastian’s new knowledge and old habits, but at least he doesn’t see it coming to sneer at it.