The P.R. Guy: A Novel

ISBN: 1481997211

Author: Riche, Robert

Condition: New

Product Description"The P.R. Guy" is a comic novel in which a lay-about young narrator running out of unemployment insurance checks reluctantly takes a job as a Junior Account Executive in a P.R. firm that has as its client Alexander's Department store. When the narrator is enticed by a sexy banana heiress into joining a group of left-wing anarchists who regularly picket in front of Alexander's he finds himself in a bit of a quandary. Adding to his perplexity, the banana heiress turns out to be a lesbian and a hooker. Other members of the lefty group include a poet who speaks only in olde English, a stay-at-home husband whose wife supports his horse betting habit, a postal worker (who goes berserk and shoots up the Post Office), a con man who works in the same Alexander's stealing from the cash register, and the leader of the group, a commie apparatchik who tries to leap off the Brooklyn Bridge after Kruschev denounces Stalin. At Alexander's the narrator must deal with a stern female executive who demands sexual favors before approving his P.R. copy. Also on the scene is a gorgeous German aristocrat lady who spent the war years as a guest of Franco, and the narrators boss who spends his days in the office splattering paint over abstract expressionist paintings. Underneath the craziness there is a sober and serious intent.ReviewThe P.R. Guy is a very funny book that also gets deep into the heart of its main character. There are particularly poignant  scenes toward the book's end, in which the narrator looks back on some of his old lefty friends and realizes the distance that's grown between them. It's the best kind of coming-of-age story, one that carries its emotional heart along on a freight train of laughter.-- Peter Dabbene, Hamilton, N.J. PostAbout the AuthorRobert Riche has been a newspaper reporter, a United Press Staff Correspondent in New York, a free-lance correspondent out of Paris. He has been a union organizer. As a free-lance writer he has written travel and food feature articles for many magazines and newspapers. He is the author of three previous novels, several books of poetry and numerous plays. His plays have been produced in many areas of the United States and at the Bristol Old Vic, England. He is a recipient of a NEA grant, Connecticut Foundation for the Arts grant, Advanced Drama Research grant, winner of the Stanley Drama Award. He is a Norman Mailer Writers Colony scholar, Breadloaf Writers Conference scholar. Mr. Riche and his wife live in Connecticut and spend part of each summer in Provincetown, Mass.