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From the MacArthur and Whiting Award?winning author of John Henry Days and The Intuitionist comes a new, brisk, comic tour de force about identity, history, and the adhesive bandage industry
Doubleday
March 2006
224 pages
ISBN: 038550795X
Hardcover
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Fiction
When the citizens of Winthrop needed a new name for their
town, they did what anyone would do—they hired a consultant. The protagonist of Apex Hides the Hurt is a nomenclature
consultant. If you want just the right name for your new
product, whether it be automobile or antidepressant, sneaker
or spoon, he’s the man to get the job done. Wardrobe lack
pizzazz? Come to the Outfit Outlet. Always the wallflower at
social gatherings? Try Loquacia. And of course, whenever you take a fall, reach for Apex,
because Apex Hides the Hurt. Apex is his crowning
achievement, the multicultural bandage that has
revolutionized the adhesive bandage industry.
“Flesh-colored” be damned—no matter what your skin tone
is—Apex will match it, or your money back. After leaving his job (following a mysterious misfortune),
his expertise is called upon by the town of Winthrop. Once
there, he meets the town council, who will try to sway his
opinion over the coming days. Lucky Aberdeen, the millionaire software pioneer and
hometown-boy-made-good, wants the name changed to something
that will reflect the town’s capitalist aspirations,
attracting new businesses and revitalizing the community.
Who could argue with that? Albie Winthrop, beloved son of the town’s aristocracy,
thinks Winthrop is a perfectly good name, and can’t imagine
what the fuss is about. Regina Goode, the mayor, is a descendent of the black
settlers who founded the town, and has her own secret agenda
for what the name should be. Our expert must decide the outcome, with all its
implications for the town’s future. Which name will he
choose? Or perhaps he will devise his own? And what’s with
his limp, anyway? Apex Hides the Hurt brilliantly and wryly satirizes our
contemporary culture, where memory and history are subsumed
by the tides of marketing.
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