Writer Ben Fountain was introduced to the world through a 2008 Malcolm Gladwell essay about artistic talent. In it, Gladwell questions the model of the young prodigy, juxtaposing Fountain—who wrote full-time for 18 years before the publication of his short-story collection Brief Encounters With Che Guevara—and wunderkind Jonathan Safran Foer. But Gladwell’s questions about the ebb and flow of creativity won’t be settled by Fountain’s first novel, which is great fun until it gets bogged down in its own meaningfulness.
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