Blue Velvet meets Oedipus Rex—Philip, a disillusioned and possibly psychopathic wunderkind, leads a Bonnie & Clyde existence with his increasingly despondent Mom before reluctantly settling down on the frayed fringes of suburbia. Then, like normalizing redemption, his affluent Dad arrives—only it’s not the sort of redemption Philip is prepared for. First published in 1989, this long-neglected cult classic features revisions and a new afterword by the author.
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“A novel as mysterious, beautiful, sad and frightening as contemporary American childhood itself—and, fortunately, a good deal funnier. Bradfield's California is haunted by vast primordial Lovecraftian forces—death, sex, credit cards, Mom—which threaten always to emerge from their ancient hiding places and engulf the world and the narrator, eight-year old Phillip and his preteen Karamazov friends. Those who think they know all about California and Oedipal drives will here discover the true extent of their ignorance. The thing is indescribable—violent, hallucinatory, comic and incredibly well written. Scott Bradfield has not simply staked out new literary terrain here, he has mapped and colonized an entire new planet.” —Michael Chabon
“Bradfield is one of my favorite living writers.” —Jonathan Lethem
“A wizardly writer of stories. His prose is so lucid and exact, his narrative sense so confident, that you hardly know where he’s taking you until you’re there.” —Tobias Wolff
“Scott Bradfield has been writing some of the wisest and funniest fiction for a while now.” —Sam Lipsyte
“Painfully beautiful writing.” —Mary Gaitskill
“As disorienting as it is seductive ... casts an utterly irresistible spell. This is the voice, recombinant and renewed, of Thomas Pynchon exploring the reaches of inner and outer space, Don DeLillo exposing the vile politics of technology, John Leonard spitting up the whole vile twentieth century ... a daringly original literary sensibility.” —Newsday
"If you spot it, grab it. If you like my stuff, you'll like [The History of Luminous Motion] ... extremely well done; most unusual ... quite a powerful piece of work." —J.G. Ballard
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Reviews/interviews, etc.:
The Believer
Grid Politics
LA Times
NY Times
Excerpt in Sleepingfish
