Processed Cheese

A Novel

By: Stephen Wright

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

From an "astonishing" writer (Toni Morrison), the savagely funny story of a couple who unexpectedly come into some money in a wealth-obsessed America deranged by Mammon. A bag of money drops out of the sky, literally, into the path of a cash-starved citizen named Graveyard. He carries it home to his wife, Ambience, and they embark on the adventure of their lives, finally able to have everything they've always thought they deserved: cars, guns, games, jewels, clothes—and of course sex, travel, and time with friends and family. There is no limit except their imagination and the hours in the day, and even those seem to be subject to their control. Of course, the owner of the bag is searching for it, and will do whatever is necessary to get it back. And, of course, these new riches change everything—and nothing at all. Darkly hilarious, Processed Cheese is both satire and serious as death. It's a road novel, a family story, and a last-girl-standing thriller of once-in-a-generation vitality and inventiveness. With the clarity of a Swift or a Melville, Wright has created a funhouse-mirror drama that puts all the chips on the table and every bullet in the clip, down to the last breathtaking moment.

Critic reviews

PRAISE FOR PROCESSED CHEESE:

"Absolutely brilliant, a frenetic, hilarious rush of pure feeling...the pacing is a thrill... [Wright's] a masterly writer, with a wild sense of humor.. sentences, so wonderful, so bizarre, $100 bills pulled endlessly from a canvas bag."—Kevin Wilson, New York Times

"An outrageous farce about money, sex and guns, which is to say, about America circa now...Nothing else I've read is as faithful to the obscenity of these latter days, the consummation of vacuous pop culture and complete social bankruptcy. For readers who can stomach it, PROCESSED CHEESE is jolting enough to reveal what degradation we've become inured to."—Ron Charles, Washington Post

"In a fairer- or at least weirder- literary world, Stephen Wright would be as famous as Thomas Pynchon or Don DeLillo...PROCESSED CHEESE is a difficult novel to love, but an easy one to admire, and with it, Wright cements his reputation as one of the country's greatest living writers of fiction. An excoriating critique of what America has become, PROCESSED CHEESE is an exhausting, maddening and unforgettable book about how far we're willing to go to satisfy our greed."—Michael Schaub, NPR

"A wry satire of a money-obsessed society."—USA Today, 5 Books Not to Miss

"Processed Cheese does for consumerism what Catch-22 did for war."—Stephen King, bestselling author of IT and The Shining

"Wildly imaginative, funny, dark, endlessly inventive, Stephen Wright is one of our most original and essential American novelists."—Francine Prose, author of A Changed Man and Blue Angel

"For many of us, Stephen Wright counts among the Famous Monsters of the postmodern novel. His too-infrequent, wildly divergent books each land as an event- guaranteed only to be unpredictable and brilliant, loaded with wit and heartfelt indignation."—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Feral Detective

"Why is Stephen Wright so funny and what can I do to be as funny as him? As perceptive? As inventive? As smart? Not much, I guess. So I'll just sit here reading Processed Cheese over and over while gnashing my teeth."—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Super Sad True Love Story

"In novel after unsparing novel-each one gorgeous, too, and full of awe- Stephen Wright has emerged as a kind of modern-day Socrates hectoring a complacent citizenry to have a good hard look at its collective delusions. With Processed Cheese, he's written a novel so outrageous and diagnostic of our current ills, it will prove much stronger than hemlock. If you hope to keep up your venality, America, your cruelties, and your death wish, better string this court jester up by his toes."—Joshua Ferris, author of The Dinner Party

Charming at first

Comical naming is charming as the start is set up. Then characters keep showing up and you struggle to keep track and the story gets lost. I rarely get this far into a book, realize that the further I get, the more confused I was. Why finish?

Meh

The work of a clever porn-nurtured high School sophomore. I am under whelmed. thanks

Lines were crossed...he went too far!

I really wanted to like this. The Publisher's Summary is what drew me in, but by the time I got to chapter 7, I was ready to throw my phone across room. I like a good Dr. Seuss story, but I draw the line at Thomas Pynchon!

T