My Search for Warren Harding

‘One of the most original comic novels of the past half century’ The New Yorker 
‘Will leave you so giddy you’ll go and kick sand in somebody’s face’ Houston Post 
 
Perfect for fans of A Confederacy of Dunces, this is Robert Plunket’s comic masterpiece: a breakneck, unhinged romp through 1980’s LA 
 
Eliot Weiner – snob, shameless opportunist, Morris dancing-obsessive – is on a mission. He has got wind of a trunk of bawdy love letters by Warren Harding, ‘the shallowest President in history’, now guarded by his octogenarian mistress on her crumbling Hollywood Hills estate. They could reignite his failing academic career – and there’s no depth to which he won’t stoop, no preposterous scheme he won’t undertake, to get at them. 
 
With an Introduction by Danzy Senna 
 
‘The author pulled me in so deftly, that after a hundred pages, I seemed to have turned over the keys, so to speak, of my nervous system’ Frank Conroy, Washington Post 
 
‘A riotous debut: The Aspern Papers performed by the Brothers Marx’ Time 
 
‘Nothing this funny is being written today’ Jacobin

One of the most original comic novels of the past half century

There’s a subversive thrill to reading this novel... Elliot Weiner is a snob. He’s vain, shallow and shameless. He’s lazy and untrustworthy. He’s a bitch too, quick to make an acid observation. And these are just some of the reasons why he’s a brilliant narrator. Who wouldn’t want to spend 300 pages in his company?

My Search for Warren Harding is essentially a picaresque novel and, as in all such works, we meet with grotesques. I am reminded of Lolita. A nasty person with a fancy prose style teaches us about America... Weiner, in the grand tradition of the comic unreliable narrator, reveals himself to be a half-insane monster... That’s the thing about a certain kind of bitchiness: it’s rarely dull... Exquisite

A satirical evisceration of the Hollywood celebrity scene... a madcap plot, and a host of vivid supporting characters

Most of all what My Search for Warren Harding conveys is a devil-may-care, not-giving-a-damn energy that makes no concessions to taste, simply offers its manic vision to the reader and says “take it or leave it”. I’ll take it

Robert Plunket (Author) Robert Plunket was born in Greenville, Texas, in 1945, but raised in Havana and Mexico City. After college he moved to New York and became Mr Chatterbox, the gossip columnist for Sarasota Magazine. He has published two novels, My Search for Warren Harding (1983) and Love Junkie (1992). He is retired and lives in a trailer park in Englewood, Florida, where he enjoys collecting old quilts and raising succulents from scratch.

Elliot Weiner is a historian with a passion for Morris dancing and Warren Harding, ‘the shallowest President in history'. After Weiner receives a research grant to write a book on Harding’s tumultuous life, he gets wind of a trunkful of the twenty-ninth president’s billets-doux, rumoured to be guarded by his ancient mistress on her declining Hollywood Hills estate. There's no depth to which he won't stoop, no moral boundary he won't traverse and no preposterous scheme he won't machinate to get at them. 
 
First published in 1983, My Search for Warren Harding garnered immediate acclaim and was described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as 'a classic picaresque novel in the tradition of Cervantes'; Robert Plunket’s original fans included Amy Sedaris, Larry David and Madonna. In this deliciously bonkers novel, The Aspern Papers meets A Confederacy of Dunces meets Sunset Boulevard meets pure, glorious, hair-raising farce.

Robert Plunket

Love Junkie is a comedy of manners with a time bomb ticking behind the curtain

Hilarious, very sad, and constantly teetering on the brink of being genuinely offensive. But it isn’t offensive!

One of the tragicomic classics of the AIDS era. In a groovier universe, Plunket would have gone on publishing novels in addition to his journalism… As it is, the strength and singularity of the two books he did publish demand an accounting of their place in the American fiction of the 1980s and ’90s

Mimi Smithers, forty-something housewife and aesthete manquée, has moved with her Union Carbide husband from Tehran to Westchester. Life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Joel, a dazzlingly handsome porn star. Soon she tumbles down the rabbit hole of Manhattan and Fire Island society, helping glamorous Joel with his lucrative mail order business (signed photographs, used underwear, 'verbal abuse audiotapes'), and her real dreams and adventures begin. A Madame Bovary for the heyday of gay New York, Love Junkie, first published in 1992, is reissued here in its full and naked glory.

Robert Plunket

Praise for Love Junkie

Love Junkie is a comedy of manners with a time bomb ticking behind the curtain

Hilarious, very sad, and constantly teetering on the brink of being genuinely offensive. But it isn’t offensive!

One of the tragicomic classics of the AIDS era. In a groovier universe, Plunket would have gone on publishing novels in addition to his journalism… As it is, the strength and singularity of the two books he did publ ...

Love Junkie is a comedy of manners with a time bomb ticking behind the curtain

Hilarious, very sad, and constantly teetering on the brink of being genuinely offensive. But it isn’t offensive!

One of the tragicomic classics of the AIDS era. In a groovier universe, Plunket would have gone on publishing novels in addition to his journalism… As it is, the strength and singularity of the two books he did publ ...

Love Junkie is a comedy of manners with a time bomb ticking behind the curtain

Hilarious, very sad, and constantly teetering on the brink of being genuinely offensive. But it isn’t offensive!

One of the tragicomic classics of the AIDS era. In a groovier universe, Plunket would have gone on publishing novels in addition to his journalism… As it is, the strength and singularity of the two books he did publ ...

Books by Robert Plunket

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