Ronald Reagan, My Father

“An elegant, wise-ass rush of truth, hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes… It almost feels like he’s leading a palace coup.” Spin Magazine on Portable Altamont “Davis’ brilliant media deconstructions are pointed and hilarious at the same time.” Kenneth Goldsmith “The book of your fever dreams.” Slate on I, Tania The elderly take to the streets at night for illegal and cathartic electric scooter racing. (Think Two-Lane Blacktop but starring Abe Vigoda and Estelle Getty.) A copy editor suffers brain damage from West Nile virus and is suddenly filled with cannibalistic violence and award-winning minimalist poetry. (It’s a little like Awakenings, but directed by David Cronenberg.) Mayor McCheese visits a sexually repressed British couple in the early 1970s and touches their lives forever. (Okay, try this: Pasolini’s Teorema but with Mayor McCheese.) A Texas doctor transplants the mind of a meth-addicted convict into the body of a suburban web developer, resulting in America’s first “death-penalty case that turned into a custody case that turned into a right-to-die case.” (It’s like a hole drilled in your head and five HBO original movies poured in all at once.) Startlingly original but anchored by vivid characters, Ronald Reagan, My Father weaves all these ideas, and more, into a bleakly hilarious vision that’s both human and uncanny — as if Raymond Carver was marooned on Mars with ten hours to live.