Fool, Frederick Dillen
Fool, Frederick Dillen
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Fool

Author: Frederick Dillen

Narrator: David Colacci

Unabridged: 10 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/07/2012

Synopsis

“For Christ sake don’t become a fluffmeister” are the last words Barnaby Griswold’s father utters to him. But despite trying to turn out otherwise, Barnaby is indisputably a fool. A well-educated, well-connected investments player on the one hand, but an entitled money-driven fool on the other.Barnaby Griswold’s life changes almost overnight when he’s found to have acted perhaps slimily (but not illegally) by selling short a stock. His wife deserts him, his daughters disown him, and he loses his final and favorite home. All he has left is a similarly deserted mother-in-law, in Oklahoma of all places, and of course the enemies who went belly up on his final deal.At forty-six, disgraced and broke and lonely, Barnaby must repair his life and maybe, just maybe, he’ll learn that doing the foolish thing may lead to his redemption.Out of print for more than a decade, Frederick G. Dillen’s comic and now timely novel about an unlikely hero is being reissued as part of librarian and NPR commentator Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries series.

About Frederick Dillen

Frederick G. Dillen was born in Greenwich Village to a family on fire, raised in a New Hampshire boarding school, and graduated from Stanford. To pay for his writing, he worked odd jobs from Lahaina to Taos and New York to L.A., managing a hotel and running a fake ranch, carrying plates and shilling for business. His short fiction has appeared in literary quarterlies and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. His Hero was named Best First Novel of 1994 by the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Dillen and his wife Leslie are parents of two grown daughters and three dogs and have settled, for good they hope, in New Mexico.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin on May 16, 2013

A very strange story of an antihero and his recovery. It's like Confederacy of Dunces, but the reader never really ends up siding with the main character, so as a sorry of redemption, it's pretty strange. There's lots of beautiful imagery and word play, but the middle of the novel relies too much on......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on May 12, 2023

Barnaby Griswold is a character you at first dislike, and continue to view as a blundering fool. Selfish from the beginning, he eventually goes through a Scrooge-like reformation learning about the meaning of happiness and contentedness. Was pretty funny at parts and the internal monologue of Barnab......more

Goodreads review by Alejandro on July 18, 2021

There are some great descriptions of places and feelings throughout the whole book but as far as the plot goes, I just wasn’t captivated since Barnaby really doesn’t do anything.......more

Goodreads review by Tim on October 15, 2012

Fool is about a fool, or a fluffmeister. He is Barnaby Griswold and he has spent his life fluffing through deals, and doing alright in that it seems. Except this book sees him on worse times as he has got in trouble for his deals (short selling), is divorced, has no money, and is suspended from trad......more

Quotes

“As compelling as a romping game of tennis.” —Booklist“Dillen’s prose is astonishing.” —Library Journal“Like Frederick G. Dillen’s first novel, Hero, Fool is about masculinity—about the likelihood of failing to achieve it and the possibility of redeeming it…The moving but unsentimental narrative…and Dillen’s happily offbeat prose, add a moving and surprising twist to Barnaby’s redemption. —The New York Times Book Review

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