Noah Baumbach’s Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale was one of the big screen’s greatest odes to family and dysfunction. Who could forget Jeff Daniel’s ruthless portrayal of Bernard, a shameless egoist of a father, whose greatest concern is collecting 30 cents in change from his oft-neglected sons.
What’s even more disturbing is that Bernard is loosely based on a real person — Baumbach’s father, Jonathan Baumbach, a man who Akron can now claim ties to.
Unlike Bernard, Jonathan isn’t a hopeless academic chasing coed skirt. In fact, he’s a legendary novelist. And his latest novel, Your: Or, The Invention of Memory will be released by than Akron’s Rager Media at the end of November.
Christopher White, Rager’s editor-in-chief, describes the novel as “experimental.” The book follows a female character known only as “you.” “The real question is about whether she exists or not,” says White. “It skirts the line of illusion and reality.” — Denise Grollmus
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.