Major Arcana
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Major Arcana
Buy Now for $33.99
-
Narrated by:
-
Nick Mills
-
By:
-
John Pistelli
About this listen
“Perhaps the elusive great American novel for the twenty-first century.”
It begins with a gunshot: a student's public suicide on a university campus. The blast radius of this tragic explosion expands to encompass 50 years of our history and two of the grandest characters in recent American fiction: Simon Magnus, a comic-book writer who transfigured popular culture turned gender activist who transfigures the English language, and Ash del Greco, an online occultist who by the age of 20 has seen to the end of everything and wants desperately to prove the superiority of mind over matter. With a decades-spanning but tightly-knit plot, written in an expansive style, Major Arcana canvasses America’s inner life and moral history from coast to coast and across two generations in a delirious saga about art, magic, love, and death.
Originally serialized on the author’s Substack newsletter, Major Arcana is a novel about the transformative power of popular culture. With a nod to Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and for fans of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Pistelli reimagines the expansive novel for the 21st century.
★ "[A] deliriously creative tour-de-force … For fans of expansive, thought-provoking, and challenging fiction, this is a breathtakingly imaginative and enjoyable novel."—Alexander Moran, Booklist, starred review
©2025 John Pistelli (P)2025 Recorded BooksThe protagonist's full name - Simon Magnus - appears so, so, so, so many times in the text that, with an audio book, it's like an ear worm specifically designed for torture.
This is the first time I've had to take long breaks from a fiction book because the author made choices that are painfully irritating to listen to.
A hardcopy read is likely a much better experience. The eyes can skip over the name of the protagonist, so would likely be less distracting and off-putting.
Unfortunately, this really detracted from an intricate story.
Pistelli has said this isn't satire, but I couldn't see it any other way.
There's no reinvention of the novel, and nothing special about an academic clucking about kids these days. Pistelli doesn't have enough insight to current youth or trans culture to make the many themes of this book more successful.
An ambitious idea that never lands. It's not a great American novel, but most books aren't.
Ambitious, but flawed
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.