Joseph Bathanti’s novella, Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days, follows Fritz Sweeney through a pivotal summer in 1973, set against the backdrop of working-class Pittsburgh. Fritz grapples with an existential crisis triggered by his job at Acme Toy Warehouse, which he finds absurd and meaningless. This sense of absurdity is deepened by his fascination with Albert Camus’s philosophy, in “The Myth of Sisyphus” and “The Stranger,” introduced to him during his first college literature class by an enigmatic Vietnam veteran professor. Further complicating Fritz’s life is his relationship with Claire Raffo, his mysterious girlfriend with whom he is precariously and hopelessly entangled. Throughout Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days, Fritz confronts numerous moral crossroads, challenging his beliefs, understanding of existence and his place in an ultimately unforgiving world.
Praise for Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days
In his beautifully written novella, Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days, Joseph Bathanti delivers a moving meditation on memory and the truth an individual finds in life. With Camus looming large in the young narrator, Fritz's mind, we see parallels to The Stranger as well as “The Myth of Sisyphus” as we are introduced to the various characters and situations of his life. While working in a toy warehouse, he tells us he spends his time “reassembling tiny broken worlds,” and later suggests that “memory is the rock we bully up the hill.” There are lines and descriptions to savor on every page and the whole of this stellar work will leave the reader immensely satisfied and also thinking of their own truths and the broken worlds they have witnessed along the way.
- Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life
It is a rare and special artist who compels readers to yearn for the well-being of their characters as deeply and as tenderly as Joseph Bathanti makes us yearn for his. These familiar friends and relatives and lovers—burdened with desire heavier than the boulder that owns Sisyphus—possess a spiritual stamina that is their blessing and their curse. They earn our empathy while they push against dead-end jobs, the weight of family, and otherworldly spells of love. Life-changing questions illuminate the periphery of every nuanced scene. The sublime inhabits these pages too, a wide-eyed wonder at the danger our protagonist insists on moving toward. Bathanti’s craftsmanship is a work of magic that leaves us embracing the mystery of how such flawed and complicated humans can make us feel more forgiving, more merciful, more alive. Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days is a powerful work of art that forces us to slow down, to hold close every loved one who will, too soon, disappear.
- Matt Cashion, author of Last Words of the Holy Ghost
Too Glorious to Even Long For on Certain Days captures nineteen-year-old Fritz Sweeney on the cusp of adulthood, a time when one decision can chart a life’s course. In this vivid and absorbing novella, Joseph Bathanti grapples with big questions about work, love, family, faith, forgiveness, belonging, and how much we can hope for from life. This is a book about possibilities, what worlds to enter, what paths to go down, and what doors to shut. I loved spending time with Fritz during the summer of 1973 in Pittsburgh, a city that bursts alive through the beauty and specificity of Bathanti’s prose. Bathanti portrays complex and real characters in a full and pulsing world in this novella; Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days is a feat of compression and a masterclass in characterization.
- Karin Lin-Greenberg, author of You Are Here
