How to Sell A Novel [Paperback]

Bobby Clark is just sixteen when he drops out of school to follow his big brother, Jim, into the jewelry business. Bobby idolizes Jim and is in awe of Jim's girlfriend, Lisa, the best saleswoman at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange.

What follows is the story of a young man's education in two of the oldest human passions, love and money. Skilled at the art of persuasion, Bobby is drawn to Lisa, but also to the myriad scams and frauds of the jewelry trade, where the power to appraise also means the power to bait and switch and cheat like hell. Clancy Martin's gripping debut novel takes us behind the counter, where diamonds and watches aren't the only precious commodity.

Clancy Martin worked for many years in the fine jewelry business. He is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri. He has translated works by Friedrich Nietzsche and S?ren Kierkegaard and is currently at work on a translation of Nietzsche'sBeyond Good and Evil.

Dirty, greatly original, and very hard to stop reading. Jonathan Franzen

How to Sellis outrageous, theatrical and slicker than oil. It tells the tale of Bobby Clark, a high-school dropout who joins his older brother at a jewelry emporium in Texas. It's a festival of drugs, diamonds and sex. Quality is nice, but any drugs, any sex and any diamonds will do, because anything can be spun into something better. Prostitution, a saleswoman turned hooker suggests at one point, is a more honest kind of living than the jewelry trade (at least in this book). 'With what I do now,' she tells Bobby, 'I sleep well at night.' . . . WithHow to Sell, Martin has written a gem of a story. Selling it probably won't be hard. The bigger challenge for Martin might be to learn how to stop selling. Louisa Thomas, Newsweek

How to Sellis, with memorably dark comedy, a virtual handbook on fraud. The world the Clark boys build for themselves and teeter precariouslylÃ(