Duplicity

Chapter 2

Praise for Duplicity

“Duplicity is a hall-of-mirrors metafictional masterpiece in which everything has its equal opposite and nothing is quite what it seems. Peter Selgin has found the perfect narrator for his fratricidal-suicidal romp: the dark, mordant, too envious, too inventive, Stewart Detweiler, who lurks in the black, jealous heart of every writer whose cloistered brilliance remains unseen and rebuffed by the world. Here is Stewart’s brief moment in the sun, his chops and voice unfettered at last, and to the end — and we are dazzled.”

— Peter Nichols, bestselling author of The Rocks and A Voyage for Madmen

“Duplicity is an entertaining ouroboros of a book — a cleverly collated confession that takes its rightful place in a tradition of doppelgänger-haunted novels that reflect on the instability of identity and the inadequacy of language. While poking gentle fun at plot, clichés, and other elements of conventional mainstream fiction, Selgin harnesses those same workhorses to his suspenseful tale. Smart, funny, satirical, and yet heartfelt, Duplicity is a book worth reading twice: once as a metafictional page-turner about twins, accidental criminality, and mid-life malaise, again as an instructive treatise on writing itself.”

— Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of Annie and the Wolves and Behave

“How to write a blurb for such a stunning novel? Duplicity is dauntingly brilliant. Twins may be at the novel’s center — equal and opposite twins colliding — but Duplicity is utterly, deliciously, singular. It should be taught in both literature and creative writing classes in perpetuity!”

— Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis

“Duplicity explores every rule of the novel, written and unwritten, through sins of omission and commission. It makes a cat’s toy of clichés and inflates conceits expressly to puncture them. It breaks the spell of its creation, only to take up the strands and weave them into a more complex enchantment. This is no accident. Peter Selgin is a master who engages the possibilities of the novel from the inside out. Duplicity is for anyone who has seen through a novel, and for anyone who has found a world in one.”

—Vincent Stanley, author of The Responsible Company

“Stewart Detweiler dreams of writing a book that ‘no matter how many times you open it, or what page you open it to, it feels like you’ve never read it before. In Duplicity he lives the dream. Selgin / Detweiler promises you, Dear Reader, ‘the single most unreliable narrative ever composed,’ and assures you that he is not to be trusted. He is a man of his word. Book A does indeed falsify Book B. And Book B verifies Book A. Their name is Duplicity, for they are one. Each is absorbed by its equal opposite. And so will you be.”

— H. L. Hix, author of Demonstrategy

“Darkly exuberant and completely riveting, Duplicity breaks through the metaphorical fourth wall, wrestling with the boundaries of identity, the precariousness of reinvention, and the nature of fiction itself. Peter Selgin’s storytelling mastery is on full display in this provocative meditation on the writing life.”

— Amy Gottlieb, author of The Beautiful Possible

“As Stewart Detweiler drives us south through the rain in a beaten up convertible, Peter Selgin drive us deep into the craft of writing in this delightfully disorienting, tail-swallowing novel—an irresistible riddle of craft wrapped in a mystery of memoir, inside a novel of enigma. Is Duplicity a murder mystery? A book on the craft of writing? Both? Neither? Yes, precisely.”

— Charlotte Thomas, author of The Female Drama

“Wicked, intimate, and hilarious, Duplicity is a compendium of good advice about writing and plain bad intentions. Its narrator, Stewart Detweiler, who appears to be a descendent of Poe’s William Wilson and a long-lost cousin of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, is tricky, tricky tricky. ‘Dear Reader’ (as Stewart likes to say), prepare yourself for a wild ride.”

— Jim Krusoe, author of The Sleep Garden

Praise for The Kuhreihen Melody

“Selgin’s recall of his own past is as eidetic as Proust’s.”

— Melissa Pritchard, author of Palmerino and A Solemn Pleasure

Praise for The Inventors

“[A] book destined to become a modern classic ... A remarkable model of the art of the memoir, this book will satisfy all readers. Highly recommended.”

— Derek Sanderson, Library Journal

Praise for Confessions of a Left-Handed Man

“Peter Selgin is a born writer, capable of taking any subject and exploring it from a new angle, with wit, grace, and erudition.”

— Oliver Sacks

Praise for Drowning Lessons

“[Selgin’s] ability to sling together desire and suffering in complex and moving ways is singular and memorable.”

— Booklist

Praise for Your First Page

“I heartily recommend Your First Page to any aspiring young writer.”

— Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction

Praise for By Cunning & Craft

“Peter Selgin has written an excellent guide — witty, lucid, well-written — for beginning writers of fiction. In fact, any writer can learn from it.”

— Vivian Gornick, author of The Situation and the Story