The excoriating stories in Mark Doten’s brilliant first collection dissect the pathological narratives that shape our culture and country. Narrated by a crosscutting array of White people, Doten's stories spotlight the self-serving logic through which their characters struggle to make sense of, and take control of, the narrative of our time. They run the political spectrum from “well-intentioned” liberals and newly woke CEOs to Trump appointees, QAnon adherents, and believers in replacement theory. There is an anti-vax nursing home employee, an anti-woke billionaire, a nonbinary sneaker podcaster turned January 6 insurrectionist, a nonprofit LA housing president dubbed “WORST KAREN EVER,” an elderly Republican in denial of his COVID-19 diagnosis, teenage YouTubers responding to a shooting at their suburban Minnesota school, a demonically possessed cookie manufacturer drafting a BLM statement with his new Black employee, and a gay White supremacist figure who may be a joke on 4chan, but will have his revenge. While their identities and allegiances differ, all of them are united by a ferocious belief in themselves, certain that everything they’ve done can be justified, if you’ll just hear them out. In Whites, Doten has written a relentless book that confirms their standing as one of the great satirists of their generation.
Author
Mark Doten was born in Minnesota in 1978. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, The Believer, and New York magazine. He wrote the libretto for The Source, a work of musical theater about Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks, with music by Ted Hearne, which had its world premiere at BAM's Next Wave Festival in October 2014, and was named one of the best classical vocal pieces of the year by The New York Times. He attended Macalester College and Columbia University and is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia and the MacDowell Colony. The literary fiction editor at Soho Press, he lives in Brooklyn. His first novel, The Infernal, was published by Graywolf Press in February 2015.
