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Published Dec 2008
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
On a windy September day, twenty-five-year-old Slater Brown stands in the back of a bicycle taxi hurtling the wrong way down the busiest street in San Francisco. Slater has come to "see the elephant," to stake his claim to fame and become the greatest writer ever. But this city of gleaming water and infinite magic has other plans in this astounding first novel—at once a love story, a feast of literary imagination, and a dazzlingly original tale of passion, ambition, and genius in all their guises...
Slater Brown lays siege to San Francisco like Achilles circling Troy—until he crashes headlong into reality. Out of money and prospects, he applies for a job at a moribund weekly newspaper called the Morning Trumpet—and, as if by fate, is given a very special parting gift from a moonlighting mystic.
Suddenly Slater has an exclusive on every story in the city. With his uncanny knack for finding scoops, he’s bringing the Trumpet back to life, infuriating a corrupt mayor and falling in love with the woman destined to become his muse. But it is the astonishing inventor Milo Magnet—a man obsessed with harnessing the weather—who will force Slater to navigate the most dangerous straits.
For as Milo unleashes his power on San Francisco and the ravishing Callio de Quincy entrances Slater with hers, as storm clouds gather literally overhead, Slater will become at once a pawn, a savior, and the last best hope for a city that needs him—and his knack for the truth—more than ever before.
"At times Fishburne has trouble maintaining so many moving parts ... But what saves the book is its sweetness and innocence ... " - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Delightfully visual, full of whimsy, adventure, and blithely caustic social commentary, Fishburne's sweet and funny debut novel offers comic-book-like entertainment with an iron core." - Booklist.
"Rodes Fishburne is onto something here. If you've ever been young you'll recognize the wide-eyed innocence he serves up, if you’ve ever lived in a city you'll recognize the fun house he mirrors, and the madcap ambition, the roll of the brave and shaky dice, the lightning-chord changes that leave everyone gleaming, and the luminous sucker punch of first love and first loss—all that's our own. The closer you get to Going to See the Elephant the more we all see ourselves." - Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snickett.
"Going to See the Elephant will delight anybody who has ever written a first novel, wanted to write a first novel, and especially those who cherish reading unforgettable first novels. It is both funny and wise." - James Patterson.
"Rodes Fishburne is a marksman hunting down first-novel fame, and he never misses." - Tom Wolfe.
This information about Going to See the Elephant was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rodes Fishburne has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and Forbes ASAP, where he was the editor of the acclaimed "Big Issue," an annual magazine of literary essays from leading writers and thinkers. He is a member of the Grotto, a San Francisco writers' collective.
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