Description: In One Million Maniacs, David LeGault attempts to collect one hundred copies of the 10,000 Maniacs: Unplugged CD -- a quest that frames a broader look at why we collect things and how we try to fix our lives with stuff. Each chapter uses a different collectible item and shows how we often take internal comfort with external possession. The monetary value of Beanie Babies becomes a way to talk about the death of a friend. Baseball-card expos become an entry point into his infant daughter's hospitalization. LeGault's debut is a candid and often very funny look at how we all look for value amidst life's trash and chaos.
Brief description: David LeGault's work appears in Passages North, The Sonora Review, The Seneca Review, DIAGRAM, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, and Black Warrior Review, among others. He lived and wrote in Minneapolis, where he destroyed books professionally. He currently lives with this family in Prague.
Review Quotes:
"It takes a maniac like David LeGault to pry open the lids of all the boxes of our culture of accumulation and see what's inside them. The maniac pursues long distance running, amateur competitive eating, parenting, tracking bathroom graffiti, and an obsession with the sets of defunct children's game shows. The maniac begins to question what things are worth--media, particularly, from his perspective as CD buyer for a used bookstore chain in which he leverages his position to accumulate 100 copies of an album by 10,000 Maniacs. By the time you're deep into this wonderfully obsessed book you too will wonder what anything is worth, really, and why we pursue, peruse, and keep it, how our stuff defiles and defies and defines us. One Million Maniacs is the result of a lifelong obsession with the glorious detritus of the culture, and it's a glorious debut." - Ander Monson
"An essay collection that considers the practice of collection itself? Sign me up! In these essays on Pogs, vintage CDs, bathroom graffiti, and weird fandom, David LeGault bravely tours readers through the inner-workings of a mind unable to stop cataloguing, accumulating, and wanting. With refreshing candor, considerable skill, and no small amount of humor, One Million Maniacs offers a fascinating portrait of obsession in the 21st century." - Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses and Let me Clear My Throat