Explosions: Michael Bay and the Pyrotechnics of the Imagination [Paperback]

Mathieu Poulin brings us an action comedy of a novel, starring big-budget, explosion-happy movie director Michael Bay. What if Bay were, against all odds, a misunderstood genius right up there with the likes of Plato, Sartre, and Nietzsche? What if his films were more than just Baydiocre, high-grossing box-office successes held in low esteem by most movie critics? What ifBad Boyswas a film about decolonization? What ifThe Rockwas about failing to be recognized by one’s peers? IfArmageddonwas about a post-human future? AndPearl Harborwas a reflection on the freedom afforded an artist when striving to transform fact into fiction? Poulin takes his hypothesis and runs with it. Bayhem ensues as our leading man sets out in hot pursuit of the truth, finding more questions than answers between epic car chases and sexy love interests. Who are his real parents and why did they abandon him? Who keeps following him? Did someone intentionally try to poison him, aware of his deathly allergy to sesame? And most importantly: What is meaning?

"An unusual mixture of biography, comedy, action, and analysis,Explosionstakes a tongue-in-cheek approach to one of the most popular but artistically dismissed film directors working today. (...) an amusing work of film criticism." —Daniel Schindel, Foreword Reviews

"The overlap here between formal aesthetics and metaphysics in the Aristotelian sense is useful to understanding howExplosionsworks, but it doesn’t quite capture the novel’s pulse. This is a very, very, funny book." —Scott Beauchamp, An Aggregate of Moments 

"Explosionsis a thrilling read and Jensen’s sharp and lyrical translation lives up to the promise of Poulin’s excellent confidence trick of a narrative. The balance between a plot that frequently and deliberately jumps the shark and characters thal£$