My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunket - ISBN: 9780241707999
Paperback
Historian’s madcap quest for Harding’s love letters in 80s Hollywood.

My Search for Warren Harding

$18.64

  • Paperback

    304 pages

  • Release Date

    6 May 2025

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Summary

A breakneck comic tour-de-force set in 1980s Hollywood, about one man’s quest to get his hands on a box of bawdy love letters.

Elliot Weiner is a historian with a passion for Morris dancing and Warren Harding, ‘the shallowest President in history’. After Weiner receives a research grant to write a book on Harding’s tumultuous life, he gets wind of a trunkful of the twenty-ninth president’s billets-doux, rumoured to be guarded by his ancient mistress on her declining Hollywood Hills es…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780241707999
ISBN-10:0241707994
Author:Robert Plunket, Danzy Senna
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin Classics
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:304
Release Date:6 May 2025
Weight:226g
Dimensions:198mm x 129mm x 17mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

One of the most original comic novels of the past half century * The New Yorker *
There’s a subversive thrill to reading this novel… Elliot Weiner is a snob. He’s vain, shallow and shameless. He’s lazy and untrustworthy. He’s a bitch too, quick to make an acid observation. And these are just some of the reasons why he’s a brilliant narrator. Who wouldn’t want to spend 300 pages in his company? * The Times *
My Search for Warren Harding is essentially a picaresque novel and, as in all such works, we meet with grotesques. I am reminded of Lolita. A nasty person with a fancy prose style teaches us about America… Weiner, in the grand tradition of the comic unreliable narrator, reveals himself to be a half-insane monster… That’s the thing about a certain kind of bitchiness: it’s rarely dull… Exquisite * The Spectator *
A satirical evisceration of the Hollywood celebrity scene… a madcap plot, and a host of vivid supporting characters * The Herald *
Most of all what My Search for Warren Harding conveys is a devil-may-care, not-giving-a-damn energy that makes no concessions to taste, simply offers its manic vision to the reader and says “take it or leave it”. I’ll take it * The Critic *

About The Author

Robert Plunket

Robert Plunket was born in Greenville, Texas, in 1945, but raised in Havana and Mexico City. After college he moved to New York and became Mr Chatterbox, the gossip columnist for Sarasota Magazine. He has published two novels, My Search for Warren Harding (1983) and Love Junkie (1992). He is currently retired and lives in a trailer park in Englewood, Florida, where he enjoys collecting old quilts and raising succulents from scratch.

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