The Quarrymen
A quarry worker in the Midwest recently returned from the city after failing to find success as a musician, attacks a fellow worker he believes has slept with his girlfriend, leaving him fighting for life at the edge of the quarry. Decades later, his son finds his diary.
THE QUARRYMEN is an OMNIPHONIC work of MIDWESTERN MAXIMALISM, a non-linear narrative of fathers and sons, a blue-collar small town, modern ambition, secret diaries, fishing, and an unsolved disappearance. With long sections of philosophical, cultural and artistic meditations interspersed between diary excerpts, traditional narrative, first person musings and telepathic lover's conversations, this is a sprawling novel worthy of the chaos and grandeur of contemporary America.
Fans of Caleb's previous work will appreciate the increased scope and seriousness of THE QUARRYMEN, which still preserves his signature Midwestern settings and galloping, knock-down style.
Recalling Faulkner, Bellow, Vargas Llosa among other masters of modernism, THE QUARRYMEN is your big summer read.
"Probably the novel I'm most excited about for 2026, beyond my own." -Ross Barkan, author of Glass Century and Colossus
on Caleb Caudell's Hardly Working
"As if Graham Greene worked at Denny's." -Gil Gildner
"...we have no doubt his next work will push the horizon even more, given that he already has all the stylistic resources that he needs to take things further. We consider him an obviously superior prose stylist to the vast talentless mass of Teju Cole, Ottessa Moshfegh, Brandon Taylor, Tao Lin, Ben Lerner and the like (all of whom, alarmingly, we have heard described as worthwhile American writers of recent years...and none of whom merit it)...pay attention to what Caudell is going to do next... " -Justin Isis, Neo-Passeism
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