The Great Man Theory

Order: independent bookstore / Amazon / B&N

Named a most-anticipated book of 2022
by Esquire, Lit Hub, Publishers Lunch, Chicago Review of Books, InsideHook

An Amazon Editors’ Pick

“Paul, the protagonist of Teddy Wayne’s new novel, The Great Man Theory, is an aggrieved Everyman who finds contemporary life unsatisfying….I loved him immediately…Wayne turns the smug woundedness of the contemporary liberal into an amusing social comedy that is, at its finest, a worthy successor to those seriocomic novels of Bellow…He captures both the pitiful and the amusing and the painfully poignant nature of this transformation, how it can hollow out a person.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A sharp, funny novel…a kind of update of Kurt Vonnegut…Wayne is an inheritor, too, of Vonnegut’s style—winkingly funny, brisk, broadly satirical…Wayne wants to get well-intentioned bookish types—people who read novels—to look in the mirror. For them, elevated, cogent truth just might work.”—The Los Angeles Times

“Wise and grimly funny, Wayne’s dyspeptic satire of the Trump years paints a vivid portrait of male misery.”—Esquire

“A picture of the world as we know it, from the point of view of a funny, aggravating man, The Great Man Theory is an original and discomfiting portrait of the individual in the collective, as he tries to make his mark.”—Lit Hub

“A wickedly insightful novel about modern America.”—The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Wayne is a bard of male failure, insecurity, and resentment…a gifted writer with a talent for deft sketching…a canny mimic of the dialogue of the liberal chattering classes…The novel’s plotting is tight, meticulous…The reader bounces between the brisk chapters.”—Washington Examiner

“A compelling portrait of a man driven to the brink in a culture that he understands both all too well and not at all…produce[s] both winces and laughter…Part character study, part social satire, The Great Man Theory is fully a document of our troubled times.”—Bookreporter

“A sharp, bitter critique of our culture wars, technological dependency, and general intellectual malaise.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“An exquisite balancing act between the farcical and the devastatingly sad.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Teddy Wayne creates an unforgettable character: an aggrieved curmudgeon who, fed up with current politics and culture, implements a wildly dramatic plan to be heard and set things right.”—Publishers Weekly

“The best summer 2022 novel…incredible hijinks of cringe-worthy humor…a page-turner…The ending is heart-pounding and fascinating…will probably make you think differently about how you feel about, well, everything.”—Fatherly

“An engrossing political novel but not in the usual sense… it asks a crucial question: What is an individual’s responsibility to make the world better?…perfectly tuned…compelling.”—New York Journal of Books

Order Apartment: independent bookstore / Amazon / B&N

A New York Times Editors’ Choice

Named a Most-Anticipated Book by
The New York Times, Vogue, The Boston Globe, Salon,
The Millions, Inside Hook, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Darkly comic and emotionally intelligent… Wayne elevates Apartment from a convincing historical facsimile to a work of art…It looks at it all—masculinity, literary ambition, our decade of free trade and liberalism triumphant—and finds the rot underneath.”—The Boston Globe

“There’s perhaps no living writer better at chronicling the most crucial emotional flash points of the young modern male than Teddy Wayne…Wayne’s knack for unpacking the fragility of masculinity continues to shine in his latest book, the slim, binge-worthy Apartment.”—The A.V. Club

“It builds to a carefully seeded climax that will leave readers — and especially writers—queasy…subtly layered prose…its sobering climax is bound to stay with you long after you close the door on Apartment.”—NPR

“Teddy Wayne began recording the degenerating effect of modern culture on American society well before a reality TV star won the White House.… Wayne’s novel excavates a bygone time to trace the stark fissures in our current political landscape.”—The Los Angeles Times

“Draftsmanlike precision…it leaves one feeling vaguely ill, in the best way possible. A near-anthropological study of male insecurity.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A deftly composed novel…its ideas about masculinity, gender, and class will rattle around your mind for ages.”―Elle, Best Books of the Year

“Wayne’s attention to detail and language serves almost as a surgeon’s scalpel, gently peeling back layered topics—friendship, class, sexuality—to reveal an engrossing survey of male insecurity and frailty… carefully written and evocative with an airtight plot.”—Salon

“The best jokes make you laugh and feel sad all at once, and that…also describes my response to Teddy Wayne’s fourth novel, Apartment, which takes on the subject of male friendship—and indeed, quite a bit more…There’s a pleasure to Apartment that it would be unfair to spoil…a taut story that the author bravely sees through to its inevitable end.”—The New Republic

“Apartment is about a volatile friendship between two men…Wayne, in the terrible-roommates tradition of Sam Shepard and Miranda July, rigorously draws out their dance of attraction and repulsion.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

“A compelling story about one young man’s struggle to know himself…Teddy Wayne voices strikingly resonant truths about the development of young writers and the development of young men.”—Financial Times

“An amusing, increasingly uneasy account of an odd couple and their unstable power dynamic.”―Vogue, Best Books of the Year

“A savvy class novel…[Wayne’s] passion for his novel, and the novel in general, is plain. There’s no better way, he suggests, to take our invisible damage and hold it up to the light.” —USA Today

“Wayne’s latest novel, Apartment, which brims with desperation, brilliantly captures the complex and complicated layers of loneliness…a subtle, sly page-turner about disconnection and its impact.”—The Millions

“Subtle, fascinating…Wayne excels at creating a narrator both observant of his surroundings and deluded about his own feelings…A careful meditation on class and power.”―Publishers Weekly

“Dark, sad, and highly readable—I finished this slim novel in three sittings…a consuming and even suspenseful bit of termite art… The ending is quiet, plausible, and all the more heartbreaking.”—Washington Examiner

“Wayne emphasizes the gap between social isolation and an intense internal life, and uses the contrast to explore contemporary cultural anxieties in tenderly close focus.”―Booklist

” Teddy Wayne has a knack for taking the darkest thoughts and feelings men might have, holding a mirror up to them and then churning out books that will stick with you long after you finish them…One of our most important contemporary authors.”―Inside Hook

“A fascinating exploration of class, art, and human interaction.”―Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“The rare page-turner that always maintains its dignity as a moving portrait of loneliness and longing.”―Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End

“In Apartment, class, ambition, and New York real estate are the components in one mortal’s struggle to know the world and its surprises about who is outsmarting what. A terrific piece of work.”—Joan Silber, author of Improvement

“What a remarkable rarity—a guy-meets-guy novel about male friendship and intimacy. Apartment is a propulsive and powerfully focused exploration of masculine insecurity, anxiety, and ambivalence.”—Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special

“Apartment is full of keenly observed, stinging insights that compound in intensity long after the initial read.”—Ling Ma, author of Severance

“Apartment is a piercing investigation of male intimacy, privilege, and literary ambition that’s as witty and insightful as it is heartrending. I couldn’t look away.”—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena