The Perturbation of O by Joseph G. Peterson

Published by University Of Iowa Press on April 29, 2025

This amusing novel is told almost entirely in the form of a chat between two characters. Fans of the movie My Dinner with Andre will probably enjoy The Perturbation of O for its celebration of conversation.

Gideon Anderson was an unenthused college student. A generous uncle covered his living expenses, leaving him with little incentive to make a life for himself. He lost interest in everything and responded to his disinterest by writing a book about all the reasons nothing mattered to him. “It told the brief story of my final year at the University of Chicago where I had squandered my time not participating in classes, not planning for my future, but where I had gone about squandering funds that my uncle sent me on a monthly basis, it was a memoir I had initially titled The Ark of Disquiet . . . .”

Gideon included in the manuscript “all the things that had filled me with loathing that year of my final year at the University of Chicago . . . filling it like Noah’s ark with all the creaturely memories that filled me with bile.” He printed it out and planned to “release that ark upon the waters of Lake Michigan, thereby flushing away the great turd of a manuscript.”

While waiting for appropriately stormy weather to assure that the manuscript would be washed away, Gideon attended a party where he sat next to a “Kentucky gentleman” who “had just published a book about his boyhood in Kentucky.” Gideon drunkenly told the story of his own book and of his plan to jettison the turd into Lake Michigan. The Kentucky gentleman persuaded Gideon to send it instead to his agent, who loved the book and sold it to a publisher that made it a best seller under the title Gideon’s Confession. The book spawned a Broadway musical and a movie, generating enough income to allow Gideon to continue living a comfortable life as a slacker, albeit one who was beleaguered by unwelcome fame.

The novel opens seventeen years later in a coffee shop, where Gideon is reading a manuscript written by the Kentucky gentleman’s grandson for which he agreed write a blurb. He’s spotted by Regina Blast, a woman who was the best friend of Gideon’s girlfriend when Gideon was still a student. Regina was interested in painting light. When Gideon saw her paintings, he got a boner (at least that’s how Regina recalls it). They slept together, ending Gideon’s relationship and Regina’s friendship with Gideon’s girlfriend.

Gideon wrote about Regina and her paintings in Gideon’s Confession. Regina thought his descriptions of her art were honest and perceptive, even if she didn’t appreciate his description of her body or the sexual encounter that subsequent lovers pleaded with her to reenact. The bulk of the novel consists of their conversation in the coffee shop.

Much of their discussion involves Oprah Winfrey. Oprah had Gideon on her show after he was proclaimed the King of Slack, the symbol of the Slacker Generation. Oprah later visited Regina in her studio to view the art that so enamored Gideon. The visit caused Regina to rethink her artwork after she made a sketch of Oprah. She found a perfect O in the sketch and thereafter became “primarily a painter of brushstrokes” that form Os.

Gideon and Regina trade delightfully over-the-top descriptions of Oprah. Says Gideon, “Oprah has a magnificence about her when you are with her in person that is hard to describe, and in my life I don’t think I have ever encountered anyone who was so magnificent as her.” Says Regina, “in all of my life, I have never come close to encountering a person who, like Oprah, possessed such a bottomless depth of humanity and understanding and lovingness . . . ” and on and on and on.

The conversations consist of long rambling sentences. Gideon and Regina repeatedly circle back to the same issues — Gideon’s book, Regina’s art, their sexual encounter, and lots of Oprah. The conversation would be maddening or boring if it weren’t so funny. And funny it is.

The story nevertheless raises interesting questions about the right of a memoir author to discuss intimate details of another person’s life, the nature of art, and the merits of being a slacker. Gideon’s memoir is seen by some as an anti-capitalist manifesto, but it seems clear that Gideon was simply blowing off steam. The story might therefore be seen as raising questions about how media sensations are promoted as geniuses or generational voices when, in fact, they don’t have much to say at all. Serious readers might therefore have serious conversations about The Perturbation of O, but I doubt they will have conversations as amusing as the one in which Gideon and Regina engage.

RECOMMENDED