Pageant of the Masters by Steven Belletto

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Welcome to the spectacle at the end of everything.

“Brilliantly crafted stories of well-traveled characters runs a thread of compassion for our common vulnerability, as if there must always be a baby in any boat dangerously near tipping.” Lee Upton, author of The Withers

In Steven Belletto’s wholly original collection, Pageant of the Masters, each story is a world unto itself, populated by eccentrics struggling to survive amid the ruins of late capitalism. Living on the fraying edges of reality—much like the culture around them—these characters are anxious, manic, deluded, and unmistakably human.

A young professional spends a weekend checking on his survivalist uncle in a booby-trapped cabin deep in the woods, only to be drawn into the older man's paranoid universe. A fiftyish California entrepreneur hatches a plan to save her failing art gallery by turning it into a reality TV show, traumatizing her daughter in the process. A washed-up installation artist wages a one-sided war against his sworn rival from the jungles of Central America. Elsewhere, wives hire escorts for their husbands, young men become obsessed with local water superintendents, henchmen revolt, and babies are set adrift on boats. Such is the Pageant of the Masters.

With a sharp eye for the absurdities and strange obsessions of contemporary culture, Belletto takes readers from West Hollywood to Guatemala, the Congo, and Bhutan, exploring the limits of what it means to be human. These stories navigate a world tangled in political and economic pressures, where romantic relationships, family bonds, and friendships are pushed to their breaking points.

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Pub date: 3-Nov-2026

Page count: 354

ISBN: 978-3-98832-275-3