Seth Kaufman’s nov­el The King of Pain evokes mem­o­ries of anoth­er trans­for­ma­tion sto­ry (Franz Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis) where the pro­tag­o­nist awakes to find him­self unable to recall how he came to be in his cur­rent state. Kaufman’s pro­tag­o­nist is Rick ​‘The Prick’ Salter, a smug Real­i­ty TV pro­duc­er with a hit show about tor­ture called ​“The King of Pain.” In the irony to end ironies, Rick finds him­self trapped under­neath his enor­mous enter­tain­ment sys­tem with­out a clue how he got there. Unable to roll out from under­neath its weight, Rick must wait forty-eight hours until his house­keep­er returns to sum­mon help. To pass the time Rick picks up the only book with­in arm’s reach, ​“A His­to­ry of Pris­ons” writ­ten by Seth Kauf­man. This frame with­in a frame nar­ra­tive helps cre­ate a more per­son­al satire for the author.

Kaufman’s nov­el can be boiled down to the human emo­tions of pain and cathar­sis. One must go through dif­fi­cul­ties to know hap­pi­ness and free­dom. As Rick lies on his floor his per­spec­tive changes both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly. Through read­ing (fic­tion­al) Kaufman’s sto­ries Rick even­tu­al­ly real­izes that he must change his ways. Now, this type of abra­sive nar­ra­tor is one you either accept and find humor­ous or can­not put up with, much like real-life ver­sions of Rick ​‘The Prick’ Salter. Kauf­man, on the oth­er hand, is prob­a­bly a pleas­ant author both fic­tion­al­ly and non-fictionally.