SKU: 14983176467

The Portable Veblen

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The Portable VeblenLonglisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction Finalist for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction An exuberant, one of a kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big hearted as it is laugh out loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and

Longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction

Finalist for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction

An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor

The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its pages, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fianc Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate t te- -t te with a very charismatic squirrel.

Veblen (named after the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term "conspicuous consumption") is one of the most refreshing heroines in recent fiction. Not quite liberated from the burdens of her hypochondriac, narcissistic mother and her institutionalized father, Veblen is an amateur translator and "freelance self"; in other words, she's adrift. Meanwhile, Paul--the product of good hippies who were bad parents--finds his ambition soaring. His medical research has led to the development of a device to help minimize battlefield brain trauma--an invention that gets him swept up in a high-stakes deal with the Department of Defense, a Bizarro World that McKenzie satirizes with granular specificity.

As Paul is swept up by the promise of fame and fortune, Veblen heroically keeps the peace between all the damaged parties involved in their upcoming wedding, until she finds herself falling for someone--or something--else. Throughout, Elizabeth McKenzie asks: Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals? And what is that squirrel really thinking? Replete with deadpan photos and sly appendices, The Portable Veblen is at once an honest inquiry into what we look for in love and an electrifying reading experience.



Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 11/01/2016
ISBN: 9781101981597
Pages: 448
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.30w x 1.40d
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SKU: 14983176467

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Andre Glover
Boise, US
★★★★★ 5
Love it
Size: Pair
These are nice for any audiophile. They look and sound amazing.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2026
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Lee W. Sellman
Fort Morgan, US
★★★★★ 5
Great Sound
Size: Pair
Great things sometimes come in little packages. Powerhouse sound with virtually no input at all. Tight, crisp, and well-made as usual from Klipsch. If you are looking for a powerhouse monitor these are what you want.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2026
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YALE70
Whiting, US
★★★★★ 4
Great starter speakers - for the right price.
Size: Pair
A good all-around pair of starter speakers if you're planning on using them as standalones. These will have zero trouble filling a small to medium sized space with rich and detailed sound at low to mid volumes. The bass is adequate for their size. They're not going to knock your socks off on more thumpy genres. I would imagine pairing them with a subwoofer would make quite the difference but for rock and some synth pop, they're pretty sweet. Plus the copper woofers look very striking without the faceplates. That said, I say these are best suited at low to mid volumes because cranked, the higher frequencies can be awfully fatiguing coming out of these speakers. I would not pay anywhere close to the $349 MSRP for these (you can probably find a pair of far superior RP-600Ms for around that price nowadays). Around $150 seems like a sweet spot for the R-51Ms, but the Sony SSCS5s and Fluance Signature bookshelfs are very comparable, if not better sounding for around the same price. Still, these will probably more than satisfactory if you're not expecting to be blown away by them. UPDATE 5/20/25: Can confirm that the subwoofer made a big difference. I was going to retire these since I replaced them with some bigger floor speakers on my main setup but I decided to try them out in place of the factory speakers on the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 I have hooked up to my computer. Not only does the onboard amp seem to drive them okay at not-insane levels of volume - they sound really sweet paired with the 6.5-inch subwoofer. While I won't change my rating, I do highly recommend getting a sub along with these speakers.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2025
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Ramona O.
Massapequa, US
★★★★★ 5
Great speakers, rich full sound
Size: Pair
These are really great speakers. I got them to go with my husband's new record player for Christmas. These really sound fantastic. A rich range, with a nice bass that's not too much. They were easy to connect to the player. I like a rich sound better then bright (I think if it's too bright it doesn't have enough bass), and these definitely fit the bill. I got these on a black Friday deal which was even better. They are a good value for the quality.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2026
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Q W Lott
Massapequa, US
★★★★★ 5
The new amp/speaker configuration made a very noticeably positive difference.
Size: Pair, Size: Pair
I bought a Denton amp / Klipsch 7 speaker bundle for Christmas last year. It sounded impressive. For this year, I recently replace the Denon AVR-S970H, a 5.2.2 POS-Amp that quit after less than a year. Then I also added a 70” TV and a set of R-51M’s on the sides. I could never hear this amp driving the Dolby Atmos speakers on top of the R-625FA towers, so I decided that back speakers would be more beneficial to this 7-channel system. I’d been using the R-41M’s that came in the bundle as side surround speakers, but I was thinking that they would be more suited for use in back. So I replaced them with a new set of R-51M’s that I thought would be better surround sides because of their fuller stronger sound. As of now, at the front of this theater system is an Onkyo TX-RZ 820 AVR amp, a 70 inch LED 4K smart TV, a set of Klipsch R-625FA towers, an R-52C Center Channel Speaker, and two R-12SW Subwoofers. For the surround sides is the newly purchased set of R-51M’s on stands, and mounted on the back-wall is the set of R-41M’s, using BS-218pro Wall Mounts. For good reason, this is a very powerful amp driving a complete set of purely Klipsch speakers. I built this THX 7.2.0 surround sound system to go in my wife’s 11’ X 12’ privacy room, specifically because she is hard of hearing. She said, that with the new additions, the sound is much cleaner, stronger, the 3D surround effect is more noticeable, and the vocals are easier for her to understand. I get to use it sometimes when she’s not at home. Thunder in movies sounds as crisp sharp and loud as real thunder. All around, the system is very realistic sounding. And it can play music, shaking the house at live levels. At present, my wife and I are extremely happy with this system. It sounds as good as it looks. The Klipsch speakers & Onkyo amp configuration makes a very noticeably positive difference.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2026

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