On the third page of Ingram , the debut novel by comedian and actor Louis C. K., which releases November 11, the eponymous main character—a child who doesn’t know his last name—sees a couple of men approach his house. They are, he has come to understand, “from the bank.” He knows this means trouble for his poor rural Texas family, who survive by raising animals for food and who seem to know no form of joy or pleasure. Just how rural is young Ingram? This is how he describes the bankers: “They were both wearing full suits of gray clothes and black shoes, and they had ropes of cloth tied snug to their necks, something I’d never seen and looked to me like two Guernsey cows had yanked their ropes in half from where they’d been tied and had run off and got themselves a car.”

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