"It's just not true. That would be random chance. But of course, brackets are not random chance. The seeding is asymmetrical. The real odds can be really different year-to-year and they can be debatable. They're still minute, but significantly more likely than Phil makes them seem."
"A retelling of the Icarus myth, the book traces his climb, asking not just 'what if it happened' but 'what if it happened to the most average guy you've ever met?' Narrated by Cassandra, a sleek political fundraiser who has the mythic curse of prophecy that no one believes, the book also sends up low-level DC politics."
"It's a basketball novel the way Infinite Jest is a tennis novel-hilarious and exuberantly written, a virtuosic, language-obsessed reimagining of a classic story."
Medium Rare is a contemporary retelling of the Icarus myth set during March Madness, following protagonist Phil Fayeton as he attempts the statistically improbable feat of predicting every NCAA tournament game perfectly. The novel is narrated by Cassandra, a DC political fundraiser cursed with prophecy no one believes, allowing the story to satirize both sports culture and low-level Washington politics. Written in an exuberant, language-obsessed style reminiscent of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, the novel explores what happens when an extraordinarily average person pursues an extraordinary goal. Author Joukovsky clarifies that while the novel uses the famous one-in-nine-quintillion odds statistic as a recurring joke, actual bracket odds are more favorable but still astronomically small and vary year to year based on tournament seeding.
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