"One of the drollest and most inspired creations of Tito Perdue's imagination is the 'escrubilator, ' a piece of technology whose multifarious features and functions make it as impossible for the reader to visualize as Gogol's nose that abandoned its owner and left town disguised as a civil servant. Tito Perdue's nineteenth novel, The Gizmo, tells the story of how a small group of misanthropic, septuagenarian geniuses created the escrubilator to...