Summer on Fire by Peter Werbe

By Jim Feast 

Using the term a bit irregularly, I would say Peter Werbe’s powerful new novel Summer on Fire, which describes events in Detroit in 1967, is a work of alternative history. In general use, this phrase refers to science fiction in which what happened in the past is imagined as having taken a different path. In a famed Phillip Dick’s novel, for instance, the Nazis won WWII. However, to shift the meaning of the term: what if, due to the predominance of the corporate media in shaping perceptions, Americans mostly have a false perception of what happened in the past? Then most would already have a false sense of the old days.  

To give some  credence to this view, we can follow the  argument of German  writer Michael Schneider (in Neurosis and Civilization) who says the  abundance of advertising filling the world with pleasant, concocted imagery puts people into a dream world. “In … commodity society the sphere of religion [with its mythical projections] … becomes superfluous  because   commodity production  creates out of itself a ‘phantasmal world of appearances’ on a much  higher level than  religion  was ever capable of doing.”  Taking a similar tack, Anthony Wilden (in the anthology Semiotexte Canada)  remarks, “In society  today, especially in  Canada and other countries with colonial histories, the Imaginary dominates our understanding of  social and economic relationships. … The dominance of the Imaginary  … is a collectively experienced and collectively supported system of mirages.”

Our remembered history is also subject to becoming a mirage. In Werbe’s novel, the two main characters (Paul and Michelle) pick up the book Topaz, which “has been on the New York Times best-seller list for a year.” Its popularity indicates its influence on consciousness, yet, as Paul explains, “It’s bullshit history [of the Cuban Missile Crisis] with one of the imperial powers getting presented as the bad guy, and us as the victim,” while, in truth, there was wrongdoing on both sides.

In distinction from Topaz’s dishonest account of events, Werbe’s portrayal of the Detroit 1967 riots, coming from one who saw it firsthand, reporting for Fifth Estate underground paper,   wants to get the facts straight. For Werbe, who for years as a radical  journalist in print and on the radio has worked to expose where the dominant corporate media has diluted or hidden facts, reality is alternative history.

In three ways, Werbe’s novel, while following literary conventions  with an engaging plot, well-developed characters, and striking conflicts, acts as a corrective to slick, thoughtless histories of the 1960s.

Most journalistically, the book contrasts hysterical mainstream press accounts with actually recorded facts. For instance, the Detroit papers report “Bands of Negroes armed with  army machine guns [who] kept two police precincts from functioning … [and] guardsmen and police … forced to abandon entire sections of the ghetto due to sniper fire.” Yet, in point of fact, according to court records, “No one was arrested as a sniper nor wounded in so-called gun battles. There were no police or Guard casualties from shooters. No [sniper] ‘nests were found.” All this gives the lie to the fevered media depictions.

Secondly, being on the ground, viewing thing up close (with Werbe drawing on his own articles and memories from the time), the hero touches on elements of the events that were never mentioned in the mainstream’s tales of violence, fire and property destruction. Tragic as these events were, Werbe points out that in the chaos one might also observe what might be called the “joy of looting.” Here’s what Paul and another reporter observe when they arrive at one of the epicenters of the action:

As Paul and Sidney pulled up, they  could  tell right away that this was not an angry crowd but a quite joyous one. Not only were groceries free for the taking through the smashed-out, large plate-grass window but it was also payback time for a despised merchant.

The reporters find “The elation was contagious with everyone, strangers and friends, greeting one another, hugging and laughing. It was a half Black, half white crowd, as was the neighborhood, rifling through the meats and vegetables, picking out just what they wanted.” The author is neither condoning nor condemning what went on, but observing that in distinction  from the news reports of mad-dog violence, he is seeing in one area an almost party atmosphere.

However, the most significant way the real past is brought to life is through the employment of a method that is well beyond the purview of corporate journalism, that is, by situating current events in historical context. Conveniently enough, many of the characters are history buffs, so as groups of them go into various parts of the city, the autodidacts among them fill in the others on each neighborhood’s past.  For instance, when they go into the Belle  Isle beach  area, we learn that in 1943, there was a previous riot with “violence perpetuated mostly by white mobs attacking isolated blacks, leaving a toll of 34 people dead, 25 of them  Black; 433 wounded, 75 percent of them Black.”

As readers learn the back story of Detroit’s generations of racism, they see the riot is not just the  result of the trigger incident when white police invaded and roughed up blacks in an afterhours joint, but  the culmination of years of police brutality and discrimination. Moreover the Black club where the  action  starts is located in an anomic, unsettled area that recently formed after the close-knit, long-lived Paradise Alley Black neighborhood was destroyed for urban renewal, which forced evictions breaking ties and leaving people with less community  support .        

It goes without saying that the misinformation about the riot provided by the mass media is not simple inaccuracy but a way of hiding white supremacy. To return to Wilden, we can find  a possible  explanation of why the corporate media, run by the  well off and over the years providing  depictions Blacks as lawless, now concocts  the erroneous stories of machine-gun toting Blacks. Wilden shows how oppressors, without checking evidence, will project their own hostility on their victims. As the Canadian author explains, “We project onto them [people who are defined by  society  as  subordinate in the  various  socioeconomic hierarchies] our unrecognized desires … This kind of projection is a kind of violence against other human beings; and in consequence, it has as it  almost  automatic complement: the fear of retaliation.” Werbe’s corrective writing aims to take away this cover that has shielded domination. 

Certainly, there is also a positive side to the city recognized in Werbe’s  book: incidents of self-help, mutual aid and people of all races banding together to protest racism, the U.S.’s war in Vietnam and sexism. The core group in the story, journalists for the underground press, both report on and join the protests against injustice.

The book ends on what at first appears a somewhat out-of-place excursion. After the  rioting has been quelled and the city returns to business as usual, the leading  pair go  off to visit Paul’s  parents who  rent a house on a Maine island. This seems an odd swerve to take, ending far from where the heart of the book is centered. However, once the heroes arrive on the coast, they find the effects of America’s conflicts are evident even in this vacation spot.

Monhegan Island is a tourist mecca. “The big island’s permanent residents numbered 44, but swelled fivefold during the tourist season.” It is a retreat for the wealthy or near-wealthy, with beautiful seascapes and no pesky minorities.  Yet even here the Vietnam War has stirred a group of radicals to go forward with their ill-conceived plan to blow up the post office!

And beyond this continuity between the Midwestern city and the resort in the presence of dissent against the Southeast Asian war, there is the inescapable pressure of history that Werbe finds in every landscape. So, for instance, as the couple drive through some of Maine’s impoverished inland burgs, Paul thinks aloud, “Why are these towns so poor? … I know the IWW was big around here in the 1920s, and the Wobblies fought a big battle with the Ku Klux Klan.” The point here and throughout the book is that we can only grasp everyday events by throwing a backward glance at the history of struggle between the  dominant  groups and the (relatively) dispossessed.

In sum, Summer on Fire involves a double reflection on temporality. The characters living in 1967 in their ongoing conversations during the days of the riot orient themselves and their reporting by anchoring their understanding in  Detroit’s racist history. Simultaneously, Werbe, writing in 2021, implicitly suggests that the struggles in our day, when racism and the fight back against it continue, need an accurate account of the past to work fruitfully. If, as Paul Virilio puts it, a central task of corporate culture is “the extermination of  time,” then Werbe’s enthralling novel aims to put time  back on our  clocks.

You can find the book here: https://www.thebookbeat.com/bookshop/catalog/summer-on-fire-by-peter-werbe/

Bio:  Jim Feast is the author of the poetry book A Strange Awakening of Light  that Takes the Place of Dawn (Autonomedia, 2020).

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Max Turns Yellow by Martha King

By Jim Feast

Although Martha King’s Max Turns Yellow is a standalone murder mystery, a reader familiar with her last book, Max Sees Red, will be able to see how, taken together, the two books serve as an interesting commentary on the course of gentrification and the place artists play in the process. Let me say a little something about that before I get to this book’s special charm.

Red is set in the Soho of the mid-1970s, which is turning from what, in the time of the Abstract Expressionists in the 1940s and ‘50s, was an industrial neighborhood of small factories with a few artists’ loft scattered among them, into an attraction where New Jerseyites and other tourists come to gawk at the Bohemians. At that time, Max Birtwhistle is still making a name for himself as a painter and is living in this area where he can keep his finger on the art market’s pulse.  At the same time, more successful artists are colonizing the Hudson Valley, much to the chagrin of the locals who resent the intrusion of Manhattanites who are buying up all the old family manses. Jump ahead ten years to 1986, and Max has become successful. However, instead of lighting out for the sticks, he helps to start the latest hip trend and moves to the Brooklyn waterfront, taking a place in Dumbo. There he can get cheaper space (in an old pickle factory!!) and quiet. Although the district has few inhabitants, the locals who are in residence are disturbed by this growing incursion. This is especially the case for those in the Mafia-connected restaurant, who would prefer fewer peering eyes.

The change of geographic focus can be tied to formal differences in the novels. Where Red, in keeping with a story that takes place partly in Soho and partly in a rural enclave upstate, is a sprawling work, filled with varied subplots, shifting milieus and a diverse cast of rambunctious characters; Yellow, set in an under-populated neighborhood, is more focused in plot and delves more deeply into the psyches of its fewer characters. It is a more intense read. But it is also Max’s own status that changes the tones of the book. In Red, as an up-and-comer, he has to be out circulating at the Soho bars – one is lovingly described in a delightful thumbnail – and gallery openings. The book is chock full of incident. In Yellow, Max is established and doesn’t have to gad about so much. He can stay home and concentrate on art making, up to a point.

The point is murder. But the killing is different than in the last book. There, in keeping with the book’s picaresque quality, Max gets involved because an oddball writer of his acquaintance has entangled himself in the murder of his editor. Often, though, since he is only peripherally involved, Max watches from the sidelines.

This time it’s personal. Max is living with his girlfriend Britz. She goes out one night when he is asleep and doesn’t come back. Soon enough, her body is found floating in the river. Max is devastated. His sadness throughout the book gives the text a somber complexion, new to King’s writing. Moreover, another new element, as he gets involved in investigating what happened, Max uncovers a mystery in triplicate. Not only is there Britz’s death but, as it turns out, her brother Theo is facing the possibility of being sued for plagiarizing from his writing teacher, even accused of killing him. Moreover, Britz’s earlier life, which she had been cagey about revealing to Max, is itself filled with shocking secrets.

While Red was an engaging read, it was not put together along the lines of a traditional murder mystery in the way Yellow is. In line with generic conventions, this new book begins with a shocker, is filled with unexpected but plausible twists that keep piling up, has moments of real menace (especially in relation to the Mafia’s hangout), and there are times when suspense is ratcheted up to exquisite heights.

And yet, for all these similarities, Yellow is not a typical mysteries. First, there is a depth of characterization in the portrayal of Max that is unusual. As already noted, Max is broken-hearted and much of the book is pervaded by a carefully rendered sadness, quite different from the equitable tone of other crime novels. Max’s circumstances after the disappearance change in a paradoxical way. From living a quiet life with Britz, he now becomes entangled with her brother and with her now-separated parents, whom Britz hadn’t seen for decades. Hadn’t seen for good reason as they were cultists who, when they were growing up, had taken her brother and her from one wacko organization to another. Moreover, to suggest some of the complications, Max is disoriented by Britz’s mother. When he first meets her, “Max’s mouth went dry. The slender woman with silver-gray hair walking toward the glass bus terminal door could have been Britz perhaps twenty years older.”

This can be disconcerting, especially as he is putting her up in his space until the funeral. Meanwhile, the father, who hasn’t been in New York for many years and who from all reports was a burned-out hippie, turns out to know some of the big corporate players connected to the large cancer research institution where Britz worked. Max is forced to contend with these complex and semi-antagonistic personalities as well as with the police, the Mafia (who may be involved), the researchers from Britz’s company, and others who come out of the woodwork. All this happens as he is beset with a grief and misery that is little alleviated by his hunt for the killer.

Second, the book further differentiates itself due to the already suggested, serious thematic substructure which makes location crucial to the story. King shows how people’s lives, their plots as it were, are intimately shaped by their surroundings. With uncanny precision, she evokes the ambience of the area, which is so attractive to artists. She describes Max’s morning walk, “Whatever the weather, it was bracing to trot through the waterfront streets at dawn. Harbor water scented the air even though access to the river itself was for the most part blocked. The variation in light and weather fascinated Max every day. The rhythms primed him for his work.”

Dumbo is edging from being a dilapidated manufacturing zone to being a classy, pricey neighborhood, so it is ambiguous territory. At this point in time the residents find both the joys of solitude, as in our hero’s morning wanderings through deserted streets, and the dangers of the evening. This last is illustrated by the night Britz disappears. Someone from work asks to meet her in her neighborhood at 10 pm. In most parts of the city, the streets would still be busy, but in this area to get to her rendezvous she must walk past the cavernous warehouses and shutdown factories.  It is with an observant eye that King paints her unforgettable portrait of a neighborhood shedding its skin.

While her first murder mystery was a well-structured, lively tale, the purist mystery reader might have found that book too full, with many cross-currents that were not part of the central crime. With this book, King has supplied all the prerequisites of a crime novel, including a taut story, which goes twisting and turning without losing its tight focus, and other elements already enumerated, that are so pleasing to the mystery buff. She does this while offering a profundity of theme and character that goes beyond generic expectations.

You can find the book here: http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/max-turns-yellow.html

Jim Feast is the author of two poetry books, the latest being A Strange Awakening of Light that Takes the Place of Dawn (2020).

Paula Regossy by Lynn Crawford

By Jim Feast

While in writing Lynn Crawford has veered between realism (as in Shankus & Kitto) and near sci fi (as in Fortification Resort), her new book, Paula Regossy, combines elements of both by mixing contemporary reportage into an imaginative novel  of spies and fairy tales.

The founding premise is one familiar from espionage fiction. The lead characters all work for an unnamed NGO, which is discreetly commissioned to bust crime. “We are contacted and hired by the few in the know. Our fees are high.” The operatives primarily investigate people who work for companies that balance on the knife edge between philanthropy and skullduggery. “Our marks are wealthy companies that wreak wide-scale damage yet contribute. For example, they authorize toxic dumps in waterways and launch and fund charitable and arts foundations.” Most of the chapters describe the experiences of Regossy and agents she has trained.

(Let me mention that in an email exchange with the author, Crawford said she sees these trained agents as aspects of the main character. She writes, “The book is titled Paula Regossy and is, in fact, a portrait of her. … No piece is ALL of her. Each one is PART of her. What we end with (in my head) is a picture of SOME of her but, of course, not ALL of her.)

Unlikely as this may seem, what is fundamentally a crime story is structured so as to allow Crawford a chance to display her knowledge of the Detroit arts scene. The title character has broken a rule of the agency by getting emotionally involved with a suspect and so has been reassigned to Detroit where, while getting her priorities back on track, she takes as her cover identity that of a Bohemian art maven, who supplies the reader with descriptions of the budding, bubbling creative community.  A note at the back of the book tells us that Crawford was inspired to compose this book by her viewing of a number of gallery shows, including some described by Regossy. She tells us, “Each chapter in this book is my personal (but faithful) response to works by various Detroit-based artists and spaces.”

In this way, the author grounds the cloak and dagger narrative in a world she knows well. However, if she gives it a realistic edge here, in other sections, she lets the story lift off into wild reaches of the imagination.  For instance, in a story that explains how Joan became an individual whose skills proved very useful in sleuthing, we learn of Joan’s devastation when her brother dies tragically in his youth. After this trauma, she develops odd physical symptoms. “For a while, I stopped growing. Then I shrank.” Next, her changes get even less explicable. “Another thing happened: my new body stopped respecting gravity. I was permanently airborne, hovering or flying. And I emitted a sound, a buzz.”

So far, I have dwelt on the novel’s extremes, from the most matter-of-fact depiction of art openings to the most fantastic, an agent moving from one species to another; but this might provide a slightly distorted picture as most of the book centers on more novelistic stories of the genesis and activities of agents. Most of these crime-busters have been touched early on by violent deaths, which oriented them to pursuing law enforcement careers. A few of these stories are almost procedurals where the detective explains how she or he nabbed a criminal, usually by employing unorthodox methods.

Another attribute of these agents touches on themes found earlier in Crawford’s Fortification Resort. There (with some tongue in cheek moments) she describes the activities of personal assistants, gym trainers, party curators, travel guides and others who work directly with a refined upper class clientele. This is a world slightly in the future where the hyper-sensitive services carried out for the elite have been enhanced. As I wrote, reviewing this book in Rain Taxi in 2005, Crawford’s “language is modeled on—and quietly spoofs—upscale New Age promotional writing, fluff that would extol a spa, new skin enhancer, Pilates program or other psychic or physical rehabilitation. Crawford never voices open criticism of the group, but offhandedly skewers the pretensions, muffled cruelty, and sometimes downright wackiness of her characters.”

The link to the present book is that this type of hyper-sensitive modulations of the self are not carried out for the elite but have become regimens used to attune agents to their jobs. Paula’s morning routine, for instance, is made up of “EXERCISE, BATHE, MEDITATE, EAT, DRESS, SOUL BUILD.” Each of these routines is precisely and subtly geared to her professional duties. As to her breakfast, “Morning meals vary, depending on what lies ahead. Desk days it is quinoa with butter and syrup. Push days usually mean a circle of nuts around something vegetarian.” She adds, “TANGENT: I do sometimes use nuts, usually almonds, to kill.”

While this theme links this book to the former novel, there is a perspectival shift. While Resort is a cutting, low-key satire on the New Age-y fads of the upper crust, in this book the trendy treatments are used to sustain and strengthen the principled fighters against abuse and corporate malfeasance. On this note, it might be suggested the novel is partly science fiction because at this point it nearly takes an alternate reality viewpoint to imagine an NGO facing off so resolutely (and effectively) against the corporate/governmental machine that is polluting the waters and air while killing off irreplaceable animals and plants. Paula Regossy is one of those creative works that reimagine social justice and ecological thinking. It is a vision within a forward movement, a forward movement that takes us backward to the world of indigenous, ecologically oriented   civilizations, where people were more in touch with Nature and willing (through prayer and ritual) to right the wrongs done to her.  

You can find the book here:  https://mocad.myshopify.com/collections/all/products/paula-regossy-by-lynn-crawford

Jim Feast is the author of the just published (August 2020) and long-titled poetry book A Strange Awakening of Light that Takes the Place of Dawn: Poems for Lady Bunny, Chicago: 1972-1975.

There’s Never Been a Better Time to Buy Die by Bernard Meisler

By Jim Feast

Bernard Meisler’s new detective novel, There’s Never Been a Better Time to Buy Die, centers on a flawed character who acts as a sleuth. If we look over some of the classical gumshoes, from Phillip Marlowe to Travis McGee, going back to Sherlock or, for that matter, Hercule Poirot, all of them, while differing in lifestyle, methods of investigation and personal involvement in the cases, are basically decent human beings. In radical contrast, in Meisler’s novel the sleuth, real estate salesman Rick Davies, is a petty chiseler, failed business investor, over drinker, and all-around skunk, who sets out to investigate some crimes in Mill Valley, a tony community north of San Francisco,

And it’s this a-bit-unsavory narrator who gives the book its irrepressible zing. For one, while our larger-than-life protagonist, always on the lookout for the main chance, spends his time trying to find the truth behind a murder linked to some illegal drugs he found in an old house he was prepping for sale, he accompanies this with a running, scathing commentary on his fellow, equally flawed but generally much richer, neighbors and suspects. For instance, in labeling the different suburban lifestyles, he mentions: “Let’s not forget the trustafarians. Their grandfather invented Velcro or Sterno or whatever. They dress like bums, torn t-shirts and ripped jeans or else eccentrically, sporting Victorian gear and top hats, killing time, waiting till the sun goes down so they can get loaded again.” In another classical skewering, he watches a rich yuppie getting out of her car with her kids. “Her kids popped out of the SUV like maggots out of a dead rat’s eyes, the girl in a ballerina outfit, the boy in a baseball uniform, still carrying his little bat. It could have been the cover of White Privilege magazine. ‘Zooey! Hunter! Let’s go.’”

Indeed, while detecting these motes in other’s eyes, he is also amusingly aware of the beam in his own. He characterizes himself, “People [in the area] like to hike and commune with nature but me, I’m a dedicated indoorsman.” And, to go back to the earlier comment on trustafarians, he ends his diatribe with this, “Believe you me, it might sound like I resent them but I don’t. I want me some of that fuck-you money too so I could smoke weed all day, drink all night and sleep till noon.”

But let’s be clear – and this is one of the gutsy moves of the book – the funny patter doesn’t make our protagonist a loveable bad boy, he can be a real shit.

The second strength of the book is that while trying to solve the crime, Davies must also keep trying to earn a living as a real estate broker, and in doing so he lays bare the scamming and over-hyping that are standard practice in a field, which, like a con game, depends on the cupidity and vanity of the clients to keep the money rolling.

He explains, for instance, that what the realtor wants is a quick sale, not the highest price. He says, rhetorically, “Do you think I’d rather sell your house in the first week for $900,000, or take 3 months of work to sell it for $1,000,000? That a $100k difference for you but not for me. See, I can make $13,500 in a week or $15,000 in 3 months. Which do you think I prefer?” Not that he lets the seller find that out. He goes on, “Meanwhile the suckers – I mean my cherished clients – think I’m out to get them top dollar. They think I’m their friend. Who am I to disillusion them?’

I appreciate learning the (often nefarious) workings of this business as well as the way Meisler keeps the pot boiling, that is,  keeps the clues popping up and the mystery unfolding. But most of all how he puts center-stage  a narrator with two major “character defects,” using my special meaning of the term. I am taking it to mean not the personality-based shortcoming of  the character in a story; but to defects which hit at the character’s functional role in the narrative.

Perhaps from what I’ve said already you can see what I’m getting at. A basic innovation in Meisler’s approach is in giving the story over to a lead character who violates two conventions. Davies is a detective who lacks the traditional good sportsmanship and decency of the Chandler type P.I. And, along this same line, he does not even have the charm and saving grace of the bad boy scamp, such as Hammer (as played in Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, for instance), who may have gotten drunk too often or let his partner get killed. No, Davies is not so lovable. For god’s sakes, when he sees he can get away with it, he even steals money from an old lady.

Add to that a second violation. He breaks with one regularly honored convention of satire. Like Juvenal, he “lashes the rogues,” treating those who deserve contempt with contempt, but he refuses to make this judgment from a lofty place, looking down at the lowlifes. Davies admits to sharing similar vanities and cupidity with those he condemns, shares them without having the strength to grow out of them

So if you want a book that, in the process of delivering a good mystery, on multiple fronts challenges the accepted way of doing things, in that case, while there may be a better time to buy, they’ll never be a better time to read this book.

You can find the book here: https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/books/theres-never-been-a-better-time-to-die-bernard-meisler/

Jim Feast is the author of the poetry book Time Extends Life to Those Who Survive, Fly by Night Press, and the novel Long Day Counting Tomorrow, from Autonomedia.)

Long Day, Counting Tomorrow by Jim Feast

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By Thaddeus Rutkowski

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Jim Feast’s new novel, Long Day, Counting Tomorrow (Unbearables Books/Autonomedia), is basically a murder mystery, told in brief, nonsequential chapters identified by date. Set during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the fall of 1998, the story follows Raskin Trask, a former drug user (and Wall Streeter) who is undergoing treatment for the virus. Though Rask is not gay, he gets involved in the politics of gay rights—demonstrating, for example, with the group ACT UP. At a crucial point, Rask suspects something is up with the doctor who manages the treatment in a hospice for a AIDS patients. When Rask’s roommate dies of questionable causes, Rask realizes he could be next. He works to get evidence that will implicate the doctor in charge.

Around this storyline, the author (who wrote the book with the editorial assistance of Carol Wierzbicki) brings in a number of other characters, some more important than others. Rask is a member of a downtown New York group called the Neo Phobes, and many of his fellow phobes cross paths and socialize with him. One of the more interesting of these people is the radio personality Mac, who works at the station WPHEW. Mac is described this way:

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There was something about his libido, something that both got him into bad fixes (like the one-nighter that cost him his marriage) and into some of the most indefinably sweet moments of his existence. … More than once, he’d met someone at a party and, locked in the toilet, used the shag rug for … shagging.

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This description of Mac reminds us that there was a time—in the ’90s—when urban youths didn’t think much about risky behavior or the need for recovery from such behavior. It was OK to “wang chung” all night.

Elsewhere, Feast brings us deep into the world of AIDs treatment centers. Here, Rask meets his new roommate in the infirmary, Yardley Chu:

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Five or six bodies—not people, department store dummies—were grouped around one of the beds. … Rask went to the covered shape on the bed to introduce himself, but then stopped in surprise, jerking his head to the left. What he took to be Chu was a seventh dummy, prone on the bed. His new roommate sat beyond the bed in a wheelchair. Hanging over the back of his chair was a minor poet Rask had seen hanging around Mac.

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At first, I took this scene as an example of surrealism, without a realistic corollary. Why would mannequins be set up in and around a hospital bed? It seemed a metaphorical comment on the impersonal nature of hospitals. There is no flesh and blood here. The live person is “beyond the bed,” in a wheelchair. Then, on second thought, I saw the situation as Yardley Chu’s attempt to physically hide from those in power, from the staffers who can—and will—do him in.

There are a number of subplots in this novel—having to do with drug dealing, corporate spying, file stealing—that add to the atmosphere of shadowy doings and hidden motivations. To say that all is explained by the end might be an overstatement. Long Day, after all, is only the second installment in the Neo Phobe Trilogy (the first volume is titled Neo Phobe). The forthcoming third volume promises to provide more excitement, more details, and more answers.

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You can find the book here: https://www.akpress.org/long-day-counting-tomorrow.html?___SID=U

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Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of five books of prose. Haywire won the Members’ Choice Award, given by the Asian American Writers Workshop. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, Medgar Evers College and the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York. He received a fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

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