Ben Ehrenreich : Ether & Robert Arellano : Curse the Names
A Literary Double-Header
- When
- Mon Jan 23, 2012
- Where
- The Booksmith
- Time
- 7:30 pm
- Tags
- Literary Arts
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Description
Ben Ehrenreich is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. His fiction has been published in McSweeney's, Bomb, and Black Clock, among other publications. His previous novel, The Suitors, received widespread critical attention. ETHER is his second novel.A bearded man in a badly soiled suit known only as The Stranger wanders into an apocalyptic landscape on the fringes of a dying metropolis, looking for a way to "get back on top." Thwarted and rejected at every turn by old friends and strangers alike--even by the author of this novel, whom he visits repeatedly in unsuccessful attempts to determine his own narrative--his impotence and rage are expressed in acts of seemingly senseless violence. The various characters he encounters on his journey--a pack of sadistic boys, skinheads who beat him senseless, a deaf-mute woman who tries to heal him, a sidewalk preacher and a deranged man who identify him as The One--avoid him or abuse him, or attempt to follow him.
Entertaining, disturbing and wildly intelligent, written with sinister humor and great compassion, ETHER reflects on the possibilities and consequences of forgiveness, the problems of faith and the trials of creation.
"A compact work of biblical noir...like Bambi directed by Quentin Tarantino....In Ether God is one of us: fickle, self-obsessed, senselessly malicious....Drink in Ehrenreich's sculpted sentences ... language for the weary and the dispossessed, the rich or the poor. Have a seat; stay awhile." -- Los Angeles Times
Robert Arellano is the author of the Edgar-nominated noir Havana Lunar and two earlier novels. Writing as Eddy Arellano, he collaborated with three artists on the graphic novel Dead in Desemboque, and as Bobby Rabyd he created the Web’s first interactive novel, Sunshine ’69. He teaches in the College of Arts & Sciences at Southern Oregon University. CURSE THE NAMES is his newest work.
High on a mesa in the mountains of New Mexico, a small town hides a dreadful secret. On a morning very soon there will be an accident that triggers a terrible chain reaction, and the world we know will be wiped out. James Oberhelm, a reporter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, already sees the devastation,like the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be. He believes he can prevent an apocalypse, but first James must escape the devices of a sensuous young blood tech, a lecherous old hippie, a predator in a waking nightmare, and a forsaken adobe house high away in the Sangre de Cristo mountains whose dark history entwines them all.
A massive bomb is ticking beneath the sands of the Southwest, and time is running out to send a warning…
“In this unsettling mix of noir and paranormal obsession . . . Arellano displays a sly, Hitchcockian touch.” -- Publishers Weekly
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