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Surreal and satiric, this collection of short fiction pays a mesmerizing visit to the shadowy zone that lies between present everyday life and a perilous near future that is frighteningly tangible. In "The Wall of America," the Department of Homeland Security has put up a border wall between the U.S. and Canada, but the NEA has plans to turn it into the world's largest art gallery. After the Rapture, working-class life for "A Family of the Post-Apocalypse" is not as different as one might imagine, despite the occasional plague of biker-gang locusts. Between addiction and art is "Ringtime," where a criminal is trapped in a recursive compulsion to visit other people's memories while he is forced to record his own for an eager audience. A Somali schoolgirl living in post-WWIII Minneapolis goes on a bloody crusade to rid her town of a familiar predator, one who might just be a monster, in "White Man." Vivid, starkly imagined, and strikingly articulate, this disquieting compilation is a journey that skillfully straddles the line between absurdity and irony.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Courtney Glover
reviewed Wall of America on July 29, 2010
Wall of America
I was unaware of Tom Disch before ReaderCon 2010, when Konrad Walewski introduced me to his works.
Unaware, but apparently nobody is unfamiliar. It's hard to believe this rebellious, gun-toting, gay-liberating, tattooed outlaw is the same guy who wrote The Brave Little Toaster and the original treatment for The Lion King.
This collection of his work shows his diversity, which is another way of saying it's uneven. Through the first three or four stories I wondered, "What's the big deal about this guy?" But as I stuck with it, I'm glad I did. "Canned Goods" was essentially a one-liner joke, but a funny one and it encouraged me to keep reading. "Bunny Steiner," "Voices of the Kill," "In Xanadu" and others were wildly entertaining.
He pushed a couple of my "fail" buttons, though: "Torah! Torah! Torah!" got much of the book of Genesis factually wrong, conflating the story of Abraham and Sarah with that of Jacob, Rachel and Leah. (Disch went to Catholic school. No excuses!) And some of his stories, "Bunny Steiner," "Man Who Read a Book" and "Slaughter Rock," were riffs on the business of being a writer or a creative artist based in New York -- which always struck me as lazy and self-indulgent material.
But overall, I'm very much impressed by this writer who was as once prolific and silenced too soon. But Disch would've been comfortable with that contradiction. It certainly wasn't his most jarring.
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Add Wall of America, Surreal and satiric, this collection of short fiction pays a mesmerizing visit to the shadowy zone that lies between present everyday life and a perilous near future that is frighteningly tangible. In The Wall of America, the Department of Homeland Secu, Wall of America to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add Wall of America, Surreal and satiric, this collection of short fiction pays a mesmerizing visit to the shadowy zone that lies between present everyday life and a perilous near future that is frighteningly tangible. In The Wall of America, the Department of Homeland Secu, Wall of America to your collection on WonderClub |
