*A commentary update from the audio publisher regarding A Disorder Peculiar to the Country


Monkey Mind*

 Update: January 19, 2012
It is my understanding that Ken Kalfus has been at work on a new novel. Of course, anyone in publishing already knows this, but this blog is not written for the likes of publishers marketplace and publishers weekly, but for the lonely audiophiles who straggle on to this site in the wee morning hours. The traffic that comes to this site is mostly myselfto write, my mother to see what else I might have said about her, or my father, sister, or nephew; and audiophiles. The confusion, audioevolution.com versus audioevolution.org.

"Audio Evolution,. heh that sounds cool, I need some new stereo equipment."__audiojoe

Original post March 2007

Ken Kalfus's post 9/11 novel, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country was a 2006 National Book Award nominee. A sly satire (dark) black comedy of war, terrorism and conjugal strife. Audiobook Details Author Interview

I first read this novel in manuscript when I was still the acquisitions director for Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC, now known as Macmillan Audio. Little did I know at the time how few the degrees of separation were between myself and the author, Ken Kalfus. I would come to find out later, that the book was dedicated (in part) to my wife's college roommate and that the two of them had attended NYU with the author. It is indeed "a small world after all." Published in contravention of all the accepted axioms of audio publishing (big first print, marketing budget and simultaneous with the hardcover). Why? Because: the novel spoke to me.

I found in it a voice that crystallized my inchoate concerns, thoughts and feelings post 9/11, especially about the direction the country was heading in its aftermath. As a nation, I believe that we responded to 9/11 with our collective hypothalamus, determined to avenge the stain upon our nation. We set reason aside, then our founding principles, and finally, our morality. There is nothing we have not sacrificed to achieve victory in the war on terror, nothing, not habeus corpus, due process, nor civil liberties. We sacrificed it all in an illusory quest, not for freedom from terror, but for freedom from the fear of terror. And all we have after four years and billions of dollars is more terror and more fear of terror as we sacrifice more and more of our freedoms. A black comedy, indeed.

The Phoenix Chronicle (continued)

۞         ۞        ۞

My life is a barren field.

I begin again.

This is the way,

I am the Phoenix.

Jake was my uncle

a Texan, who drank to drown his sorrow.

When he was younger

he thought he had what we wanted, Jessie

his wife, his high school sweetheart.

It was a desperate love.

She was unfaithful, but so was he.

Jacob was no saint

but there is a rule in Texas for women

and one for men

that it ain’t right nor fair

just ain’t germane.

He killer her lover on a full moon night

coming home from a three day drunk.

Caught them in bed together.

Killed him with his hands.

His best friend.

He served his time, seven years.

Jessie was long since gone

His children to

Scattered to the winds

He returned to the oil field

Late nights, slamming quarter inch pipe

down deeper and deeper holes

to the bowels of the earth

They said of Jake

he could do more work drunk

than two men sober.

He took more wives

but it came to nothing.

Always his sorrow, his secret grief.

Living in cheap motels

stinking of cigarettes and stale beer

he worked less, drank more.

Always a bar stool for Jacob.

He died drunk in Dubai

rolled his truck down a mountain of sand

I was with him once, asleep at the wheel

When the wind moves the sand.

it sings his story

it howls in the wind.

Jacob’s Lament

I am Jacob

I have grown so weary.

Life is a barren field

and I am hungry.

I sew the seed by hand

I water it with blood

still nothing grows.

Shall I live to see the rain

and if I did

who would I tell.

I am the dust.

Will I ever be at peace

until death,

Or even then?

taboo

Transcription from the black moleskin, "Dark Matters"

"the nymphet, now with a dash of Irish blood, was really much the same lass,... but otherwise the thing was new and had grown in secret the claws and wings of a novel" - Vladimir Nabokov (1956)

He wrote his story, and then went to burn it as promised,
but the wife stopped him on the way to the incinerator
and saved the final copy.

Commentary:
(Deleted)
obliviously unaware,
of the cock of her hip
I transcribe immoral words
on the soft fold of her

shoulder,
(Yes, less offensive, shoulder.)

She casts a glance back
questioning
(an encantation)
then cast a spell.