Novels II

 

Novel about a woman who thought for 20 years about a phrase her friend said: "Drum machines have soul."

Novel about a ventriloquist who has a dummy, Serge, that talks to him and for him on stage, and sometimes off stage. After years of this, the dummy grows to desire his own remote talking creature. He settles upon a green parrot - and a loquacious one at that. At home, the parrot, called Jeremy, lives a largely cageless life - flying to the window ledge, over to the kitchen counter, the coat rack, back to his open cage. And all the time, talking - repeating words and phrases in a doubly uncanny voice: The uncanny voice of the dummy echoed in the almost human voice of Jeremy. As happens to many bird owners and bird watchers, Serge is struck by the canny intelligence of Jeremy. The mind beneath those green feathers appears to be always absorbing and processing. Jeremy develops a robust vocabulary which he can produce on his own. The three of them - the ventriloquist, Serge and Jeremy - take to the stage, and they are a hit. Nobody has ever seen something so dynamic in the world of ventriloquism. Inevitably, Jeremy the parrot wants more. He wants his own remote creature to speak through. The ventriloquist is the obvious choice. The ventriloquist will speak the saucy, sassy and occasionally sage words of Jeremy.

Novel about a guy who could not solve capitalism. He couldn't solve it on a personal level. He would get a decent job and eventually, inevitably, find himself unable to cope with the workplace hierarchy and the fact that the job consumed his peak hours of mental acuity and physical energy. He wanted those hours to himself, to be able to create things, beautiful things, great things. He wanted those hours to be able to enter into relationship with the natural world -- even if this merely meant the winds, the oaks, the elms, the squirrels, the rabbits, the worms, the ladybugs and the clover in his neighborhood. He sensed that the loneliness he felt on an existential level could only be resolved through a relationship with that world. He started to bring grasses, insects and, ill advisedly, mice into the nonprofit where he worked. It seemed like a good solution. People could get to know the native grasses, The bugs and even the scurrying mice. And so it went, with the guy trying method upon method to both be able to earn a livable and have a relationship with the living world, with some methods working better than others.