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ISBN 1-930922-00-0 Publisher: j-Press Publishing Distributed by: Ingram, Baker & Taylor Orders may be made directly through j-Press by phone or by internet. Wholesale orders may be placed by phone. |
by Michael McIrvinZeke Reilly, the protagonist of Deja Vu and the Phone sex Queen, sometimes has visions of future events. Though he can see these events happening, he cannot do anything to stop them nor can he make things happen just by envisioning them. The visions merely add another question mark to his life, which seems to careen out of control from one serendipitous event to another: he commits an atrocious act for which he can find no justification and, stranger still, feels no remorse. He goes into hiding, finds himself caught in a hold-up, during which he meets the phone-sex queen. Fleeing the scene together, they hide in her apartment for a time, whereupon they fall in love. Zeke's life gets no simpler from that point on, however. Through another series of bizarre events, Zeke has to flee again and is drawn farther and farther south into the ancient lands of the Aztec, Mayan and Toltec Indians, where at last he learns the meaning of his visions. Despite the strangeness of the story, Michael McIrvin's Deja Vu and the Phone Sex Queen is not merely irony or surrealism, but is presented as plausibility in a world which itself often seems absurd: violence without reason, the subsumption of cultures into mass culture, the commercialization of even tragic experience, a milieu in which we, like the protagonist, hope against hope to find purpose and meaning. |
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Zeke Reilly's picaresque adventures are like nothing else in recent fiction. McIrvin's witty absurdities shape a critique of American culture and society that is unforgettable for its wit and biting irony. Zeke himself is an amazing character, like someone escaped from a Dickens novel to America, where he has gone terribly wrong. The conclusion of the novel is a magnificent set-piece of transcendent insight and beatitude, a coda of unexpected beauty. An exceptional book by a highly individual writer. —William Doreski, Professor of creative writing and literature at Keens State University. His many literary criticism titles include Robert Lowell's Shifting Colors and The Modern Voice in American Poetry. His most recent poetry collections include Suburban Light and Pianos in the Woods.
Michael McIrvin's 'Deja Vu and the Phone sex Queen' is a complicated and multilayered novel of the first order. It's protagonist, Zeke Reilly, is beset by incomprehensible visions. He commits a terrible crime and cannot understand why; fleeing, he encounters the phone-sex queen and the two fall in love. Their journey at right angles to the world leads them to the lands of the Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec Indians, wherein lies the secret of the bizarre visions. Ironic, laced with a tongue-in-cheek world view, and a critical gauge of how mass culture tends to overwhelm and subsume all without so much as a by-your-leave. 'Deja Vu and the Phone Sex Queen' is a singularly unique, unforgettable, highly recommended work. —Midwest Book Review In addition to its intriguing title, Deja Vu and the Phone Sex Queen poses an intriguing set of questions about life, love, and death. The story concerns two damaged people [Zeke Reilly and Cindy Sweet] and their attempts to find love amid circumstances that conspire to undo their relationship. The search for purpose dominates Zeke's and Cindy's lives and ultimately takes them on separate paths. He must continue south through Mexico to escape the bounty hunters on his trail. She must stay in Denver to take care of business. All the while they attempt to reconcile their inner discoveries with the press of events. "... McIrvin's novel is rich with meaningful insights about the conflicts between ancient and modern, primitive and civilized cultures. Above all, McIrvin dramatizes the burden and the anguish of living in a modern civilization." —John Minton, Professor of English (Emeritus), Century College "Not since I was a very young man reading Kerouac's 'On the Road' have I been as excited -perhaps entranced would be a better word- by the raw energy and highly charged encounters of a fictional journey as when I picked up Michael McIrvin's 'Deja Vu and the Phone Sex Queen' and began the odyssey of a remarkable character, Zeke Reilly. ... Zeke Reilly is a Chosen One. And there are among us the Chosen. Michael McIrvin is one of the Chosen Ones. He has been given the eyes to see us as we are and the voice to tell our story. 'Deja Vu and the Phone Sex Queen' instructs me in the way I want books to instruct me. I can see myself more clearly, my place in the web of our common humanity. And I am roused from my lethargy to take a stand. I urge you take this journey of a remarkable man as it is told by a remarkable author." —John Freeman, for American Book Review, Nov.-Dec., 2002. |
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Michael McIrvin lives in Wyoming with his wife, Sharon, and his sons, Jesse and Eli. Michael has worked as a telephone installer, liquor store clerk, bouncer, archaeologist, and ranch hand, among many other erstwhile occupations. He taught literature and writing courses for a dozen years and is presently a writer and freelance editor. His essay collection, Whither American Poetry, was published in 1999, and his fifth poetry collection, Optimism Blues: Poems Selected and New, was published by Cedar Hill Publications in 2003. He is presently at work on a novel about the CIA titled The Blue Man Dreams the End of Time. |
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