What do you do when the review of your novel is more literary than your novel? Proudly post it, we reckon: The absurd is only absurd to those who are incapable of leaps of faith, or reason, or joy. Or to those who have never lived in Cleveland. Or, to quote Julio Cortazar, We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe. Sports fans all know that anything can happen at any time (unless youve DVRed the thing, and even then...), and that is why they watch. Otherwise why watch? We can always watch scripted things: plays, movies, reality shows. But at any given moment in any given game, strange things can, and do happen. (Believe me, as a Jet fan, I know, boy do I know...) Fans of Ferraros work also know that, like watching a Terry Gilliam movie or reading a Cortazar story or sitting through a Cleveland Browns game, or walking through downtown Los Angeles, everything is possible. Ferraro captures the tensile existence of the long-suffering fan, whose fatalism walks the same tightrope as his faith, by tossing a monkey wrench into the narrative so big and so believably nonsensical that it at once clogs the machinery and sets off an ever-spiraling series of even more absurd (but believable) events. In other words, the story of the aftermath. What happens when the apocalypse is fashioned by ego, and the ego-makers are forced to scramble in its wake. Money, fame, media, fandom, religion, luck, morality, hypocrisy, hyperbole all co-exist in this hilarious take on contemporary society seen through the lens of American football, with just enough mystery to keep you scratching your head deep into the mix. A great read. I look forward to the film version. If Jean-Luc Godard werent dead, or French, hed be the perfect director to do it. Alright, so hes not dead, but hes French. Get Ridley Scott on the phone. - Dean Ellis (Ellis Island Drawn & Quarterly)
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 20:20:35 +0000
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