Jeff Suwak's Blog, page 5

Thumbing a Ride Down Zelazny’s Highway in “Roadmarks”

 

For whatever reason, most of my favorite books tend to gravitate towards the darker side of things. The top shelf of my bookcase displays names like Cormac McCarthy, Clive Barker, C.S. Friedman, Toni Morrison, and Richard Price. Roger Zelazny’s “Roadmarks” is one of the few ‘good-times’ reads to make it into that vaunted company. Yet the book indisputably stands as one of my favorites of all time.

Thinking back on it now, it might not be inconsequential that I first read the book when I was 20 years old and in the midst of a summer-long cross-country hitchhiking tour. The road consumed my blood then, bits of asphalt swimming in my veins. Perhaps that’s why I found my way to “Roadmarks.” Perhaps the real reason I decided to walk into the Flagstaff, Arizona library was because the book and I were tuned to the same exact resonance. Or, perhaps it was sheer coincidence. Regardless, 15 years later, I have read the book cover to cover four times, and have opened it up to look around for a few pages at least a hundred times. And still, 15 year later, I remember clearly the first day that I read it, sitting in the Flagstaff library, backpack at my side, completely absorbed from beginning to end.

For a 20 year old kid thumbing across America, the road is a mythic place, a world of its own, scattered with all times and all things, where every mile promises adventure and every smile insinuates deep leagues of knowing. It is, in short, a place very much like the Road in Zelazny’s “Roadmarks.”

Make no mistake about it, the greatest magic of the novel, as with many of Zelazny’s works, is the setting and the characters. The main plotline, which is a kind of death-match narrative in which various assassins try to take out the cigar-chomping, gunshot-wielding Red Dorakeen, is a very entertaining follow. But, really, the item of central interest in the book is the Road upon which the events take place.

The Road in “Roadmarks” traverses all times that ever were, or would ever be – concepts which sort of become convoluted when you’re traveling along a line that bisects everything that ever was. Every few miles, there are exit and entrance ramps leading to some other reality. But the Road is not merely a stage for those temporal refugees to play, it also affects the various alternate histories, so that any action can open up or block one of the exit ramps.

The book alternates between two narratives. The first is the relatively linear tale of Red Dorakeen as he smuggles guns to the Greeks at Marathon and tries desperately to find a way back to his own, distantly remembered time.

The second narrative is non-linear jump between various characters, everything from a malfunctioning, pottery-making assassin-robot to a dragon that’s fallen in love with a T-Rex. The whole thing is a collage of interesting personages, sort of a sci-fi version of Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.”

The novel is violent and somewhat profane, yet there is an undeniable playfulness about it – a statement that could be equally said of life, of course.

Along the journey of the novel, we meet Jack the Ripper, Doc Savage, and Adolf Hitler, among others. It’s the kind of tripped-out romp that one might expect from a book published at the tail end of the 70s, possessed by a sort of energetic irreverence for plausibility that rests quite nicely in my palate as a fine respite from all those tomes of brooding seriousness.

When I was 20 years old and first read “Roadmarks,” I was fresh out on the road and certain that the asphalt stretched out infinitely. Now, as I’ve gotten a bit older and have become a house-dog, every time I go back to read the book I find myself identifying just a little bit more closely with Red Dorakeen’s quest for an exit to his past.

Zelazny’s “Roadmarks” is a ticket to a fascinating world where lines of logic overlap so often that they become a big tangled ball of “wow!” It’s a ticket to an older and less serious world where time is just something to be played with. I highly recommend you get off the next exit and visit Zelazny’s “Roadmarks.” It’s a couple hours well spent.

Review of “Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different”

This book is a quick, easy read. It’s quite dense with information, conveying a lot about Jobs life in a small space. The positive aspects of its brevity were that I got a good overview of the man and of his life, I found some terrific inspiration quotes and insights, and I was able to read the book very quickly.

The drawback to its brevity is that it didn’t go as deeply into Jobs’ mind and motivations as I would have liked. This, I think, is a purely personal preference, and I don’t mention it as a failing in the book, but rather something left unsatisfied to my personal tastes.

People are fascinating, and Jobs is exceptionally so. I’d like to read a long, in-depth examination of the man and of his mind, of his experiences with meditation and spirituality, and his perspective on LSD.

However, the drawback of the books’ brevity does not count against the general quality of the book. I would give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The book was very balanced in that it didn’t shy away from the less likeable aspects of Jobs personality, which I found admirable because Jobs is still a celebrity, almost a cult figure of the modern age, and it would have been very easy to post a puff piece doing nothing but aggrandizing the man.

This book, like all honest accounts of a life as impactful as Jobs’ was, raises many points of interest in the debate over the “great man theory” of history. Jobs was clearly brilliant and fueled by a passion few could understand, but he also got quite a lot of help by people and circumstances along the way. Who knows where an arrest for his earliest forays into entrepreneurialism would have led him? Who can say how limited he would have been without the practical know-now and dedicated of Woz?

But, more than anything, I finished this book feeling inspired. Jobs was smart, without a doubt, but so were lots of people around him. What pushed him to such incredible success was his single-minded devotion to his goal. A person can’t help the level of intelligence they’re born with, but they can uncover the fire in their own soul that will give them a similar driving passion. And, with that force operating within us, who knows how high any of us can fly?

A Place at the Table

Today, I’d like to talk about a dream I once had. Or, maybe it wasn’t really a dream. Maybe it was just something I imagined, but have thought about so many times over the years that it now feels like it had been a dream. I don’t know.

Anyway, in this dream that I once had, or imagined I had, I am walking alongside a highway that runs straight through a white desert. When the dream begins, I know, in that dream way of knowing, that I have been walking a very long time and have seen nothing for many hundreds of miles.

After I have walked for some ways, I come across a round table standing on the side of the road. Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Philip K. Dick, and Cormac McCarthy are all sitting at the table, passing around bottles of beer and liquor, talking boisterously and laughing amongst each other. But all at once they fall dead silent as I approach, and turn their heads to look at me.

I notice that there is a single empty chair at the table and ask if I can sit.

They exchange glances amongst each other, all of them grinning, except for Hemingway who bores into me with his eyes. “You’ve still got a long walk ahead of you,” Hemingway says. “A long, hard walk ahead of you.”

Hunter chuckles. Bukowski gulps down some beer before he busts up laughing and spraying suds all over McCarthy who just laughs.

“But I want to sit down here with you,” I say.

Bukowski nods towards the horizon. “Then you better get walking, baby,” he says.

They all laugh and start talking amongst each other again. Their voices turn to shouting and they shove each other around, trying to knock each other off their chairs. I can’t understand what they’re saying, anymore. They’re using some language that I’ve never heard before. I wait a bit longer, hoping they’re just putting me on, but they ignore me, so I turn around and walk away.

After I’ve made it a few feet, Hunter calls out, “Hey, kid!” I turn to face him.

Hunter speaks around his cigarette holder as he screws a smoke into it. “Remember, doing it isn’t enough,” he says. “Any asshole can do it. But doing it your way…that takes some fucking grit.” The other writers nod solemnly at each other before returning to their wild, unintelligible conversation.

I turn around and walk away. With telescopic eyes I see that the road continues for vast miles ahead, and I know in that dream way of knowing things that nothing, not a single thing, about my future is guaranteed. Even an end to the highway is uncertain. It could very well continue forever, and my journey might never stop until I finally drop dead in the sun on the roadside. Knowing all that, I just keep walking.

It’s been almost five years since I had that dream, or first imagined that I had that dream. All this time later, I’m still walking alongside that highway in the desert. Some days, and lately most days, all I have to keep me going is the memory of that dream. I have no idea how many miles still lie ahead of me. I gave up hope a long time ago that things would ever get easy.

All that keeps me going is this idea of coming across that table in the desert again, seeing Jack Kerouac kick the empty chair out from the table and nod for me to take a seat, sitting down between Charles Bukowski and Cormac McCarthy, and knowing that I have the fucking grit to belong among them.

Genevieve Valentine’s “The Sandal-Bride”

As a hopeless word-nerd, there isn’t much in life that gives me more of a thrill than discovering a great new writer. For that reason, I’m deliriously stoked to have stumbled upon

Genevieve Valentine’s “The Sandal-Bride” in the March, 2011 issue of Fantasy. Yes, that issue of Fantasy is now over 2 years old, but it’s my first encounter with the issue, and it feels brand new to me.

Usually, I only become  instantly smitten with a writer after reading a novel or novella-length work, but Valentine has managed to fully ensnare me with only a short story. So much writing today feels like television-in-a-book, but “The Sandal-Bride” feels more like a tale told by a master orator beside a campfire.

The story itself is about storytellers. I don’t mean storytellers in a professional sense, but rather those individuals who are compelled by nature or by circumstance to craft meaning of the world around them by binding events together into tales.

“The Sandal-Bride” isn’t an aimless, antiseptic adventure tale (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that).  Instead, it’s a story with a literary heart, one that encapsulates what it means to be born into a doomed life. In this way, it calls to mind Jack Kerouac’s great novella “Tristessa.”

“Tristessa” was a mediation only on a junkie living in a Mexican slum. Rather than fixate entirely on the depravity of her surroundings, it also materializes in words that strange halo of light that sometimes forms like a moon ring around hard, painful lives. The scope of Valentine’s “The Sandal Bride” is too narrow to quite reach the kind of spiritually-cathartic poetry possessed by “Tristessa,” but it dances around with the same stuff, and serves as a clear indicator of the great writing Valentine is capable of.

“The Sandal Bride” takes the sort of melancholic artistry wielded by writers like Jack Kerouac and brings it into the world of fantasy. It’s a marriage of essence and form that I find immensely intriguing. Valentine’s tale leaves behind mournful echoes in very much the same way as “Tristessa.” Such music serves not only to illuminate a special kind of beauty, but also to draw us just a little bit closer to humanity. It’s the kind of feat that would be almost universally panned today as melodramatic and/or pretentious. But for true believers like myself, it’s the highest aim of all literature, whether realist, fantasy, or weird-tale.

I’m giddy with excitement for having found Valentine. I’m also happy that this story is 2 years old, because it means that there is a great deal more of her work for me to explore. Her novel “Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti,” looks particularly intriguing. I will be ordering as soon as I post this review, and I cannot recall the last time I was so giddy to read a first novel.

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-fiction/the-sandal-bride/

An interview with William Wall

I sat down and spoke to blogger, writer, and book reviewer William Wall. Here is the video from discussion. I had a lot of fun and hope to work with William again in the future. He’s got the kind of passion for books that I can relate to. The video of the interview is here:

 

http://www.creativewritingtime.com/6/post/2013/09/interview-with-jeff-suwak.html

 

 

Goodreads is hosting a giveaway of my novel “Beyond the Tempest Gate.” Everyone is welcome to enter.

Goodreads is hosting a giveaway of my novel “Beyond the Tempest Gate.” Everyone is welcome to enter..

The Lighthouse

My literary short story “The Lighthouse” is up on The Foundling Review. This is one of my proudest publications for a couple reasons. For one, I have a lot of respect for The Foundling Review. For another, the story is one of the existential meanderings that have such a hard time finding a publishing home these days. The story is dear to my heart, and I’m happy it found a home.

http://foundlingreview.com/Aug2013Issue2Suwak.html

William Wall’s review of Beyond the Tempest Gate

William Wall’s review of Beyond the Tempest Gate

In the process of arranging an interview and a book giveaway, I got to know William a bit as we exchanged some correspondence. He is a bit fanatical in his love of Rothfuss’ “Name of the Wind,” which makes him just fine in my book! William has a true love and respect for literature, and a tendency towards deep thinking on all the same existential matters that keep me awake at night and drive me out of bed in the morning. For all those reasons, I was really a bit overwhelmed to read his review of my novel.

Thank you, Mr. Wall.

Author Frank A. Rogers’ review of “Beyond the Tempest Gate”

I’ve gotten to experience some neat things since my book was published, and this is one of them.

A couple days ago Frank A. Rogers, who is an author I respect and one that recently hit Germany’s best sellers list (which I find very intriguing because he writes American Westerns) left a review of my book on Amazon and on his Facebook page. It’s an honor and I wanted to include it here.

By Frank Allan Rogers, author of Twice Upon A Time

The best books seem always to be those recommended by a friend. Beyond the Tempest Gate by Jeff Suwak is not a genre I usually read, but a close friend gave it high praise. In stories past, the rubber-stamp knights of old seldom captured my interest. But Holy Knight Gabriel is anything but typical. The author used his exceptional skills to create a believable, likable character with a unique mission, and forged a fascinating tale.

No matter what genres you favor, if you enjoy a story set in a strange world, high conflict and nonstop suspense – with an ending you will never guess ahead of time – get a copy of Beyond the Tempest Gate. The hardest thing to believe about this book is that it’s Jeff Suwak’s debut. The man has a future in storytelling.

Jeff Suwak

Greetings. Welcome to the home page of writer Jeff Suwak, author of the dark fantasy novella Beyond the Tempest Gate, to be released by Vabella Publishing on August 26, 2013.

I assume that your presence here means that you’ve taken the time to read my writing, and even gone further by taking the time to visit my site. I’m honored that you would do so. Such a sentiment might be somewhat clichéd, but it’s the most appropriate one that I can find for the circumstance. I pledged a long time ago to put every bit of my heart into my writing. To have an audience to read the words that I labor over is a tremendous gift.

Please feel free to leave comments about my stories. I would love to hear whatever thoughts you might have. I am particularly interested to hear about your impressions and interpretations of Beyond the Tempest Gate. There are mysteries buried in there that I’m still trying to figure out. I don’t view any of my writing as dictation. To me, it’s conversation, and ever since I was a kid, I have loved stories that allowed room for the reader to talk back a little bit. That’s my passion, and I hope you take the time to drop a comment about what you think.

Again, thank you for visiting.