Wednesday night at 8 on Bibliocracy: MARK
SLOUKA. Perhaps even the name of the
town of Brewster in southeastern New York , on the border with Connecticut , a grim working class village,
suggests the themes of my guest’s novel about it. It sound like bruiser or bruised, and the
name is just the start. In his newest book,
essayist, short story writer and novelist Mark Slouka seems to have gone back
to his real-life home town of, yes, Brewster, NY to reconcile with the place,
painfully if beautifully. With the
intensity of the best coming-of-age novels told from the perspective of a
sadder, wiser narrator - A Separate Peace,
This Boy’s Life – Brewster the novel relies on its
author’s considerable skill at putting his characters, trapping them, in
Brewster the town by way of their parents’ and the nation’s histories, and of
race, war and class. The claustrophobic
urgency of youth is here provoked by most of Brewster’s adults, exaggerated ---
not only the sociological requirement, or biology, of being a teenager --- by
duplicity, silence, the exceptions being a couple of teachers and close, close
friendship. And if all of that were not
enough, the politically engaged author finds a way to bring more tension, story
and characterization to that pivotal year of 1968, with the US wars against Southeast Asia ,
civil rights struggles, rock music and youth culture as backdrop. Mark Slouka has written short stories and
novels, including the collection Lost Lake Eng. He is an award-winning essayist with work
chosen for the Best American Short
Stories, Best American Essays and
the PEN/O. Henry Prize stories, and
of course a contributing editor at Harper’s
and he arrives at KPFK with all things --- trouble, loss, love and the
Viet Nam War --- Brewster. Thanks for listening, on the radio or online, and as a free download from the KPFK audio archives. Support anti-corporate community media!
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