Stalking America (Delere Press)

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Stalking America blends an interior/exterior assemblage of a young person on a train riding cross-county where everything is subtext and suspicion. Here, events are presented in a glassy contemplation of travel and transition. Stilted and strange dialogue, description, minor reality stars, historical influences, lists, architecture, movements, and mundane pop culture observations of a misinformed but well-meaning observer montage into an internal and external reverie. In America, nothing is seen or spoken directly. Conversations and thoughts wander in from around a corner—a deleted browser history of experience—ripple into the cliché of a coming of age. In this sense America is half-baked like a teenager. The protagonist obsesses over historical references to nude bathers, anarchist colonies, reality television, communes, volcanic eruptions, and songs in a playlist trying to understand a certain aspect of America through observations and false epiphanies. A vacated puzzle attempts to undo itself while each piece ploddingly re-assembles with the assurance of the train ride as elements come into proximity. To understand America, to really appreciate it, is to fundamentally misunderstand it at the deepest levels—to read into its flattening out and image as the ultimate subtext and that is where the story lies.