First published 1990
A psychiatrist's patient moves through a fractured mental landscape where reality bleeds into obsession. His mind fixates on the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, weaving their images together with astronauts, car crashes, and the random violence that defines modern life. He inhabits different personas in his quest for psychological stability: bomber pilot, would-be assassin, accident victim, killer. Each role represents an attempt to process the senseless brutality surrounding him. The contemporary world offers no refuge from its own irrationality, forcing him deeper into fantasies that mirror society's darkest impulses. Through these violent imaginings, he searches for a path beyond his mental collapse. His journey leads him toward a twisted form of transcendence, where destruction becomes a means of psychological survival and sexual awakening.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, psychological-thriller, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: fractured-reality, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
127 pages · Hardcover · Re-Search Pubns
Content warnings: graphic-violence, mental-illness