Travel. Read. Fly. Read. Lie on couch as kid sleeps. Or claims his own row on empty plane. And we are read and talking The Sky Conducting by Michael J. Seidlinger and Creamsicle Blue by Mike DeCapite, books that came to us to be consumed, and books that read as rumination. In The Sky Conducting, Seidlinger weaves a web of post-apocalypse, though it is also more than that, because while there are so many ways the world can end, this is different, it is rumination by way of commentary, and it is not the end of the world as much as the death of America, hollowed-out by consumerism and misplaced direction.
It's also about the flow of words adding up to something and seeking to capture the sense of terror and dread that accompanies this death, psychic and otherwise. Which is not a bad way at all to talk of Creamsicle Blue. More rumination, more words, more hollow, and more death, though more focused on how we all die, always moving forward, yet looking back as well on what is lost along the way, love, youth, opportunities, and decisions made and not made. It is all told smaller too, the story of an individual in mid-, and possibly ongoing, wander. And while it's true that we don't really know these authors personally, we were struck that maybe there's something generational going on here, with Seidlinger representing the new generation, one certainly focused on self, but also part of a world that feels like it's rapidly deteriorating even as so much lies ahead, and DeCapite reflecting a generation just removed, more individually focused, with less to come. And maybe, just maybe this is all projection, but it is the state of the world, if not literature, we look back, we look forward, we are where we are, and things fall a part even as they sometimes fall together.
Which isn't to say it isn't in that order, it's just that, we are reading The Sky Conducting, though not as this very moment, or this one, but there is reading, and we are taking this opportunity to hype it regardless by drawing your attention to this quite kick-ass review by the Alex M. Pruteanu. Now how about some excerpt?
"Seidlinger’s prose is an exercise in brevity, with sentences, phrases,
and dialogue coming at you like short jabs to the ribs, to the kidneys,
to the jaw . . . advancing the story seamlessly. I liked the
construction of the language, as well; building blocks stacked upon
building blocks in short passages, making up the chapters."
