1. Despite having been a teen mom on the streets, Clio was only now coming to terms with the infinite sadness and cruelty in the world. Life, which had once been so perilous, was desperate in ways she had not before considered; it was hard to say which was more frightening: the practical or the conceptual.
2. To be optimistic seemed naive . . . or did it? She could not imagine life without the hazy, ephemeral beauty of hope.
3. Sometimes she felt jealous of the garden, whose plants -- and specifically the campanula -- seemed to flower without any thought of their imminent demise.
4. The night garden, where strings of lights now lit up the sky, offered even more fear and more comfort. It was, she realized as she considered the artificial stars, how she pictured death.
5. One of her 'owners,' who constantly complained about his sore hamstring (but at least managed to run 36 miles this week), went out into the larger world, where he brought back images of an even-bigger garden.
6. He complained about so much. Apparently, on this run, the camera had jumped out of his pocket and landed face down, smashing its screen. "I've run hundreds of miles with this camera in my pocket," he said. "Why now?" Clio nodded ambiguously and thought about it. "Why does anything ever happen?"
7. Apparently, the park was filled with annoying pedestrians walking their dogs on twenty-five foot leashes. A group of children, armed with swords, gave chase as Clio's 'owner' passed them. "Lay down your swords, loud things," said the 'owner' (to himself). "For you will not catch me, even when I am hobbled by this tender hamstring." Clio could not understand why these children were not also on leashes. Actually, she did understand. "The world is not a fair place."
8. The smashed screen cost $119 (including tax) to repair. "What is money?" asked Clio. "And how much is enough?" It was a question that seemed to get at the crux of the 'national conversation' yet was rarely asked with any precision. "If these Senators already live in castles," she asked, "is it necessary to paint their gates in gold leaf?"
9. Meanwhile, a mysterious box containing 'books' had arrived. The 'owner' was pleased about something, for once. "You see how nice it looks with the french flaps and the beautiful cover?" he asked Clio. "And it feels substantial. It's a good size. It's almost five hundred pages long!" But then he returned to his usual state of anxiety. "Do you think anyone will read it?"
10. "Probably not," said Elektra, who had pre-ordered a copy from the publisher's web site, just to get the 'owner' to stop badgering her about it all the time.
11. "But if it looks good on the shelf, maybe that's all that matters," she mused, and -- for a little while -- everyone went to sleep.
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06/17/2017
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.