The reach and the grasp

Just finished rereading my novel Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones and am deeply satisfied by it. Here, I think, my grasp is as close to my reach as in anything I've written. This novel is almost perfect, in terms of what I set out to do. It also is a marriage of deeply personal parts: from my life, from my previous work, from my literary obsessions. This is my story, through and through, "a final statement" as clear and strong as my skills allow. This is how I see the world, through my protagonist CJ.

This book deserves a much wider audience but it won't get it unless, far down the road if at all, an enthusiastic advocate for it appears. But it already has attracted enough favorable responses to satisfy me, to tell me I am not alone in my interests or tastes.

"This book surprised me. It is intelligent, funny, bawdy and real," wrote a reviewer at Amazon. Perfect. 

Another wrote, "SODOM, GOMORRAH & JONES is a unique and original look at the world we live in from the perspective of someone who has done a lot of living. What's happened to the world in the last century is sad; the American Dream used to be about having a family, a house, a car, and a comfortable life without worry and stress. Now it's about getting rich, and then getting richer. And to hell with anyone or anything that gets in our way. If this speaks to you, so will this novel. I recommend it to those with an open mind, a progressive spirit, and a lust for life."

The critic Bob Hicks wrote, 

Deemer’s novel flips easily through flashbacks and current events, and it can hit lightly on some of its scenes, like a screenplay (and in fact, Deemer has taught screenwriting at PSU for several years). It also drops in frequently on CJ’s increasingly hopeless and cynical view of the state of the nation: he was, after all, a historian and a political activist. As offhand as these passages can seem, they’re a crucial part of the novel, both in defining its position in the culture and in reporting the core of CJ’s character. Deemer doesn’t dwell on CJ’s political positions, and his references can pass so quickly that they sometimes seem more like sound-bite position statements than explorations of complex social issues. Yet the novel’s opening sentence – Was the American Dream coming to an end? – is a serious proposition that Deemer examines, in various forms, from beginning to end.

Few and scattered fans but that's to be expected, given the parameters of the book's existence. I am glad it is out there, and I am proud that my grasp came so close to my reach. This is success, in my value system.