Phillip Freedenberg - Pynchonesque/Wallacian erudition, psychedelic excursions, and postmodern pyrotechnics. Going to absurdist lengths to dramatize the liberating effects of creative thought, the novel also demonstrates the power of the right book arriving at the right time to change one’s life

 

Phillip Freedenberg, America and the Cult of the

Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic, Corona/Samizdat,

2021.

America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic is a metafictional, maximalist, experimental book about writing a book while waiting for a book to arrive in the mail, and the mysterious transmissions from expatriate American author Rick Harsch, whose novel The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas altered the unusual lives of author Phillip Freedenberg and illustrator Jeff Walton, who both reside in Buffalo, New York.

The novel’s quixotically plotted architecture of fictional and non-fictional action contains an alternative American history and, ultimately, a new possible world, nested within a complex labyrinthian Mandelbrot fractal structure that encases a diagnostic theoretical index of ideas. Phillip and Jeff navigate an unusual world, inhabited by the character-surrogates Rick Harsch and philosopher David Miller, on an eccentric, chaotic, alchemical, experimental odyssey that occurs inside and outside the book itself. And all this under the existential umbrella of a decaying, dystopian America, where everything — including the word itself — is at risk.

America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic explores philosophy, neuroscience, totalitarianism, alchemy, technology, psychology, cosmology, psychedelia, politics, physics, mystery, adventure, absurdism, poetry, and literature within an obscured hero's quest

 “Written and illustrated during the final months of the Trump presidency, America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic transmogrifies that bizarre period into a dystopian fantasy about what might have happened had Trump and his totalitarian troglodytes triumphed. Metafictionally calling itself an “unreal, esoteric, exotic, metaphysical adventure,” the novel features three talented rebels—the author, the illustrator, and the publisher—who defend independent, nonconformist thinking against an Orwellian war against the written word by way of superfetatious prose, sci-fi/occult tropes, Pynchonesque/Wallacian erudition, psychedelic excursions, and postmodern pyrotechnics. Going to absurdist lengths to dramatize the liberating effects of creative thought, the novel also demonstrates the power of the right book arriving at the right time to change one’s life. Recommended if you like Burroughs’s Sixties novels, Brossard’s freak-show epics, Robert Anton Wilson’s trilogies, and/or Mark Leyner’s fiction.” –Steven Moore

There is a very strongly plotted core architecture of fictional and non-fiction action in the book, which is nested in a complex Mandelbrot fractal structure surrounding a diagnostic theoretical index of ideas.

That is an eloquent way to articulate the work thus far while preserving its mystery, until of course the book is published and read as an entire gestalt, at which point the grander meanings, and implications of the text will be accessible to the reader of the book.

This is a book about writing a book while waiting for a book to arrive in the mail, and the mysterious transmissions regarding author Rick Harsch and his novel The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, that inspire an eccentric alchemical experimental metafictional odyssey occurring both inside as well as outside the book, under the existential umbrella of a decaying America.

The book explores metafiction, philosophy, neuroscience, totalitarianism, alchemy, psychology, cosmology, psychedelia, politics, physics, mystery, adventure, absurdism, poetry, and literature within an obscured hero’s quest plot arch in the book among a few things. - http://www.makeamericacultagain.com/a-book/

In Episode 62, Daveand Matt talk to the author and illustrator of the cryptic meganovel sensation, America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic, out now from Corona/Samizdat Press.