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Fast Eddie, King of the BeesBy Robert Arellano Fiction | Paperback, 4.5" x 7"
"Robert Arellano is that rare thing: an exceptional creative talent perfectly in tune with his own rapidly changing times." -Robert Coover, author ofGhost Town An abandoned child hustles on the streets of a dystopic, near-future Boston in the aftermath of the Great Devaluation - squatters have turned the tunnel system into an underground hive known as Dig City. In an elaborate search for his unknown parents, Eddie narrates through several levels of deception: street performer, pickpocket, adoptee, casino employee, and finally commander of the subterranean revolution. Fast Eddie is a convoluted Oedipal adventure blending low-brow scenarios with high-art diction, reminiscent of Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Edmund White. With the publication of Fast Eddie, Akashic Books launches the Akashic Urban Surreal series. Inspired by the shifting social boundaries in underground classics such as O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces and Nersesian's Manhattan Loverboy -- and echoing the achievements in imagination of magic realism - this series invites readers to glimpse worlds that are similar to their own, but with margins and rules that evolve . . . and devolve. In 2004, Akashic will publish Arellano's new novel, Don Dimaio of La Plata. Robert Arellano is a Cuban-American novelist and hypertext author teaching writing at Brown University. His stories have enjoyed favorable attention from New York Times Book Review and the Associated Press. In 1996, Sonicnet published Arellano's electronic book, Sunshine '69. Arellano has lectured extensively on his groundbreaking work in hypertext and literary innovation. He offered the inaugural speech at the first Sundance Film Festival New Media Seminar and the keynote address at the 1999 European Cultural Capital Media Arts Symposium in Stockholm. Arellano's essays on new directions in literature have been published in the User's Guide to the Millennium, edited by Julio Ortega, and online at Feed magazine. Arellano has worked intensively with writers John Hawkes, Joe Ashby Porter, Paul West, Edmund White, and C. D. Wright; and has instructed fiction workshops at Brown with colleagues Ben Marcus and Carole Maso. He spends his breaks playing guitar for indie rock outfit Palace Brothers. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Critical Praise for Fast Eddie, King of the Bees: "Fast Eddie is a down-and-out and underground fable. It's a tight close-up, mile-a-minute monkey-cam, filled with more wordplays and puns than an Eminem rap." -Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up "A lively and imaginative 21st-century parody of the Victorian novel of the foundling in search of his true parents, complete with comically elaborate twists and turns of plot, broad social satire, and a rich cast of characters. Fast Eddie's a lot of fun." -Robert Coover "Robert Arellano leads us through a maze of playful language and hairpin plot twists to a realm where myth mutates like cells bombarded by radiation--all with a showman's touch for making the familiar world seem strange and a strange world vivid." -Stacey Richter, author of My Date with Satan |
