Deus Ex Machina
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
On a distant island, reality show contestants battle for bragging rights and a slot on next week's episode. They've perfected their dramatic roles and are prepared to do whatever it takes to win. There's the take–no–prisoners Marine sergeant, the gay hairdresser, the ruthless lawyer, the brainy poet. But one player refuses to compete—Gloria Hamm, a sullen dental hygienist, voted least likely to win by the show's crew.
The higher–ups are desperate for ratings and sensational twists to trump the plots of seasons past. But the producer—haunted by personal tragedies all too real—is losing control of the show and its crew. While he obsesses about Gloria, the crew plots mutiny, a contestant dances with insanity, and disease threatens to halt the show completely. When real catastrophes strike, the producer finds it harder and harder to navigate his surreal landscape, where boundaries of the real, imagined, and orchestrated have blurred beyond recognition.
Deus Ex Machina deconstructs our notions of narrative, revealing how tricky it is for any auteur to disappear from his creation. In an age when people will seemingly do anything to be on television, it asks what is the true nature of "reality," and what is its cost?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rarely has societal critique come with more mayhem than in Altschul's second novel (after Lady Lazarus), but perhaps extreme times call for extreme measures, especially when reality television is on the skewer. Television's The Deserted follows 10 contestants forced to trek through a merciless island environment, while, behind the scenes, an unnamed producer wonders how, after 12 seasons, he can turn around a ratings slide and retain control of the show. As The Deserted degenerates into outright warfare, one cast member, Gloria Hamm, refuses to take any action at all, even toward her own survival, and the producer becomes convinced that an island cave holds the key to the out-of-control production and the path to the Promised Land. Standards of reality and the price of playing God are certainly on Altschul's mind, but the key to this novel is banter, the petty, almost hypnotic nothings that eat away at the business of life until we begin to identify with Gloria's refusal to fight for it. Though Altschul's brand of Juvenalian satire can grow tedious in its zaniness, as an anarchic assault on the dehumanizing power of media, it excels at fighting excess with excess.
