Not Fade Away
or, Quality Woodwork
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In 1959, on the Day the Music Dies, President Dwight Eisenhower signs a top-secret order meant to protect America's biggest secrets.
Decades later, at the height of the cold war, an American army general in receipt of Ike’s long-forgotten order mistakenly believes he’s been told to nuke the world.
All that stands in his way is a mysterious boy who believes he's Buddy Holly reincarnated.
What begins as a spoof on cold war spy thrillers soon becomes a tour de force of 20th century American pop culture.
“I wanted to write the sort of 19th century novel that sums up the age in which we live, a switched-on Dickens,” explains writer Bill Keisling. “Instead of two-dimensional Dickens characters, the characters here are American archetypes inspired by pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein. I wanted a book that departs from the dull state of American realistic fiction. I wanted a book that is fun.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Long and unwieldy, this strained, styleless and implausible novel takes the reader on an apocalyptic joy ride from Eisenhower's presidency to John Lennon's assassination. Concerned about national security, Eisenhower appoints General George Natlong head of a supersecret national security task force; the agency is so secret, in fact, that succeeding presidents forget about its existence. Unable to draw presidential attention to glaring weaknesses in the U.S. defense position, Natlong decides to demonstrate the perilous state of U.S. nuclear missile codes by launching the missiles himself. He hires computer scientist Linda Patterson to build a super computer that can produce exponentially more powerful versions of itself. Soon, the penultimate computer in her series, Epimetheus, needs just one more upgrade before it's ready to go into launch mode. As day zero approaches, George's spoiled, rich wife insists that George give her niece Claire a place in the Virginia compound where George has carved out an underground nuclear shelter. Claire brings along her boyfriend, Paul Stocken, who believes he is the reincarnation of the legendary Buddy Holly. Paul and George immediately hate each other. Eventually, their confrontation, which is also the clash of good old rock 'n' roll and bad old militarism, results in the foiling of George's plot, and the first rock video. Keisling's second novel (after The Meltdown) is an endless shaggy dog story that never becomes even remotely comic.
