Jungle J.D.“It was like living with dead people.”
When I finished reading this story, I uttered aloud: “Wow!”
What a story, I thought, how can I possibly categorise this, ‘gestaltise’ this, chase the noumenon of this, because, simply, it’s its protagonist Tony’s “it”! The “hypo” of the “hippo”.
Any story that features the 1960 record ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon — that was so significant in my life at that time, playing it almost incessantly, as I did, on my Dansette auto-change — cannot possibly fail, even if it’s completely above my head. This is a significant gem of literature for me, with its rocking and rolling cruising of boy and his gal in his kooky car, the sudden crash and the wild alternate post-war Nazi-Tarzan future that we all missed because we weren’t killed. Well that’s one interpretation. A seriously politically-incorrect gig that makes me think I am in a dream – or nightmare? Or literary Heaven? Ungawa!
[His gal's name is Joy. Well, here's a story I had published in 1998 that also features Del Shannon, called 'Joy Rider'!!!]
An excerpt from my real-time review of ONION SONGS (Chomu Press) here.
