Jokerman 8

(Paperback)

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A NOVEL FOCUSING ON ECO-SABOTEUR ACTIVISTS AND A MULTI-STRANDED NARRATIVE ABOUT TWO PASTS THAT CAN NEVER BE RECONSTITUTED Jokerman 8 is a posse of forest radicals based out of San Francisco State University that engages in a series of demonstrations and stunts to protest environmental destruction: they sink whaling ships in iceland and stage a "tree-in" in southern Oregon, then party to let off steam. Along the way, numerous subplots merge the past with the present: a young man tries to escape the draft, and yippies succeed in levitating the Pentagon. Challenging and irreverent, the text moves at a breakneck pace, stopping just long enough to question how the world got the way it is and how it might be fixed.

Reviews

"My first thought when I started reading Jokerman 8 was, 'Damn it, why didn't I write this book' Then I set to work trying to figure out how to plagiarize it. Finally, I had sit back & give in to its crazy brilliance - which is all its own and unstealable. Written with love for all of us babies blinking in the silent home movies of the 60s and 70s, Jokerman 8 reminds us of who we were meant to be and how we intended to live in this wack-ass world." - Ariel Gore, author of Atlas of the Human Heart "Like the Dylan songbook its title invokes, Jokerman 8 is freewheeling and deeply felt, moving and cymbal-crashing funny. It is also that rarity: an angry, politically-minded work of exuberant high spirits. A great first novel." - Andrew Lewis Conn, author of P: The Novel"

Author Bio

Richard Melo also writes for The Believer and the Gobshite Quarterly. This is his first novel. He lives in Portland, Oregon.