|
HiT MoteL Press |
|
||||||
Psychology / Cyberpunk / Parenting / Movie / Poetry / Humor / Buddhism
A Blue Moon in August
Michael Lyons
A Blue Moon In August
This novel, about marriage and children late in life, is the 5th in the series "My Years of Apprenticeship at Love". In it the main character, an older Walker Undererwood, makes the decision to marry
What happens when the perceptive personality type is forced to
undergo the necessary commitments of time required by marriage and
raising children. We see him undergoing many hanges.Love and the
Age old Question
Veteran writer Michael Lyons takes a common universal question,
Shall I Marry? And what will be the outcome of my decision? And
explores it to humorous and human effect.
Lyons, through his alter-ego character Walker Underwood, - who has
been the main character of 6 novels now - loosely bases this novel
on his own real-life story. He changes from being a Berkeley
slacker to being a father in a crack infested neighborhood of San
Francisco. Walker Underwood himself is an information worker and
writer and he writes a Sci Fi story set in the dark crowded urban
future. This story expresses his protective regard for his wife,
and she drives the getaway car. Previously to that in a chapter,
The Prowess of Kong, we got the story of Walker’s experience
in a communal marriage; this sets up the comparison.
The female character in this person drama of star crossed
lovers, is Sam, and we see here struggles with the new marriage,
in conversations with friends, and her scenes with Walker. Set in
San Francisco, the action unfolds in flashbacks: we here the story
of their meeting on the way to the hospital for a pre-mature birth
scare, we here the story of Walker’s decision to marry on a
trip to some land the commune owned, the actually birth story
traces a time line back many generations for the confluence of
families. in memories as they prepare for the coming of a child
into their life, in chapters like Domestic Multitasking for the
Complete Mongol, and The Tabernacle of Dr. Mom, we see his awe and
adulation for his child’s mother, and how he struggles to
understand his role as a lesser person, the secondary care
giver,
A "bookmovie" (an easy to follow movie script in narrative form) shows Walker getting up for a night of memories and hallucinations - he calls the sleep deprivation of being a new parent the "poor man’s virtual realty." It is the boogie man outside the window that allows Walker to see that monstrous side of himself as he contemplates the male role models he most admires in life.The symmetry of the ascendancy of woman to mother is paralleled in the bookmovie Father Night, in which
The last chapter, the title piece A Blue Moon in august, has Walker writing to his brother a long letter in which he interprets some dreams around his own place in birth family, and telling him about seeing the goodness of family. The progression toward becoming a father reflects the mail archetype Father Night.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer of fiction,
technical manuals and theatre performance in San Francisco.
April 2005
234 pp. 5 x 8
ISBN 0-9655842-5-9 Paper $25.00