Mike Palecek

Some historical events take on such significance they become ingrained in a nation's culture. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is one such event. In part because of the conspiracy theories that have grown up around it, nearly 50 years later we still see a variety of books, both novels and nonfiction, published about it. The assassination and the questions of conspiracy that arose almost immediately are the building blocks for Mike Palecek's latest novel, rel="nofollow" target="_top">Johnny Moon. And while the conspiracy theories are a driving force, certain readers will see an ability to evince the times as the novel's real strength.

The title character is a third grader in a Catholic school when Kennedy is killed. Johnny is flush with not only the hopes and dreams of a third grader -- becoming physically fit in response to Kennedy's promotion of fitness -- but the hopes and dreams that reflect the Kennedy Administration more broadly -- going to the Moon and fighting Communism. In fact, Johnny is fond of quoting the phrase from Kennedy's speech announcing the lunar program, that Americans pursue such goals "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." This is a unique time in American history, post-50s but before the tumult and disarray of the late 1960s. It is a time that seemed so much simpler and clear.

Johnny's story reflects the disruption of the times. The sister of a nun at his school witnesses the assassination. Glimpses of her story reveal various facts with which anyone who has read about the conspiracy theories is familiar. Johnny, occasionally picked on for his seemingly odd ways, becomes the leader of an odd assortment of people who come to believes the school boiler possesses special powers, powers that among other things may reveal what really happened in Dallas. Johnny leads classmates, nuns and a couple maintenance workers on a type of vision quest to assuage the rupture in their previously ordered world and the suggestion that the assassination may not be as it seems.

At times, this search may strike readers as a tad confusing. Moreover, it doesn't quite ring true the Catholic school environment in which it occurs. This is surprising because perhaps the strongest part of the book is Palecek's ability to capture the culture and and atmosphere of Catholic schools at the time. As he notes in a prologue, in the 1960s "every berg, town and ville in the Midwest boasted a Catholic block of school, rectory and convent." That was certainly the case in my hometown, where I was a second grader in a Catholic school at the time of the Kennedy assassination. The school took up half block. The rectory and sat on a quarter of a block across the street. And even though my hometown had a population of less than 15,000 at the time, it had two Catholic schools.

There is no doubt the Catholics took pride in JFK being the first Catholic president. That pride bolstered the sense of exhilaration many others in the country felt. But it also bolstered the Catholic education system being one in which patriotism and religion went hand-in-hand, particularly when it came to "the Red Menace." It was virtually doctrine among students in Catholic schools that unless the government continued to battle Communism, the Catholic Church would be a primary target when the Russians invaded. Regardless of the size of the town, children in Catholic schools "realized they would be soon rounded up by Russian soldiers and made to line up in the playground and say there is no God."

Thus, although Johnny Moon's main theme purports to be the Kennedy assassination, those of a certain era, particularly those who attended a Catholic elementary schools, will see it differently. To us, Johnny's life and beliefs are a surprisingly insightful and accurate commentary on an aspect of life never forgotten but rarely finding its way into print.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)… (lisätietoja)

As its subtitle indicates, this blog stemmed from feeling wholly alien in an area that is a bulwark of conservative ideology. Imagine my surprise to find that one of the most radical political novels I've read in years comes from Sheldon, Iowa, some 70 miles away from where I live.

Mike Palecek's Looking for Bigfoot is a no-holds-barred onslaught on the state of the America today. Palecek uses Bigfoot as a metaphor for what we tend to believe about America.

Seemingly semi-autobiographical, the novel's protagonist, Jack Robert King, is a former seminarian who served prison time for protesting the U.S. military. He worked for a while on small town newspapers and now is a stay-at-home husband in Dyersville, Iowa, where he and his family live in the farmhouse from the movie Field of Dreams. Jack is convinced Americans spend too much time on banality to realize that the American dream and American history are the product of disinformation created and controlled by men in the shadows. He starts his own streaming radio program on the Internet called "Bigfoot Radio." Bigfoot Radio streams in more than one sense as it is often a stream of political consciousness from "a blue state mind living in a red state universe."

Jack becomes so obsessed with truth versus perception that his home life is falling apart. When a magazine he's never heard of mysteriously arrives in his mailbox with a cover story about the disappearance of his former baseball coach who became a Bigfoot investigator, Jack decides he needs to find the truth. And what better way than to search for his former coach and Bigfoot?

Balance of review http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=543… (lisätietoja)

Everyone at some time must respond to their conscience. When Charlie Johnson's inner voice leads him in new directions in Mike Palecek's Terror Nation, Charlie finds himself truly a prisoner of conscience in middle America.

Charlie is retired after spending 35 years as a sportswriter and sports editor in Saint Smith, Iowa. He is a prototypical resident of rural and small town America. He went to work dutifully, raised his family, belonged to the Kiwanis Club and was a Reagan Republican. Yet with his retirement, Charlie has begun pondering the state of America. He ends up writing letters to the president and the local newspaper, among others, questioning the war in Iraq and the direction of the country. His letters and comments cause his townsfolk to start looking at him askance.

With his wife having left him, relatives in Saint Smith convince Charlie to voluntarily commit himself to the Saint Smith Mental Health Institution. Yet this is little more than a pretext by which to lock Charlie up. With an ongoing yet seemingly unknown armed struggle between rebels ("The White Sox") and government forces ("The Red Sox"), Charlie is viewed by the powers that be as a dissident and potential homegrown terrorist. When Charlie walks away from the institution, SWAT teams and federal forces come in search of and forcibly return him.

What happens to Charlie is a precursor for the rest of the country. Emulating the worst of the Soviet Union, dissidents (i.e., those who oppose the administration) are sent to mental institutions and/or disappear. Shortly after Charlie's institutionalization, more widespread and public sweeps and detention of dissidents occur on the basis they threaten national security. The message is not only that this could happen but if it can happen in rural America, it can happen everywhere.

Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/2006/05/12/book-review-terror-nation-2006/… (lisätietoja)