Malasz

When you’re Alexander Poole, everyone’s your teacher: a skeevy stereo salesman, master of the bait and switch; a flaky folk singer and his dog that reads Tolkien; a drug dealer loan shark with a passion for trees; a ballsy townie chick who turns you on to Springsteen; your wiseass roommate whose favorite pastime is smoking your dope; even your one true love. Together they point you to paradise — Poole’s Paradise – but what will it cost to get in? Poole's Paradise is set in 1974 in the "wilds of Western Connecticut", among the Berkshires to be more specific. It's the story of Alexander Poole, a Cort College sophomore in the fictional town of Greenville. As the blurb implies, Poole is trying to assemble a personal code of ethics, or philosophy for life, from the interactions he has with several people in his life. There's a certain level of naïveté to his demeanor. He's too trusting and deals with the world in an open and honest way that, while admirable, is da...

Poor Jeremy Fade. He lives in Goom, suburb of San Francisco, with his second wife and three kids. He worries. About his wife, about his ex-wife, about his kids, about his job. An engineer-turned-salesperson, his career and peace of mind depend upon the closing of his first sale, that of a huge software package to an unnamed university. But first he has to negotiate all the postmodern everything-is-a-social-construct politics and then kiss up to the Bursar, who decides everything. And he keeps seeing a ghost. The beginning of the book deals with the various characters and their feelings of deserving things: Fade, his sale; the Bursar, deferential behavior; Fade's drug-counselor-wife's patients, her time. All are pursuing their agendas with varying degrees of success. The University faculty is distracted from their usual concerns by the impending visit of a delegation, headed by an Imam Walid, from the Islamic Institute of Wyrigistan. Pakistan has been defeated by India. Its remn...