An upmarket, darkly comic literary novel about identity and the absurdities of contemporary culture.
THE VOLCANO GOD (95,000 words) is about man's search for authenticity on a slippery surface. And violent escape from the discovery.
Zero-charisma, semi-divorced, middle-aged, and self-exiled, Bill Lee runs away from home in a reckless search for his one true identity. What he finds is unsatisfactory. Starting a cult and a book club along the way wasn't supposed to be part of the journey. Neither was murder.
For fans of Chuck Klosterman and Warren Zevon — that is to say comic despair and deadpan escalation in the literary traditions of Sam Lipsyte's The Ask and Joshua Ferris's To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.
I spent thirty years helping mega-corporations tell sustainability stories that were, charitably, aspirational — work that left me with a few guilty demons. A master's in English, concentration in writing and cultural theory, gave me somewhere to exorcize them.
John Rooks
Portland, Maine