ISBN: 0-88739-346-2
114 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Pub Date: 1/2002
Paperback Original
Price: $13.95
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Superstitious Life of Trimble DeFeet, The
B. Anthony Varga
Inhibited, self-conscious Trimble DeFeet is singularly unsuccessful as sole U.S. representative for the Laguiole Knife Company; he is also lead singer for Scapegoat, a band that plays seventies hits by black artists in funky nightspots.
Ahman Relingquiche is the personally magnetic, spiritually astute daughter of a sadistic mid-eastern despot. When Trimble saves Ahman's life by performing an emergency tracheotomy with an heirloom knife on the grubby dance floor of Chubby Silk's Nocturnal Experience, he does not expect to get his first massage-or his first lessons in self redemption and universal love. Indeed, Ahman presents him with such a rigorous case for the logic of love that he finds himself falling in love with her. But when Trimble overcomes his myriad insecurities and brashly sets out to ask her father for her hand, he finds an unexpected sort of redemption.
Trimble contemplates the details of the previous evening's drama as he captains his car through the comforting illusory omniscience of daylight, back up to Chubby Silk's Nocturnal Experience.... Was it true about his hairstyle, Trimble wonders, did it somehow comment-however abstractly-on his capacity for courage? Or were those just the words of a retarded woman in shock, which the paramedic, before carting her away, had said was clearly the case?
Trimble feels both afflicted and blessed by her words. It wouldn't take a lot of imagination to interpret her comment as sarcasm. Or did she seem to have an instant affinity for him, this retarded woman? Didn't she seem attracted to him beyond general, momentary, appreciative kindness? Or was that just her absence of mind? Her smile said a lot, yes but her words, what she said. Laughing about his hair. Plucked barely from the grave and all she can say is that his hair was "courageously unique," while laughing as if someone from the other side had told her a world-class joke just before pushing her back over to this side. Fucking nut.
Bio: B. ANTHONY VARGA lives and writes in St. Louis, Missouri.
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