Carnival Wolves - Softcover

Rock, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 038549209X ISBN 13: 9780385492096

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1998

Synopsis

Alan Johnson is a man ill-at-ease among people and only slightly more comfortable with animals. His story begins in upstate New York with his rescue of an injured Dalmatian who "came down out of the sky and survived the fall, showed me how gradually I have fallen--how I never touch, never really talk to another person...I am hardly a person at all." The dog heals and is returned to its neglectful owner, but Alan Johnson steals it back and heads west in search of what it means to be human.

As he crosses the United States, he moves through landscapes full of animals half-tamed and people run wild: a fanatical taxidermist, a lonely woman raising tigers on her remote ranch, a tragic circus chimp named Rufus, contemporary polygamists, and the caretakers of boot camps for troubled youths. They are Carnival Wolves, manifestations of our attempts to tame what is dangerous and wild, distorted reflections of parts of ourselves.

After a tortuous journey through various states of depravity--and of America--Alan Johnson ends up in California having reached a reconciliation of instincts and having found a human being he can love. A gripping, hallucinatory read, Carnival Wolves is a provocation, a plea for identification that questions the humanity of its readers and confirms Peter Rock as a unique literary talent.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Alan Johnson is a man ill-at-ease among people and only slightly more comfortable with animals. His story begins in upstate New York when, while walking through a gorge, he sees a dog fall from the cliff above and comes to her rescue. He interprets the incident as a sign. The dog heals and is returned to her neglectful owner, but Alan Johnson steals her back and heads west in search of what it means to be human. As he crosses the United States, he moves through landscapes full of animals half-tamed and people run wild. They are carnival wolves, manifestations of our attempts to tame what is dangerous and wild, distorted reflections of parts of ourselves. After a tortuous journey through various states of depravity - and of America - Alan Johnson ends up in California having reached a reconciliation of instincts, and having found a human being he can love.

From Kirkus Reviews:

In this spooky, sharply written second novel, a social misfit rambles through classic American Badlands territory, emerging with newborn sanity and decency despite the odds. Utah-born Rock (This Is The Place, 1997) mines a crystalline vein by slipping his wandering cipher of a protagonist, Alan, into one scene after another in which modern dysfunction and rural claustrophobia combine with horrific possibility. Museum guard Alan is sprung from his life back East when a dalmatian falls down a cliff and lands at his feet. A protoTravis Bickle, with potential for good or evil, steals the injured dog from its callous owner, the first of a series of characters who train, trap, torture, or otherwise dominate animals (and, by extension, people). The fractured, off-center narrative short-circuits conventional thriller/serial-killer conventions, so that Alan at first barely inhabits each set piecean encounter on the frozen Great Lakes with a solitary woman; a strange saving friendship with Upper Wisconsin recluse Eddie Polenka, whose barn is full of ``unrealistically'' stuffed animals and who hints at a crowning achievement (skinning a woman). Meanwhile, Alan's presence grows less peripheral, and his humanity increases by hard-won increments, through progressive psychic ordeals: as a mechanic for a Montana doomsday cult, lover of a woman who raises tigers for illegal big-game hunting ranches in Texas, witness to a polygamous Mormon village. Full of scenes of zoos, race tracks, farms, and a boot camp for rebellious teens, the novel underscores the frail divide between so-called social man and the animals he subjugates. Despite the burden of its sometimes autistic narrative structure, and a few too many enigmatic interactions, heres fiction thats often exciting to read for all the old reasons: voice, vision, talent, guts. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 038549209X
• ISBN 13: 9780385492096
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288