Victoria N. Alexander talks with Sean Caron about Locus Amoenus live from 6PM – 9PM Pacific time (9PM-11PM Eastern).
In Locus Amoenus, a 9/11 widow remarries and her son, Hamlet, learns from Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, that something is rotten in the United States of America.
Now archived at http://www.awakeninglibertyshow.com/show-archives/
It’s ironic if you move to the bucolic quiet of natural surroundings of say, upstate New York, you may be out of the grit and hustle of the city but you may also find yourself in the midst of what America really looks like. The struggle for the Good Life begins again with wholly new challenges.
Ironically you will again be gaping aghast at material obsession and driven spending on poisonous foods and crappy stuff nobody should even want. The conspiracy reaches into the countryside, i-phone-dazed and texting people who are across the street, where nobody votes because the real choice is between Coke and Pepsi or Ford and Chevy, and the bureaucrats right next door are somehow sneaking closer and closer to what you do and say, or that the kids are getting bullied by Core Educational mandates and standardized testing that will determine their Continue reading
VN Alexander talks about Locus Amoenus tonight with Cat Watters of the Organic News Show. Listen live. Join the chat ; ask questions. Go to www.awakeradio.us. Now archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xljN48nF_2k
Locus Amoenus by Victoria N. Alexander centers upon the bucolic county seat of Amenia in upstate New York where Gertrude and her son Hamlet make their home after the horror of 9/11 deprived them of husband and father respectively. Seeking a new start in the rural quiet, Gertrude purchases a sheep farm where they intend to live a sustainable lifestyle butchering their own livestock, growing vegetables, and eschewing the material trappings and celebrity-devotion of the modern world. The Webutuck school district, where Hamlet attends classes, greet Gertrude’s healthy food campaign with suspicion and distrust; populated by overweight teachers overseeing equally rotund students, they are all fed on processed, pre-packaged, warehouse-shipped food portions that fast-track the next generation to dull-eyed diabetes. Gertrude’s persistence leads, eventually, to Hamlet’s expulsion Continue reading
Reviewed by Cal Cleary
Victoria N. Alexander seems to dislike a lot of things. She seems to dislike the obese, who are either willfully ignorant or weak and corrupt. She doesn’t like medication – surely, PTSD and depression aren’t so serious as all that, the book wonders? She doesn’t like money or GMOs or really mass-produced anything–what do you mean you can’t afford artisan, organic everything? You aren’t – shudder – poor, are you? Bullies and conspiracy theorists, at least, are given a semi-sympathetic eye, but at its worst, Locus Amoenus reads like little more than an organized list of Alexander’s least favorite things about modern American life. Continue reading
I was honored today to be interviewed by Susan Lindauer, a peace advocate and courageous whistle-blower who holds the distinction of being the second person wrongfully arrested and jailed for treason under the Patriot Act in 2001. The two-hour live interview is archived here on Truth Frequency Radio. Continue reading
Victoria N. Alexander talks with Canada’s Bev Collins about her new 9/11 political satire novel, Locus Amoenus.
Victoria N. Alexander’s new dark comic novel, Locus Amoenus, is the story of a 9/11 widow who moves with her son, Hamlet, to the countryside to start a sustainable farm. But when Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, marries a NIST bureaucrat named Claudius on the eight anniversary of 9/11, Hamlet becomes very depressed. Then Hamlet’s old science teacher, Horatio, arrives to tell Hamlet that Claudius, who worked on the investigation of the WTC towers, is a fraud: NIST never actually investigated how the towers came down and never tested for explosives. But there is more: young Hamlet had collected a dust sample at ground zero, which he had given to Horatio. Unknown to Hamlet, Horatio has sent the sample to scientists who have found evidence of incendiary material in the dust. Now Hamlet and Horatio have to figure out what to do. Is Claudius guilty of covering up murder or terrorism? or is he just a pawn?
Alexander’s novel re-imagines Shakespeare’s play to launch a scathing satire of post-9/11 political corruption generally, local and federal; something is rotten in the United States of America. From big ag to standardized curriculum, economic disparity, big pharma, intelligence contractors, and endless wars, no issue is left unexamined in this fast-paced, witty and tragically humorous novel. Continue reading
Alexander in a treehouse like the one that appears in her novel.
Upstate Novelist, Victoria N. Alexander, To Give Reading at the Golden Notebook
by Gary Alexander
Have you spent too much time trying to convince your girlfriend that ‘Decadent’ is not a flavor? Or are you ticked off that some nutritional idealist wants your school cafeteria to use coconut oil on something your kid might eat for lunch? (Not here! We don’t have coconut trees along the Hudson River!) The most stark divisions in America may spring not from political, ethnic or racial backgrounds but from informational sources and a currently prevailing chasm between American cultural lifestyles.
This is a theme explored in the darkly humorous novel, “Locus Amoenus” by Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D. (my new bride-just joking; she’s no relation), who will be reading at the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock at 6 PM on Saturday, August 1st. Continue reading
