Category Archives: politics

Signing at Golden Notebook in Woodstock Sat, Aug 1st 6PM

Political satirist, Victoria N Alexander has a new novel entitled, Locus Amoenus, a literary term that refers to a beautiful pastoral paradise where nothing bad can ever happen.

Set in the nearby Harlem Valley region of New York, the story involves a 9/11 widow, Gertrude, and her son, Hamlet, who move to the country to run a sustainable farm. Unfortunately, they find their neighbors prefer the starchy products of industrialized agriculture. On the 8th anniversary of Hamlet senior’s death, Gertrude marries an incompetent federal bureaucrat named Claudius, who tries to get the eighteen-year-old Hamlet to “move on.” As Hamlet is becoming more and more disgusted by the hypocrisy of the adult world he’s entering, Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, tells Hamlet that his new stepfather is a fraud and something is rotten in the United States of America. With gallows humor, Alexander looks at the tragedy that is contemporary post 9/11 politics, as it plays out in small town America where health and happiness have been traded for processed foods, cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, and endless war.

Kirkus Reviews likened Alexander’s Hamlet to Holden Caulfield (the angry hero of The Catcher in the Rye), but he is more like his namesake, plagued with doubt about the news that Horatio brings him.

In the Wild River Review, cultural critic William Irwin Thompson compares Alexander to Thomas Pynchon and calls Locus Amoenus “an important contribution to contemporary American fiction.”

Man Booker Prize finalist Josip Novakovich praises Alexander for her critique of American consumerism: “despite the tragedy, we have the consolation of her humor. I haven’t laughed this well while reading in a long time.”

Victoria N. Alexander, PhD, is the author of two other novels, Smoking Hopes (Washington Prize for Fiction), Naked Singularity (Dallas Observer‘s “Best of 2003”), and a work of philosophy, The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature, and Nature. Alexander’s fiction is published by The Permanent Press, one of the finest small presses in the U.S., which has been “turning out literary gems…on a shoestring,” since 1978, according to The New York Times. Locus Amoenus is set in Amenia, New York, an upstate rural community where Alexander’s family owns a sheep farm.

http://www.goldennotebook.com/event/victoria-n-alexander-locus-amoenus

No Lies Radio: Locus Amoenus, a retelling of Hamlet, featuring a NIST bureaucrat as Claudius

9/11 Free Fall Radio
July 16, 2015

Interview starts at 9:55. Here’s a snippet:

AS: “What do you want people to get from this book?”

VNA: “Well, in the passage I just read where Hamlet [a conspiracy theorist] makes his big revelation. He makes some very logical points and asks some very good questions. But what’s the response to that? Evasion. Nobody really takes the point [chuckle]. Nobody really gets what he’s getting at. The whole thing is kind of ineffective, really [chuckle].

“One of the things I wanted to do for people, who have tried to talk to friends about some evidence they’ve read, is to give them a story that they can relate to. We’ve all gone through this. We all know what it’s like to bring up this conversation at dinner and have very good our friends treat us very coldly.

“And I wanted to give the conspiracy theorist a place in literature. He is a very important character, as was [Shakespeare’s] Hamlet, for really defining who the modern man is. Continue reading →

Nice short summary of Locus Amoenus in TriCorner News

Novelist at Amenia Free Library

Amenia–Local novelist Victoria N. Alexander will be promoting her new novel, “Locus Amoenus” at the Amenia Free Library book fair on Saturday, June 13th, from 10 a.m. to noon.

“Locus Amoenus” (which means pleasant locale) is a story based in Amenia which satirizes the Webutuck School District Wellness Committee. Local complacency and conformity feeds into a larger narrative of post 9/11 corruption, junk food, junk news, big pharma and war. Continue reading →

VNA interview now archived online

Kevin is such an interesting and intelligent person to talk with. In the course of the hour-long interview, I was drawn into mentioning a thing or two about my favorite philosopher C.S. Peirce in relation to the plot of one of Pynchon’s earlier conspiracy novels, The Crying of Lot 49. Years ago I wrote about Pynchon and the link between teleology and conspiracy theory, here. We went on about Noam Chomsky’s ridiculously unscientific, because unfalsifiable, “theory” of universal grammar. (Chomsky has sent some hate Kevin’s way because Kevin has said that sometimes some people in or associated with the U.S. government some times to do corrupt things.) With his semiotic theory, my favorite philosopher (uh oh, Peirce again) explains the emergence of grammar much better than Noam. (Terrence Deacon provides a good slap down of Chomsky in The Symbolic Species.) And yes, we did talk about Locus Amoenus too, as well as Tom Breidenbach’s book of poems Wicked Child/IX XI. Tom, a mutual friend, was the initial inspiration for the Horatio character in my novel.

The interview is now archived online here: http://noliesradio.org/archives/99840

Locus Amoenus on the radio

“There are several 9/11 truth thrillers in print. But until now, the only 9/11-truth-themed novel of high literary quality was Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.

Victoria N. Alexander’s new novel Locus Amoenus is the best fictional treatment of 9/11 yet. It’s hilarious, darkly ironic, playful, deeply moving – and stands as an explosive controlled demolition of post-9/11 American culture.

Has 9/11 left us in the position of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who knows but cannot act? I’ve asked that question more than once – but never as eloquently as Victoria Alexander does in this unforgettable book.” Continue reading →

William Irwin Thompson on Locus Amoenus in WRR

Victoria Alexander’s Honest Look at American Culture

In much the same way that James Joyce used Homer’s Odyssey to create a classical stage set for the characters of Ulysses in the dear dirty Dublin in 1904, V. N. Alexander’s new novel uses Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an archetypal structure that casts a shadow over the stereotypes of our new American life of junk food, junk politics, and NSA/Homeland Security.

Like the tight narrative and focused attention of Thomas Pynchon’s shortest novel, The Crying of Lot 49, Locus Amoenus uses hilarity and conspiracy theories to present the tragicomedy of a contemporary America that is beyond belief. Alexander has a good ear for prose rhythms, and the uplifting wave of her prose style picks you up and carries you all the way to her Coda—a coda that reminds us as her story becomes framed in journalistic reporting that American History is a dumpster and not an Akashic Record backing up karmic justice. From Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase that made Manifest Destiny and the American Empire inevitable to Jackson’s Cherokee Trail of Tears to Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus to FDR’s Day of Deceit with Pearl Harbor to Wolfowitz’s and the Neocons’ call for a new Pearl Harbor that became 9/11 to Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act and Arctic Drilling for the oil companies, the United States has always been bad while believing itself to be good.

Alexander is truly humorous in a bittersweet way that never becomes nihilistic. Everyone notices European Evil, whether it is the case of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror or Hitler’s Holocaust, but no one noticed when Obama shredded the Constitution of Madison and Jay in the National Defense Authorization Act, and no one noticed when the One Percent bought out the country in a hostile takeover brokered by Goldman Sachs.

Locus Amoenus is an important contribution to contemporary American fiction, and perhaps it is time now for Alexander to move up from the small arty presses to the major publishing houses in Manhattan. (Farrar Strauss take note.) But, on the other hand, since the large publishing companies now are all owned by the giant corporate conglomerates who produce our junk food for the mind, we should celebrate the contribution of The Permanent Press of Sag Harbor for being, like the Farmers Market in Union Square and the Berkshares local currency of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a healthy alternative to airport fiction.

http://www.wildriverreview.co/lit/bookreview-victoria-alexander/

RabbitReader on Locus Amoenus

Victoria N. Alexander has constructed a clever and engaging novel loosely based on Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet. This dark comedy revolves around the tragedy of 9/11. Alexander has several novels to her credit, as well as a work non-fiction, The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature, & Nature. She is also working on a comedy screenplay about a high security dystopia.

Hamlet’s father has apparently died in the collapse of the twin towers, and Hamlet and his mother Gertrude move to a rural village, Amenia where the residents are suspicious of strangers. The town suffers from an epidemic of obesity, because of a local connection to big agriculture farms…Read more.

Kirkus Reviews Locus Amoenus

Alexander’s newest novel Locus Amoenus (Permanent Press, 192 pages) finds Hamlet taking place in rural America against the backdrop of 9/11 and the Iraq War. “Something is rotten in the United States of America.” So says Alexander’s narrator, a young man named Hamlet. After his father dies on 9/11, Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude, move to upstate New York, where they maintain a farm. After several years, Gertrude meets Claudius, a bureaucrat and scientist who contributed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s World Trade Center report. Yes, this is Hamlet reimagined as a truther, and in this retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the protagonist isn’t just feigning madness—he’s genuinely losing his mind.

Locus Amœnus is now available on Amazon.

Charles Holdefer, author of The Contractor, on Locus Amoenus

A tale of dark political corruption, betrayal and a through the looking-glass world where you can believe six impossible things before breakfast, Locus Amœnus is also a fiercely funny romp by a talented writer.
Locus Amœnus is now available on Amazon at a 10% discount.

David Koepsell, author of Reboot World, on Locus Amoenus

“Alexander’s Locus Amœnus is a biting, witty, and ultimately touching window on modern American life. She evokes the wit and depth of the best of Kingsolver and high satire and earnest social exploration of Pynchon or Delillo. Her experiences bridging the worlds of rural and urban northeastern America provide those of us with experience of both a welcomed bit of nostalgia, longing, familiarity, and a sense of loss. This story is to be savored, and hopefully re-read in certain existential moods.”

Order Locus Amœnus direct from the publisher, The Permanent Press, or from Amazon today for a 10% discount.