Table of Contents

IN

About the Author

Frederick Reuss is the author of Horace Afoot, Henry of Atlantic City, and The Wasties. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

Reviews

The narrator of this skillfully crafted first novel is an eccentric, introspective loner named Horace, who moves into a rickety house on a dead-end street in a Midwestern town named Oblivion. Although Horace's past and the motivation for his move to Oblivion remain ambiguous, he clearly hopes to find refuge and comfort in this small town. Intelligent and literary, he is also existentially troubled, and the peace he hopes to find proves to be elusive. Horace is philosophical by nature, but this impulse more often than not serves to confound and confuse him. His interactions with the townspeople of Oblivion also prove to be problematic, and although he becomes involved in small ways with a few people there, he sadly remains essentially alone throughout this interesting and thoughtful novel. Recommended for libraries with large modern fiction collections.‘Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., Ct.

Classical allusions leap garishly out of a drab minimalist landscape in this incongruous debut. Morbidly self-centered protagonist Horace (self-named after the Latin poet) has come to an anonymous town (self-named, no less pretentiously, Oblivion) in search of autarkeia, "the serenity of not caring." His main occupations are telephoning strangers, reading philosophy, drinking above-average wine, walking aimlessly‘to the regional airport, the factory of defense contractor Semantech and an Indian mount of indeterminate archeological significance. Horace (full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus) quickly achieves the reputation of an eccentric-about-town and unwillingly clashes with Oblivion's truculent sheriff and the neighborhood juvenile delinquent. Only slightly less reluctantly, he strikes up a reserved friendship with the terminally ill town librarian. Horace's withdrawn existence is ultimately compromised by Sylvia, Reuss's most attractive character. Sylvia is a blue-collar exemplar of unbuttoned emotions and casual sex, but even she can't save the novel as it meanders to an indifferent resolution of its protagonist's bios theoretikos. (Nov.)