To be a writer in America, you have to bleed. Eddie Iturbi, a young car-thief obsessed with the dark magic of Beat culture in a mythic San Francisco, sets off on a spaced-out crusade to connect with the Beat Gods.
From The Deification: The Return from the Buzzard Cult
Gordon’s black eyes and black hair were so intense, they looked bionic, and when he smiled, he cut you open and you knew he’d been under the flail. Easy, graceful, a man. He wore his black and white like a badge, but with a flair that turned even basic color into an art form while Eddie in black and white felt like a sheet of paper written on with a blunt ballpoint pen. It was a bad night for writers.
Paintings splashed over the walls. A museum full, a sea of color, paintings that ate the eyes with brilliant carmine shading to robin’s egg blue at the center of a universe that held you captive until your brain blew out and you had to turn away from the intensity before you exploded. Pure art. Eddie loved it. He loved the smell of still wet paint, loved the odor of linseed oil and the reek of turpentine. Gordon had tapped into the mythic wave and rode it like a maniac surfer cresting and diving suicide-runs into blue washes then shooting up in rainbow arcs you knew he’d never survive. Eddie took a deep breath. Let it out. When his pulse settled and the prickles at the back of his neck softened, he said,
That’s a hell of a painting
It’s talking to me, Gordon said.
When I can write like you paint, I’ll die happy.
Speaking of death, you have to meet my wife Marcia.
“I grew up in California’s Central Valley. The Valley was huge but stifling. If you climbed the water tower one foggy night and the cops hauled you down, it made the local newspaper. Your one goal was a customized car with a flame job and flipper hubcaps. You wore Levis or Chinos and you cut your hair short. And then along came Jack Kerouac and On The Road. Right behind him came William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg …. On The Road and the Beatniks set me free. Get out of the Valley, they said. Go find your America. And some of us did. …. This novel, The Deification, pays homage to those
wild men whose vision of the world opened up the social revolution of the 1960s. They changed me. They changed you. They changed everything.” Jack Remick
From the Publisher:
The Deification is currently available on Amazon.com. The novel is also for sale on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon Japan. The Kindle edition retails for $5.95. Other eBook versions can be purchased on Smashwords and through most major eBook retailers. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com and Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Services.
Jack Remick 