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I in THE XLIII AMENDMENT trilogy
If Ayn
Rand and Douglas Adams could have gotten together
and not loathed each other on sight, they might
have come up with something like The Alphabet
Challenge. Set
several decades in the future, the action takes
place in a nearly unrecognizable Manhattan made
kinder and gentler by PeopleCare, an umbrella
organization of myriad victims’ rights groups whose members work their fingers to the
bone to make caring, compassion, and lowest-common-denominator
equality a federal law, now that they have already
fought for and won their campaigns for federal
prohibition on smoking and obesity, among other
unhealthy things.
Enter entrepreneur
Howell Langston Toland, who has learned absolutely
nothing in the seven years he’d
spent in jail for failure to recycle empty bottles.
To cash in on the prevailing zeitgeist, he creates
a new category of victimization, which encompasses
the broadest audience yet. Threatened by the
brazen invasion of its turf and the sudden popularity
of the new cause, PeopleCare mounts a counterattack
against the upstart. Toland, meanwhile, succumbs
to the more natural for him entrepreneurial
mode of thinking, urging his annoying followers
to become self-reliant so that he may cut them
loose.
Vicious politics ensue . . .
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“[The Alphabet Challenge] is an adventure
through the logical conclusion of current trends
in political correctness — the same scourge
that ENC Press has emerged to challenge.”
— Julia Gorin, FoxNews
“Satirical pleasures abound: moral exhibitionism
is everywhere in Gardner Galvin’s energetic
narrative, with escalating crusades against incorrect
behavior and attitudes. . . . Astutely, Gardner
Galvin renders these comic absurdities in a deliberately
stripped-down prose style; the deadpan approach
renders the narrative’s absurdities all
the more hilarious. . . . Perhaps Gardner Galvin’s
own background — growing
up in the final years of the Soviet Union —
keeps her alert to the dangerous irrationalities
of groupthink and the reduction of literature
to propaganda. Certainly, her honed intelligence
and satiric sensibility are long overdue. One
hopes Gardner Galvin and other tough-minded authors
are the leaders of a nascent battle against the
PC chokehold upon literature.” —
Prof. Steven D. Vivian, English Dept., South Suburban
College, IL
“This is real literature, skillfully interwining
the classical model of a picaresque novel and
the most modern views, topics, and language. .
. . I’d [have liked] to see the final scene
stronger and more definite. But then I decided
that maybe this book is just the beginning of
a series devoted to the adventures of Howell Toland
and the author did not want to put a full stop.
If this is the case, I wish I could subscribe
for the next book as well.” —
Natasha, St. Petersburg, Russia
“. . . Few writers are willing to take on the New
York Zeitgeist as head-on as Ms. Galvin does here,
and to such effect. She places the whole city
in a fishbowl, and one can spend hour after enjoyable
hour watching the fish wiggle by, one by one.
. . . The work has inspired me to look more closely
at the other titles at ENC Press. If they come
close to matching Ms. Galvin’s originality,
then I’m sure I’ve found the publishing
oasis that so many of us looking for bold, imaginative
works of literature, with an eye-popping timeliness,
have been searching for.” —
Richard Margolin
trade
paperback
5.25" X 8.25"
248 pp.
list price $17.95
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