X-Ray Rider 3 E-Book

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

• Herausgeber: Wayne Kyle Spitzer
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Jonesing for a drive-in theater and a hotrod El Camino?It’s the dawn of the 1970s and everything is changing. The war in Vietnam is winding down. So is the Apollo Space Program. The tiny northwestern city of Spokane is about to host a World’s Fair. But the Watergate Hearings and the re-entry of Skylab and the eruption of Mount Saint Helens are coming…as are killer bees and Ronald Reagan.Enter ‘The Kid,’ a panic-prone, hyper-imaginative boy whose life changes drastically when his father brings home an astronaut-white El Camino. As the car’s deep-seated rumbling becomes a catalyst for the Kid’s curiosity, his ailing, over-protective mother finds herself fending off questions she doesn’t want to answer. But her attempt to redirect him on his birthday only arms him with the tool he needs to penetrate deeper—a pair of novelty X-Ray Specs—and as the Camino muscles them through a decade of economic and cultural turmoil, the Kid comes to believe he can see through metal, clothing, skin—to the center of the universe itself, where he imagines something monstrous growing, spreading, reaching across time and space to threaten his very world.Using the iconography of 20th century trash Americana—drive-in monster movies, cancelled TV shows, vintage comic books—Spitzer has written an unconventional memoir which recalls J.M. Coetzee’s Boyhood and Youth. More than a literal character, ‘The Kid’ is both the child and the adult. By eschewing the technique of traditional autobiography, Spitzer creates a spherical narrative in which the past lives on in an eternal present while retrospection penetrates the edges. X-Ray Rider is not so much a memoir as it is a retro prequel to a postmodern life—a cinematized “reboot” of what Stephen King calls the “fogged out landscape” of youth.Want to go for a ride?

Leseprobe

X-Ray Rider 3: Mileposts on the road to Childhood's end

The X-Ray Rider Trilogy, Volume 3

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Published by Hobb's End Books, 2017.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

X-RAY RIDER 3: MILEPOSTS ON THE ROAD TO CHILDHOOD'S END

First edition. November 25, 2017.

Copyright © 2017 Wayne Kyle Spitzer.

Written by Wayne Kyle Spitzer.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

I | Fireworks

II | Kiss

III | Magic Kingdoms

IV | Werewolf

V | Terrified and Alone

VI | The Arm of the Milky Way

VII | The Willows

VIII | The Auto Shop

IX | The Fall

Chronoscope | 1981

I | Fireworks

THE LUMPECTOMY HAS GONE WELL. Her doctors believe with near certainty that they have gotten it all. That nothing has spread to the lymph nodes and she will make a full recovery. But she has a long, nauseous August ahead in which she will be bombarded with powerful X-rays, five days per week for five weeks, which could keep her incapacitated into September, and will probably cause her to become gravely ill and to lose her hair. His mother believes a celebration is in order before the follow-up treatments begin—a road trip, naturally. Sheldon chooses not to go, opting instead to join his friend John Morrison’s family on a fishing trip.

She insists they go to Kelowna, British Columbia, to visit Bedrock City—a theme-park based upon The Flintstones, for the Kid; but the Kid doesn’t enjoy it, having lost his taste for dinosaurs, or at least ones that look like Dino—colored purple or Day-Glo orange or sherbet-green—with frilly humps along their backs. Because they take the El Camino (“124,000 miles and still unstoppable,” his father says more than once) they are forced to stop frequently to buy tranny fluid, especially on their way home, so that they find themselves pulling into a town called Oliver at twilight just as a professional firework display is starting—apparently in celebration of British Columbia Day.