The Straw That Broke Book
by Tom Whalen
Publication Date: August 1, 2014
Publisher: Black Scat Books
Pages: 172
Book Description:
In his rollicking new novel, THE STRAW THAT BROKE, author Tom Whalen
continues his ENCYCLOPEDIA MOUSE series, a challenging and funny roller-coaster
ride through the outer margins of science-fiction, philosophy, and word play.
Readers who reveled in previous books in the series, such as THE CAMEL’S BACK (called “the Moby-Dick
of mice” by poet and critic R.H.W. Dillard) and ROITHAMER’S UNIVERSE (which science-fiction writer Rudy Rucker
termed “giddy fun”), are sure to greet the arrival of THE STRAW THAT BROKE with anticipation and joy. Lovers of such
visionary writers as Kafka, Borges, Vonnegut, Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams
(THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE series) also
will find a kindred spirit in Tom Whalen, as will readers of all tastes who are
looking for a thrilling literary adventure.
The
main “character” in THE STRAW THAT BROKE is
the Encyclopedia Mouse, who, according to the author, “is the one creature who
can save the multiverse.” In Whalen’s
synopsis of THE STRAW THAT BROKE,
“Bulwer Zetford’s work-in-progress, The Cosmic Messenger, is about to take a strange turn,
and the multiverse with it, when Roithamer of Relix “beads” once again and
brings swirling into Zetford’s Kaduza M-mon processor the Encyclopedia Mouse …
Tale twines tale as the mouse battles his Doppelgänger in cyberspace,
Heidegger, in his Black Forest hut, and a hyper-crazed Roithamer. Death is
everywhere, but the mouse, birling (if only barely) in his Binding Nexus Drive, is determined to
narrate the universes away from their demise.”
Whalen
describes his style as “playful, parodic, philosophical, lyrical. I wanted THE STRAW THAT BROKE to be thick with
character and plot and at the same time alive with language.”
“The
word play is part of the novel’s texture, as well as being embedded into the
plot and character of the mouse,” Whalen also explains. “No need for the reader
to pick up all the formal play. It’s enough that this exists on a subliminal
level.”
Whalen’s
ultimate goal, he says, is to have the Encyclopedia Mouse books published in
one volume “and eventually turned into a wide-screen baroque masterwork of
cinema.”
In
the meantime, THE STRAW THAT BROKE is
available in print, ready to delight all readers.
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