Portions of a book review: "Estranged sons of a long-dead professional daredevil clash in Stranger’s farcical novel. 30-something Marcus Speed exists in perpetual fear of entropy. He’s also a germaphobe who abhors others’ constant “fumbling” of the English language. Unsurprisingly, he has no friends—save his mother, Minerva, with whom he still lives in Nashville. Marcus is in for a shock when he meets his half-brother, Ace Junior, an Alabama native with “bushy Elvis sideburns” who uses the word “them” as an adjective (“you said your mother moved over with them Arabs”). Their father, Ace Speed, a traveling-circus daredevil, died performing a stunt, driving a car strapped with a jet-assisted take-off unit. Junior and his brash mother, Bernice Crabtree, bring chaos when they begin staying with Minerva and Marcus, but when Ace’s band of sideshow-performer friends shows up, it may be too much for Marcus to handle. Many in this motley cast have their own troubles... Stranger’s story was inspired by an urban legend in which a rocket-powered Chevy Impala supposedly disintegrated its driver. It’s the colorful characters, however, who drive this novel...A measured but gleefully absurd tale with a simply wonderful cast of assorted characters."– Kirkus Reviews
Portions of a book review: "Estranged sons of a long-dead professional daredevil clash in Stranger’s farcical novel. 30-something Marcus Speed exists in perpetual fear of entropy. He’s also a germaphobe who abhors others’ constant “fumbling” of the English language. Unsurprisingly, he has no friends—save his mother, Minerva, with whom he still lives in Nashville. Marcus is in for a shock when he meets his half-brother, Ace Junior, an Alabama native with “bushy Elvis sideburns” who uses the word “them” as an adjective (“you said your mother moved over with them Arabs”). Their father, Ace Speed, a traveling-circus daredevil, died performing a stunt, driving a car strapped with a jet-assisted take-off unit. Junior and his brash mother, Bernice Crabtree, bring chaos when they begin staying with Minerva and Marcus, but when Ace’s band of sideshow-performer friends shows up, it may be too much for Marcus to handle. Many in this motley cast have their own troubles... Stranger’s story was inspired by an urban legend in which a rocket-powered Chevy Impala supposedly disintegrated its driver. It’s the colorful characters, however, who drive this novel...A measured but gleefully absurd tale with a simply wonderful cast of assorted characters."– Kirkus Reviews
Darwin
Description of the 1995 Darwin Award recipient:Â
The Arizona Highway Patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The metal debris resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it turned out to be the vaporized remains of an automobile. The make of the vehicle was unidentifiable at the scene.
The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and pieced together the events that led up to its demise.
It seems that a former Air Force sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO (Jet Assisted Take-Off) unit. JATO units are solid fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for take-off from short airfields.
Dried desert lake beds are the location of choice for breaking the world ground vehicle speed record. The sergeant took the JATO unit into the Arizona desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, accelerated to a high speed, and fired off the rocket.
The facts, as best as could be determined, are as follows:
The operator was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala. He ignited the JATO unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash site. This was established by the location of a prominently scorched and melted strip of asphalt. The vehicle quickly reached a speed of between 250 and 300 mph and continued at that speed, under full power, for an additional 20-25 seconds. The soon-to-be pilot experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners.
The Chevy remained on the straight highway for approximately 2.6 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied the brakes, completely melting them, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The vehicle then became airborne for an additional 1.3 miles, impacted the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, and left a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recovered; however, small fragments of bone, teeth, and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.
Ironically a still-legible bumper sticker was found, reading
"How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT.
On Icarus
The Darwin Awards website and books were created in 1993 in order to “salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!” Although it remains a favorite among Darwin Award enthusiasts, the infamous JATO rocket story has the distinction of being the only Darwin award based on an event that had never been verified. It is now generally believed to be no more than urban legend, a myth… perhaps.Â
This is a tale about that intrepid and resourceful air-borne pioneer (the man was never in the military) – who dared to fly too close to the sun. It is also a story of the adventures of all those he left behind.
Marcus Aurelius Speed has issues. He complains to his therapist, “My natural order and enthalpy are under assault.”
His father, Ace Speed, was a circus performer who died trying to break a land speed record in a rocket propelled Chevy Impala—a feat for which he posthumously won a Darwin Award (for improving the human gene pool by eliminating himself). Before his demise, though, Ace married Minerva Ross, a wallflower from a private girls’ academy, and young Marcus sprang from their unlikely union. Despite growing up in a traveling carnival, Marcus acquired a taste for the Classics and preferred speaking Latin over the vulgar English tongue.
Scions of Icarus by Walker Lane Stranger is a dizzying mélange of slapstick, satire, and whimsy, populated by a jester’s gallery of unforgettable characters. Marcus is delightfully eccentric, in the vein of the immortal Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. His therapist, Peter Clinger, dreads every session with him, as indeed he does most of his patients. When a clan of carny refugees invade Marcus and his mother’s home, he laments to Clinger, “I could feel my essence flow out of me just being in the presence of this uncouth legion.”
Among Marcus’s houseguests are Bernice Crabtree, “a brazen bleached tart” from the trailer park who claims she had an affair with his father, which spawned her dim-witted son, Junior—allegedly, Marcus’s half-brother. Accompanying them is Junior’s moody, candy addicted twelve-year-old daughter, Sugar, and joining the entourage later is the enigmatic Janice, aka the Monkey Faced Woman.
Feeling under constant duress, Marcus records daily self-assessments: “Disease risk 8/10, Social entropy calculation 7/10, General angst scale 8/10.” After an altercation at a New Age boutique, he becomes a wanted man, accused, among other things, of hate crimes and Satanism.
This novel explodes with comic absurdity, but also resonates with edgy social satire. While humor pervades every page, some of the most potentially funny scenes take place offstage—ex., it would have been hilarious to experience Marcus’s exploits with white supremacists, rather than reading about them ad hoc in his daily “Meditations.” Quibbles aside, Scions is the funniest thing I’ve read lately, this side of Dave Barry. Â
Stranger’s bio introduces him, “a retired emergency room physician who at age 75 decided to try his hand at creative writing.” I salute his life’s work but wish he could’ve squeezed in some writing between surgeries. This stuff is good medicine.Â