Max

Since the first page doesn't include much dialogue, I have included a portion later on in the novel that includes more dialogue. This portion is the first page: Before you’d get a chance to read all the graffiti-slandered names on the aluminum “Welcome to Canal County” sign staked along the shoulder of Ohio State Route 18, a Greater Toledo Area Extended Rapid Transit bus screeched to a smokey stop, the doors thumped back and a delicate frame dressed all in black, swam out in a high arc towards the northern horizon before splatting big time into a drainage ditch. A sizable military green duffle followed through the air close behind. “Call that debate?” No time to dust off, they scurried after the bus - a mountainous Avengers: Infinity Wars poster mud-flecked on its rear - as it huffed along the double-yellow stretch pinching up through tired farmlands, towards the vanishing point just starting to get dusty with the oncoming evening. “It’s gaslighting! Un-American! Literally hate-criming the entire concept of free speech!” winging a fistful of gravel, hitting nothing but exhaust. “Literally beyond traumatic! When I’m mayor I’ll grind the whole goddamn transportation department to hamburger!” The bus didn’t bother honking back. The road it left behind, the short and dead grass laced with Hostess wrappers and Marlb Light butts, was a triangular response to the cloudless gradient of gray above. In Ohio in March in the latter teen years of this new millennium pretty much everything was gray. That’s OK, they told themself, straighting their twig-thin suit, pressing back the flaps of their impressive cop-esque mustache. To be a leader is to be a visionary among the blind. A balladeer to the mute. A barista to the soccer mom crowd. You must force yourself to see and say things others can’t. Or won’t. And often with it comes abuse, even humiliation, by the very ones who most desperately need its medicine. It means the bottomless love you have for your fellow countryperson will be chewed up and hocked slimy and cruel back in your face. But you must look to the monuments, to stoic Abe and pointiest Washington, and make as purist marble against the sanded winds of time. “You cow.” They reset the clear-framed wayfarers they’d bought for a song at the Salvo, lifted their pen nib chin and let a cool shaft of lake effect rattle their grease-flat pompadour. Then they stomped a wedge of asphalt from the shoulder, fit a corner between their molars and crunched. “See? Bitumen, you pin-headed cow ass turkey. The tech already exists. On paper at least. Practically fertilizer for regenerative polymers,” an obvious finishing move on the healthy debate they’d been having not five minutes before, although they knew as well as anyone that winning an argument has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with the will to keep the fight alive. “And with the advances in CRISPR? Empirically rock-solid government investment. Self-healing roads are unquestionably the future.” Confidence squeezed their eyes shut, despite that tarry creep threatening to closed their esophagus for good. They spit with rage, tongued around to see if they’d cracked any teeth. “People who don’t read The Journal of Integrated Public Works regularly should be publicly shot.” The rest of the asphalt hunk badly bruised their shin when they tried to punt it into a culvert. Portion with more dialogue. It involves the incumbent trying to recruit her 14-year-old son to help out on her campaign. It takes place in the family living room. Creeping past, Josh pretended not to notice the lights being on, or the bowl of pretzels and the meticulously placed diet and regular Cokes. Stacking papers on the buttery walnut table taking up most of the room, Barb asked Josh to bring in two cups of ice, and whatever else they wanted. When Josh came back, documents and pens had taken the place of placemats, and in the center of the table was a recording device. In front of Josh’s seat was a striped ash and crimson clip-on tie. Barb’s budget manicure drum-rolled up next to it, dismounting in a knock. “Can’t we just talk, mom? Does this have to be like a full meeting?” “We can’t start until you put on the tie. If you’re not wearing a tie, it’s not a meeting, it’s a hootenanny. Sorry, but you know that. Now put it on so we can get this over with. I still have to make dinner.” The tie, affixed to the prolapsing collar of an Iron Man t-shirt, barely came down to Josh’s navel. Barb did the ceremonial clearing of the throat, pressing of the record button and stating of the date - news to Josh. The purpose of the meeting, they said, was a job interview, which prompted Josh to scan the room in case there was anyone else waiting in the wings. “How do you feel about freedom of choice, Joshy?” “You mean like being able to pick out what clothes to wear?” “More like having some say in figuring out your future. Do you like being able to determine your future? Your place in the world?” “My place -” “Good. Because it might upset you to learn that your poor mother has lost her free choice, her right to self-determination in something very important to her and her future. And by extension your future too.” “Ok.” “It’s my job sweetie. You know that aside from you and your father - who are my everything - my job is my other everything. Being clerk, serving the good people of the county, it’s my purpose. Without it, who knows? Maybe I’d be alright, or maybe I’d be like your Aunt Sue, going batty trying to get people to help sell internet make-up, or yoga pants, or some other garbage - don’t tell her I called her junk useless - but, long story short, some people are forcing me to go through a primary, which makes it harder to hold onto my job. A whole H-E-double-hockey-sticks of a lot harder.” By that point, Josh was looking into the concave blur at the bottom of a Coke can, wondering at the scuffed lump of humanity staring back. Barb swiped the can, put it out of reach. “You know what a primary is, sweetie?” “Umm… It’s like got to do with colors, right?” Barb dropped new ice cubs into their Coke and explained the primary system and then rehashed the meeting they’d had with Jim earlier that day and how the state party wanted to make things as difficult as possible for them. They had no choice in the matter, they said. They were going to have to have to launch an all out assault on their primary opponent, employ every known tactic this side of legal. “And basically everything’s legal online. How well do you know the internet?” “I know it OK I guess.” Barb was now ticking off items on a check list. “Would you say you use it a lot, or a little?” “Derek plays video games like all day on weekends, so not that much. Medium I guess.” “And Ms. Rivera just lets him - never mind. What’s your favorite thing about the internet?” Josh shrugged. “Well, we can’t let the challenger score a W here. This is the first, but there could be others, so we need to be bold and dynamic and decisive. Have you ever seen ‘Patton’?” “The bear with the raincoat?” “That’s Paddington. Patton was - you know what, it doesn’t really matter. I think given how swell you are with the internet, I think you might be able to help me. I need you to make a big splash online, create some real buzz around my campaign, and make everyone think my opponent is a real dipstick.” “Like you want me to go viral?” “That word is so icky. Always makes me thinks of sailors in port. But yes. One good viral ad, and I don’t think we have to worry about anything else with this idiot’s campaign.” As soon as the Diet Coke can was emptied into the glass, Barb hamfisted it to rubble, belched under their breath and then excused themself. “So, if that all sounds doable, I want you to make me an offer.” “A what?” “This is real J-bird. I’m not going to just make you do this job for me. That’s nepotism. At best. Slave labor at worst. I want you to know, unlike your mother, you have a choice here. This is a two-way street. You make me an offer, and I’ll see what I can do. This is like what happens in the real world. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you really want.”

Story statement: An enigmatic hipster launches a grassroots, anti-democracy movement in a small town, prompting their nepotistic political opponent to launch a viral online campaign that unleashes social forces none of them fully understand. Antagonist sketch: In two words, the antagonistic force is machine politics. It’s specifically embodied by a character named Barb Mundy, who is the incumbent the protagonist, Casey Latrobe, faces off against. Barb’s motivation is to retain her role in county government. She pulls whatever tricks she can, relying on her knowledge of the system and her connections within it. She’s fine with depressing the vote, stifling new voices, or kicking social hornets' nests she hardly understands. Where Casey wants to claw and scrap and fight, Barb wants to tie everything up in red tape and take an extra-long lunch break. Zooming out more broadly, what Casey faces is what you’d call the status quo, or even social entropy - the reality that most people are too busy to see what’s really going in front of them and probably wouldn’t care about any of it one way or the other. Titles: The Hopeful (American flag boxing gloves tied together) Ballot Boxers (American flag boxer shorts crumpled at someone’s ankles) For Clerk And Country Comp titles: The Sellout by Paul Beatty Election by Tom Perrotta Hook line: Desperate to sidestep the worst apocalyptic predictions about the future, an agitated, cutting-edge hipster struggles to spark a heretical political movement in the face of humdrum smalltown life. Inner conflict: Constantly quoting research journals they may or may not understand, Casey is a firm believer in science and empirical truth. To every problem, they firmly believe there is an obvious solution, it’s just a matter of getting the right minds to figure it out and then having the will to execute on it. However, this feverishly held belief is put to the test as they struggle to get their ideas across to the local populace, and struggle against mundane realities of smalltown life. But what’s even worse is when they encounter those inclined to agree. Hypothetical scenario: They’re on a public bus and get into an argument about how governments should use gene-splicing technology to create self-sealing roads to curb the “current pothole cataclysm.” The fight escalates to the point where they get thrown off the moving bus. Secondary conflict: Casey’s so caught up with their cause, they struggle to find actual meaning, or connection in the world. They develop a relationship with a character named Ivy Singer, who is suffering a great loss. Ivy showers Casey with love and support, but Casey never seems to get the message until it's far too late. Hypothetical scenario: Ivy buys a karaoke machine to help Casey when they’re preaching their ideas on the street. Casey gets upset about the songs that are preloaded on it and smashes it, which then prompts Ivy, in a show of solidarity to start smashing other appliances around the house. Setting: The epigraph from Robert Bolano’s 2666 - “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom” - comes to mind. Canal County is sort of like that. It’s filled with strip malls, county roads, gas stations, municipal salt storage buildings, suburban housing developments, regular malls, public bus stops, etc. The action also takes place in early spring, when the clouds are heavy and the grass that isn’t mud is barely hanging on. However, the book views this grayscape, Rust Belt town along Lake Erie through a maximalist, bordering on mythic lens in the hopes of making it sing like the southern landscapes in Jesmyn Ward’s prose or the hardscrabble Newfoundland and Wyoming landscapes from Annie Proulx. Whether it’s intentional, like zoning ordinances or building codes, or unintentional, like the collective hopes and fears undergirding everyone waiting in line at the mall food court, a lot lies tamed by small town convention just beneath the surface, which this book aims to scratch at.