Meteor in the Madhouse

By Leon Forrest

Book Overview

Forrest's long-awaited last work follows the last days of journalist Joubert Jones and his long relationship with his friend and mentor, the idealistic and doomed poet Leonard Foster. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810151146
• ISBN13: 9780810151147
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: TriQuarterly
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

"I ride out to the monstrous sea . . ."

METEOR IN THE MADHOUSE is a good sequel to Leon Forrest's famous novel of Chicago life, DIVINE DAYS. That book is a touchstone for American literature and METEOR, though sadly incomplete, follows up the story of poor Joubert Jones with great conviction and a whole lot of glee. We are lucky that Forrest, whose work on METEOR was interrupted and finally ended by prostate cancer, kept on working pretty much right up to the grand finale, and that he had some good executors who made sure his final salvo got into print even in a mixed up, muddled up state which they have done their elevl best to untangle. Briefly, Joubert Jones, whom we loved in the Joycean DIVINE DAYS, is undertaking a voyage of memory twenty years later, and different figures from his past come back to haunt him. Each of them comes equipped with his or her own back story, and these stories form the meat of the book. "Meat" is a good metaphor for Forrest's gritt realism, and you don't want to miss the pun in the title which is so close to "MEATIER IN THE MADHOUSE." "Forest County" became his fictional equivalent of Faulkner's famous "Yoknapatawka County" or however you say it. Some may feel that these five long stories are trivial in comparison to the Musil-sized DIVINE DAYS, but they help us udnerstand what the Master was doing in the earlier book, as well as introduce us to some striking new characters and themes. Rap makes a strong impression here. The man might have had troubles in his prostate, but he didn't let them keep him from the poetry of the living word. The notes to the five stories have a strange quality as though the editors, John Cawelti and Merle Drown, actually thought that Forrest's characters were real people and the notes indicate the interrelationships of the characters with an eerie precision.