No Aloha : The Friendly Happy Music of the Past

By Deran Ludd

Sometime early in the new century following the collapse of the former United States, Pastor-Governor Bill Kingson and high-ranking members of Team Jesus flee the theocratic genocidal police state... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1584350083
• ISBN13: 9781584350088
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Semiotext(e)
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A brilliant, funny vision of postapocalyptic America

Deran Ludd's second novel concerns the adventures of a small band of young people as they make their way through the dangers and debris of a millenarian United States balkanized by warring political and religious factions, in order to reach a blitzed Denver. The action as well as the writing style recall Burroughs, Acker, and Stephen Tunney's _Flan_. The sexuality remains as mobile as the characters, and the language tosses off incisive shards of distressed beauty: "The tides of spew and water wash mountains of waste into hillocks and valleys. All along the channels and above on the banks, micro-tribes of salvagers and recyclers live in transient shelters." Ludd has effectively identified an America divided by its internal contradictions but still offering opportunities for guilt-free kitsch (wrought-iron faux-medieval furniture) and connection (the names of easy-listening artists title the chapters). Postmodern fiction could use even more of Ludd's peculiar fierceness.