Stalking America - Paperback

by Jared Pappas Kelley (Author)

Stalking America blends an interior/exterior assemblage of a young person on a train riding cross-county where everything is subtext and suspicion. Here, events are presented in a glassy contemplation of travel and transition. Stilted and strange dialogue, description, minor reality stars, historical influences, lists, architecture, movements, and mundane pop culture observations of a misinformed but well-meaning observer montage into an internal and external reverie. In America, nothing is seen or spoken directly. Conversations and thoughts wander in from around a corner-a deleted browser history of experience-ripple into the cliché of a coming of age. In this sense America is half-baked like a teenager. The protagonist obsesses over historical references to nude bathers, anarchist colonies, reality television, communes, volcanic eruptions, and songs in a playlist trying to understand a certain aspect of America through observations and false epiphanies. A vacated puzzle attempts to undo itself while each piece ploddingly re-assembles with the assurance of the train ride as elements come into proximity. To understand America, to really appreciate it, is to fundamentally misunderstand it at the deepest levels-to read into its flattening out and image as the ultimate subtext and that is where the story lies.