Literary / Satire
Date Published: October
2016
Publisher:
JAM Publishing
Ruth Askew, a minor celebrity, is spouting some highly incompetent philosophy about the end of virtue. Con Manos, a journalist, is attempting to uncover a political scandal or two. Add some undistinguished members of City Council, an easy listening radio station, a disorganized charity, a prestigious Philadelphia newspaper, and any number of lawyers and other professional criminals. In Worthy Of This Great City the compelling stories of two stubborn individualists intertwine in a brisk, scathing satire that invites you to question everything you think you think about today's most discussed issues: populism and elitism, the possibility of truth, the reach of profound stupidity, and the limits of personal responsibility in these post-truth, morally uncertain times.
EXCERPT (From Chapter One):
Earlier that day, I lay in the shade with only my
bare toes exposed to the vicious sun, part of a modest audience similarly
disposed beneath the modest fringe of trees surrounding the field. Light fell
down through the foliage, thick victorious beams that described powerful angles
in their descent inside the usual breathtaking green cathedral. Around me the
grass was withered and compressed into a flattened mat over ground still
saturated from the previous night’s thunderstorms; everything smelled of baking
wet earth, sunscreen, and greasy event food. I don’t remember any intrusive
insects or even visible birds except for a couple of extremely distant hawks,
dull specks in the otherwise empty sky.
Another respectable
scattering of spectators occupied the baking field, most sprawled directly in
front of the small Camp Stage, true fans eagerly upright despite the merciless
heat. So just as expected, one of those perfectly innocent afternoons you buy
with the ticket, monotonous while deeply nourishing, readily absorbed through
the whole skin like childhood summers.
didn’t know about the witches yet, but they
were out in force. Yeah, it’s a silly description but I don’t know how else to
capture the awful effect of those damn women. So they were witches who’d been
summoned by a highly demanding assembly of affluent suburbanites, people
accustomed to commanding natural forces. And while arguably these were all
benevolent females who only meant well, with witches you never know how it’s
going to turn out.
Every August for more than a
decade I’ve headed out to Schwenksville for this dependable throwback party.
And not precisely to enjoy the music, because although it commands my absolute
respect I find it too intense for everyday entertainment. It’s a kind of church
music, an unashamed church of humanity: pure sound, plaintive and honest,
twanging and rambunctious, dulcimer gentle. Fitting, then, for this late-summer
pagan rite in honor of righteousness, and I immerse myself in it to perform a
spiritual cleansing of sorts, processing across the fields from one rustic
venue to another, affirming a succession of bluegrass pickers and ballad
wailers and theatrical tellers of old tales. And it’s a mildly uncomfortable
ritual in another sense, but that’s because of the mostly undamaged people, the
one’s who wholeheartedly enjoy everything and applaud too often.
As with anything religious,
there are incredibly subversive undercurrents longing to manifest, easy to
exploit by those portending witches. Two of them performed that day, one with
such tragic skill and clarity it unintentionally aroused huge amounts of
self-loathing and subsequently resentment, at least in me. The second inspired
a joy vigorous enough to move the plot. And the third exerted an indirect but
equally damning influence courtesy of her own celebrity, her mere idea inciting
a shaming nostalgia. In fact it was dangerously stupid to speak her name aloud.
All three arrived wearing absolute certainty.
This current festival
setting, the Old Pool Farm, is perfectly suited to the occasion. There are wide
fields to accommodate the generous crowds, a nicely crisp and sparkly creek,
and the requisite gates and groves, all at a situation remote enough to evoke a
wholly separate culture despite easy proximity to the city. Although that’s not
difficult, because even today you only have to poke your nose outside the
nearer suburbs to spot a rusty silo on some decrepit farm with another of those
filthy black-and-white, diarrhea-spewing dairy cows leaning against a sagging
wire fence, its pelvis practically poking through its muddy hide. Peeling paint
and hay bales directly across the road from another mushrooming pretentious
development, a slum of dull, identical cheapjack townhouses. So despite the
fervent country claptrap the festival is essentially a metropolitan scene,
drawing a sophisticated crowd, and therefore in one sense condescending, an
insult.
Murmurs of anticipation
brought me up on my elbows to discover Hannah Lynch already onstage, a
typically modest entrance. I sat up and paid attention, catching sight of her
inside an amiable circle of probable musicians, a glimpse of her face and one
thin shoulder between competent-looking backs in cowboy or cotton work shirts,
all of them endlessly conversing there in surprisingly gentle voices.
Until finally they broke
apart and here she came gliding towards the front of the tiny platform, moving
within a reputation so illustrious it made her physical presence unlikely and
you had to struggle for it. A tiny bird of a woman, an elderly, fragile sparrow
with fine gray hair and hazel eyes and translucent skin, nodding to us and
smiling nicely with small unremarkable teeth while seating herself on a wooden
folding chair. She was dressed like good people, like a decent Christian
farmwife in a faded print skirt and cotton blouse of mixed pastels, pink and
beige and blue. Only with dangling silver jewelry to be noticed, since after
all she was a major star.
With this one unshakable
article of faith: that her famously quavering soprano was entirely unrelated to
her own ordinary self, more of an imposition or a trust, an undeserved gift
from God that in no way merited personal praise. So she has stated. And
accordingly she exuded genuine empathy with all of us waiting out there for
her, straining forward to better capture the spirit and stamina investing each
word. A curve of laughter lit her face, and there was grief there too, but
nothing to diminish that serene spirit.
Author Bio
If you know my website and Twitter addresses
(asmikemiller.com and asmikemiller, respectively), you must realize Mike Miller
is only an author name. It's not a matter of privacy
or secrecy; anybody can find me with minimal effort. It's about keeping things
separate. My writing is about what appears on the page. It's not about my
personal politics or religion or history.
Worthy Of This Great City is a B-game book. I'm ambiguous about this, being
interested in money like most people, but I don't want to compete with a slick
professional cover or smooth editing so I've stuck to a sort of reasonable,
human middle ground. I value those things for what they are, of course, but I
see them as artifacts, part of a system of publishing that fought like hell for
a week's worth of shelf space, that fought to catch the eye, not the mind or
heart.
As my character Con Manos says: "It's a revolution, isn't it?" I say:
Why fight on the side of the enemy? Why imitate and thus perpetuate a business
model that stifles originality? Just to show you can? Unless, of course, you're
fighting to attract the eye, not the mind or heart.
I've played a joke with this novel - my first, incidentally. Played with the
idea of narration and who can be speaking after all. It's all very literary.
Contact Information
Website: asmikemiller.com
Twitter: @asmikemiller
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