Pepkin's Travels

In August of 1988, a body was fished from New York Harbor. In spite of the damage that 7 days in the water among the crabs and fish can do, earmarks of a gangland hit remained in evidence on the corpse. And though identification proved difficult, dental records and prints from the remaining fingers proved the victim to be Aleatoric J. Pepkin. Which presented a problem. Because the man who pulled the body from the water was NYPD Sergeant Aleatoric J. Pepkin. “A communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy and interlaced stories including those of highway killers, gangster nuns, celebrities, conspiracists, ninja potboilers, whole centuries of American life wonderfully distilled.” – New York Evening Advocate Teeth, prints, and even DNA proved a match. Thus began a mystery which in time would topple a president, reduce a city to rubble, and cause the people of a nation to question everything they had been told to believe about the fabric of reality. “Equal parts philosophical quest, questions multiply and suspense mounts in this spellbinding occult puzzle of birds: a major political novel about what America has brainy and moving.” – The Boston Post A search of Pepkin’s flophouse room turned up a journal which became the subject of intense speculation before disappearing almost immediately from a high security evidence locker. Exposés of police corruption by metropolitan news outlets were followed by high level resignations, low level firings and a spectacular series of suits and counter-suits. “The novel deemed too dangerous to be published in America – is finally published in America” – San Francisco Review of Books The citywide contretemps was interrupted by the unannounced publication of a book purported to be a facsimile of Pepkin’s journal by a small press known previously only for pornographic novels and avant garde poetry. After a minuscule print run, both the press and the entire stock of books, other than a few review copies, vanished. “A book we have never seen or read, and the existence of which we have begun to question.” – Vax “We do not accept unsolicited review requests.” – Esquire “I did not receive a journal but rather a book of poems, amateurish in the vein of self-published or university press poetry.” – Garth Hudson, McClure’s “Why are you calling this a novel? It’s supposed to be a journal.” – Situationist Antinational “No comment.” – New World Writing “Does not respond to interview requests.” – Partisan Review