Magic Sweat

This is a collection of short fiction, long fiction and one play, whose title comes from an expression used by Mircea Eliade. We again encounter Nash, a character from the earlier "Beautiful Illusions." Many trips are taken: a young, stricken preacher-criminal in “Seeing the Grey” takes off for a while with a latter-day dope-smoking obese man named Fingerwood, and Aiken in the opening “Ways Home” is subjected to a most unpleasant, yet somehow satisfyingly insane series of fugue-like movements as he festinates about. “Dipsocryptamnesia” documents the binge drinker’s DUI night and subsequent trials. “No Prozac For Hamlet” explores the connections between fathers and sons, madness and pretense, as seen on stage and presented by a media shill. Magic Sweat is not without moments of fey humor, but it is a troubling array of tilted viewpoints, tangled karma and slow learners that we see here, moving around at night and with purpose (if not direction).