<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>Atomik Aztex</TitleText>

City Lights Books transfers@onixsuite.com 20130918 eng

COM.ONIXSUITE.9780872864405 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100323040 02 0872864405 03 9780872864405 15 9780872864405 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>Atomik Aztex</TitleText> 1 A01 Foster, Sesshu Sesshu Foster Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 20 years. He's also taught writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has been published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. One of his last readings at St. Mark's Poetry Project NYC is Mp3 archived at <a target="blank" href="http://www.salon.com">www.salon.com</a> and local readings are archived at <a target="blank" href="http://www.sicklyseason.com">www.sicklyseason.com</a>. He is currently collaborating with artist Arturo Romo and other writers on the website, <a target="blank" href="http://www.ELAguide.org">www.ELAguide.org</a>. His most recent books are the novel Atomik Aztex and World Ball Notebook. Visit his blog, <a target="blank" href="http://atomikaztex.wordpress.com/">East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines</a>. 01 eng 224 00 224 03 24 Internet CL Hierarchy Asian American Writing 24 Internet CL Hierarchy California Writers 24 Internet CL Hierarchy Fiction 01 A fantastical gonzo Aztln mythology, where modern Aztecs and immigrant ghosts uncover blood sacrifice in Los Angeles In the alternate universe of Atomik Aztex, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders long ago. Aztek warriors with totemic powers are busy colonizing Europe, and human sacrifice is basic to economic growth. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is plagued by nightmares of a parallel reality where American consumerism reigns supreme. Ghosts of banished Aztek warriors emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles, and Zenzontlis visions of Hell become real as hes trapped in a job in an East L.A. meatpacking plant. "With Atomic Aztex, Foster slices through history. His Aztex are not so very different from the Spanish colonialists or the corporate greed-mongers or the Farmer John pig butchers. "Everybody knows," he acknowledges from the outset, "that atavism and savagery make the world go round." For Foster, as a writer, the best strategy for fighting back is to rip up the language . . . He is not the first writer to use odd spellings to arrest our normal reading patterns. And he is not the first artist to explore the fantasy life of someone working on a factory line. But Foster puts his finger here on a particular nexus of World War II-era racism, factory life and the landscape of Los Angeles and then claims it for his very own." Los Angeles Times Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 20 years. He's also taught writing at the University of Iowa and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has been published in <a onclick="CSAction(new Array(/*CMP*/'BF9E298A4'));return CSClickReturn();" csclick="BF9E298A4" href="http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/foster/foster.htm">The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry</a> and, recently, <a onclick="CSAction(new Array(/*CMP*/'BF9E298A5'));return CSClickReturn();" csclick="BF9E298A5" href="http://www.xcp.bfn.org/foster.html">XCP: Streetnotes</a>. One of his last readings at St. Mark's Poetry Project NYC is Mp3 archived at <a onclick="CSAction(new Array(/*CMP*/'BF9E298A6'));return CSClickReturn();" csclick="BF9E298A6" href="http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/foster/">www.salon.com</a>. He is currently collaborating with artist Arturo Romo and other writers on the website, <a onclick="CSAction(new Array(/*CMP*/'BF9E298A7'));return CSClickReturn();" csclick="BF9E298A7" href="http://www.elaguide.org/">www.ELAguide.org</a>. His most recent books are the novel Atomik Aztex and American Loneliness: Selected Poems (Beyond Baroque, 2006). 02 In the alternate universe of this glitteringly surreal first novel, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is visited by visions of a parallel world run by the Europeans, where consumerism... 08 "With Atomic Aztex, Foster slices through history. His Aztex are not so very different from the Spanish colonialists or the corporate greed-mongers or the Farmer John pig butchers. "Everybody knows," he acknowledges from the outset, "that atavism and savagery make the world go round." For Foster, as a writer, the best strategy for fighting back is to rip up the language . . . He is not the first writer to use odd spellings to arrest our normal reading patterns. And he is not the first artist to explore the fantasy life of someone working on a factory line. But Foster puts his finger here on a particular nexus of World War II-era racism, factory life and the landscape of Los Angeles and then claims it for his very own." Los Angeles Times 08 "Finally, but not an also-ran, is Sesshu Foster's Atomik Aztex, which takes us into a parallel universe where the Aztecs beat Cortez and now more or less rule the world, draining Europe of captives for their sacrificial rituals. In Foster's Aztec metaphysics, both universes play out at once, with our hero doubling as an Aztec warrior/priest and a grossly exploited Latino worker in a filthy, modern-day L.A. slaughterhouse. Blood flows everywhere here, human and animal, but so do the laughs. Foster is profoundly disorienting . . . but that's what we need from novels. You should put them down, rub your eyes, and see that the world isn't so flat after all. " Barbara Ehrenreich, on Atomic Aztex being picked as one of The Progressive's "Favorite Books 2006" 08 If the Aztecs had defeated the conquistadores and had eventually become the mainstream, what would our world be like? Where is Teknotitln located? In Robo-Los Angeles, Mexico D.F., or in the imagination of Sesshu Foster? If Ancient America had triumphed over savage capitalism, chicanismo would be the (poetical, political, and spiritual) center of it all. Atomik Aztex is a graphic, hilarious and violent chronicle of multiple realities that could emerge out of this proposition. It's an amazing exercise of radical imagination. Guillermo Gmez-Pea 08 "Punk sci-fi and kitchen-sink realism create a startling, morally fraught vision in Foster's genre-straddling tour de force. . . . readers will be blown away by Foster's control over the material . . . brilliantly inventive . . . " Publishers Weekly, Starred Review 08 "This is one mad neighborhood carnival roller coaster ride through Aztln, the underground, the QTa smoky universe hall of mirrors cosmik barrio existential comic strip. Oddball, hilariousdeep. Sesshu Foster delivers." Marisela Norte, author of East L.A. Days/Fellini Nights 08 "Burroughs meets Gmez-Pea . . . nah, Roque Dalton meets Kurt Vonnegut . . . or how about Cesaire meets Nezahualcoyotl? Dare we say original? Yes! Hilarious, poignant, and at times devastating, Foster has crafted a fine post-global poetic, a cocktail of sublime anarchy to toss into the machine." Rubn Martnez, author of The New Americans: Seven Families Journey to Another Country 08 "Anyone who reads Atomic Aztex is doomed. Those who don't have lost their opportunity to go out with a salubrious whimper, never to know why they were condemned. The prose is an electrifying, eclectic phantasmagoria of Groucho's marxism, dadada, surreal and natural (ism and ain'tm) combined with double-edged intellectual/historical hysteria." Rick Harsh, author of the Driftless Trilogy 08 "Just as Joan Didion once traced the deep fissures in Southern California’s sun-kissed façade, poet-turned-novelist Sesshu Foster brings to life places one can’t visit from the inside of a car.. . . a jocular novel where violence liberates and enslaves at the same time, History (with a capital “H”) is rendered as organ grinder, quite literally – monkey included." LA Weekly 08 "Sesshu Foster's oracular Atomik Aztex is a novel of alternate history that posits the existence of an America where the Spanish conquistadors didn't conquer Mexico, thus turning the Aztecs into a major world power. . . . an unfailing, visceral, even courageous reminder that the Other is impossibly close. " Rain Taxi 08 “Foster has fashioned a wild, thrilling and occasionally revolting ride through a pre- and post-modern world where bloody violence seems the only connective tissue in history and chronology has been collapsed to allow for centuries of events to all happen concurrently. Atomik Aztex is hip, bloody, occasionally baffling and often piercingly brilliant.” Cherie Parker, Minneapolis Star Tribune 08 "In his rambunctious debut novel, Atomik Aztex, poet Sesshu Foster swaps a few consonants to designate the city "Teknotitlan," rendering the name far more piquant to a contemporary English-speaker's ear. . . . Renaming the Aztec capital is just one creative flourish in a book so heedlessly imaginative that it often seems ready to burst its pages like a comic-book POW. . . . this is an ambitious, energetic, and fiercely intelligent novel." Emily Barton, Bookforum 08 ". . .Foster's first novel. . . leaps fearlessly back and forth from 1940s Stalingrad, where an elite cadre of Aztec warriors is helping the Russians fend off invading Nazis, to "the frenetic hustle of overcrowded Teknotitlan," capital of the "Aztek Socialist Imperium," to the industrial back alleys of "some 3rd-class city called Los Angeles, someplace to the north." Ben Ehrenreich, The Village Voice 08 Atomik Aztex combines Latin American magical realism with science-fiction for a story set in an alternate future. The Aztec empire has triumphed, running the world with ruthless, and psychotropically enhanced, efficiency. Elaine Wolff, San Antonio Current 08 “Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519; two years later, history tells us, the Aztec civilization fell to the Spanish invaders and was wiped out. Atomik Aztex, the hallucinatory first novel by poet Sesshu Foster, proposes a different reality.” Carolyn Juris, San Francisco Chronicle 08 "In Sesshu Foster's explosive new novel Atomik Aztex, we get two narratives for the price of one. In the first (or maybe it's the second, part of the delight of Foster's book is that it's impossible to tell), the Aztecs not only beat back the Spanish conquistadors, but then went so far as to colonize Europe itself.... The other narrative finds... Zenzontli a lowly illegal immigrant slicing up pigs for a living at a Farmer John slaughterhouse in East L.A." SF Station 08 "Foster's satire on war and commercialism depicts a modern world ruled by the Aztecs, who rose to dominance after defeating the invading Spaniards in the 1500s. . . . A fine example of alternative fiction with a strong social theme; recommended for most collections." Library Journal 08 "Atomik Aztex defies genre-labeling, yet it may be pigeonholed as science fiction. That would be unfortunate, as it could limit its audience and belie its serious intent. Foster’s subversion of history is not a simple exercise in what-ifs, nor is it politically correct revisionism. It raises a fresh, if demanding, voice above the recent trend for books composed using understated, psychological, navel-gazing, whispering prose." Susan McCallum-Smith, urbanitebaltimore.com 23 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100323040/extras/inter.foster.html 04 03 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100323040/images/87286100323040L.jpg 07 03 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100323040/images/87286100323040S.jpg http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100323040 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 20050701 01 8 in 02 6 in 08 16 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 30 20050701 01 02 16.95 USD