Arise and Walk - Softcover

Gifford, Barry

3.79

117 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385314728 ISBN 13: 9780385314725

Publisher: Delta, 1995

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The author of Wild at Heart pictures New Orleans in the near future, torn apart by madmen bent on exacting a just vengeance before they are destroyed. Reprint. Tour.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Gifford (Night People, 1992, etc.) starts off this patchwork quilt of insanity by pairing quotes from the Bible (from which the title is culled) and from filmmaker Sam Peckinpah: ``Despair is the only unforgivable sin, and it's always reaching for us.'' Somehow, in Gifford's fundamentally twisted world, Jesus and Peckinpah seem like a natural pairing. Along with Bible-spouting and blood-spurting, the neon cast of characters go in for deviant sex, perverted politics, and...well, you name it. But no matter how low they sink (and that's very low, indeed), despair cannot grasp them. So that's something--and generally all--you can say for them. There's Cleon Tone, former pastor of the Church of the Fresh Start in Daytime, Ark., whose fall from grace leads him to seek redemption through assassination; his intended victim, Klarence Koscuisko Krotz, the Real American Party candidate for governor of Louisiana and love toy of Bulgarian sardine czar and avid pederast Zvatiff Thziz-Tczili; televangelist Presciencia ``Precious'' Espanto, charismatic and bisexual leader of the Church of the Ungrateful, whose throngs of multiracial supporters listen, entranced, to her prophecies as Krotz schemes to win her--and them- -over to his candidacy; and Marble Lesson (a holdover from Night People whose longevity is remarkable in Gifford's corpse-ridden world), 16-year-old feminist and head of a radical faction within the Mary Mother of God Rape Crisis Center that espouses elimination of any male guilty of violence toward women. What's it all about? Not much, really. There's a good dose of hard-core feminism, a dash of political satire, a smattering of aberrant sex scenes. The author's attention span seems shorter than that of a 13- year-old MTV addict; Arise and Walk reads more like the literary equivalent of sound bites than a novel. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

It's time to check in again with Barry Gifford's gang of New Orleans weirdos. A few of our old favorites from Night People (1992) are backincluding Marble Lesson, the lethal leader of the Mary Mother of God Rape Crisis Centerbut there are also plenty of new, equally bizarre faces: we've got Croesus Spit Spackle and Demetrious Ice D Youngblood, ex-cons out to rid the world of demagogues; we've got Roland Rocque, the Smartest Mouth in the Deepest South, host of the radio call-in show Prostitutes Talk to Jesus; and we've got Parshal Lee, distraught over losing his girlfriend, Hipolyte Cortez, to another woman, Irma Soon, a Panamanian Chinese exotic dancer who simulates copulation with a rock python six nights a week at Big Nig's Gauchos 'n' Gals Club on Pelican Avenue in Algiers. It should be becoming clear by now why Gifford is a cult favorite and why Twin Peaks director David Lynch, who has already made the movie version of Gifford's Wild at Heart, will soon begin production on Night People. What may not be as clear is the fact that beneath all the camp and all the cultishness and all the apparent perversity, Gifford is just an old softy. His characters are as bighearted a group of eccentrics as Pickwick's motley crew, and his violent, noirish story lines camouflage a genuine love of life. Magic for the heart is what Tombilena Gayoso promises her husband, Pace Ripley, before she seduces him; it's also, in a sneaky sort of way, what Gifford gives us every time he puts pen to paper. Bill Ott

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