Zeitgeist - Hardcover

Wiggins, Todd

3.63

90 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805044175 ISBN 13: 9780805044171

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1996

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Set in 1999 against a backdrop of race riots, well-armed zealots, discount euthanasia, and sexual worship, Zeitgeist is a searing portrait of a nation facing Armageddon.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Wiggins's maiden voyage is an endless apocalyptic road trip going nowhere at great length, certain to leave even the grownups in the backseat whining, ``Are we there yet?'' Everything starts on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where a priest with a Kalashnikov commandeers a car to elude the cops and make it out of town. Inside the car are Dorian, a failed Oxford don, and Prophet, a black ``cyberterrorist'' who specializes in computer fraud. Fish, the priest, quickly hits it off with Dorian and Prophet, and the three decide to take to the highways with the ample stash of drug money that Fish has just ripped off from a dealer. Like all such characters on the lam, they commit more crimes on the way and eventually find themselves in deep trouble. It's the end of 1999, you see, and America is coming apart: Racial tensions have erupted into something close to actual warfare, and a plague of militias and cults have sprung up. The story is narrated by Venus Wicked, a novelist and prostitute, who is rather coy at first about her relation to the peculiar trio. ``I have a narrative of my own,'' she insists, ``which runs parallel to that of my friends, and to which I will repair from time to time throughout these pages. The diversion will not be unprofitable- -trust me on that.'' It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Venus's story is not a diversion at all, and that her history and fate are directly linked to the three outcasts. The leisurely way that she makes her own connection to the action clear is emblematic of the book as a whole--basically a simple road story smothered by intellectual pretensions and a meandering narrative voice. Odd, bloated, and devoid of focus. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

A cautionary tale of Generation Z millenarianism, this intriguing first novel follows the cross-country travails of a ragtag assortment of unlikely desperadoes: a petit bourgeois black-nationalist hacker; a Welshman starving for media attention; a lesbian martial arts expert on the lam from her manipulative mother; the shell-shocked victim of a gang bang; and a schizophrenic Catholic priest turned armed robber. They come together by chance and, despite their faxed-in bomb threats, dustups in hayseed canteens and occasional chopper-jacking, are a generally decent lot. How can they be expected to know that their innocent actions will result in race riots, the suspension of the Bill of Rights and the coming of an avenging angel of the Lord? Interspersed throughout the narrative are the memoirs of the story's "author," one Dr. Venus Wicked, failed novelist and successful prostitute. Wiggins is a lucid writer with a true gift for puns, but he lets the story get away from him. The violent ending has some endearing cartoonish elements (a militia made up of Las Vegas showgirls, for instance), but it more often settles for an unpleasant mix of sentimentality and gristle. The novel's "Nabokovian intent," as Venus puts it, is also a disappointment, turning out to be, as Dr. Wicked herself might say, way obvious.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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