Count Geiger's Blues - Softcover

Bishop MS MT (Ascp) Cls (Nca), Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933846488 ISBN 13: 9781933846484

Publisher: Fairwood Press, 2014

Synopsis

Count Geiger's Blues follows the adventures of Xavier Thaxton, arts editor at a major Southern daily called the Salonika Urbanite. Thaxton thinks himself a superior man. His aesthetic standards are so lofty that he regards superheroes as pop-culture cock-and-bull, rock music as audible rubbish, and soap operas as the contemptible spew of script-writing committees. While skinny-dipping in a pool polluted with radioactive waste, Thaxton is afflicted with superpowers all his own and becomes that which he most scorns. A radiation-induced ailment, the Philistine Syndrome, forces him to assume the persona of comic-book hero Count Geiger to allay its career- and indeed life-threatening symptoms. Michael Bishop's Count Geiger Blues, a novel of intellectual heft and self-spoofing kitsch, is a take on superheroes like no other: a rollicking foray into high and low culture that mines the vicissitudes and tragedies of everyday life for serious belly laughs and bona fide heartbreak.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Another distinctive fantasy featuring a dying protagonist (as in Unicorn Mountain, 1988), this one set in the mythical southern state of Oconee and its largest city, Salonika. After cultural-snob Xavier Thaxton, Fine Arts editor of the Salonika Suburbanite, swims in a pond whose waters (unbeknownst to Xavier) are contaminated with illegally dumped radioactive waste, his life takes a strange turn. He acquires a fashion-designer girlfriend and, much less welcome, a roomie, his retropunk nephew, the Mick, a dedicated fan of UC superhero comics. Following the launch of a new comic character, Count Geiger (he acquires superpowers after exposure to radiation), Xavier and the Mick quarrel over Xavier's condemnation of comics in general and Count Geiger in particular. Soon, however, Xavier develops a strange malady: culture--opera, literature, whatever--makes him sick; the only cure is a dose of lowbrow realism...especially the Mick's comics and rock music. In the hope that constant contact might alleviate his symptoms, Xavier takes to wearing a Count Geiger suit underneath his clothes. But then Count Geiger's creator, blaming Xavier's hostile column for his firing by UC, shoots Xavier--who, far from ending up dead, finds he can expel the bullets and heal right up! Days later, he defeats four would-be subway muggers in comic-book style: somehow, he has become Count Geiger! Not only that, but Xavier now approves of comics and rock music. He starts a crusade to heighten the social awareness of Salonika's stubbornly reactionary inhabitants. Then, as another shipment of illegally dumped nuclear waste comes to light, Xavier realizes that he is dying, though he lives to see the owner of UC comics convicted for masterminding the dumping. Social-conscience-tweaker, tear-jerker, environmental- consciousness-raiser, or just plain if ponderous fun? Witty, often admirable work but with a hidden agenda that grates. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Xavier Thaxton, erudite fine arts editor at a great metropolitan newspaper, views himself as a "superior" man. Then he is exposed to radiation that endows him with powers far beyond those of mere mortals. Adopting the name and costume of a popular new comic-book superhero, he becomes Count Geiger; his exploits include saving women from muggings, stopping a particularly exploitative exercise at a local strip joint and generally inspiring all and sundry--until he starts to die of radiation poisoning. Nebula Award winner Bishop ( No Enemy but Time ) sets this amusing super-hero sendup in the fictional city of Salonika, capital of the southeastern state of Oconee (no doubt on the same map as the famed comic-book locales Gotham City, Metropolis and Central City). The plot is developed in leisurely fashion; Thaxton does not don the Geiger identity until the novel's midpoint. His efforts are dedicated to reforming criminals and bettering humanity's lot. Along the way Bishop finds time to criticize nuclear power plants, making his story politically correct as well as entertaining.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fairwood Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1933846488
• ISBN 13: 9781933846484
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 354