BACK IN THE USSA

Byrne, Eugene and Newman, Kim

ISBN 10: 0929480848 / ISBN 13: 9780929480848

Published by Ziesing, 1997

About this Item

First limited edition, #150/300, in slipcase. Near fine/Fine condition, indentation on pages 179/180 from paperclip. Signed by both authors on the limitation page. Seller Inventory # 31059

Bibliographic Details

Title: BACK IN THE USSA

Publisher: Ziesing

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed By Both Authors

Edition: First Ed.

Book Type: Book

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In the zany scenario of this alternative history of the 20th century, Russia didn't have a revolution, but the United States did, sparked by Teddy Roosevelt's death in a gun battle between the Rough Riders and striking meatpackers in 1912 Chicago. Soon Chairman Capone and the iron arm of the Federal Bureau of Ideology have remade the party of Eugene Debs in their own image. As the authors laboriously conceive it, the U.S. becomes a sort of simplified Eastern Bloc in which historical and pop-culture figures mingle with the fictional characters. Sometimes the rules of this transformation bend weirdly enough to create a kind of brief, madcap diversion, as when Buddy Holly tells how Howard Hughes and Jack Kerouac barnstormed across the USSA in the Spruce Goose, here a homemade biplane ("`I'll tell you what music was in those days," says Holly, here spared from untimely death, "Mario fucking Lanza singing about agricultural machinery"). Despite such bursts of high spirits, Newman's (Bloody Red Baron) and Byrne's disheveled goose has a hard time getting off the ground, and the cartoonish country it surveys offers little food for thought.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.