Synopsis
It's autumn, 1957, the age of innocence, but change is afoot. In the great cities, people speak of Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and his "slow, persistent wind" of fate that blows from the dark horizon of the future. In the half desert of Northeastern Oregon, high school seniors Ray and Angie explore existentialism and each other. But lurking behind them is Billy, star of the high school football team. Billy has tried to rape Angie, but only Ray believes her. And someone has been raping, even murdering, women over several counties. The police cannot act against the football hero without proof. Ray and Angie see the inevitable showdown coming. They know the police can't help. Bravely, they enter into the existential responsibilities of choice and confront Billy themselves, a decision that changes their lives forever. Forty years later, their choices on that memorable night have come back to haunt them.
From Kirkus Reviews
A 1950s fictional memoir of teenage sex, existential small-town blues, and a nasty bully who doesn't know when to quit. After his wacky, Pynchonesque thriller debut, Mongoose Man (1998), van Pelt veers into twisted nostalgia with a squeamishly adolescent, rites-of-passage sex-capade set in a tiny, dusty Oregon farm town. Its 1957 and pruriently prodigal 16-year-old Ray ``Skeeter'' Hawkins, earning spare change as a drugstore janitor, gets a wink from slim, sexy Angie Boudreau as she steps off the bus. Angie, whose American Indian ancestry gives her exotic features, has come to the forlorn hamlet of Umatilla to stay with relatives and finish out her high school years. She sees something in Raythe son of a crippled, former bootlegger with a struggling farmthat no one else does, least of all the testosterone-charged bully and high-school football hero Billy Karady, who thinks every pretty girl is his to conquer. Angie and Ray quickly become a couple, passionately discussing Camus's The Stranger while indulging in R-rated groping in the front seat of Ray's battered car, only to be stalked and threatened by Karady, who, Angie soon reveals, almost raped her when Ray wasn't around. Karady's envy leads to increasingly violent encounters with Ray, whose puny stature and intellectualized cowardice prevent him from trouncing Karady. When Ray and Angie hear of a series of rape-murders on the outskirts of town, their attempt to stick Karady with the crime goes awry. Forty years later, Ray, now a globe-trotting journalist-turned-novelist writing under the name van Pelt, expects Karady to jump out and challenge him in every locale he inhabits. The eventual confrontation is a letdown, as it inevitably must be, and afterward Hawkins/van Pelt reveals that Stomp! is less nostalgic idyll than postmodern critique of existentialism. Endearing comic invention, small-town angst, and a plausibly philosophical intent clash with embarrassingly trite masturbation metaphors. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
