As the Wolf Howls at My Door

In As the Wolf Howls at My Door, Brossard takes on the '70s: a time of despair as the dreams and ideals of the '60s were cashed in for political opportunism and crass materialism. America's inglorious exit from Vietnam, the increasingly desperate actions of counterculture protest groups, the rise of repressive CIA operations, the commodification of the American wayall this and more is captured here in Brossard's inimitable style. That style discards realism in favor of a free-form fiction that mixes French surrealism and theatrical absurdity with Beat improvisation and performance art confrontation. Brossard's avalanche of language is outrageous. A kind of verbal delirium possesses the text, which on one level may be the collective fantasy lives of a countercultural group in Paris; on another, the psychotic outpourings of a woman named Decca Aldridge; on yet another, a script by impresario Socks Peelmunder for a guerrilla theater performance; and on the final level, the gamy underside of America's subconsciousa terrifying lava flow of provincial prejudices, racial fears, political paranoia, and sexist attitudes all speaking in tongues in a desperate attempt to bolt the door against the return of the repressed. Not since Naked Lunch has the American dream been assaulted with such ferocious verbal energy.