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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Grimy and Hauntingly Beautiful - Warrants Multiple Readings Nov 20, 2009
By Jennifer A. Kotting
"JKotting"
The beautiful blue sky on the cover belies the dark and bleak innards of this allegorical novel, but there is an important meaning posed through the contrast, a clash over the deepest dualities of society. Consciousness-dreaming, self-other, life-death. The narrator, at first oblivious to the unfolding crisis between good and evil, soon discovers that the reckoning is unavoidable, in the city of Balaise and in his own mind. His transformation into an iconoclast is made all the more dramatic because he is initially situated within the system of the city's panopticon, a mini-FBI that surveils the conscious and unconscious behavior of its citizens in the name of safety, security, and sanitized street life. Sound familiar?
As more and more residents dream of death, the city government scrambles to control, restrain, and forcefully regulate the situation. And just beneath the fear-mongering surface of corrupt politics, dark secrets lurk - violence, transgression, and terrifying excess. The suspense builds into hopelessness as the narrator learns he can trust no one.
The chapters move at a rhythm that fits the anti-heroism of the protagonist, who is accessible enough for anyone to imagine themselves in his place. The author avoids abstraction and the trap of classic good/evil plotline through intensely visceral writing that exposes the backdrop of a decaying urban landscape. In this, the book satisfied cravings for grimy city descriptions, twisting and twisted plotlines, and just beneath the surface, haunting beauty that warrants multiple readings.
I say the novel is allegorical because, coming from Baltimore myself, like the author, I can't help but notice the parallels and imagine the city must have served as his inspiration. The congruent story of Balaise is woven carefully around Baltimore, a thin but important veil to allow for a disturbing realization - that the implications of the injustices in the book are, in fact, real.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Zero Tolerance is not a dream... Oct 09, 2011
By T. Graham
"monologue"
What makes this book fascinating for me is how it configures a surreal allegory for the little known affects of an mass arrest policy in Baltimore city that was the primary crime fighting tool during the middle part of the past decade I heard the author speak, and he said he got the idea for dream regulation from covering Baltimore's zero tolerance arrest policy. According to him the city arrested almost a three quartrers of a million people in 8 years, most of them African American. Police would drive paddy wagons into poor black neighborhoods and round people up It was witnessing that policy and it's repercussions throughout the city that gave Janis the idea for the book. In a way I see it as a cautionary tale about the unseen consequences about our use of force, imprisonment, mass criminality to solve complex social problems. In a sense this book is a great metaphor for the psychic toll exacted on all of us for being the country that incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Janis takes you for a ride into a history, a nightmare! Feb 26, 2010
By William Hughes
The fast-paced story is set in the decaying, crime-saturated and once-highly industrialized, "City of Balaise." It's a look into a grim, but maybe a not-too-distant future, where your worse fears of an ultra-controlling "Homeland Security-like" agency running amuck are a reality. Preventing crimes means the municipal bureaucrats, at the urgings of a paranoid "Deputy Mayor," can check out your "dreams" for any "negative" thoughts, and if necessary, restrict your liberties.
We learn that Blacks are targeted for "negative" dreams more than Whites. Dreams "about death" pose the highest threat to the deputy mayor. As for the media, well, don't get your hopes up. Even the narrator refers to the evening news as, "Nightlies!"
Stephen Janis told the audience at his book reading, on Feb. 18, 2010: "Baltimore is Balaise!"
If I didn't know any better, I'd would have thought the model for Janis' deputy mayor was NYC's gift to the absurd--that raving Neocon, one Rudy Giuliani! He's that same lock-them-all-up politico, whose inept and corrupt Police Commissioner, Bernie Kerik, just got four years in the federal slammer for tax evasion. However, closer to home, some might see a wee bit of ex-Baltimore City Mayor, now Maryland Governor, Martin O'Malley, in the persona of the overly-ambitious deputy mayor. When he was the City Hall boss, his disputed "arrest policy" led to some innocent people, mostly in the Black community, to get police records, even though the charges against many of them were later dropped. O'Malley denied any wrongdoing on his part. Also, when he was mayor, his theme for the populous was--"Dream!"
Janis builds his tale in one bone-chilling scene after another with a writing style of clipped sentences that suits the genre. His urban landscape descriptions are first rate. As the tension escalates, the character of the narrator evolves, too, into a much more sympathetic figure. As you begin to care about him, Janis takes you for a ride into a history, a nightmare, which I fear, may be only one more 9/11 incident away from becoming our reality!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Please make this into a miniseries Jan 09, 2010
By Craig R. Smith
"craigertiger"
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys utopian fiction. Thru rich imagery and a spectrum of characters, Janis paints a bleak picture of a future city where notions of good and evil are constantly being questioned. I was entertained throughout. I can see this book being a pilot for an amazing miniseries. Think: a more futuristic and existential The Wire.
"The low rumblings of bass guitar filled the room, followed by the soft hiccups of syncopated perucssion. Then light strings, stabbing and aggressive. Finally the voice of woman, sultry, vague and haunting.
'Ever heard this one?'
'No,' I answered.
The bass wobbled, the strings sagged, and the woman's voice descended into off-beat musings, a feline whisper. The drums would halt, and then resume, stripped down to single sound, a smattering of bone dry congas.
The bass rode up the scale, bumping into higher notes until it dominated the upper register. A saxophone jumped in plumbing low frequencies vacated by the bass.
'What is it?' I asked.
'How should I know? It's your dream,'"
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