New Book Release: Wrequiem at the Red Rocks: A Novel of Brutalist Satire and Futile Gestures - by Jason Makansi

 

Find it on Amazon HERE

Bradley Maniopolos has Problems.

Sedona, Arizona Plays Host to Them.

When attendees at the “Neo-Anthropocentric Models of Retrospective Freedoms” colloquium arrive in spiritual Sedona, they become facilitator Bradley Maniopolos’s problem. Scholarly debate immediately devolves into who has freedom, who doesn’t, who’s getting it, who confers it, who assumes it, who guarantees it, and why the hell anyone cares. All the while, pontificating on stolen land.

But Bradley has problems of his own. Looming retirement. His identity. Personal issues of a private nature he’d rather not talk about. Too bad his best friend can’t keep his mouth shut, and the billionaire benefactors are keeping tabs through social media.

In the tradition of Catch-22, A Confederacy of Dunces, and The Sellout, Wrequiem at the Red Rocks makes you laugh until you see yourself. Then you cry. It’s not art that wins universal praise, but in the brutalist tradition, the satire is functional and effective exposing the hypocrisies we flawed humans depend on, and vociferously deny.

About the author:

Since launching a family newspaper in the 6th grade (it lasted two issues), Jason Makansi has considered himself a writer all his adult life. He wrote bad poetry in the 1980s and 1990s, a few published in vanity collections; short stories for fifteen years, a dozen of which were published in reputable (though now largely defunct) literary journals. His first novel, The Moment Before, came out in 2018 to a small but quite enthusiastic readership of about a hundred. Other publishing credits include several professional books, including the industry-acclaimed Lights Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means To You (John Wiley & Sons, 2007) and the 2016 IPPY Gold and Foreward Reviews Indie Silver winner, Painting By Numbers: How to Sharpen Your BS Detector and Smoke Out the "Experts," a layman's guide for strengthening numerical literacy. Makansi earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in New York in 1974, worked towards a higher degree in Sociology at the University of Missouri in the late 2000s, and attended the Sewanee Writers Conference in 2009. Other than the epigraph in the beginning, his favorite quote, from a long-ago Saturday morning cartoon, is "A pie in the face is worth two in the mouth. "Find out more about me and my work, including my music.

visit: kristinamakansi.com/jason-makansi
Instagram: @jasonmakansi

Substack: https: //jmakansi.substack.com/