John Gardiner

Trash John Gardiner

Trash weaves the familiar dramatis personae from the author's earlier sequence of novels, WHAAM!, Exiles & Siren, into the tapestry of years, 1977, 1978, and 1979. The celebrated and irresistible image and momentum of Physics' Arrow of Time penetrating the fabric of three-dimensional spacetime sets up powerful resonances, politically, metaphysically and romantically, the author condenses in his paragraphic style to suggest the stillness of film-frames. The powerful Japanese Zen motif, the Enso, O, intensifies as a symbolic toolbox the dramatis personae utilize to help focus the meaning of being-and-existence within the darkening cloud of probabilities enshrouding the events manifesting on the World Stage through 1977 - 1979. WHAAM! prophetically begins the cycle of novels in January, 1968, with the climactic event from the war in 'Nam, of the Viet Cong takeover of the US Embassy in Saigon, and Trash concludes with the mirroring event of the Iranian invasion of the US Embassy in Tehran, and holding of personnel as hostages. Unresolved, the Iranian crisis and the cloud of probabilities associated with the emergence of the 1980s, the dynamics engendered in the passage of the Arrow of Time, await the dramatis personae as this cycle of novels continues.