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5.5 x 8.5 Paperback cream |
ISBN: 9781432729769 |
$15.95 |
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Genre: |
FICTION / General |
Publication: |
Feb 27, 2009 |
Pages: |
233 |
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William Homer Omkowski is an alienated and haunted man who drinks too much. He tells a story that spans a single evening and the following morning, about a loft party he attended in Baltimore forty-some-odd years ago and the tragic event that overshadowed it. But this story is only a framework. Memories, events, delusions, and images with origins that extend back to Creation expand the design into an imposing, if unstable, edifice. His rich, but unsteady, imagination enlivens a vivid tale laced with free associations, stream of consciousness, and poetry.
The question asked by the book is: where does one find a comfortable place? From William’s point of view, that place is as the hero and legendary bard in an epic.
The novel opens with a poem recited by Omkowski. It is a reference to “The Song of Amergin”, a grand proclamation of the bard’s claim to Ireland. Omkowski’s version is self conscious and diminutive, underscoring his conflict: the demand for a home in which he is celebrated, and the realization that he is aimless and marginally important at best. Juxtaposing references, such as this example, create a subtle and dramatic subtext, an undercurrent so like the forgotten or subconscious ebbs and flows that influence life in general.
The book sits well among the books of both modern and postmodern literature. It turns from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness, drawing on the stream of consciousness styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and the explorative style of T. S. Eliot. In addition, it exploits the fragmentary style of these movements regarding narrative- and character-construction. The structure of the book is taken from the early Christian monks’ transcriptions of Celtic epics, moving from prose to poetry, and, therefore, deviates from the usual narrative form of a novel a bit further. These transcriptions infuse these pagan epics with Christian themes. It follows that the book does the same to gain additional license for expression.
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Squirming on soft ground, this way and that, I slip from one circumstance to another. I slip to my blessed eventuality: it was during the penalty phase of Big Lug’s trial that I was born, or so poppa had it. After a corned beef and cabbage dinner momma began to moan and even cry that a trip to the hospital was in order. Poppa calmed her by reminding her that cabbage often gave her gas. As the story goes, momma was satisfied with the explanation until a fit of sneezes brought on by a peppercorn lodged in her sinus cavity provided exactly the sort of muscular contractions to expedite a blessed event, and out I popped with A-tishoo! A-tishoo! a bundle of dazed awareness, flopping to the kitchen floor, between momma’s feet. Before poppa had sized up the situation fully, he tossed a God bless in her direction from behind a copy of the Times. Momma was closer to the situation, but she thought the sudden loss of pressure was a biological accident unbecoming adults at the dinner table and hid her face in her hands and began to sob. It was my brother that noticed my arrival first and it’s only natural that he did. Being an irrepressible, hyperactive child momma had tied him to the kitchen table’s leg in an attempt to keep him on a short leash so she and poppa could dine in peace.
Boom! laughed my brother. He followed it with shrill, falsetto-explosions of hysterical screams, sending our dog, Spot, in a panicked rout of tail-chasing that terminated under the kitchen table where she shivered uncontrollably, huddled between my brother and me. When she had collected herself a bit, she licked my face clean.
The meaning of the situation began to take shape for momma and quickly became very clear.
My God! she cried. It’s a boy, I think. She picked me up from between her feet and gave me a quick check. Ya got a boy! she squealed.
Poppa put down the Times looking up a bit annoyed. Did he fall on his head? he grumbled.
She bounced me in her in her pudgy arms. E’s going ta be a smart one anyway! she cried. E’s th spittin image of is brother! E’s an Omkowski if I ever saw one. E’s a Willeeum! she cried.
In the short time I spent under the table, staring up just prior to my first cry, I noticed my first glimpse of symbols and their mysteries, a tiny explosion of a timeless, dimensionless point both innocent garden dweller and fully corrupt brother of Able. So saying, directly overhead, a white patch of paper glued in place years before, read: Checked by No. 2. And a bit to the left in a greasy, black scrawl some previous owner had written: I love you, Bill. My eyes traced along those grease-penciled lines of sloppy penmanship—doubling back now and then as is the nature of following the path of a scripted o or l—to a destiny promising only love for the child born of edgy sneezes, those sharp staccato sounds that snagged a stitch in an unfurling fabric and marked the defect’s vicinity. It was the place in which I was born, to the extent such a place can be marked, just as the judge’s gavel cracked down sending Big Lug to prison. So a start and an end and a story that fills a comfortable middle form a breakfast sausage suitable for an egg as its complement.
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About Roger Sakowski
From an Otherwise Comfortable Room is the result of Sakowski’s on-going interest in fine art, literature, philosophy, psychology and history. Over the years, his short stories and poems have been published in college literary magazines. Sakowski was awarded the English Department Award for Literary Merit for his short stories and the Sheaf Literary Award for his poetry. He has written numerous training manuals for the IT industry, as well as lectured across the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
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