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January's Paradigm
A groundbreaking novel about coming to terms with marital infidelity -- from the male perspective. Can novelist Robert Porter with assistance from Joe January, the protagonist from his novels, right the wrongs of his own tormented present and, through letting go of the past, find hope for a better tomorrow?
"Guest holds the reader's attention here by pulling out all the stops on his powers of imagination... Personal identity -- the slipperiness and the malleability of it -- makes up the major theme of the story... (readers) will not be able to put it down."
-- Current Entertainment Monthly, Ann Arbor, Michigan
"Guest holds the reader's attention here by pulling out all the stops on his powers of imagination... Personal identity -- the slipperiness and the malleability of it -- makes up the major theme of the story... (readers) will not be able to put it down."
-- Current Entertainment Monthly, Ann Arbor, Michigan
339 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 2002
30 people want to read
About the author
J. Conrad Guest
27 books47 followersJ. Conrad's first novel, January's Paradigm, was published in 1998. Current Entertainment Monthly in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wrote of January's Paradigm, "Readers will not be able to put it down." He has two other novels based on the Joe January character, One Hot January and January's Thaw.
Backstop: A Baseball Love Story In Nine Innings, was nominated a 2010 Michigan Notable Book, while the Lewis Department of Humanities at the Illinois Institute of Technology adopted it as required reading for their spring 2011 course, "Baseball: America’s Literary Pastime".
Apex Reviews hailed The Cobb Legacy, a murder mystery written around the shooting death of baseball legend Ty Cobb's father by his mother, as "... an eye-opening tale of drama, scandal, and intrigue highlighting the living, breathing history of a fatally-flawed, intrepid folk hero."
A Retrospect In Death portends not only a search for the meaning of life, but also seeks to determine why we are as we are: prewired at conception, or the product of our environment?
Set during the golden era of motor racing, 500 Miles To Go follows young Alex Król as he seeks love while making his dream to win the Indianapolis 500 come true.
A World Without Music is speculative fiction set against a backdrop of romance. Can a Gulf War veteran suffering PTSD leave behind his past to find the music that will make his life worth living?
His fiction and essays appear in various online and print publications; Google him.
A critic calls his work "Gritty, entertaining... real. Romance for the non-romantic."
Backstop: A Baseball Love Story In Nine Innings, was nominated a 2010 Michigan Notable Book, while the Lewis Department of Humanities at the Illinois Institute of Technology adopted it as required reading for their spring 2011 course, "Baseball: America’s Literary Pastime".
Apex Reviews hailed The Cobb Legacy, a murder mystery written around the shooting death of baseball legend Ty Cobb's father by his mother, as "... an eye-opening tale of drama, scandal, and intrigue highlighting the living, breathing history of a fatally-flawed, intrepid folk hero."
A Retrospect In Death portends not only a search for the meaning of life, but also seeks to determine why we are as we are: prewired at conception, or the product of our environment?
Set during the golden era of motor racing, 500 Miles To Go follows young Alex Król as he seeks love while making his dream to win the Indianapolis 500 come true.
A World Without Music is speculative fiction set against a backdrop of romance. Can a Gulf War veteran suffering PTSD leave behind his past to find the music that will make his life worth living?
His fiction and essays appear in various online and print publications; Google him.
A critic calls his work "Gritty, entertaining... real. Romance for the non-romantic."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 5, 2009
I hate this man, Joe January. Hate him. Even as my respect for him grows, possibly even… a begrudging sort of affection. Who knows? Maybe someday we will see eye to eye and I will be able to say – January, you’re a helluva man, and I’m enriched to know you.
This is precisely what makes January’s Paradigm such a remarkable book. I have read it once, twice, and will read it yet again. January and I have an ongoing relationship, and that’s how alive, how real, how tantalizingly, aggravatingly vivid his author has made him.
J. Conrad Guest has created a kind of anti-hero, a Bogey sort of tough guy, a man’s man who I suspect, deep in his isolated, walled-in heart, would very much like to be understood, appreciated, and… oh shivers, but yes, loved. His motto in life is to move through it unscathed by petty emotion. His relationships are not relationships at all – they are brief physical encounters. He cheats on the one woman who matters most in his life, and that is unforgiveable.
Or is it?
Because here is the intrigue of the book, here is Guest’s sheer mastery of the art: he has created a character who transcends boundaries of reality and fiction, who pops through the shell of the author’s skull and speaks to him, speaks from inside of him, and one man transforms the other and is then transformed himself in the process. He is the strength of a man as well as his most despicable weakness. He is the muscle as well as the whimper. He is the beacon in the storm as much as he is the shadow every man winces to find in himself if he is a man at all. If nothing else, January has courage. The kind of courage necessary to face his own weakness, his own shadow, his inner beast. He has the courage to recognize his cowardice in seeking only the most shallow of encounters with the parade of women in his life. How many men can do so? For all his fist-fighting, damsel-rescuing, tough-talking bravado… this is January’s true gold. He can look in the mirror, and he is willing to see.
Infidelity is a wound inflicted on so many of our relationships, yet it scarcely draws the attention of anyone, save those involved. So many marriages split at the seams, so many families are broken, so many lies told, so many temptations succumbed to for so little, if any, reward. But have we the courage to understand why? Have we the courage of Joe January?
Society has taken a microscope to the suffering of women caused by infidelity. Women, after all, are the warm-hearted sex that speaks freely of emotional pain, and sheds tears in public forums. Women’s emotions are socially acceptable. Men, on the other hand, are encouraged from boyhood to be tough and thick-skinned and to hide their softer emotions. Joe January is very much a man society has created. If he is a man closed off from emotional intimacy, from the ability to love, have we the courage to acknowledge that we have required him to be this way? That we have made this sort of man our hero? While whining about the lack of sensitive men, have we indulged in doubletalk, still stubbornly giving the nod of respect to the man who is mean and hard and difficult to pin down? Have we encouraged the warm-hearted man to wear his heart on his sleeve, while secretly still pining for the bad boy?
J. Conrad Guest has written a novel that reveals this conflicting message society sends to its men. He has created in January’s Paradigm a hero who struggles with his emotional barriers. He writes about a male perspective on infidelity. Yes, men hurt, too.
January’s Paradigm is the first of a promised trilogy – books that will, the author says, stand alone but also show a continued evolution of this intriguing character, Joe January. I am most eager to read the next one, One Hot January. I expect at some point I am going to be won over by this tough character. The process is well underway.
This is precisely what makes January’s Paradigm such a remarkable book. I have read it once, twice, and will read it yet again. January and I have an ongoing relationship, and that’s how alive, how real, how tantalizingly, aggravatingly vivid his author has made him.
J. Conrad Guest has created a kind of anti-hero, a Bogey sort of tough guy, a man’s man who I suspect, deep in his isolated, walled-in heart, would very much like to be understood, appreciated, and… oh shivers, but yes, loved. His motto in life is to move through it unscathed by petty emotion. His relationships are not relationships at all – they are brief physical encounters. He cheats on the one woman who matters most in his life, and that is unforgiveable.
Or is it?
Because here is the intrigue of the book, here is Guest’s sheer mastery of the art: he has created a character who transcends boundaries of reality and fiction, who pops through the shell of the author’s skull and speaks to him, speaks from inside of him, and one man transforms the other and is then transformed himself in the process. He is the strength of a man as well as his most despicable weakness. He is the muscle as well as the whimper. He is the beacon in the storm as much as he is the shadow every man winces to find in himself if he is a man at all. If nothing else, January has courage. The kind of courage necessary to face his own weakness, his own shadow, his inner beast. He has the courage to recognize his cowardice in seeking only the most shallow of encounters with the parade of women in his life. How many men can do so? For all his fist-fighting, damsel-rescuing, tough-talking bravado… this is January’s true gold. He can look in the mirror, and he is willing to see.
Infidelity is a wound inflicted on so many of our relationships, yet it scarcely draws the attention of anyone, save those involved. So many marriages split at the seams, so many families are broken, so many lies told, so many temptations succumbed to for so little, if any, reward. But have we the courage to understand why? Have we the courage of Joe January?
Society has taken a microscope to the suffering of women caused by infidelity. Women, after all, are the warm-hearted sex that speaks freely of emotional pain, and sheds tears in public forums. Women’s emotions are socially acceptable. Men, on the other hand, are encouraged from boyhood to be tough and thick-skinned and to hide their softer emotions. Joe January is very much a man society has created. If he is a man closed off from emotional intimacy, from the ability to love, have we the courage to acknowledge that we have required him to be this way? That we have made this sort of man our hero? While whining about the lack of sensitive men, have we indulged in doubletalk, still stubbornly giving the nod of respect to the man who is mean and hard and difficult to pin down? Have we encouraged the warm-hearted man to wear his heart on his sleeve, while secretly still pining for the bad boy?
J. Conrad Guest has written a novel that reveals this conflicting message society sends to its men. He has created in January’s Paradigm a hero who struggles with his emotional barriers. He writes about a male perspective on infidelity. Yes, men hurt, too.
January’s Paradigm is the first of a promised trilogy – books that will, the author says, stand alone but also show a continued evolution of this intriguing character, Joe January. I am most eager to read the next one, One Hot January. I expect at some point I am going to be won over by this tough character. The process is well underway.
Read
January 4, 2010Fellow Michigan writer and author of Landscape with Fragmented Figures Jeff Vande Zande writes of Backstop: “J. Conrad Guest offers an entertaining and instructive journey into both major league baseball and major league matters of the heart.”
While Rachael Perry, also a Michigan writer, says, “Baseball, like love, is a game of errors and regrets. Pop-outs, ground-outs, strike-outs. A bad swing, a bad throw, a bad hop. But what captivates us most is the possibility of the next at-bat, of the chance for a rally, of an unlikely clutch play that suddenly changes the stakes. This is where J. Conrad Guest meets us in Backstop: in this beautiful, hopeful place closest to our hearts, where we play for the love of the game, and we love with everything we have.”
And Jeff LeJeune, author of Postmarked Baltimore says, “In this story of love and sport, told in the tradition of Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game, J. Conrad Guest masterfully weaves the human realities of risk, regret, and redemption in bold and charming fashion.”
While Rachael Perry, also a Michigan writer, says, “Baseball, like love, is a game of errors and regrets. Pop-outs, ground-outs, strike-outs. A bad swing, a bad throw, a bad hop. But what captivates us most is the possibility of the next at-bat, of the chance for a rally, of an unlikely clutch play that suddenly changes the stakes. This is where J. Conrad Guest meets us in Backstop: in this beautiful, hopeful place closest to our hearts, where we play for the love of the game, and we love with everything we have.”
And Jeff LeJeune, author of Postmarked Baltimore says, “In this story of love and sport, told in the tradition of Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game, J. Conrad Guest masterfully weaves the human realities of risk, regret, and redemption in bold and charming fashion.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews