Leap Year

by Steve Erickson

Published simultaneously with his other novel "Tours of the Black Clock", the author takes on the contemporary myth of America, a myth in conflict with the reality of the United States in the election year 1988. He paints a portrait of a country already far beyond its own crossroads.

Genres: Fiction, Biography Memoir

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Steve Erickson is a distinguished American novelist known for a visionary, dream-fueled style that blends European modernism with American pulp and postmodernism. Raised in Los Angeles, he studied film and political philosophy at UCLA, influences that permeate celebrated works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, and Zeroville. Critics, including Greil Marcus, have labeled him "the only authentic American surrealist," placing him in the lineage of Pynchon and DeLillo. His most acclaimed novel, Shadowbahn, was hailed as a masterpiece even prior to its release and was later adapted for BBC Radio. A "writer’s writer," Erickson has published ten novels translated into over a dozen languages, consistently appearing on best-of-the-year lists for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is the recipient of the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters award. Erickson served for fourteen years as the founding editor of the journal Black Clock and is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

How the hell am I supposed to review this book.



Okay listen.
It doesn't matter where I am.
When I hit the last 20 pages of a Steve Erickson, any Steve Erickson, I start hyperventilating. My pulse speeds up threefold. My stomach prisms. I can feel individual cells.

How this can happen when reading a memoir about the 1988 U.S. presidential campaign, I have no fucking idea.

I was two, and Canadian, in 1988. This was all before my time, though most of the names rang vague bells. But I have never cared so much about politics in my damn life. I could see people whining about the structure or surrealism or postmodernism in this book and I would not even engage in conversation with them because while they are entitled to their opinion, they do not fucking get it.


There is no one who has ever or is currently writing like Steve Erickson.

[tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An imagined memory - one of hiding in a dark hotel room bed in 1988, pretending to be asleep, as presidential hopeful Al Gore hovers inches away, indignantly expounding his entitled righteousness, while a thoroughly sloshed Tipper inexplicably hides behind the bathroom door - is alone worth the price of admission for this particular Steve Erickson effort. I can only wonder what he makes of the current leap year's presidential election, strive as I might to imagine anything stranger than what passes for consensus reality these days.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Erickson's most engaging work, though it is very apropos for an election year and demonstrates the stuck in the last groove repetition of political themes and agenda-furthering pandering quite well almost 25 years after the election it focuses on. Fantastic insight into Reagan's character, and some interesting journalistic evaluation and glimpses, to some extent, of the formulation of the personality of the enigmatic author himself. Also has some vivid imaginary history lessons. The interweaving of events that require heavy suspension of disbelief for which I usually turn to Erickson isn't as skillfully or seamlessly woven into this particular narrative. S'awright, though.

[Terence · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is rated only in relation to Erickson's other novels.