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Revelation
"In 'Revelation', Colin Winnette sets fire to the world, and in the aftermath, characters wander through smoke, struck dumb by devastation. A forceful book--stripped down, cool, and painful--about the absolute peril of desire." -Ben Marcus, author of "The Flame Alphabet," "Notable American Women," and "The Age of Wire and String" "Alternating the apocalyptic with the laconic, the end-of-times with the poignantly down-to-earth, 'Revelation' is full of fine surprises. Colin Winnette has a sharp eye, a good ear, an ironic spirit and , like a smaller scale Terrence Malick, he’s made a provocative work by framing the ordinary in the unfathomable." -Rosellen Brown, author of "Before and After" and "Civil Wars" "Keep your eye on this Colin Winnette. He's a gifted stylist, and quite often a funny one." -Adam Levin, author of "Hot Pink" and "The Instructions" Revelation , Colin Winnette’s debut novel, is a startlingly simple, fresh and audacious retelling of the famous biblical apocalypse tale. Winnette’s Revelation is, on the one hand, a very everyday and modern story, in which desperate characters wander and slip from one year to the next, but behind what would otherwise be a mundane detail lies an architecture of the supernatural—a father carries his son to his grandfather’s retirement community, but does so across a parking lot consumed in a plague of locusts, two childhood friends construct a fort from the hull of an enormous ship abandoned by the oceans as they recede, a body falls from the sky as a warning, but only demolishes the deck of a character’s lakeside home. A Finalist for the 1913 Press First Book Award, Winnette has stirred up notice from all corners for his innovative and striking stories, as well as his various narrative experiments of larger size. However, Revelation is more than just a stylistic exercise, it’s a powerful emotional document.
218 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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About the author
Colin Winnette
20 books150 followersColin Winnette is an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. He is the author of several works of fiction: Revelation (Mutable Sound 2011), Animal Collection (Spork Press 2012), Fondly (Atticus Books 2013), Coyote (Les Figues Press 2015), and Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio 2015). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Playboy, Lucky Peach, The American Reader, The Believer, Gulf Coast Magazine, and 9th Letter. He was the winner of Les Figues Press's 2013 NOS Book Contest, for his novel Coyote.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 25, 2012
This book is a carefully wrought novel and a peek at the opening book from a genuinely talented writer.
Interview at Monkeybicycle: http://monkeybicycle.net/blog/intervi...
Interview at Monkeybicycle: http://monkeybicycle.net/blog/intervi...
November 17, 2011
Revelation, a novel by Colin Winnette, is a story about the end of the world in which, somehow, the apocalypse isn’t the biggest thing going. The story follows a core of three friends (Marcus, Colin, and Tom) from youth to old age as they lead ordinary lives in the midst of exploding trees, vanished oceans, plagues of locusts, and the Four Horsemen. Mundane traumas like a lost teenage girlfriend are more devastating to these characters than a lost ocean, and the vast wasteland of dead, rotting fish left behind as it dries are taken as a wretched novelty but not much of a warning.
It’s disorienting, at first, that the novel insistently focuses on these men growing older, having children, entering and leaving marriages, and so on, rather than offering specifics about why the world is on fire or what will will be done about all these plagues. It goes so fiercely against expectation, reversing the genre of apocalypse tales; think 2012, in which hollow stock characters are put in the story only to lead the viewer from one special effect to the next. In Revelation, by contrast, the explosions are there to lead us through the years of these characters’ lives, and for the most part the catastrophes of the story — both apocalyptic and domestic — happen “off stage.” That stylistic choice of huge spans of time passing in between pages is disorienting, too, reducing the chronological context of how these boys became the men they are to ambiguous events of religious conversion, time spent in jail, multiple wives we don’t meet, and so on. We drop on these characters once in a while, at moments that aren’t their most dramatic but are more like the aftermath of drama, and all along the apocalypse goes on in the background as ambiguously explained as their lives.
For these boys-then-men, the end of the world has gone on like this for years, one plague at a time their whole lives. Time passes, other things dominate your attention, and minding the apocalypse is as easily forgotten as remembering, for example, to visit an aging father more often than it actually happens. That may be the biggest revelation in all of this: how easily time slips away, subsumed by smaller demands, even in the face of global destruction; no need to overload the implications, in our age of climate change and extinction.
There’s a metaphor in all this, that the world is always ending and always has been and will be for each generation of men (because Revelation is very much a story about men and men’s lives, with markedly few women crossing the novel’s pages) as they’re born and they age and they endure the same frustrations and failures as past and future sons. It’s the end of the world but that’s no reason to give up on it, as a father who spends his free time on astronomy reminds his son:
Later, that son, Marcus, pays to take a hot air balloon ride, and the balloon’s pilot asks,
Why pay for a view above a scorched, oceanless, nearly-dead landscape unless that’s the only world you’re used to and individual heartache pains you more than that global loss? Why, unless the end of the world is the ordinary cost of being alive?
Later, when he’s older, Marcus wades through a parking lot flooded with biting locusts to carry his own son to safety, a much greater concern than asking why the world has been plagued. And Marcus’ own father, the astronomer looking for answers, says of the insects:
Characters endure and even ignore the apocalypse one way or another, the way we endure anything — broken bones, broken hearts, lost jobs and lost oceans — and ultimately there’s a fatalistic optimism in that: this is the world we live in, whether it’s on fire or not, and this is the world in which we’ll grow old, so you might as well get used to it. The way you might get used to a sky when familiar stars are fading away:
It’s disorienting, at first, that the novel insistently focuses on these men growing older, having children, entering and leaving marriages, and so on, rather than offering specifics about why the world is on fire or what will will be done about all these plagues. It goes so fiercely against expectation, reversing the genre of apocalypse tales; think 2012, in which hollow stock characters are put in the story only to lead the viewer from one special effect to the next. In Revelation, by contrast, the explosions are there to lead us through the years of these characters’ lives, and for the most part the catastrophes of the story — both apocalyptic and domestic — happen “off stage.” That stylistic choice of huge spans of time passing in between pages is disorienting, too, reducing the chronological context of how these boys became the men they are to ambiguous events of religious conversion, time spent in jail, multiple wives we don’t meet, and so on. We drop on these characters once in a while, at moments that aren’t their most dramatic but are more like the aftermath of drama, and all along the apocalypse goes on in the background as ambiguously explained as their lives.
For these boys-then-men, the end of the world has gone on like this for years, one plague at a time their whole lives. Time passes, other things dominate your attention, and minding the apocalypse is as easily forgotten as remembering, for example, to visit an aging father more often than it actually happens. That may be the biggest revelation in all of this: how easily time slips away, subsumed by smaller demands, even in the face of global destruction; no need to overload the implications, in our age of climate change and extinction.
There’s a metaphor in all this, that the world is always ending and always has been and will be for each generation of men (because Revelation is very much a story about men and men’s lives, with markedly few women crossing the novel’s pages) as they’re born and they age and they endure the same frustrations and failures as past and future sons. It’s the end of the world but that’s no reason to give up on it, as a father who spends his free time on astronomy reminds his son:
“The stars don’t stop moving.” Marcus’s father was at the telescope. He sat back in his chair and looked at his son. “There is always something else to see.”
Later, that son, Marcus, pays to take a hot air balloon ride, and the balloon’s pilot asks,
“What makes you want to do a crazy thing like ride in a hot air balloon, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Marcus said. He leaned against the inside of the basket, resisted the urge to sit, to lie down. “My girlfriend left me.”
The other man could only laugh.
Why pay for a view above a scorched, oceanless, nearly-dead landscape unless that’s the only world you’re used to and individual heartache pains you more than that global loss? Why, unless the end of the world is the ordinary cost of being alive?
Later, when he’s older, Marcus wades through a parking lot flooded with biting locusts to carry his own son to safety, a much greater concern than asking why the world has been plagued. And Marcus’ own father, the astronomer looking for answers, says of the insects:
“Funny thing is,” his father began, “as long as they stay outside, they’re not really a problem. In fact, they can be comforting at night. Their little bodies tapping against the windows and the walls of the building, every night sounds like a soft summer rain.”
Characters endure and even ignore the apocalypse one way or another, the way we endure anything — broken bones, broken hearts, lost jobs and lost oceans — and ultimately there’s a fatalistic optimism in that: this is the world we live in, whether it’s on fire or not, and this is the world in which we’ll grow old, so you might as well get used to it. The way you might get used to a sky when familiar stars are fading away:
Marcus was no good at rowing. They turned three half circles in either direction once the boat was out of the mud and fully afloat. She took a turn with the oars and managed to get them 20 feet or so from the shore. It was a clear night. Things were still. Little wind. The water gathered itself around the body of the boat.
“So few stars,” she said.
“You have to let your eyes adjust.” They sat in the boat and tried to see how still they could be, how easily they could settle into the night, and it into them. The stars never came. The sky was thin and dark and the moon hung low, as empty as the night before.
“It’s much duller than it was at the beginning,” she said.
April 13, 2022
Snapshots of an entire life marked by significant events, literal and biblical. I am in love with the writing of Colin Winnette. To me, it travels similar roads as the writing of William Faulkner, but with a dash of Joseph Heller to keep you on your toes. When I read Winnette's novels or short stories, there is no effort in participation. It is so easy to be right there, in the moment.
August 14, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews