Echo Detained

by Joshua Daniel Cochran

Snatched off the street after another boring day at his copy shop job, Caleb Nell is whisked into the bowels of a secret, corporate-run prison. Caleb tries to make sense of his situation while he is fed delicious meals, endures physical and psychological humiliations, and is constantly threatened with visits to the Machine Room. Through his interactions with a strange array of guards and doctors, and the writings of an off-kilter and very dead philosopher, Caleb soon comes to terms with the confounding temporality of existence.Echo Detained is an allegorical satire inspired by the absurd practices employed in the “War on Terror.” Cochran’s novel takes its cue from Kafka’s "The Trial" and Nabokov’s "Invitation to a Beheading," before evolving into a ludicrous world resonant of Stanley Kubrick’s "Dr. Strangelove."

216 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 8, 2014

About the author

A graduate of the University of Arizona and City College of New York, my first published short story won the Fred Scott Award way back in 2002. More recent publications include Bourbon Penn and The Gathering Darkness anthology from Black Cat Books. My second novel, The Most Important Memoir Ever Written Ever, was released in January, 2014. Currently, I live and write in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews

[Alice Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found the characters to lack depth and the story line to be murky with the referencing back and forth between Delasco and Echo, the detainee. I understand what the author was trying to do, but did not like the book.

[Darby Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was, to me, comparable to reading Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, at many points throughout it was pretty far from being enjoyable (the first few chapters especially start to feel like misery porn) but it has a very specific point that it is communicating through this sadist's theater prose. Echo detained was written by a New Yorker in the years following 9/11, and it is a depiction of a disturbing but all-too-possible reality that was feared to be ushered in by the freedom act and the war on terror. If anything, Echo Detained actually has a much more meaningful and alarming message behind it's occasionally miserable plot. I knew yuppies in the 80's were terrible before I ever started reading American Psycho, and therefore found it hard to even finish. In the case of Cochran's book, a government having the ability to make you VANISH from the face of the Earth by filling out a form is not only terrifying but an actual possibility for some, and a reality for others.
Saying that's all the novel is would also be selling it short, in the second half (behind an absolute buzzkill of an opening, admittedly) there is a genuinely compelling exploration of what it is to be human when everything has been stripped away from you. Echo's arc is more like a rollercoaster than the traditional upward graph of the heroes journey, every bit of his narration is manic, only ever clinging to sanity. Caleb Nell is broken, completely and utterly, in the introduction of the book. He is renamed as Echo (no better than a number) and you are present for him rebuilding himself out of a shattered husk.
When you read American Psycho you do not ever escape Patrick Bateman's head, his mind, his thoughts, and that makes you hate him. When you read Echo Detained you do not escape Caleb's cell, you are with him for every moment of his torture, and every glimpse of hope, and that makes him utterly human.

[Tammy Carlyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Echo Detained by Joshua Daniel Cochran is a literary masterpiece, that can easily be compared to Kafka's "Metamorphosis". Joshua takes his character Caleb Nell (Echo) out of a lonely mundane life, and sends him to hell, by way of US government officials in suits hell bent on torture. Though the story of poor Echo may seem too unimaginable to relate to, if the reader is patient, they not only find themselves in Echo but find all of humanity within the walls of Echo's institution. Echo Detained has the convenience of an easy read, but also has the unmistakable quality of the deep and disturbing aspects that make us think outside of ourselves. Cochran's use of Dr. Ambrose Delasco's lectures is especially enlightening, and the reader should pay special attention to the footnotes.