New York City: From acclaimed film director and essayist, Peter Christian Hall, comes an apocalyptic new e-novel currently being released online. Posted in segments, this chilling piece breaks the barrier between novel and blog. Drawing on years of intensive research into the nature and history of influenza and the human response to it, Hall reanimates the concerns of classic plague authors from Defoe to Camus to Saramago.
Hall’s protagonist is a blogger – a young libertarian “do-it-yourself” flu fighter who huddles at home in the East Village, selling respirators and personal protection products on the Internet. As an evolving influenza strain kills its first New Yorker, the protagonist begins posting an online journal and goes on to chronicle events that wrack New York and the nation.
A charming, highhanded woman stalks our blogger, badgering and tantalizing him while he delves into the mysteries of influenza and of society’s muddled political response to it. At her prodding, he begins helping some colorful community activists, the Lower East Side DIY. Soon he is wondering why the government puts so much effort into channeling and controlling popular energy—treating vital Americans as if they were viral intruders.
As the pandemic waxes, wanes, and furiously rebounds, American society staggers into a kind of national Katrina amid weakened Constitutional constraints. With Chinatown a smoky ruin and Houston shattered in a gas explosion, this outspoken New Yorker becomes a victim of domestic rendition, a federal prisoner in a white room somewhere in Manhattan. Ultimately he must fight both the flu and the system to save his life and his love.
This live, linked, and frequently illustrated serial novel will flow online through fall 2009 at http://americanfeverbook.com/, and is a dramatic blueprint for survival as we all wait to find out what pandemic H1N1 (swine flu) will do to us. Readers can tour the novel’s ever-expanding art gallery, buy the respirators, masks, gloves, goggles, and disinfectant the blogger sells, and learn about various past and current flu strains, their mutations, transmission patterns, treatments, and governmental responses.
AMERICAN FEVER is sure to simultaneously entertain and frighten audiences – free of charge! With a facile depth of knowledge and theory, it bears on the little-known universe of influenza and the imminence of its threat – from the social implications of America’s crumbling infrastructure to the political peril imposed by the nation’s drift away from the Bill of Rights.
Don’t miss the next installment of AMERICAN FEVER on Tuesday, September 14 as the novel presents the onset of a dreaded second wave of a lethal strand of influenza.
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American Fever will become available for purchase only after the entire work has been posted
Hall’s protagonist is a blogger – a young libertarian “do-it-yourself” flu fighter who huddles at home in the East Village, selling respirators and personal protection products on the Internet. As an evolving influenza strain kills its first New Yorker, the protagonist begins posting an online journal and goes on to chronicle events that wrack New York and the nation.
A charming, highhanded woman stalks our blogger, badgering and tantalizing him while he delves into the mysteries of influenza and of society’s muddled political response to it. At her prodding, he begins helping some colorful community activists, the Lower East Side DIY. Soon he is wondering why the government puts so much effort into channeling and controlling popular energy—treating vital Americans as if they were viral intruders.
As the pandemic waxes, wanes, and furiously rebounds, American society staggers into a kind of national Katrina amid weakened Constitutional constraints. With Chinatown a smoky ruin and Houston shattered in a gas explosion, this outspoken New Yorker becomes a victim of domestic rendition, a federal prisoner in a white room somewhere in Manhattan. Ultimately he must fight both the flu and the system to save his life and his love.
This live, linked, and frequently illustrated serial novel will flow online through fall 2009 at http://americanfeverbook.com/, and is a dramatic blueprint for survival as we all wait to find out what pandemic H1N1 (swine flu) will do to us. Readers can tour the novel’s ever-expanding art gallery, buy the respirators, masks, gloves, goggles, and disinfectant the blogger sells, and learn about various past and current flu strains, their mutations, transmission patterns, treatments, and governmental responses.
AMERICAN FEVER is sure to simultaneously entertain and frighten audiences – free of charge! With a facile depth of knowledge and theory, it bears on the little-known universe of influenza and the imminence of its threat – from the social implications of America’s crumbling infrastructure to the political peril imposed by the nation’s drift away from the Bill of Rights.
Don’t miss the next installment of AMERICAN FEVER on Tuesday, September 14 as the novel presents the onset of a dreaded second wave of a lethal strand of influenza.
# # #
American Fever will become available for purchase only after the entire work has been posted