Lanterna Rally

Author: Dave Cowen

Publisher:

Published: 2020-04-09

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 9781660970643

What makes a good writer? Publishing in The New Yorker? Selling a screenplay? Writing something that will be acknowledged for all time? In April of 2019, Dave Cowen wanted to prove he wasn't a failed writer. Even though he published humor in The New Yorker, they weren't buying any more of his work. Even though he wrote a screenplay that sought to help heal the country's divide on guns, Hollywood didn't want it. So he set out to write something that would be a success no matter what anyone thought of it. The ensuing quest to write the longest sentence ever published in the English language becomes a strange, all-consuming, life-changing odyssey. The stream-of-consciousness draws in James Joyce, Numerology, Copyright Law, Jeff Bezos, Instagram, The Enneagram, Kanye West, and portions written by an AI.But what begins as a comedic conceptual performance soon transforms into a poignant grappling with the suicide earlier that same spring of the writer's beloved father with whom he shared a bipolar disorder diagnosis. As the author pours out words through his year of mourning - without stopping to edit - right up until the anniversary of his father's death, he's unsure if he's losing his sanity or if he's awakening his consciousness, seeing mystical synchronicities in the texts he reads, the music he hears, and the external/internal interplay of life itself. Finding inspiration in his father's hero, Abraham Lincoln, and other father figures such as Lewis Hyde and David Shields, Carl Jung and James Hollis, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, and Philip K. Dick and Jack Kerouac, the writer integrates personal memoir with literary criticism, original thought with collage remixing, depth psychology with freethinking spirituality. He comes out on the other side a wounded healer with much to offer his readers: comedy, candor, and catharsis. And the opportunity to add 250 words of their own to the sentence-book, whatever it inspires them to express, via a verified Amazon purchase review, so that all of us can be part of the longest sentence ever written and published!