The Bouncer - An American Sakadagami

Abstract

The Bouncer: An American Sakadagami is the opening section of a novel that blends literary fiction with a traditional genre thriller. The genre thriller elements include life and death stakes, violence, sex, and an intricate conspiracy plot. The literary elements enter the text first through a narrative voice that uses the myriad sounds and rhythms of language and other voices to (hopefully) enable a heightened state of concentration. Other literary elements infused into this thriller include psychological questioning, social and political observations, and observations on the relationship between the body and the emotions, and on the body and what might be considered consciousness or a soul. The author has made a sincere attempt to achieve verisimilitude. He has studied taiji, yoga, and meditation deeply. He has also tried to imagine how thriller plot events and a thriller-worthy hero could exist in real life. Thus his hero does not just confront the villains and the plot machinations of a thriller, but also the experiences and the emotions that are common to young adults living an age where technology and mass culture mediate so many social interactions and desires. The plot itself is simple. A brother and sister escape their troubled childhood. As they begin to build stable adult lives in the same city, the criminals from their past re-emerge and draw them into a war between rival drug dealing gangs. The author’s goal is to write an operatic text with the very highest of stakes, vibrant emotion, and poetic language. His other goal was to create a character who models what it really means to be strong and masculine in the contemporary United States.