Braddock Avenue Books

$16

I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that this is not an age of disconnection. More and more of our interpersonal communications take place electronically. Even our news sources are becoming increasingly specialized, one news source for Republicans and another for Democrats, with the result that we don’t really connect even when we need to. As in past eras, we can turn to art and literature to try to come to terms with our changes world and how a person might survive within it.

However, necessary though this view into modern disconnection is, there is a problem with exploring this in fiction. After all, the issue is disconnection. How can an author depicting disconnection do so in any meaningful way while still connecting the reader to the story? If the story fails to connect with readers, then readers will not be engaged and the story goes unread. We are talking about disconnect, after all. Last Call in the City of Bridges is definitely a book that has to come to terms with this particularly thorny issue.

Michael Bishop, the main character of Salvatore Pane’s Last Call in the City of Bridges, opens his story on what is a night of hope for him, election night 2004:

It was supposed to be the greatest night of our lives. By our, I mean my entire generation, all those unlucky souls raised on the 8-bit wastelands manufactured by Nintendo, all those boys and girls who watched the Berlin Wall crumble in kindergarten, the Twin Towers in high school. Overeducated, Twittering, viral…Election Night was supposed to be our moment, but not all of us were ready to believe. Continue reading →