In looking at C.D. Payne’s connection to Winnemucca I came upon a genre of writing called Absurdist fiction. My ‘Desert Waif of the Undrivers’ certainly fits into this new category that is sometimes surreal. At twelve, I was a great surrealist artist whose hero was Salvador Dali. I am enjoying being a surrealist writer whose posts are surrealist paintings.
Add the topical news I cover in the same genre, then, I might be titled an Absurd Surrealist Journalist. I like the sound of that.

If I can only get Rena to come aboard and write a column.

My novelette ‘Golden Girls of the Corn Cob’ can be described as Absurdist fiction, where my Muse in set in a surreal environment and seen as the Female Messiah. C.D. Payne wrote a play ‘Queen of America’ that has sprung my soap box. Payne has walked into my trap on this one.

‘Youth in Revolt’ is one of my favorite movies. We Absurdist authors are notorious borrowers – it would appear – because there may be a common surreal landscape.

It’s great to be sixty-six and alive. I expect the next ten years of my life to be – out of this world!

Jon Presco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdist_fiction

Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature, most often employed in novels, plays or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire, dark humour, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being “nothing.”[1] Works of absurdist fiction often explore agnostic or nihilistic topics.

While a great deal of absurdist fiction may be humorous or irrational in nature, the hallmark of the genre is neither comedy nor nonsense, but rather, the study of human behavior under circumstances (whether realistic or fantastical) that appear to be purposeless and philosophically absurd. Absurdist fiction posits little judgment about characters or their actions; that task is left to the reader. Also, the “moral” of the story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters’ realizations—if any —are often ambiguous in nature. Additionally, unlike many other forms of fiction, absurdist works will not necessarily have a traditional plot structure (i.e., rising action, climax, falling action, etc.).
The absurdist genre grew out of the modernist literature of the late 19th and early 20th century in direct opposition to the Victorian literature which was prominent just prior to this period. It was largely influenced by the existentialist and nihilist movements in philosophy and the Dada and surrealist movements in art.

Revoltingly Young: The Journals of Nick Twisp’s Younger Brother
Book VI: Youth in Nevada

by C.D. Payne

SATURDAY, June 18 — My cousin Tyler Twisp is visiting Grandma Wescott and me in her dreary singlewide trailer deep in the lonely wastes of Nevada. Tyler loves everything about Winnemucca, just as I, conversely, despise every aspect of my hometown. Of course, he is an immense jock who eats his own weight in grub every three days. Whereas I am a picky-eater flyweight with intellectual and cultural aspirations. Hard to believe my sinewy cousin is only 15, while I–a mere shadow in his wake–will be 16 in December. Strictly speaking, I may in fact be his uncle, since he’s the son of my half-sister Joanie. But since it would be silly to have a nephew twice one’s size, we prefer to regard each other as cousins.

Nevada prides itself on being the emptiest state in the nation. For example, Winnemucca is situated 165 miles east of Reno and 353 miles west of Salt Lake City. In between stretches a forbidding expanse of barren rock and scrawny sagebrush. Nice country for jackrabbits, but a challenge for any life form higher than a buzzard. If it weren’t for the Internet, I’m sure my mind would have atrophied and died long ago.

Welcome to the Kingdom of America, where a crisis in succession imperils the 220-year reign of the Washington royal family. Into the breach steps a lovely descendant of King George Washington I. She may become America’s first Queen–if she can overcome the forces conspiring against her and prevent a war with her realm’s fiercest adversary: the Kingdom of Canada.

Discover contemporary royal America, where sports stars play polo on pogo sticks, tourists queue up to tour opulent palaces, shoppers spend millions on royal collectibles, and even Elvis earned a knighthood. In this fanciful and uproarious rewriting of history, the Czar of Russia is America’s closest ally and behind every tree lurks a Canadian spy. Read C.D. Payne’s first play–and get set for a royal good time.