199X: NINETEEN NINETY-TEN

 

About the book:

199X is a true follow up to The Legend of the Fetal Poltergeist in many ways.  First of all it was the second fully formed book that I attempted to write after Poltergeist.  Second, it is poetic but drives the concept of poetry in different directions.  And third, I do try to (thinly) continue the story of the main character from that book.  The Legend of the Fetal Poltergeist was about growing through experience and centered around the loss of an aborted child. 199X begins with the loss of a lover (an event referenced in "Poltergeist") and is about growing through questioning the spirituality that defines one's belief system.

I got deep into writing this book around the time that I was first introduced to the great authors of "the Beat Generation".  199X owes a lot to Burroughs' Naked Lunch but the true gas that fueled my inspiration came from Jack Kerouac.  His Book of Dreams and his studies of Zen particularly fascinated me.  The main jumping point for writing this book was when I read about Gary Snyder telling Kerouac that he was ready to write his own sutra.  Born of that was Kerouac's tome The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. I ended up reading a lot of other Zen writings and referred to myself (in a ignorantly wise way) as a Zen-Buddhist for a period of time. In fact my original title for the book was 199Z:  Nineteen Ninety-Zen.  I thought it was really cool that an author that I idolized went out and wrote his own religious scripture and I wanted to attempt the same thing. 

Blasphemous?  I do not think that Muhammad/ God/ Allah/ Jesus/ Zeus/ Buddha would think so.

I started working on this book in 1998.  As the new millennium approached and the population became increasingly concerned that our existence would devolve into chaos at midnight on New Year's day 2000, I wondered what would come after the year 1999 if the Y2K panic came to fruition.  The answer at the time was an unknown...a variable...an X.  That same variable was representing my wandering spiritual confusion at the time.  

I took all the end of the century fears, the lead story of The Legend of the Fetal Poltergeist, the influence of Beat Generation writings,  various religious beliefs, scribbled accounts of my dreams, and threw them in the blender to test the English language.   The mythological poetic journal 199X: Nineteen Ninety-Ten emerged.  I am sure.

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    WKAN--Bill Yohnka Interview discussing 199X

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199X:  Nineteen Ninety-Ten

was released on 04/18/2009