The Death of Che Guevara (100 page)

the I.V. tubes still in his arm, his bed being pushed by another patient. They’re unlikely to make it, aren’t they. Make it from where to where? Im;

priali

        berao

            n

                His

voice would be useful to explain here. Pieces of a new intrp It is gone from these pages The old people too All of them The Khmer Rouge do
not explain, they enforce When the city is empty the soldiers who are left disdain the buildings, make cooking fires in the streets. The country surrounds the All fall A curse is on the city An image is this the promised end or image of

  —No! (
I open myself to his friend’s anger, his correction.
) This is no response! (he says). This is only an animal’s howl of pain! You’ve misinterpreted the instruction you must take from the history you’ve been given. Your idealism (which no one asked for) sours into irony. But your irony corrodes only you, and not history.
Will you sit still?
Let his life interrogate yours; then improvise an answer—the next, the necessary step. Begin again! It all must be done over!
1976
1977
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1983
1984

KRAZY KAT

Krazy Kat adores Ignatz Mouse. She sees the bricks he hurls at her head as tokens of love. But when Ignatz and Krazy witness a mega-brick explosion in the desert, Krazy becomes depressed and refuses to perform. To coax her back to work, Ignatz invents his own brand of psychotherapy, orchestrates her kidnapping, and tries to seduce Krazy with promises of stardom from a Hollywood producer. As the mouse confronts the Kat with bewildering new concepts like sex, death, and politics, Ignatz and Krazy begin to yearn for a fullness of body and spirit beyond their two-dimensional realm. Forming an altogether witty and winning counterpoint to George Herriman’s classic comic strip, Cantor’s novel has become a classic in its own right, one of those masterpieces that creates its own unforgettable universe.

Fiction/0-375-71382-4

GREAT NECK

In 1960, a group of friends are plucked from their sixth grade classroom in privileged Great Neck, Long Island, and confronted for the first time with the horrors of the Holocaust. They hear a challenge from the past, a cry from history to set the world on a better course; but it is the murder of a much-loved older brother during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer that makes their mission clear. From the front line of the civil rights movement to Andy Warhol’s New York art scene, from comic-book superheroes to the violent maelstrom of the Weather Underground,
Great Neck
immerses us in a charged time not so long ago and illuminates the lives of those who were shaped by its energies and ideals. Vigorous, funny, profound and altogether gripping, it is a masterpiece of contemporary literature.

Fiction/0-375-71339-5

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