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From an Otherwise Comfortable Room
By Roger Sakowski
A literary mindscape, a stunningly crafted and imagined work. Humor and tragedy form a rich, intricate and poetically told story. Thought provoking and thoughtful, a rewarding read.
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Description
William Homer Omkowski is an alienated and haunted man who drinks too much. He tells a story that spans a single evening and the following morning, about a loft party he attended in Baltimore forty-some-odd years ago and the tragic event that overshadowed it. But this story is only a framework. Memories, events, delusions, and images with origins that extend back to Creation expand the design into an imposing, if unstable, edifice. His rich, but unsteady, imagination enlivens a vivid tale laced with free associations, stream of consciousness, and poetry. The question asked by the book is: where does one find a comfortable place? From William’s point of view, that place is as the hero and legendary bard in an epic. The novel opens with a poem recited by Omkowski. It is a reference to “The Song of Amergin”, a grand proclamation of the bard’s claim to Ireland. Omkowski’s version is self conscious and diminutive, underscoring his conflict: the demand for a home in which he is celebrated, and the realization that he is aimless and marginally important at best. Juxtaposing references, such as this example, create a subtle and dramatic subtext, an undercurrent so like the forgotten or subconscious ebbs and flows that influence life in general. The book sits well among the books of both modern and postmodern literature. It turns from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness, drawing on the stream of consciousness styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and the explorative style of T. S. Eliot. In addition, it exploits the fragmentary style of these movements regarding narrative- and character-construction. The structure of the book is taken from the early Christian monks’ transcriptions of Celtic epics, moving from prose to poetry, and, therefore, deviates from the usual narrative form of a novel a bit further. These transcriptions infuse these pagan epics with Christian themes. It follows that the book does the same to gain additional license for expression.
