Terror-Dot-Gov

by Harold Jaffe

Overview

As in Harold Jaffe's two previous "docufiction" collections, False Positive and 15 Serial Killers, the author of Terror-Dot-Gov selects then "treats" his texts such that the reader is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. That ambiguity permits Jaffe to cunningly tease out the contradictions and subtexts of official "news" or "information" and torque it into what it so often is fundamentally: jingoism, xenophobia and propaganda. Jaffe's subject in Terror-Dot-Gov is not the everywhere-represented "illicit" terrorism so much as "licit," institutionalized terrorism, and he assaults his subject from multiple angles: razor-sharp satire, precisely cadenced rhetoric, faux-reportage, and "unsituated" dialogues (Jaffe's term, referring to his trademark talking heads with perfect pitch). The result is virtuosic and paradoxical: a prodigious display of firepower--in the cause of peace.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000122709
Publisher:	Raw Dog Screaming Press
Publication date:	06/14/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	586 KB

About the Author

Harold Jaffe is the author of author of ten fiction or creative nonfiction volumes and four novels, including Jesus Coyote, (2008) 15 Serial Killers (2003) andTerror-Dot-Gov (2005) from RDSP, Beyond the Techno-Cave: A Guerrilla Writer's Guide to Post-Millennial Culture, (2007) False Positive, (2002), Sex for the Millennium (1999), Othello Blues (1996), Straight Razor(1995), Eros Anti-Eros (1990), Madonna and Other Spectacles (1988) and Beasts (1986).

Jaffe's fiction has appeared in numerous journals and has been widely anthologized. His novels and stories have been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, French, and Czech. Jaffe is editor-in-chief of Fiction International and Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at San Diego State.

Editorial Reviews

Terror-Dot-Gov is a tour-de-force rumination on the psychical and physical carnage resulting from present day terrorism and war. In his distinctively sparse and cool prose, Harold Jaffe takes on the contemporary cultural and political climate with narrative bravado and ideological courage.

American Book Review - Book Reviews Editor

As Terror-Dot-Gov vividly demonstrates: We are spiritually imperiled by illusions masked as 'news.' Omissions, slants, pallid editorials all testifying to servitude to a slavish, enslaving text. Harold Jaffe knows this by heart and has it right. He isolates the self-justifying words that demonize the enemy while cleansing the ongoing crime, the 'preventive strike.'...Everywhere in Terror-Dot-Gov is exemplary skill, faultless tonality. And courage, don't forget courage.

SJ - Daniel Berrigan