Adult Books
Current affairs and uncertain times aside, in the mid-’80s, the notion of nuclear holocaust crossed my mind almost daily. Perhaps I was a little neurotic, or paranoid; but maybe, just maybe, I was mature for my age. After all, at five years old, I once asked my pediatrician during a routine check-up, “Am I gonna live, doc?” which, as a child, I found pretty damn hilarious, despite the fact that it seemed to disturb both of my parents, as well as the family doctor.
I was a bit of a loner as a kid (no surprise; who would want to hang out with a bespectacled, gangly, paranoid blonde?). Reading, and browsing library shelves, comforted me. For a few years in the late ’80s, I was averaging a book, sometimes two, per day. Often, if I enjoyed a particular title, I’d begin re-reading it the moment I finished.
One such book was Gloria D. Miklowitz’s After the Bomb.
Jesus, just look at that cover art! The sinister font. The looming cloud. The bicycle tossed aside. The ajar door. The, uh, aluminum siding (or is that vinyl?). My god, whoever scanned the image for Amazon couldn’t even align it correctly on the scanner!
Tangent. In any event, my family vacationed in a lovely resort town with a surprisingly impressive library, and I found myself borrowing After the Bomb from the branch once a year, for several consecutive years in the late ’80s. Quality beach reading. Re: young adult lit, Judy Blume is all fine and good, but compared to After the Bomb, her books can suck it.
In her novel, Miklowitz weaves a colorful, gripping, and truly horrifying tale of a misfired atomic bomb, focusing on a small group of Californian survivors. Perhaps I shouldn’t take the blame for precociousness; after all, the title was, across the board, categorized as Young Adult Fiction, as if publishers and librarians nationwide decided it was time for a new generation of pre-pubescent American readers to wise up to the reality of nuclear bomb victims’ own shadows being etched on the pavement via the glow of atomic power and radiation and the dreadful reality of falling apart, limb by limb, in the wake of an atomic blast, if vaporization and flying debris don’t get to you first. Sorry, was that a tangent again? Burn victims, overwhelmed hospitals, food/water shortages, fallout shelters — Miklowitz includes all of this in her novel, laid out nicely for impressionable Reagan-era youth.
Have you read this book? Do you find yourself grimacing at the notion of atomic threat? I encourage feedback. If you are inclined to read Miklowitz’s novel, it seems there are NINE used copies available on Amazon. That means either 1) fans are hording their copies of this bestseller, 2) the remaining deliverables were destroyed in an atomic misfire somewhere, hopefully not California, though, because I was thinking of taking a trip to Los Angeles sometime this year.
Well, that was a nice trip down nuclear holocaust memory lane. All of this memory-dredging made me remember how much I also loved Arthur Roth’s Avalanche, published during the same time period. I’ll tell you one thing, I learned a valuable lesson from the latter: If you find yourself caught in an avalanche, freezing and disoriented, spit. Simple as that. Spit. Gravity will dictate which direction you should be digging your way out. Believe me, readers, you’ll thank me if, one day, god forbid, you find yourself buried in a mountain of the white stuff.
That’s sick. Vamos a la playa.
For your consideration:
Duran Duran, “Planet Earth”
Fad Gadget, “Fireside Favourite”
Modern English, “I Melt With You”
Timbuk 3, “The Future’s So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)”