New frontiers with my novel

I haven't blogged in a while. Mostly, I've been writing (or should I say re-writing) my novel.

So, here's the skinny. My novel is about a kid who takes and overdoses on a designer halunicinigen and so is put into a permanent state of delirium. The main theme of his delirium is that he starts to see the movements of his world in the kind of "rending of the veils/religious epiphany" manner befitting an acid or shroom trip. Most notably, he sees and falls in love with the angel of death.

Now, meanwhile, in the very real world, a gang war has begun between the kid's boss and that boss's boss. Many of the acts of which the kid either interprets, or invents, so as to mirror language concerning the end of the world. This culminates in the kid having to choose to betray God in order to save God, or to be loyal to God so as to provide assistance to the devil. It is a scene I have been trying to figure out for about 8 years.

Now, I admit that this is already an enormous undertaking and incredibly esoteric and weird, but upon re-reading the novel, I've discovered that, out of nowhere, I was writing fantasy. While I still liked the writing, it lacked any and all gritty reaslim. It just didn't have the punch. So, I'm working through it. Over Christmas I made it through about a third of it (it's nearly 400 single spaced pages right now) and I really like how it's shaping up. The wife is thinking about Breadloaf and, for the first time in a long time, my confidance in my writing (which was once overwhelming) is coming back.

Richard Powers says that writing a novel is like digging a tunnel through a mountain from both sides. It's hard to get it to link up in the middle. I think he's right. Just as you get the biting cynicism to work, you realize that you're writing a farce, and that's no good. In any case, wish me luck. I've always believed that the realistic is the most powerful so long as we can admit how weird reality is. Kafka is a realist and all that.