Books by Jack Remick

Satori, this book that took my entire life to put together, is the closest I can come to an answer. I see the whole book and every poem in it as the working out of the endless possibilities of the line. In the end, I came back to the Imagists-Pound, H.D., Amy Lowell, Jack Moodey who taught me that the essence of the poetic line is the image, not the metaphor, which decodes into a system of signs, but the hard, clear, limpid image, the incontrovertible image. Without the image, the poetic line is hollow. But the goal of our art from the cave paintings at Chauvet to the '80s movie Blade Runner and on down has been to make art move.

"Beast" is a pure innocent with one simple goal-to become an expert on the Middle Ages. He comes to Berkeley, the Cathedral of Learning, in 1971, a time of political upheaval, hallucinogenic drugs, group sex, and electric, acid, psychedelic, mind-bending rock and roll. On his quest for meaning he hangs out with a Harley-riding dwarf, a raven-haired Gothic artists' model, a sorority girl turned nymphomaniac, and the heir to a family of French aristocrats with a bloody history dating back to before Joan of Arc. Beast soon discovers that he can't live in the past but has to embrace the present, with its traps and land mines and the horrors of contemporary society-death by motorcycle and bad acid trips. The world is exploding, but students still go to classes, fall in love, get laid, study in libraries, win awards, even graduate. The country is on fire, and Berkeley supplies the fuel.

To be a writer in America, you have to bleed. Eddie Iturbi, a young car-thief obsessed with the dark magic of Beat culture in a mythic San Francisco, sets off on a spaced-out crusade to connect with the Beat gods. En route Eddie links up with living legend Leo Franchetti, the last of the Beat poets. Leo sends Eddie to the Buzzard Cult, where a mysterious mentor reveals the writer''s ritual of blood and words. Changed and invigorated and back in the City, Eddie falls in love with a snake dancer at the Feathered Serpent. She can''t save him from Scarred Wanda, jealous bad-girl of literature, whose goal is to destroy Eddie before Jack Kerouac relays all the magical secrets of the literary universe. Immortality is just a book away. Will Eddie live long enough to write it?

Ex-mercenary Hank Mitchell is doing five years hard time for stealing a tubful of women's underwear. In prison Mitch falls like a bear for his young cellmate. In the prison library Mitch discovers the novels of Genet and the Marquis de Sade and is inspired to write his own story-a saga of family deception, sexual obsession, and contract killing-to atone for all the blood he's spilled. But now his family wants him out and back in the killing game, a game where the rules are about to change ...

The Widow (La Viuda) is ninety-two years old. She lives in a house filled with photos and coins, jewels and a sable coat. Aware that her memory is failing but burning with desire to record the story of her life on paper, she hires Gabriela, a nineteen-year-old Mixteca from Mexico. Gabriela is one of the few survivors of a massacre and treacherous journey to El Norte. Gabriela and the Widow is a story of chaos, revenge, and change: death and love, love and sex, and sex and death. Gabriela seeks revenge for the destruction of her village. The Widow craves balance for the betrayals in her life. In the end, the Widow gives Gabriela the secret of immortality.

Ricky Edwards lives, works, and plays in Centerville, a small California town in the middle of the Valley. Ricky has a gift for music but he'd rather fight, drink beer, chase girls, and debeak turkeys. He debeaks turkeys because he wants a Lifters Car Club jacket with red lettering on the back. He fights because his long-time pal, Linard Polk, teaches him about violence, fast cars, and guns-which drives Teresa, Ricky's hyper-religious mother, nuts. She wants Ricky to escape the legacy of his daddy, an Okie skirt chaser who abandoned the family for a honky-tonk preacher's daughter gone bad. If Ricky can just get out of Centerville, maybe he can make his mark. Valley Boy is Book Two of Remick's California Quartet series.