Palm Tree Pipe DreamsA new novel by Maureen Paraventi Southern California is weird - and it gets a lot weirder in the hilariously dystopian comedy, Palm Tree Pipe Dreams. In the near future, L.A.’s traffic reaches a saturation point, resulting in a massive, intractable gridlock. While politicians and special interest groups battle each other over solutions, a new normal takes hold - one that challenges the already-challenged Ira O’Riley, a young, frustrated screenwriter from Detroit. The low-level foothold Ira had gained in the entertainment industry slips away. Jobless, homeless and girlfriendless, Ira struggles to adapt and find the success and love he’s convinced are his destiny. His missteps and misadventures inadvertently lead to him becoming a media darling, folk hero and hunted fugitive. “Craptastic,” as Ira would say. Writing in the absurdist tradition of Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut, Paraventi uses the memorable characters and preposterous yet believable situations in Palm Tree Pipe Dreams to both skewer and embrace the ambitious, adaptable, self-inventing, delusional, trend-obsessed people who are drawn to L.A. After all, “they’re like Americans are in general, only more so.” From the novel: Cap, half-listening to the news, unscrewed the top of his thermos and poured some coffee into his mug, an oversized blue ceramic number bearing the legend, “I Hate Cats.” He never drank the coffee from the coffeemaker in the station’s kitchenette, claiming that he used a special blend: organic, heirloom, non-genetically engineered, free trade coffee grown from beans first cultivated by Incan kings and now, after being enthusiastically dispersed by migrating caffeine addicts, grown on sweetly sun-kissed hillsides in Hawaii. Cap’s special blend actually consisted of supermarket brand coffee mixed liberally with Scotch or sometimes – when he was feeling festive – Bailey’s Irish Cream. Usually Scotch. He didn’t give a damn whether or not what he ingested was genetically engineered frankencoffee from beans saturated with toxic chemicals and picked by child slaves. All that “special blend” crap was just an ironic nod to his location. In L.A., you had to pretend that you cared deeply. About what depended on the day of the week. “Absurdist fiction at its best. Paraventi is a natural storyteller with a unique voice.” -Mia Thorsten
