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Mel Nicolai
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Our role in
the world is to publish and promote as many great books as possibe to those who like an exciting and challenging read. We
will be publishing at least 50 'indie' writers during 2010. Our motto is "Good books must be published".
Mel Nicolai was born in 1950, in a small town in Nebraska. The attending physician informed his parents that he had suffered irreparable brain damage and would not live through the night. True to character, he failed to meet their expectations, and has been failing in kind ever since. He is the author of the stunningly humourous experimental novella 'The Case', has just released a collection of private eye stories in a similar vein - '7 Remote Mysteries & 1 Delay', starring Koji Remote - and is currently near completion of a novel, 'The Shake'. Mel lives in Carmichael, California with his wife, Jana.
'7 Remote Mysteries & 1 Delay'
Some PIs solve murders, find stolen paintings, expose insurance scams. Things aren't always so simple for Koji Remote. In 'The Case of the Obvious Solution,' instead of tracking down a criminal, Koji gets hired to be the victim of a murder. The scene of the crime may be a logical place to begin an investigation, but in 'The Case of the Windowless Monad,' the client enters Koji's office and promptly dies. In 'The Case of the Nihilist's Daughter,' a young woman is about to get married and she's afraid her father has become a nihilist. She hires Koji to help her decide if it's safe to invite Dad to the wedding. In 'The Case of the Candy Aisle Smile,' the sister of a friend has lost something and hopes Koji can help her find it. But there's a little catch. There are good days, like in 'The Case of the Low-Temperature Et Cetera,' when Koji makes a few bucks just lending a sympathetic ear. And there are not-so-good days, like in 'The Case That Wasn't,' when he gets his ear chewed off for nothing. In 'The Case of the Blowfish Exit,' Koji uncovers the reason behind a very improbable suicide. And finally, in 'X'pek d'Laze,' things get really strange when Koji is waylaid by aliens. '7 Remote Mysteries & 1 Delay' sparkles like fireworks from another dimension.
'The Case'
I first read 'The Case' as a part-work on the Speak Without Interruption Site and then got to read the whole book as a paperback. Even from the part-work, read from a computer screen, I believed that the book was extraordinary, and with every passing day it re-stakes its claim as a masterpiece. In fact, I will go further. I think that it may well be the only book in my life I have ever read twice, except The Bible and Karl Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ (well, they are best-sellers). Probably like many of you, I am equally allergic to talking animals and to post-modernist self-reflective irony. The talking animals are all too easy to understand (they are the voice-over artist with fur on), whereas the post-modern ironists are solipsistically eliptical just for starters. However, Mel Nicolai’s approach is different - he is a post-ironic post-modern ironist and he has written the epitome of a post-post-modernist post-post-ironic book. While most of us search feverishly for a subject worthy of both 500 pages and the resultant discussion, Mel has searched, with considerable facility, for a topic which is devoid of any significant content whatsoever. As an ardent advocate of contrarianism, I take off both my heads and my foot to him. It is a spellbinding, almost perfect, piece of work. Should any of my friends ever again claim that substance trumps form, I shall wave ‘The Case’ in slam-dunk rebuttal at them (it is too light to throw properly). In fact, the only reason why I have decided to award the book only 9999 points out of ten thousand is that he devotes a few pages at the end to a tangential discussion of free will vs. determinism, which we all know is both pre-modernist and just an excuse to splice a leftover university thesis onto the end of an otherwise flawless book. Read ‘The Case’ and weep for whatever reasons come naturally to you. (Tim Roux). |
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