Firewater

Library Journal

This first novel is a comic, surrealistic response to a very real problem: the collusion of government and big business to create "the science of death and the death of science...a monoculture of death." Indian Chief Shelldrake threatens the powers that be with a promising presidential campaign based on environmental responsibility and fulfilling human needs, and they respond with such odd weapons as giant toxic clouds called tarbabies, designer dwarf warriors, and superbacteria. In a cover blurb, James Ridgeway attests that this book has "all the feeling of Abbey in the words of Bukowski." Perhaps, but Cohen's writing is closer to Gerald Vizenor's or Ishmael Reed's . . . The steady stream of scatological jokes and textual inconsistencies will put off some readers, but others will be delighted by this wild romp. Buy wherever ecofiction is collected.

Library Journal

This first novel is a comic, surrealistic response to a very real problem: the collusion of government and big business to create "the science of death and the death of science a monoculture of death." Indian Chief Sheldrake threatens the powers that be with a promising presidential campaign based on environmental responsibility and fulfilling human needs, and they respond with such odd weapons as giant toxic clouds called tarbabies, designer dwarf warriors, and superbacteria. In a cover blurb, James Ridgeway attests that this book has "all the feeling of Abbey in the words of Bukowski." Perhaps, but Cohen's writing is closer to Gerald Vizenor's or Ishmael Reed's. Unfortunately, he is simply not as skillful as those masters at juggling disparate elements, making absurd situations credible, or going over the top without sometimes falling on his face. The steady stream of scatological jokes and textual inconsistencies will put off some readers, but others will be delighted by this wild romp. Buy wherever ecofiction is collected.-Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., Chico Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An amusing and imaginative cautionary tale from the late longtime environmental activist. The apocalypse has struck again in this bizarre and discombobulated warning about a world where genetic engineering labs are still up and running, though society is reduced to tribes and factions named after old products, such as the Diehards. "UNSEEN CHRONIC POISONING FROM INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION THAT CAUSES PAIN, SUFFERING, AND DEATH," reads a report at a fish lab in the small Washington State coastal town where the action begins-and there's plenty of it, and plenty of characters, for a slim novel. The members of the lab, who do things like harvest oysters and covet baby salmon, all remain remarkably distant and emotionally stoic as they continue to rape nature and pay homage to their almost-dwarf neo-Nazi new leader, Bill Urbanchuk. The much-feared Urbanchuk is a central figure (or as central as one can get here), along with Chief Shelldrake, a Native American with US presidential aspirations who's suddenly powerful again in the wake of society's collapse. Bent out of shape about some issues involving lichens, Shelldrake decides that his only real recourse is to drive to our nation's capital and execute a coup. He'll eventually encounter Urbanchuk, but not before wading through Cohen's morass of postmodern imagery that foretells a perhaps unavoidable future: spilled truckloads of golf balls and fields of bovines collapsing as their insides spontaneously explode. En route to DC, the Chief gets caught up in niggling questions: Should he really follow through with the coup-when the Pentagon can be such a problem-or should he just open a restaurant? Cohen (1937-99) proves himself to have been an unsungtalent as the confusion of his narrative echoes the confusion he fears and anticipates. The manuscript feels a bit unfinished, but unfinished in the best possible way, with echoes, say, of Nathanael West and Thomas Pynchon. Fun and frightening.