Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley's latest books are Bomb Baby (Enigmatic Ink), Even the Dog Won't Touch Me (Ahadada Press), Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch (Dog Horn Publishing), Acting Alone: a novel of nuns, neo-Nazis and NORAD (The Drill Press), My Hands Were Clean (Unlikely Books), Calliope's Boy (Black Rainbows Press) and Put It Down in a Book (The Drill Press), which was named 3:AM Magazine's Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Further curiosity can be indulged at http://tombradley.org.


Excerpt from Bomb Baby, pages 30-31:





In the middle of Hiroshima's Peace Park, standing at full attention among the barbecued cuttlefish booths, is a platoon of male college cheerleaders, Sam’s students. These junior fascists are dressed in WWII-style military uniforms of dark-blue wool. They’re rallied under giant radiating-sun flags and banners emblazoned with reversed and righted swastikas. Their boom-box blares martial music and racist propaganda. A couple of these cheerleaders hold up a big placard which reads, in both Japanese and English--



WE ARE A DIVINE NATION

WITH THE EMPEROR AT OUR CENTER!



One bulldog-like cheerleader screams into a megaphone, "Japan is a tiny rice paddy! America is a treeless peak! Flood control is paramount!"



Everyone is terrified of these fanatical boys--everyone except Sam, of course. He barges through their ranks.

Among the cheerleaders is a thin boy with glasses, who looks frazzled. He is Sam’s most nervous student. Sam shouts at him, "Why aren’t you at home studying your English? It’s a required course, you know!"



The nervous student almost faints from embarrassment. He gobbles some pharmaceutical amphetamines from a little prescription bottle. It looks as though he’s got quite a habit.



Feeling really holy now, Sam prances further into the A-Bomb Golden Anniversary Celebration, heading toward Ground Zero.