outinprint.net

Buy it now direct from Arsenal Pulp Press or from our Amazon.com store - Krakow Melt

Finally, a book for the pyromaniac in all of us. Who else but Daniel Allen Cox could combine a bisexual Polish activist, popsicle-stick replicas of 1871 Chicago and 1906 San Francisco ripe for conflagration, the dying Pope John Paul II and Pink Floyd and come up with a compelling, essential read? Um—no one, that’s who.

Radek is a bisexual artist who believes fire is the great equalizer, making his living by igniting his intricately detailed recreations of great city blazes for university classes and other fans of performance art. He meets Dorota, a literature student and fellow pyromaniac, and together they buck the system, the church, the establishment and their enemies to find each other and sexual freedom.

Cox’s greatest strength is his narrative style: avant-garde descriptive with enough grounding in realism to scare the hell out of you. His 2006 Poland is gritty, grimy and dangerous to queers, yet they emerge from dank apartments smelling of cabbage to join in a prideful March of Tolerance that degenerates into a shit-throwing spectacle.

            Dorota gathered every slimy piece of feces she could find—wiping it

            off marchers, herself—and slung it wildly at the crowd. She even

            jumped over heads to aim curveballs at the neo-Nazis on the fringe…

            Then sirens, and the beautiful sounds of police beating their riot shields

            with batons. Rescue. Only they came right at us, hitting and kicking

            faggots and dykes and gender-nonconformists and the bisexual threat,

            pounding us into pockets of solidarity and then breaking us up until we

            were alone and defenceless, pulling our hair and dragging us down the

            street.

Amazing stuff, this. But no more amazing than the sly, threatening surgical notes on Pope John Paul II’s tracheotomy, the blaze from Chicago 1871 or the witty musings and critical asides on Pink Floyd (“…if you think ‘Comfortably Numb’ is Pink Floyd’s best song, then you’re a lightweight”). Even more amazing is how Cox pulls these disparate elements together into a fascinating narrative as foreboding as it is forward-thinking. 

If I have a criticism, it’s that the damn thing is too short—but I get that too. The most interesting fires are quick and intense, leaving ashen memories, and that’s the way Krakow Melt burns. That’s also mirrored in the relationship between Radek and Dorota, and you just know Radek has to flame out in the end. Has to. But it’s a surprise even when it happens.

Cox’s first novel, Shuck, set him up as a writer to be reckoned with and he suffers no sophomore slump here. His voice grows stronger and more assured with each effort. So drop what you’re reading right now, turn your face towards the white hot Krakow Melt and let Cox crackle your flesh.

It’s just the bonfire to start your Fall reading season. 

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler