A washed-up novelist navigates the dreamscape of a cataclysm-ravaged Los Angeles In the apocalyptic Los Angeles of Amnesiascope, time zones multiply freely, spectral figures roam the streets, and rings of fire separate the city from the rest of the country. The narrator, a former novelist, lives in a hotel and writes film criticism for a newspaper whose offices are located in a bombed-out theater. Viv, his girlfriend, is a sexually voracious artist, and together the two are collaborating on an avant-garde pornographic film. But in this world, what's real and what's merely the conjuring of the protagonist's imagination-obsessed with dreams, movies, sex, and remembrance-is far from clear. At once outrageous and hypnotically lyrical, Amnesiascope enflames the reader's memory.
"Erickson is a major player, a spokesman of the chaos generation."
The Washington Post Book World
"Quite unforgettable. To read Amnesiascope is to be constantly astonished by Erickson's powers of invention. If you buy only one novel this autumn, make sure it's this one."
The Independent (London)
"One of the few American writers willing to leave himself open to the truly visionary. At once a romantic and a futurist, he's willing to take risks others aren't."
