Horace Afoot [Paperback]

Frederick Reuss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 1998

Fiction

"Quietly entertaining, thought-filled. . . . The narrative voice is
particularly congenial--cool and unflappable, often humorous."
--Washington Post Book World

Not since The Moviegoer has a first novel limned the human condition with such originality and subtle insight. A small-town iconoclast who is at once deeply principled and occasionally as absurd as the world he rebels against, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (or Horace) has assumed the name of a Roman poet and has forsworn automobiles, and entertains himself by telephoning strangers to ask them what love is or what they think of St. Bernards. His neighbors in the Midwestern town of Oblivion consider him wacko. This suits Horace just fine, since all he wants in life is "the serenity of not caring."

But people are conspiring to make Horace care about them. There's the dying librarian who finds Horace's morbid curiosity oddly bracing. There's the mysterious woman whom Horace rescues, only to become obsessed with her identity. And as Horace finds himself drawn into their affairs, Horace Afoot depicts the unruly dialogue of his mind and heart with sly wit and splendid generosity of feeling.

"Delights continuously with its humor, originality and . . . unfolding personalities." --Rocky Mountain News

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The narrator of this skillfully crafted first novel is an eccentric, introspective loner named Horace, who moves into a rickety house on a dead-end street in a Midwestern town named Oblivion. Although Horace's past and the motivation for his move to Oblivion remain ambiguous, he clearly hopes to find refuge and comfort in this small town. Intelligent and literary, he is also existentially troubled, and the peace he hopes to find proves to be elusive. Horace is philosophical by nature, but this impulse more often than not serves to confound and confuse him. His interactions with the townspeople of Oblivion also prove to be problematic, and although he becomes involved in small ways with a few people there, he sadly remains essentially alone throughout this interesting and thoughtful novel. Recommended for libraries with large modern fiction collections.?Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

A wealthy, erudite, middle-aged loner in search of anonymity settles in the aptly named midwestern town of Oblivion and is swiftly drawn into the town's persistent local mysteries in this idiosyncratic, rather beguiling debut novel. The newcomer is, by any standards, peculiar: He repeatedly changes his name, adopting names of writers he particularly admires, among them William Blake and, most memorably, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (the Roman poet Horace). And in a place where everyone drives, he walks. It's while he's doing so, hiking into the country to visit an old Indian mound, that he becomes inextricably tangled in the town's affairs. A young woman, naked and bleeding, stumbles out of a cornfield and collapses. Horace becomes a prime suspect in her assault, until Sylvia, the young woman, regains consciousness and clears him. She refuses to name her attacker, though, and the police (who harbor some nasty secrets of their own) keep a wary eye on Horace. They become even more suspicious when he's drawn into the violent, messy world Sylvia (a self-destructive, small-time drug dealer) inhabits. And then her callow boyfriend, infuriated by her affection for Horace, begins to follow and harass the newcomer. Horace, against his better judgment, finds himself promising to help Sylvia escape from Oblivion. In doing so, he stumbles across some of the town's unpalatable secrets, putting his life itself at risk. Reuss, in a spare, precise prose, does a deft job of catching, without overdoing, the quirks, obsessions, and longings of his characters. And he effectively renders the unsettling (and misleading) calm of Oblivion, a town frantic to deny or suppress life's unpredictability. Horace, however, is a bit wearing--too skittish, too stubbornly incapable of change--to be very appealing. Still, his voice lingers, as do many of the scenes in this terse, moving exploration of modern anomie and the longing for--and fear of- -intimacy. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Contemporaries ed edition (December 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375703780
• ISBN-13: 978-0375703782
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,334,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A metaphysical mystery and often very funny, May 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Horace Afoot (Hardcover)

This book is marketed incorrectly and deserves a wider audience. Such is the fate of a debut writer in the hands of a small independent press. I think more people would read this novel if it were sold as a comic mystery novel - and I mean mystery in the medieval sense. This novel, about a seemingly aimless ponderer of life's absurdities and profundties, is looking for some larger answers to the inexplicable mysteries of everyday life. The catch, and wonderful surprise, in this novel is that Horace(a curmudgeon, at first) undergoes a true epiphany and begins to feel and act like a real human. What changes him? A chance encounter with a naked, amnesiac woman who he saves from an unseen gun-toting rapist. Who is she? Who attacked her? Why was she in a cornfield near the local Indian burial mound? None of these intriguing plot elements are mentioned anyway on the jacket blurb or any of the marketing materials for this book. It seems that the publisher was attempting to sell this very accessible novel to an intellectual, philosophy minded readership. This was a mistake. Reuss' novel is a delight and I was truly surprised by who Harace meets and how he is affected by these encounters in his wandering adventures.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holds a surprisingly rich reward, December 19, 1999

By 

Bob Gibson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Horace Afoot (Paperback)

This story held me at arm's length for a bit. The narrator is disconnected, a stranger in a town named Oblivion, no job, with little apparent purpose in life. But I am glad I stayed with it. Horace Afoot has a singular charm. The story develops a unique, pleasing movement once Horace actual connects with someone - the lovingly depicted librarian Mohr - and the 'aboutness' of the tale emerges. I look forward to reading Reuss's new book, 'Henry of Atlantic City'. I have a feeling that Reuss may be one of those authors - Thomas Mallon is another to come immediately to mind - whose story-telling skills grow to match a quietly inventive approach.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars HORACE AFOOT, while a bit ambiguous, is thought provoking., June 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Horace Afoot (Hardcover)

Oblivion and autarkeia ("the serenity of not caring") are the underlying themes of Frederick Reuss's first book. The book's narrator, Horace--full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a name and identity borrowed from the classical Roman poet of 65-8 B.C.--is an enigmatic self-absorbed individual who is financially independent and in relentless pursuit of the answer to the existential question Who am I?

Unlike Cervante's eccentric hero Don Quixote, Reuss's narrator is the antihero who expends his time re-reading favorite books, recording memorized literary passages and philosophical thoughts, telephoning strangers at anytime of the day or night asking enigmatic questions on a variety of subjects, walking "afoot" (Horace disdains all mechanical transportation) to the Indian burial mound of questionable archaeological significance or to the small airport on the outskirts of his adopted Midwestern town called Oblivion, and rocking endlessly in a chair on the porch of his neglected house.

"I have been rocking on the front porch for three days now, and I have discovered something: time passes, and I enjoy having it pass. Inactivity is no easy accomplishment, and finding pleasure in it means overcoming conditioned reflexes."

Although Horace is indifferent to nearly everyone and everything about him, his unintended interactions with the local sheriff who belligerently questions Horace's eccentric behaviour in an unsolved crime, a dying librarian who befriends Horace and in the process discovers his own life's quest, the earthy young woman recently laid off from the town's defense contractor factory who challenges Horace's repressed sexuality and compassion for others, and the town juvenile punk who threatens Horace's mortal existence all compromise Horace's need for oblivion and give hope that Horace (or William Blake or Lucian of Samosata or ...) finally will answer the Why in his own life.