Review
Ahoy!
Just as I am on the verge of finishing my first rigorous year at the Naval Academy, I am on the verge of finishing this great achievement. It has rocked like few books I have read, and when I say rocked I mean it in the truest sense of the word. I'm a lover of rock n' roll, but only the kind that rocks the soul and your work here is more counterculture than one hundred million Woodstocks and gave me a better high than the biggest, shiniest heroin needle ever could.
When the book spoke with characters who are replicas of the hearts and souls of our peers, I didn't understand it. But the scene after Uncle Walt's piano lesson, that is a work of Shake-a-spear's caliber. From then on I understood the book. It's a satire of Swift's caliber, and I can see the characters in the people who surround me. All I can say to that is Hallelujah and Amen! The truth is being spoken in a mighty way and rocks the soul! We are on the verge of a great renaissance here, it's happening even as we speak.
My heartfelt gratitude for writing that book. God bless yer merry soul! -- J.C., The US Naval Academy
In the first novel of the WWW Renaissance, Elliot McGucken sets out to tell the tragic tale of what happens when politics pollutes literature. The story is rendered through the eyes and in the slacker vernacular, of two teenagers (Cliff and Timber), who aim to solve the mysterious death of Cliff's brother, Drake Raft, a Princeton senior and renegade sonneteer.
The novel reads with the speed and humor of a Twain odyssey, as the two teenage heroes, armed with a map and conviction to solve Drake's murder, catch a train from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, bound for Princeton. After arriving at Princeton, they encounter the empty-hearted and morally vacant college scene which is the basis of much of McGucken's humorous--sometimes biting-- observations about the dismantling of the Western Canon and the stifling cynicism of students and professors alike. -- SpinTech Magazine, December 12th 1999
Product Description
As the first novel of the WWW Renaissance, The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com takes the reader on a "heart of darkness odyssey" into the swirling postmodern fog on the Princeton University campus. The distinguished chair of the English department, Walter Gimgoul, has been murdered, and the famous feminist scholar, Elizabeth Sycorax, has replaced him at the helm of the English/Creative Writing department. Drake Raft, a popular Princeton senior, has feigned suicide and set up a website at drakeraft.com while investigating Uncle Walt's supposed suicide and contemplating revenge. Timber, the best friend of Drake's younger brother Cliff, narrates the novel, which begins in Chapel Hill as he and Cliff hop a Princeton-bound train so as to investigate the macabre events and follow a treasure map which they found at drakeraft.com.
The novel is written in a rich classical context, and it marries the timeless truths to the internet age, while exalting the reader on an exhilarating and entertaining voyage. This is a book written for the community of eternal souls, and the epic tome shall satisfy anyone seeking to read a contemporary work with all the traditional features of a classic.
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