{"id":8359,"date":"2024-05-31T11:06:54","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T15:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/?p=8359"},"modified":"2024-05-31T11:06:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T15:06:54","slug":"professors-new-novel-is-a-quest-into-the-heart-of-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/2024\/05\/31\/professors-new-novel-is-a-quest-into-the-heart-of-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor\u2019s new novel is a quest into the heart of Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CoverThe Rachel Condition<\/em>, a new novel by English Professor Nicholas Rombes, is at once a political thriller, family saga, and a mind-bending love story set in the mysterious byways of Detroit.<\/p>\n

Published in March by CLASH Books, Rombes\u2019 explained that The Rachel Condition<\/em> focuses on \u201ctwo characters whose lives and destinies are shaped by the forces of ideology and politics that they have no real control over. I was curious as to how they could still love each other despite being on opposing sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rombes, a voracious reader of political theory, lays the groundwork for the novel in the darker moments of Detroit’s tumultuous political and social history.<\/p>\n

In the novel, he main character, Antony, travels to Detroit in search of the last copy of a dangerous political novel, but his true purpose is to infiltrate a tight circle of political dissidents. Crossing the streets of Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard and Cass Avenue, Antony meets Rachel at Old Miami, a dive bar in Detroit, and falls in love in a society where no one can be trusted, and, as Rachel reminds Antony, everything is different in retrospect.<\/p>\n

Describing his work on the novel and reasons for writing, Rombes says, “It was almost an organic part of my daily life, something I was compelled to do because it gave me joy to fall into the world I was creating.”<\/p>\n

\"NicholasDuring the writing process, Rombes was tested by sometimes not knowing when to just let a sentence be, a challenge he has overcome in such passages as when describing the dress of punk band Yama, calling their fashion “unforgiving<\/em> black as if their clothes has soaked up the night” signifying “a blackness behind the blackness.”<\/p>\n

The<\/em> Rachel<\/em> Condition<\/em>\u00a0is also a story of tenderness and the power of art to create and destroy in the midst of violence and chaos. Rombes describes his new book as a “mash-up of genres (letters, reports, a novel-within-the-novel),” which contributes to the sometimes disturbing narrative.<\/p>\n

“I felt the story needed to be told in this fractured way because the main characters are themselves wounded and fractured, and I wanted readers to feel this in the collage-like structure of the book,\u201d Rombes said.<\/p>\n

Critics and advanced readers seem to agree. Elizabeth Hand, author of A Haunting on the Hill<\/em>, called\u00a0The Rachel Condition<\/em>\u00a0\u201cA dark, beautiful, noirish tale set in a Detroit that\u2019s slightly sideways to our own; an unsettling foray into places and people we glimpse from the corners of our eyes, sometimes to our peril.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rombes has been a professor of English at UDM since 1995. He is also the author of\u00a0Cinema in the Digital Age<\/em>\u00a0(Columbia University Press),\u00a0A Cultural Dictionary of Punk<\/em>\u00a0(Bloomsbury) and the novel\u00a0The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing<\/em>\u00a0(Two Dollar Radio). His book,\u00a010\/40\/70: Constraint as Liberation in the Era of Digital Film Theory<\/em>, was translated into Turkish in 2021. He also directed a movie, the lo-fi, sci-fi love story\u00a0The<\/em> Removals.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more about The Rachel Condition, visit www.clashbooks.com\/-products-2\/nicholas-rombes-the-rachel-condition-preorder<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rachel Condition, a new novel by English Professor Nicholas Rombes, is at once a political thriller, family saga, and a mind-bending love story set in the mysterious byways of Detroit. Published in March by CLASH Books, Rombes\u2019 explained that The Rachel Condition focuses on \u201ctwo characters whose lives and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":8360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/88\/2024\/05\/20240531_105656-scaled.jpg?fit=1920%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Kcng-2aP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8363,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8359\/revisions\/8363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}