Horace Afoot

By Frederick Reuss

Book Overview

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

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375703780
• ISBN13: 9780375703782
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.0" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Holds a surprisingly rich reward

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.

HORACE AFOOT, while a bit ambiguous, is thought provoking.

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.

A metaphysical mystery and often very funny

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.

Imagine "Zen and the art of walking around a small town".

The narrator's attempt to live in and react to the world as if he were the person whose name he has currently taken brings a new way of viewing the world, particularly that of a small town and its sometimes bizarre, inextricably inter-related residents.

A stunning debut

Horace Afoot is a spare, learned and profoundly pleasurable novel whose extraodinary level of craft makes it hard to believe that it is anybody's first. This moving and beautifully dramatized meditation on modern (and perhaps ancient) life reminds me a little of Frederick Dillen's "Hero." The great surprise, once the author establishes the tone and direction at the outset, is his amazing ear for American speech, his sure pacing and dramatic instincts, and his unerring powers of observation. (Horace's descriptions of the world around him are marked by almost excruciating economy and wit.) This book could well become a contemporary classic on the order of The Moviegoer, A Fan's Notes or A Catcher in the Rye.