Writing the American Dream (Mickey Z.)

[Tace]

An interview with novelist Mike Palecek

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

Jan. 9, 2007 -- I read Mike Palecek's latest novel, "The American Dream," as I traveled to visit family. The experience of enduring both airport security (sic) and the sanitized airplane environment served an appropriately eerie backdrop for a book like this. No more than a few degrees from what currently passes for reality, "The American Dream" is a societal vision that hits too close to home(land) to be called a futuristic satire. Channeling both Orwell and Bill Hicks (with perhaps a touch of Chuck Palahniuk), Palecek has created more than a powerful and engaging novel; he has let loose a global wake-up call.

At first glance, Palecek hardly fits the "global wake-up call" profile. "I started out what some might call a good American," he says. "I grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska, home of Johnny Carson, watching his show on TV, playing football, baseball, driving a '56 Chevy station wagon." From there, Palecek's restlessness led him to a monastery in Oregon, the diocesan seminary for the archdiocese of Omaha in Saint Paul, a life-changing meeting with Fr. Dan Berrigan, and getting arrested at Offutt Air Force Base, outside of Omaha.

"It was maybe 1980 or '81," Palacek says of his first arrest. "I remember it raining. I sat down and cried. It was just this overwhelming feeling that I wasn't part of America anymore and even though I had to do it, I was going to miss it."

I interviewed Mike via e-mail during the first week of January, 2007.

Mickey Z.: What does the phrase "American Dream" mean to you?

Mike Palecek: When I started to write this, what I was thinking of was "dream" as in sleeping dream. The possibility that so much of what we think of as our reality might be false. That is, a lot of the "conspiracy theory" stuff, which I find fascinating. They have places for people who think like this: either a mental institution in Iowa or in the middle of a subway station in New York City, screaming, handing out leaflets.

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