Unplugging Philco: A Novel

Wally Philco is a gentle midlevel insurance industry operative living with his wife Margie in Brooklyn. In the years since those terrible events took place in Tupelo Mississippi though the world -- and Brooklyn too -- has become a very different place. Nobodys sure exactly what happened on the day now known as Horribleness Day but it became pretty clear afterward that the Australians were involved somehow. Long after all the initial craziness has petered out the Horribleness is still being used as an excuse for everything from insomnia and lower back pain to joblessness bank robbery higher taxes drunk driving and murder. Likewise everything from icy sidewalks to earthquakes to casino bus accidents is being cited as the work of terrorists. Now its every Mutual Citizens job to keep an eye on his neighbor and to report anything amiss. Wallys neighbor Whit Chambers has been busy practically setting a world record for turning in suspicious characters and Unmutuals to the local authorities and in fact Whits had his eye and his telescope trained on Wally for some time now. When Wally finally snaps he finds refuge with the Unpluggers an underground movement fighting for just a few minutes of peace and quiet. With a cast of Dickensian characters from stroller-wielding Brooklyn mothers to former Kennedy spooks and Norwegian cowboys Jim Knipfels Unplugging Philco is a wildly funny look at our life and times filled with sharp cultural references and vivid witty prose that testifies to a dangerously perceptive mind behind the madness.