Skulk

by Marc Estrin

Marc Estrin's Skulk is the sixth of his critically-acclaimed novels for lovers of intelligent fiction. Radical prof Richard Gronsky is swept off his feet by T.L. Skulkington, a sassy, right-wing... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0930852559
• ISBN13: 9780930852559
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Progressive Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Truth through Fiction

Marc Estrin's Skulk is like a crossword puzzle, a clever array of words and images skillfully woven into a story. Skulk may be fiction, but it speaks more truth than the 9/11 Commission Report.

truth be told

The great thing about Marc Estrin's new novel Skulk is that there is something for almost everyone in this book. If you prefer watching TV or reading grocery store checkout line romances this may not be the book for you. It has lines and passages that you read over and over. It makes you laugh out loud and consider your position in the universe. Heady thoughts broken up by hearty chuckles. The book has three main characters, Dr. Gronsky history professor, T.L. Skulkington heiress and college circuit lecturer , and department store Santa Miles Hippie. What brings these three together? At times they seem to have very different points of view but in the end they unite for a common cause. Right a great wrong. Expose a great lie. Uncover the truth and liberate the people. Will they succeed? Like a good mystery this tale keeps you guessing even after you've read and re-read the final chapter. The 9/11 attacks changed the world. We still don't know what really happened that day. Hopefully Skulk will educate people and make them ask those hard questions that maybe they did not ask themselves before. Like the heroes of the book observed"In a week ignorance can destroy what knowledge has taken centuries to build up". Read Skulk. Maybe you will learn something. I did. Peter Garritano

After Skulk

Marc Estrin has his finger on the pulse of American madnesses. Contemplating 9/11 conspiracies would be no laughing matter except in the hands of a writer who once (INSECT DREAMS) resurrected and apotheosized Gregor Samsa's discarded insect carcass. Now in SKULK, this master satririst raises questions of our national (ir)realities to breathless heights. As they used to say, "Right on!"

Hilarious, luscious, erudite, and stunningly imaginative!

I'm dying to tell you about this amazing book, but I don't know where to begin. Let's start with, "Buy it!" Drink it all the way down. You'll be more than satisfied, yet ravenous for more. Skulk has a knack for making the preposterous believable, a device perfectly suited to its subject; post-9/11 America. We're deftly transported in a suspension of disbelief, the depth of which becomes apparent only after the last page brings us abruptly back to earth. The book begins with a familiar premise -- 40-something liberal professor (Gronsky) gets the hots for an Ann Coulterish-conservative firebrand (Skulk) -- but before we know it, we not only believe in their improbable relationship, we're cheering for it. T.L. Skulkington (of the Connecticut Skulkingtons) could be Ann Coulter, if Ann Coulter only had a heart, and a brain. Although the book never mentions that thought, or its connection to a later reference to Frank L. Baum, that's the way it works - on many levels, seen and unseen. The tired sobriquet, "thought provoking", would be a slighting understatement. Skulk is billed as "a post-9/11 comic novel", but don't expect manga, nor a tendentious rant about 9/11 truth. In fact, for those who have avoided the "rest of the story" of 9/11 (rest in peace Paul Harvey), there may be no better introduction (certainly none more entertaining!) than this book. Everything you didn't want to know about 9/11 is confined to no more than two pages, and by the time the ride is over, you'll want to know more. The book is an endlessly illuminating romp through post-modern America, with more food for thought about why Americans remain obtuse to their government's glaring lies than any supposedly rational explanation I've encountered. When has such an extensive armamentarium of historical, literary, musical, and political allusion been deployed in such wonderfully transparent, light-as-a-feather prose - with some insanely funny verse tossed in for an extra treat? Estrin's penetrating satire spares no one - liberals get an especially incisive look - yet there's nary a drop of sarcasm or cant, almost as if Jesus were channeling Voltaire. Even when the Department of Homeland Security's proxy goons (the Wichita SWAT team) disport in a side-splitting free-for-all of bloody repression, the action is fueled not so much by political antipathy as by a childish desire to seize a rare opportunity to try out all their high-tech toys. Estrin's light touch leaves us space to consider that this all-too-real political theater reflects a contemporary politics less rooted in interest, theory, or history than in the cynical tropes of well-connected propagandists. Gronsky and Skulk's mission is to deliver a "teaching moment" to shock America awake to the master deception of 9/11. True to its multi-leveled structure, the book itself never misses an opportunity for a teaching moment, from the working class subtext of Frank Baum's The Wizard of OZ to a brief meditation on the artistic tec

Combating apathy with comedy

Fighting frustration at a seeming epidemic of sightlessness, Marc Estrin resorts to premeditated fiction in an effort to pry open the nation's eyes to the disbelievable: America's official history of 9/11. Since the media and perhaps also the masses cannot bear to contemplate a regime complicit in that day's atrocities, the author beats a novelistic path to be traced with those figurative eyes wilfully closed. In a midwestern academic setting, the protagonists couple and conspire, and in the end carry out a modest reenactment of the World Trade Center implosion to demonstrate publicly the implausibility of the 9/11 Commission's version. Estrin's wit and scope always keep the action (and modest didaction) entertaining. Skulk's forensic message is readily accessible on 9/11 websites and blogs, and in the end the author tells us just what phrases to search to read up on it. But even getting Skulk widely read may not help Estrin sublimate his frustration. National opinion surveys tell us in fact that a sizable cohort does not necessarily credit the official 9/11 story. But perhaps they also do not necessarily expect their government to tell them the truth. Is that where the real frustration comes in?