{"id":273,"date":"2018-12-31T11:32:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=273"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:32:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:32:17","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=273","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

Fiction<\/p>\n

Flores, Carlos Nicol\u00e1s<\/span><\/p>\n

Sex As a Political Condition: A Border Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Texas Tech University Press<\/p>\n

9780896729308, paperback, 406 pgs., $34.95<\/p>\n

July 1, 2015<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>SEX AS A POLITICAL CONDITION, the newest smartly designed title<\/span> in Texas Tech University Press\u2019s Americas series, is professor and activist Carlos Nicol\u00e1s Flores\u2019s<\/span> latest novel. Sex As a Political Condition<\/span> is about history, family, politics, economics, friendship, and religion. I am conflicted. The novel ambitious and has great potential but ultimately disappoints.<\/p>\n

Former narcotrafficante<\/span> and all-around punk (\u201cfrom a long line of vain and violent men, always in trouble with women or the law or both\u201d) Honor\u00e9 del Castillo runs his family\u2019s Mexican curio shop in Escand\u00f3n (Laredo), Texas. He\u2019s gone straight thanks to his mentor, Juan S\u00e1nchez Trusky (a.k.a.\u00a0 Trotsky), a revolutionary. Honor\u00e9 and Trotsky are part of a humanitarian aid convoy to the Nicaraguan contras. Difficulties ensue: Feds, federales,<\/span> the CIA, feminists, Republicans, hillbillies, the Guatemalan army, old grudges from narco<\/span> days.<\/p>\n

Flores\u2019 novel exhibits wry humor, such as this conversation between Honor\u00e9 and his wife, Maruca:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy greatest fear is dying in front of a television.\u201d<\/p>\n

She glanced sideways at him. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrotsky says most men die like that. Stupid, inconsequential deaths. Me \u2013 I want to die on some beach in Central America, before a firing squad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u00a1Est\u00e1s loco!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what it feels like to wake up in the morning and discover you\u2019re in bed with a Republican?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what it feels like to wake up in the morning and discover you are in bed with a communist?\u201d<\/p>\n

And this between Trotsky and Honor\u00e9:<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes things make sense and sometimes they don\u2019t. Sometimes your closest allies turn out to be your worst enemies. Do you know what all of this is called?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately more of the humor is pubescent-boy level. I\u2019m a fan of irreverence and agree that political correctness can be taken too far. I am not a fan of crudity for its own sake, and too much of Sex As a Political Condition<\/span> is merely offensive: stereotypes, bathroom humor, disgusting euphemisms for female body parts. Why do men deride and degrade what they spend their lives trying to get? Honor\u00e9 is obsessed with breasts \u2014 so I asked a guy friend about breasts. My point was that men are surrounded by breasts; half the population has (usually) two of them. He said, \u201cYeah, but they\u2019re hidden.\u201d Okay.<\/p>\n

Flores does have a way with imagery. For example: \u201c[T]he sunrise was the color inside a conch shell\u2026silver lacquer turning orange and pink.\u201d And this: \u201c\u2026unmarked sedans with long steel antennae flopping about like rigging on shrimp boats…\u201d You can see it, can\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

Sex As a Political Condition<\/span> has an intriguing plot that would\u2019ve benefited from further editing. It\u2019s too long, the pacing frequently slow, and the crudity tiresome. This is a shame because Flores has important things to say. We are pacified and tranquilized by comfort, television, money, too much stuff (see George Carlin). Camping for new iPhones is understandable, but Occupy is a bunch of dirty hippies. \u201cThis was what Trotsky called American totalitarianism at its worst \u2013 or rather, its best. Don\u2019t bother\u2026 [nothing] matters anyway\u2026nothing you can do. Man lives by bread alone. Nothing is worthy of personal risk\u2026.Buy a television.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

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<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}