Book: The Miranda Complex Vol. 1 by Barry Smolin
The Miranda Complex is a 1st-person narration that chronicles the mutual but unconsummated passion between two Southern California teenagers in the 1970s, using colloquial language to explore more serious philosophical and psycho-sexual issues while mapping out a mythic rendering of the Fairfax and Miracle Mile neighborhoods of Los Angeles as they existed at that time. It is a work that seeks both to engage the reader with humor and a degree of raunch yet dig deeply into the canyons and chasms of human consciousness, all of it set against a cultural backdrop that includes an adolescent-eye view of the politics, film, literature, and, especially music of the era, with the city of Los Angeles ever a presence along the way.
Narrator/protagonist Lance Atlas is 18 years old in 1979, and, having run into Miranda Savitch at a party during the summer following his Freshman year in college, Lance sits at the La Brea Tar Pits and reflects on both the encounter of the night before and a swirl of kaleidoscopic memories triggered by seeing his longtime almost-girlfriend. The subsequent time-warp/compression allows the story’s language to expand and contract in tandem with the narrator’s roller-coastering thoughts, both sacred and profane, from painful social humiliations at teenage parties to awkwardly comedic sex and drug experiments to more intense revelations, such as accidentally walking in on a student/teacher sexual encounter after school, engaging in impassioned philosophical and literary discussions in English class, and witnessing two violent deaths within a week of each other, as well as his own brushes with mortality due to a congenital heart defect. Throughout, Lance, an aspiring songwriter, also wrestles with his burgeoning creativity and how it both inspires and confounds him (much like the girls he falls in and out of love with). Ultimately, though, despite the cascading rush of Lance’s digressive mind, his brainwaves always meander back to Miranda with romantic longing and ultimate futility.
Although the novel’s era-specific references and regional place names anchor it very much in a particular time and in a particular city, author Daniel D. Victor(Seventeen Minutes To Baker Street, The Baron of Brede Place) describes The Miranda Complex as “a universal coming of age geek-fest” and adds, “In narrating his own poignant story, protagonist Lance Atlas, like Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn before him, is actually telling the story of all the rest of us as well.”
Tony Award winning playwright and composer Stew (Passing Strange, Total Bent) raves, “I can hardly wrap my head around The Miranda Complex as a book. It strikes me more as a sacred tribal text designed for the conjuring of memories & the poetically righteous mythologizing of youth. There is something so fundamental about the way Smolin writes this story that I cannot help but feel that I am reading my story as well. The Miranda Complex also redefines the term bedside reading for me. I can think of no other volume that comes anywhere close to serving better in that sacred capacity as this one. How better to measure a work’s worth? The scope of this book is phenomenally broad even as it talks very specifically about tender little things. It’s major.”
BARRY SMOLIN BIO –
The Miranda Complex Volume 1 is Barry Smolin’s third work of fiction. He is also the author of Wake Up In The Dreamhouse (2011; Amazon ), a novella that explores dementia from inside one man’s disintegrating mind, and Narcissus In The Dark (2012; Amazon), in which God is sentenced to eternity in a dungeon for believing in his own divinity. Since 1995 Smolin has been the host and producer of the radio shows The Music Never Stops (1995-2012) and Head Room (2012-present) on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. As a musician, he has also released four albums of original music under the name Mr. Smolin: At Apogee (2004), The Crumbling Empire Of White People (2007), both produced by Tony Award winning playwright and composer Stew, as well as the Los Angeles-themed song-cycle Bring Back The Real Don Steele (2009; listen; read LA Weekly feature) and a psychedelic rock album entitled Heaven’s Not High (2013; listen). In 2007, his music was featured on the Showtime television series Weeds and also appeared on the Weeds Season 3 Soundtrack album. His most recent musical project sets Chapter 1 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to music in collaboration with the band Double Naught Spy Car as part of the Waywords and Meansigns Project (2016). His work as a high school English teacher was documented in the short film Flying Lessons With Mr. Smolin (2015), directed by Matt Checkowski, and produced by Lisa Zimble.