Terror-Dot-Gov
- $13.95 PaperbackISBN: 1-933293-09-8
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As in Harold Jaffe’s two previous “docufiction” collections, False Positiveand 15 Serial Killers, the author of Terror-Dot-Gov selects then “treats” his texts such that the reader is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. That ambiguity permits Jaffe to cunningly tease out the contradictions and subtexts of official “news” or “information” and torque it into what it so often is fundamentally: jingoism, xenophobia and propaganda.
Jaffe’s subject in Terror-Dot-Gov is not the everywhere-represented “illicit” terrorism so much as “licit,” institutionalized terrorism, and he assaults his subject from multiple angles: razor-sharp satire, precisely cadenced rhetoric, faux-reportage, and “unsituated” dialogues (Jaffe’s term, referring to his trademark talking heads with perfect pitch). The result is virtuosic and paradoxical: a prodigious display of firepower—in the cause of peace.
What They’re Saying About Terror-Dot-Gov
“Terror-Dot-Gov is a powerful book, able to reframe readers’ perspective on the news and opinion provided by popular media… innovative and timely; his commentary on topics seen often in daily news reports will resonate with readers whose senses have glazed over, reading and hearing the same spin from the same talking heads, over and over again.”
—The Absinthe Literary Review
“I suggest, to understand what is truly remarkable about Terror-Dot-Gov, one should pay less attention to the rage and the politics of the work than to the marvels of style it contains….This is Jaffe’s brilliance: he shows us how language has been used against us as a weapon, and he challenges us to wake up to that fact. For the simple linear readers who can’t handle multiplicity and want everything dumbed down to the dominant level, I’d give Jaffe’s new book a thumbs up.”
—Electronic Book Review
“Terror-Dot-Gov succeeds as terrifically as – if not better than – Jaffe’s previous collections…original, imaginative, intelligent, funny, and pointed.”
—Rain Taxi
“Terror-Dot-Gov is a tour-de-force rumination on the psychical and physical carnage resulting from present day terrorism and war. In his distinctively sparse and cool prose, Harold Jaffe takes on the contemporary cultural and political climate with narrative bravado and ideological courage. At heart,Terror-Dot-Gov is a work of political activism and deep humanity with a sense of outrage at the state of national and international affairs…a potent indictment of American values and pieties.”
—American Book Review
“With Terror-Dot-Gov, once again, Harold Jaffe has proven to be one of the most incisive and important writers of our day.”
—Sebastian Bennet
“As Terror-Dot-Gov vividly demonstrates: We are spiritually imperiled by illusions masked as ‘news.’ Omissions, slants, pallid editorials all testifying to servitude to a slavish, enslaving text. Harold Jaffe knows this by heart and has it right. He isolates the self-justifying words that demonize the enemy while cleansing the ongoing crime, the ‘preventive strike.’ He encourages organized terror (our very own) to emerge white as new-fallen snow. White as leprosy. Everywhere in Terror-Dot-Gov is exemplary skill, faultless tonality. And courage, don’t forget courage. In order to be healed, our illness must worsen. Thank you, Harold Jaffe.”
—Daniel Berrigan, SJ
“Kill your TV. Terror-Dot-Gov will give you all the news that’s unfit to print—reportage gone fictive (or is it vice versa?) Jaffe’s brilliantly constructed docufictions blast holes through the mediadrome to unmask the terrifying institutionalized rhetoric that passes itself off as business as usual.”
—Jan Ramjerdi
“Terror-Dot-Gov is a full frontal assault on our duct-taped minds. High velocity words fired with unerring precision, dancing feverishly on the page before zapping their target, which is nothing less than ‘First World’ war-mongering and the terror it invokes to validate itself.”
—Faruk Ulay
About the Artist, Katana Blue
Katana Blue lives and works in San Diego, Ca. She has published photographs with the LA Times and her mixed media artwork has appeared on the two most recent covers of Fiction International. She cites the visual artwork of Francis Bacon, Hannah Hoch, Joel Peter Witkin, Joseph Beuys and Andres Serrano as influences. Upon arriving in a new location she immediately visits the local cemeteries, ossuarys, and decaying urban landscapes.
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