Tim Horvath "Circulation"

Tim Horvath Circulation (Sunnyoutside, March 2009)

** Contest ** Be the first person to e-mail the word "CAVE" (with your name and address) to orangealert31 @ gmail.com and win an ARC of Tim Horvath's novella courtesy of Sunnyoutside.

Last year my father passed away at the age of 51, but I had lost him nearly twenty years earlier. Through a child's eye, I thought he was a superstar, radio personality, music engineer, musician, and song writer, it all seemed logical and real. I would go on remote broadcasts, sit quietly in the studio as he qued up vinyl and spoke to what I thought was the world. Our apartment was filled with vinyl and demo tapes. When he left, I'm sure he thought he was pursing his dreams, but he didn't realize all that he had accomplished in my mind. At his funeral, placed on a plastic pedestal was a black binder that was his songbook. I eagerly grabbed the book in spite of my anger and confusion, and began to flip though the notebook pages. Their was probably 100 pages in the book, but only seven were filled. Seven, fifty years boiled down to seven songs of questionable quality.

I had carried that image with me for nearly seven months, but it all became clear when I read Circulation by Tim Horvath. This novella is written from a sons point of view, as he recalls his fathers life long quest to write and publish a book called The Atlas of the Voyages of Things. It is a story about coming to understand who your father is and in the process discovering how you truly feel about yourself. It is a book filled with symbolic gestures and storytelling, but at its core it is filled with heart.