A lyrical adventure

The following is reprinted from The Daily Texan.

Austin writer’s novel combines lyrical prose with a surreal plot
Tony Vigorito’s book probes meaning in life’s synchronicities

Elizabeth Wildhack had a thunderous birth. A tornado struck the church her parents attended when her mother, Bridget Snapdragon, went into labor. Snapdragon delivered Wildhack while having simultaneous orgasms.

Austin-resident Tony Vigorito’s new book Nine Kinds of Naked, details the surreal and synchronous circumstances surrounding Wildhack and three other characters: Diablo, a convict who did his time outside of Normal, Ill.; J.J. Speed, the priest turned CIA agent who presided over the mass when that fateful tornado hit; and Clovis, a medieval peasant exiled from his village. Vigorito focuses on the synchronicity of events in his novel, or the “meaningful coincidences,” as Carl Jung puts it. Wildhack, Diablo and Speed all experience the tornado in Normal, and for each it signifies a rebirth — except for Wildhack, to her it was only a birth.

As the story progresses, the three characters find themselves in post-Katrina New Orleans, where a nameable yet uncategorizable hurricane floats in the Gulf Coast. Wildhack, now 25, strips for a living while taking college courses without paying tuition. She ponders the complexities of reincarnation while “sliding her hands down the inside of her thighs,” performing for her clients. Diablo, meanwhile, has found a job and obsesses about the concept of evolution. After the tornado, Father J.J. Speed became Special Agent J.J Speed and was stationed undercover in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. How these characters come together is the root of the story.

An omniscient narrator tells each character’s story, seamlessly switching among them. At one point the reader finds herself in New Orleans and then in the next chapter in a mystical forest around the year 800 A.D. Vigorito writes in adjective-rich prose. In a tangent, the narrator explains the life of a raindrop: “the ninety-second drip of this rowdy raindrop endured a tumbling gauntlet of gladness and exultation.” This excess of abstract description can take some getting used to. Ultimately, though, Vigorito’s style makes for a lyrical adventure that complements the surreal plot.

Review by Andres Martinez.