Just a Couple of Days
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Visionary Fiction: “A lyrical, thoughtful, viral meme of a book” (Christopher Moore, author of Noir).
It all starts when a mischievous artist kicks off a game of graffiti tag by painting the phrase, “Uh-oh” on an overpass. Next, an anonymous interlocutor writes back: “When?” Then someone slyly answers: “Just a couple of days.” But exactly what will happen in just a couple of days?
Readers don’t have long to wait before Professor Blip Korterly is arrested and his molecular biologist friend Dr. Flake Fountain is drafted into a shadow-government research project to develop the ultimate weapon: a biological agent that will render its targets unable to understand symbols, thus disrupting humanity’s ability to communicate. Soon, an accidental outbreak turns into a merry-hearted, babble-inducing apocalypse that will either destroy humankind or take it to the next step in evolution.
Praised by Tom Robbins who said it “may be the most unusual, the most original novel I have ever read,” Tony Vigorito’s debut novel is an underground hit that ponders what might happen at the end of time.
“Vigorito’s . . . irreverent, whimsical style . . . has attracted a cult following... The final apocalyptic vision is a twist not seen since Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Recommended.” —Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally self-published in 2001, Vigorito's bloated first novel goes mainstream in this "newly updated" version. When Dr. Blip Korterly, the eccentric philosopher best friend of narrator and molecular biologist Dr. Flake Fountain, vandalizes a bridge with the words "uh-oh," he starts a chain reaction that ends in cataclysm. Along the way, Flake is enlisted by Tibor Tynee, the megalomaniac president and CEO of Tynee University (and Flake's boss), to create a vaccine for the Pied Piper virus, a U.S. military-designed bug that destroys humans' ability to communicate. General Kiljoy, in charge of the Pied Piper project (and very, very Gen. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove), works out a deal with the local police and the university to test the virus on prisoners. Blip, arrested after a confrontation with a raving preacher on the university green, ends up becoming one of the test subjects. The virus, of course, escapes the test facility, leading to some very bad things. Vigorito frequently delves into goofy metaphors and hippie screeds, and though his novel offers plenty of absurdity, his inability to go big with humor or vision leaves this feeling like Pynchon ultra-lite.
