The Distance, and You In It
Alexander Dickow
April 7, 2025
Author
Publisher
Release Date
April 2025
Summary
Some say we live in foolish times, but I’ve been a fool all my life, and I say these times are not foolish enough. Fortunately, Alexander Dickow’s The Distance, and You In It can help with that. We need only turn to Hob, the pro/antagonist of this narrative, to be put completely at sixes and sevens. Garish Hob, merry shapeshifter of no fixed form or gender, interferes in the courtship of Anah and Aviv. This romance—no, this comedy of errors—no, this farce in verse—captures our long moment in terms both fantastical and firmly grounded in reality. Full of delicious wordplay (and swordplay), a dizzying grammar that draws us right in amongst the characters, and even a surprise at the end, The Distance, and You In It delivers a seriously tongue-in-cheek model for navigating lives gone beyond our control ad absurdum. If it takes a fool to get us through the farce beyond these pages, then Dickow’s Hob is one to learn from: “Patchwork and fictional, true,/ Impure, together and utterly One.”
—Jay Besemer