The Iron Boys is a novel in
the form of an eccentric monologue—indeed a rambling oral history—by one
Corbel Penner who brings the reader, through his unique language,
obsessions, and relationships, deeply inside the mentality of another
time. Corbel becomes a member of a secret, quasi-Luddite band of rebels
in the early 1800s. The center point of his circuitous narrative is the
destruction of George Withy’s textile factory by a motley band of
“rebels against the future.”
The actual Luddites, and their three years
of machine breaking, are to this day mysterious, and I’ve taken that
historical murk as license to postulate a deeper, perhaps alchemical
layer of transformation. Rather than narrate “historical events” from an
omniscient distance, I clung to Corbel’s voice and followed wherever it
led me. His monologue conveys not primarily the “story,” which emerges
of its own accord, but the dislocations, the rants and daydreams, the
idiocies and inspirations, accruing as the social contract is frayed.
—Thomas Frick
THOMAS FRICK was born in Kentucky and
lives in Los Angeles where he is a writer, editor, and publishing
consultant. He has received awards and fellowships for his writing—short
fiction and essays—which have been widely published. This is his first
novel.
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