Grab All The Naked Heroes: A Novel Of The Thirties Illustrated By Alan Kapelner Accessible In Edition

Kapelner, the Invisible Writer, All the Naked Heroesis his second and final novel following Lonely Boy Blues in, In theyears between his two novels, Kapelner has developed the protoBeat immediacy of Lonely Boy Blues into a singular style that should have situated him comfortably among the echelons of the Beat writers.
Where Lonely Boy Blues is breathless and raw, All the Naked Heroes is mealy and virtuosic, He invokes agony with humor and cynicism with desperate honesty, That Kapelner isnt part of the established canon is shocking, His prose is as good as anything I've read

from Kerouac or Burroughs,

Set in preWWII New York City, All the Naked Heroes follows two brothers, Paul and Rip Gomery after their mothers death and their fathers walkout, They seek employment and meaning and love amidst the throes of the Depression and the looming spectre of Hitlers war in Europe, Rip goes on the road Kerouacstyle to see the big greatness of America and seek an ideal to fight for, But the story keeps closest to Paul, who stays in New York and contends with his own sleepwalking terror of the inevitable war, Eschewing Rip the arguably more "interesting" of the brothers to fearlessly dwell in the manic stuckness of Paul and his existential crisis runs contrary to general conventions of what a story "should" be.
But the insight, emotional depth and relentless vision of Kapelner's writing compels you to continue, We return to Rip in interludes as the two brothers desperately and earnestly search for meaning in their own way, And this search is dark and chaotic and funny and harrowing and wild and sardonic and full full full of life,

The juxtaposition of a Beat style of prose set in thes is fascinating, So much Depressionera fiction is marked by a sparseness and economy of language, like the gracious poeticism of Faulkner, But Kapelner takes the manic existentialism of thes and transplants it to a time that doesn't usually get that treatment, And the result is truly captivating, with themes of drug use, sex work, queer culture, homelessness, mental health, suicidality, antisociality, and anarchism being transported to an era of American history that largely pretended these things were invisible.


While Lonely Boy Blues is a more accessible read, I believe All the Naked Heroes to be an unsung masterpiece of Beat Generation fiction and its a tragedy that its been lost to time though it was reportedly one of thebooks found in Marilyn Monroes library.
And I wish nothing more for Kapelners invisible legacy than for his writing to become just a little more visible to just a few more people, Stumbling across and seeking out his writing has been thrilling and the kind of adventure that I hope more folks can have, Alan Kapelnerwas an American author who published two novels and a few uncollected short stories, .