Tom Wolfe has been working on his next novel Back to Blood, an epic concerning race, class, and power in modern Miami, since 2007, and its finally set for an official release in October of this year. Amazon.com's listing has the first official summary of the book, and its basically just a list of characters. There's no sense of how all these disparate characters weave together, and only the slightest hints of plot. Basically the book seems like its chock full of breakdowns of every Miami archetype ever. Well, almost every archetype.
Here's the descriptions of the characters that do appear in the novel:
- the Cuban mayor
- the black police chief
- "a wanna-go-muckraking young journalist"
- a "Yale-marinated" newspaper editor
- a white rich doctor who specializes in sex addiction.
- his Latina nurse/fuck buddy
- a police officer named Nestor
- "a refined, and oh-so-light-skinned young woman from Haiti"
- "her Creole-spouting, black-gang-banger-stylin' little brother"
- a billionaire with a porn addiction
- crack dealers
- conceptual artists who display at Art Basel Miami Beach
- people who go to the Biscayne Bay regatta in search of an orgy (???)
- Old retired Jews from New York
- a group of shady Russians
Bickering Cuban and black political figures? Shady rich people? Immigrants trying to get ahead one way or another? Retirees from New York? Well, that describes roughly half the population of Miami.
Oddly, though, there are a lot of obvious Miami stereotypes missing. Likely because Wolfe's fiction is informed by reporting, and the guys is 81. So it's no surprise really that most of the aspects of Miami he apparently won't be touching on are more of a young man's game. But if Wolfe ever wants to write a sequel, we've got a whole bunch of Miami-types he's sorely missing:
- the reclusive nightlife honcho who balances his work in the industry with his recovering addict status
- the aging drag queen who boasts about entertaining Gianni Versace and continually laments South Beach's fading gay heritage
- the shady, 20-something arms dealer
- the DJ whose networking skills far exceed his mixing skills
- bicycle-riding activist punks
- a modeling agency doyenne who starts pimping out her models to pay the bills
- the money and power hungry condo developer
- people who go to Winter Party in search of an orgy (!!!)
- a Brazilian playboy
- the anti-Castro Spanish radio personality
- the chonga, of course.
Maybe next time Wolfe.
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