Synthetic City - Synthetic City [the book]

s y n t h e t i c c i t y s e l e c t e d w o r k s o f j u n e a v i g n o n e

Ghost City/City of Bones/City of Ashes
by Gregory Van Maanen

Synthetic City:
A New Jersey Ghost Story Memoir in 44 Pieces

By June Avignone

[a work in progress]
Contact June Avignone for information.

While the line between fiction and reality is said to be slim -- a thin veil to hide behind while further exploring perceived truths -- in the case of the life and work of Rosa Amato the line is blurred entirely. Perhaps the overall portrayal of the 40-year old social worker/journalist (albeit a burnt-out one) in Synthetic City: A New Jersey Ghost Story Memoir in 44 Pieces can best be described as an anarchistic evaporation of this alleged line.

Somehow, guided along by outside guides (the radical spirits of journalist Jack Reed and bohemian socialite Mabel Dodge among them), the "real life" writings of Rosa crash together with the unpublished excerpts of a novella she has been struggling for years to complete: a "fictional" exploration of Angela, also a 40-year old social activist/journalist (albeit, a burned-out one). Together, the alternating perspectives of fact and fiction fill in the missing pieces of one another, the whole thing in the end really being just a ghost story as told from Paterson, New Jersey -- a struggling city with a radical labor past that could haunt anybody, providing they keep the door open for it. And Rosa, it seems, has kept hers wide open.

COMRADES, FOR A SAMPLE CHAPTER, CLICK HERE