You feel it sometimes – an unknown voice that reaches from some depth that is often out of touch in the mind. It rolls over you like a calm tinged intrigue, a “let’s see what happens” moment with an anxious crust, deeply spiritual. More than once, alone at the wheel on an empty road in the black, ante meridian, “Coast to Coast with George Noory”, a talk program in a paranormal landscape across the AM radio dial, becomes the only company. Readers who can relate to the experience will be drawn to John Rose’s Interview With A Regular Joe.
At first, they will be put off. book’s anonymousness is strange. Is it fiction, or not? It is not labeled. Rose boldly brags “I am anonymous.” Then writes, “I do not feel honored with any name I may have or work I may produce.” It might be, but the pages are filled with fact. As I took it, the novel snared me like those mysterious radio programs about alien abductions, ghost, psychic emanations, and a wide range of things that move outside of what most people think they control.
David, as the main character dubs himself, is in a 2 a.m., man-off-the-street interview on the fictitious “Green Wave” station. The married, 50-year-old father of a boy and girl, is no man common human. His portrayal hints that humankind is possessed of his potential. With conviction and confidence he responds to a wide range of topics. “How can one person know so much?” most readers will ask, then likely pause, unable to stop.
Questions touch on faiths, futures, dinosaurs, nutrition, even universal basic income. He responds in sections on religion, ethics, law, politics, and the personal with a strength rooted in the power of its ethereal tone. Rose measures every word to an inch. It’s as if the author calculated every answer to fascinate and inspire readers in a voice that seems outside humanity. For example, on faith, his Daniel says:
It reasons, on the rationality surrounding the Universe, the laws of nature, energy, the alphabet, elementary particles, the incredible meaning of the life….And by the need to create. Man perfects the world to make it more divine. He is God’s partner in a never-ending Creation.
The strangeness is that, as with a lonely pre-dawn broadcast, readers will swear they won’t go beyond not one more of the 138 pages in the digital version. Like a lonely voice in the night, Rose’s David shows such global perspective and wisdom, he becomes a welcome companion.
veereads 