A Catcher In the Rye for The Forty Somethings

Chicago, IL, USA (SANEPR.com) November 26, 2008 -- The Obama generation finally has their own Catcher In The Rye. Rocket Man, a novel, being published in December by Pantonne Press in Chicago. This novel is the answer to the generation that was sandwiched between the Boomers and the Gen-exers. The Tweeners as they have come to be called, now in their forties, is Barack Obama's generation. Once dubbed the yuppies, this generation never had a real voice until now when Barack Obama (forty seven) was elected President and it is fitting that they should have a novel that speaks for them as well.

As one reviewer for the site Library Thing put it, "I don't consider 46 year olds baby boomers because we have never really been able to reap the benefits that the true boomers have. We have been left to drool after what they have and then clean it up. This book is going to hit home to many readers, especially those born between 1960 and 1965.

" Rocket Man has been burning up the cyberworld with stellar reviews on Amazon, Library Thing, and Barnes and Noble.com. Novelist David Niss summed up the book this way: "I think that at the heart of this novel is the assertion that the real American dream - that of being self-made and maintaining individuality under the pressure of conformity - is what gets crushed by the pursuit of the empty and material products we are programmed to desire." http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0615213073/re...

Rocket Man chronciles the life of one Dale Hammer as he tries to keep up with the Jones and hang on to his house in the suburbs of Chicago. In the course of one week his life implodes as his father comes to live with him over his garage and he is appointed Rocket Man to head up the Rocket Day celebrations for his son's Scout Troop. What seems to bring the comparisons to a A Catcher In the Rye is the main characters sarcastic dry humor and wit. "We are constantly presented with rules we can either choose to follow or break. Does one go through the unmanned toll? Does one pay for the case of water in the bottom of the shopping cart that no one sees? They are small middle class rules, but rules all the same." For many forty somethings, now trying to raise families through the worst downturn in the economy since the great depression, this novel resonates as speaking for a generation that has been looped with the boomers and all but ignored.

"This generation of people are not looking at retirement, " the author William Elliott Hazelgrove, said from his studio in the Hemingway Foundtion. http://www.billhazelgrove.com "They are right in the thick of it, children, mortgages, big cars, right in the very cauldron of this economic mess and I think they see Dale Hammer as giving voice to their frustrations." Whatever the reason, Rocket Man is blasting off from the ranks of the unknown novels and finding voice in the thwarted dreams of a another generation. Dale Hammer might just nudge Holden Caulfield over as the antihero for our time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARVlfztYF4

Press Contact:
Jim Turner
Pantonnepress.com
27 N. Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60606
630-587-1520
jturner@pantonnepress.com
http://www.billhazelgrove.com