1992 Book by Ron Dakron
Newt
You'll laugh, you'll weep, you'll fall asleep.
Newt is a frightening ride through the hopes and horrors of a troubled American immigrant. Set in Seattle’s loft art scene, two young lovers, Alysha and Newt, discover that the past is prelude to oblivion. Switching elegantly between Alysha’s horrific past and her frenzied present, Newt delves into doomed love and taboo lust.
A Caribbean woman loves a Seattle sculptor. Their romance should end with slurred daquiri kisses. But there’s this little problem. Someone else wants her-the guy in the aqua Thunderbird. The color of his ride clues her who’s driving. Her first lover. Someone related.
Reviews for Newt
Ron Dakron does wonders with sweat. In his new novel, Newt, the best moments occur when Dakron’s restlessly sensual prose zeros in on a restlessly sensual moment; a steam bath, sex, the silent moments after sex . . . No action is described with a conventional verb. No event takes place within a conventional time frame. The results are challenging, aggravating, and hypnotically resonant.
The first thing that strikes a Newt reader is the style: short clipped sentences, risqué neo-verbs, and a plethora of striking metaphors… If novels in general are mirrors of the world, Ron Dakron has created a sort of broken-mirror mosaic, reflecting and interposing times and places, something like a cubist, pointillist collage, beaten out to the rhythm of moody, fragmented Seattle rain…it manages to create a sort of exclusive, four-dimensional time warp where past, present, and future meld in a drug-fear-creativity induced dream time… Newt creates an exclusive universe, full of riddles… All in all, a fine effort, which will keep many readers firmly glued to their favorite reading chairs for the duration of their reading..
One is immediately caught in its linguistic web: readers are best advised to get the hang of Dakron’s predatory prose before it gets the hang of them . . . Images clash and explode like reflections in kaleidoscopic insect eyes. The story itself blooms in language that resembles those little monster pills that expand in water. In truth, language may be the real protagonist here. One is reminded of Heidigger’s statement that prose is dead poetry. Nothing dead here. Recommended reading.
Ron Dakron’s sentences are lines short, rhythmic, poetic… Dakron’s storytelling technique gives the reader a perspective that shifts from the mundane concerns of Will she get away? and Will they marry and breed? The question is, Will Dakron’s lines dazzle to the end or burn out the patience of classification-bound readers who must have either story or poetry? Newt is daringly and relentless opposed to plain language.
