Naked Reverse

Abstract

Stream-of-consciousness is more than a method in Michael Boylan’s Naked Reverse. It’s a distinctive character trait of the central character and narrator, Andrew, a philosophy professor who lives inside his head—until, of course, he doesn’t. We meet our hero when he is in the process of divorcing and emotionally disentangling himself from Barbara, a woman who led him around by the nose. He seems to have married her because of a syllogism whose conclusion he couldn’t escape even though he would have liked to. This, I suppose, is a particular vulnerability of philosophers. (It is no accident that “Barbara” is scholastic shorthand for the first and most effective of Aristotelian syllogisms.) With Barbara still on his mind, Anthea pops into Andrew’s life. (“Anthea,” by the way, is a nickname for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty and desire—and Anthea lives up to her name.) The problem with Anthea is that she is being pursued by violent brutes, posing a challenge for which a philosopher is not well prepared. This and other dangerous situations call for decisive actions from Andrew. Will he be up to the task? And what is to be Anthea’s fate? By the end of the book, Andrew has been transformed into a man whom Barbara couldn’t have dominated. But is he up to the challenge of Anthea? Find out what happens when a philosopher meets the real world: ten rounds, no holds barred.