Isaac Constantine : Jeremiah’s Ghost
Courtesy of Author
Jeremiah Levi, the protagonist and sometimes-narrator of Jeremiah’s Ghost, an autobiographical novel by Isaac Constantine, weathers the storms of his frequently unsettling childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood as he trips and staggers on the road to maturity. His story begins in the anticipation and despair of his first year out of college, which coincides with 9/11 and uproots the young wordsmith from the sheltered peace of his years at a private college in a small town in the Berkshires. After returning to New York City, his hometown, Jeremiah lands an internship at an august literary quarterly with a famous socialite editor, where he strives to make his mark while managing his fear and desolation in the aftermath of the terror attacks. Compelled by circumstances to live with his parents again, smoldering tensions between his father and him foreshadow retrospective glances at his childhood, which interweave in a tapestry of parental mistreatment complicated with loving assertions and acts of tenderness. The impact on him and his family of his grandmother’s agonizing ten-year struggle with Alzheimer’s disease is presented early on and developed as a theme throughout the chapters.
Courtesy of Author
The middle sections follow Jeremiah in his late teens. Drug addled and rebellious, he fails out of college and moves back home to discover the New York rave scene. During his year of academic suspension, his shame and dejection fuel his self-destruction until a drug-induced vision of the apocalypse revitalizes him and restores his belief in himself.
The last third of the novel concentrates on his mid-twenties when Jeremiah, on a “Birthright” mission to Israel, meets his future wife and grapples with history, current events, and raw emotion in an internal conflict over his identity. A few years later, as the day of his wedding approaches, Jeremiah confronts his father for abusing him as child, in the course of which he discovers some disturbing truths. The drawn-out discussion between father and son is both poignant and chilling and sheds some light on his father’s explosive temper.
The novel tells Jeremiah’s tale in episodes ranging from his earliest childhood memories to his post-college twenties. His story proceeds along a nonlinear arc that jumps back and forth in time. The arrangement of these episodes and their thematic unity achieve a coherent history of more than twenties years in the character’s life, in a work that has been called both “terse and challenging” and—despite its brevity—a “coming-of-age odyssey.” Though little known, the work received critical praise for its taut construction, the “impressive…distinctive voice across three decades of [Jeremiah’s] life,” Constantine’s daring, inquisitive candor, and the poetic “skill and grace” of the author’s “beautiful” prose.
“An Apocalyptic Fantasy is right: the hero of Jeremiah’s Ghost is as
haunted and given over to intensities and anguish as one of H. P.
Lovecraft’s protagonists, though pursued by inner rather than
supernatural demons. Careening between the grandiose and the abject,
he tries writing, women, travel, and drugs as his obsessive means of
coming to terms with his own rage and sense of having been emotionally
abused in this coming-of-age odyssey that’s both harrowing and
moving.”
Courtesy of Author
Isaac Constantine is a writer, political activist, editor, and mental health advocate. He holds a bachelor's from Williams College and an MFA from Columbia University. His debut novel Jeremiah's Ghost: An Apocalyptic Fantasy brings forth the relationship of father and son with dramatic flair set in an apocalyptic backdrop. I was very fortunate to ask Isaac questions about his writing process, his debut novel, and his activism through the years.
For more information about Jeremiah’s Ghost please visit here and Amazon and other major booksellers and local bookstores. Reviews can be found here.
