Mike Daily's novel "Valley" (Bend Press) is a fictionalized chunk of Daily's life in the frankly ordinary San Fernando valley -- a thinly-veiled autobiography, one that was honestly recorded on hours of micro-cassettes and in miles of chaotic scribblings throughout a dozen spiral notebooks, before reaching the end-result as a perfect-bound, 224 page book.
"Valley" is a humorous narrative that darts in and out of literary styles following main character, writer/student, Mick O'Grady, as he ambles through his days in a sort of pot haze attempting to make sense of the numerous mysteries unraveling before him. With "Valley" former BMX-journalist Daily has switched from chronicling the world of BMX, to creating a practically itemized account of everything around him, the mundane included.
'Quite often the form of the book jumps from genre to genre turning the author Mike Daily into a young Dr. Frankenstein, concocting his own literary monster-a pastiche of journal entries, newspaper clippings, poetry, and screenplay scenes that when stitched together create the basis of "Valley." It is Daily's trade as an editor that allows him the insight of scrutinizing the mundane, turning a bland, everyday occurence into a profound revelation. By the book's end you're bound to realize that,yes, we are all crazy in our own special way.' --Greg Barbera, Warp Magazine
Listen to an excerpt from the "Valley (Audio Project)," performed by Jennifer Affronti and Mike Daily.
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