Everything That Could Not Happen Will Happen Now delves boldly into the issue of the racial divide in America, the stark reality of racism, and the Sisyphean struggle against its tragic repercussions.
Juan Juárez Bitol is on the verge of graduating from a prestigious California university and realizing the American Dream. Yet in the closing weeks of his last semester—having survived the rigors of academic life and a series of racially charged incidents—he attends a lecture on Beowulf and is haunted by a prophecy revealing that he, like Grendel—the monster of the epic poem and member of the “loathsome race”—is doomed. Wavering between fatalism and free will, Juan ultimately dons the mantle of monster-messiah and sets out to perform the miracle of saving himself.
Excerpt
Pushing on, passed the intramural sports field, he thought that he heard the fraternity brothers out there in the dark, beyond the iron fence, playing a late night game of football.
“A game?” he said. “At this hour? In this poor light?” Stopping for a moment he listened, put his ear to the night, as if it were a door.
It must have been the animalism of the sport that made their snap counts sound more like beastly snorts than human signals. Whatever the case, it frightened him and he had to scramble for mental distraction to steady his nerves.
“Well,” he said, decidedly. “If it’s a ritual I suppose it must be kept.”
He had only spoken the words when it occurred to him that what he was hearing wasn’t a bunch of blue-blooded, American college boys tossing a football around. The neat, herringbone-patterned path quivered lightly under his bare feet, every loosened brick a portent of the thing left unresolved, and a sign of those who were coming to lay it all to rest. Winged Hussars, he surmised, by the sound of things, by the pounding of horse-hooves on sod and the ominous whistle of flying, steel-clad horsemen charging across the intramural sports field. The horsemen of his very own, personal apocalypse, he presumed. The darkness was a veil and from it emerged six white men on black steeds; La Migra, the very same border patrolmen who had hunted his poor father in the wilds of Texas in 1959.
“In the name of ignorance and hate, they come,” he said, describing what he saw. “Bent on genocide, they come. Wielding carbines, sabers and canisters of poisonous gas, they come. To shoot and hack off my manhood, they come. To poison my seed, they come. Like it or not, they come.”
Professional Reviews
The L.A. Lit Review
Review: Alberto Ramirez- Everything That Could Not Happen Will Happen Now
Alberto Ramirez’s novel Everything That Could Not Happen Will Happen Now is a tale of Juan Juárez Bitol’s life as student at a prestigious California university. The book’s dreamy prose and musings on otherness make for a deeply pensive read. Minorities, literary types, solitaries, spiritualists, existentialists, social scientists, Bible readers, and Mexican-Americans will all find this book especially captivating. If you’re simply looking for a story filled with humor and poetry, this book will provide that, too.
Juan, a college Senior months from graduating, is filled with a loathing similar to Grendel’s in the story of Beowulf. In Beowulf, Grendel is the incarnation of evil and belongs to a “loathsome race.” Juan is sympathetic towards Grendel because he too believes he and the Mestizo race are rejects in American society. Juan’s uneasiness when locking eyes with blue-eyed people is an example of how racial myths effect the minority’s psyche. Why are some born with advantages and others disadvantages? The story’s predominant themes of racial oppression, fate and free-will, and cursed peoples help us to understand these significant matters more clearly.
When those of us fortunate enough to go to college begin that journey, we most likely weren’t aware of white privilege, how people born into the higher stratums of society’s hierarchy possess power and pride, while others in the lower stratum experience fear and shame. When our eyes are opened to this and we experience the latter, what does it do to our hearts? How will it influence the state of our mental health and self-esteem? Ramirez’s book shows us precisely.
Will everything that could not happen happen now? Maybe. Maybe not. Juan will either forcefully declare his destiny in the manner of a heroic Anglo-Saxon, or he will adhere to the fatalismo philosophy of his ancestors—that his Fate’s already been decided and he’s powerless in changing it—for better or worse.
Everything That Could Not Happen Will Happen Now was published in 2016 by FLORICANTO press. It is Ramirez’s first novel. Learn more and buy the book from the publisher here: Floricanto Press
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