Zazen

Zazen

by Vanessa Veselka

Narrated by Xe Sands

Unabridged — 7 hours, 13 minutes

Zazen

Zazen

by Vanessa Veselka

Narrated by Xe Sands

Unabridged — 7 hours, 13 minutes

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Overview

From the author of the National Book Award longlisted epic The Great Offshore Grounds, here is the debut novel that launched her career-a story of activism, police violence, and white guilt in a not so distant dystopian America.

“An ambitious encapsulation of our modern times, Zazen tackles counterculture hipsters, geology, Buddhism, consumerism, terrorism, veganism, family drama, and, above all, love." -Judges' Citation, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize

The world is on fire, and Della doesn't know what, if anything, she should do about it.

The country is poised on the brink of war. Curfews and other restrictions give the police an excuse for violence. Customers at the vaguely vegan cafe where Della is working after dropping out of grad school debate which foreign countries are the best to flee to: Costa Rica? Bali? Della's parents-former revolutionaries-are more excited at the idea of her brother and his Black wife giving them biracial grandbabies than in engaging in any new actions; her nominally activist coworkers are mostly devoted to planning a massive sex party. Della floats between them, lost and numb. 

Then a bomb goes off: some shallow place of capitalistic worship demolished. Inspired, for reasons not entirely clear to herself, Della calls in a second-fake-bomb threat. But a bomb goes off there, too, and soon Della finds herself pulled in by a group of people who, for once, are promising to actually do something. No matter the consequences. Prescient when it was first published, Vanessa Veselka's debut novel is even more revolutionary now. 
 
A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The deeply disaffected young woman narrator of Veselka's taut debut must decide whether to flee a dystopian America or try to endure it, and, in the process maybe help save it a little. Della is a waitress with an obsessive interest in self-immolation, a sharp wit, and a dwindling hope in humanity. When a bomb goes off in an office building in her faceless industrial city's downtown, Della finds that the distant wars the country's been fighting are coming closer to home. At first she considers leaving like many others, but then the chaos becomes attractive to Della and she calls in a series of phony bomb threats around town, taking big delight in watching people scramble from, for instance, a mall-church complex. But when someone starts setting off bombs at places from her list of "targets," Della realizes that she might be part of something bigger than her own absurd protest. Veselka's prose is chiseled and laced with arsenic observations, and though she unleashes some savage social satire, her focus is more on the hypocrisy, heartache, and confusion that drive Della and those around her. But don't be distracted by the chaos and disorder: Veselka makes a case for hope and meaning amid sheer madness. (May)

From the Publisher

Zazen felt like the future when it first appeared, but the present also—like Veselka had created her own genre just to describe how we were and who we’d become. Electric, visionary, I think it will always be a bellwether of a novel.” —Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night

Zazen is revolutionary. Gorgeously written, deeply intelligent, explosive, it is a vicious and nuanced takedown of the neo-liberal state, and the reactionary, identity-besotted left that opposes it. As forests burn and cities are gentrified and billionaires launch themselves into space, there is no better time for this story of terror and joy and the intoxicating freedom of resisting authority in all its insidious guises. Veselka is a genius, an outsider philosopher for the ages.” —Cara Hoffman, founding editor, The Anarchist Review of Books

“Veselka’s prose is chiseled and laced with arsenic observations. . . . Veselka makes a case for hope and meaning amid sheer madness.” Publishers Weekly

“Veselka honors the complexity of a young, intelligent generation at once confused and overwhelmed, but willing to enact change. . . . Zazen is a satiric examination of the real and perceived boundaries of activism and idealism in twenty-first-century America.” Kenyon Review

“Powerful. . . . A streaking flash of barbed satire and 21st century malaise.” The New York Journal of Books

“Vital and explosive, this book is not to be missed.” Flavorwire
 
Zazen has a power beyond the satire and the clever reimagining of today’s counterculture trends. It also has heart and soul.” The Oregonian

“Veselka grabs plot by the lapels and brings it to the forefront of the book without sacrificing the effectiveness of the more ethereal aspects of good fiction.” The Millions

“Vanessa Veselka is something like a literary comet: bright-burning, far-reaching, rarely seen, and a little dangerous.” —Tom Bissell

“At turns hilarious, unsettling, and improbably sweet, Veselka’s debut is, above all, a highly engaging, and totally unique experience, which will have you rereading passages and dog-earing pages. But best of all, in the end, Zazen is that rare novel which dares to be hopeful in the face of despair, and succeeds.” —Jonathan Evison, author of Lawn Boy

Library Journal

In her debut novel, Veselka introduces Della, a lost soul disillusioned by society and caught in a state of despair. Della yearns for security and beauty but is consumed by fear of an impending war and feelings of powerlessness. Unable to fulfill her desire to create a brilliant insurgency, she challenges the status quo only to add to the chaos. Using solid prose complemented by subtle lyricism and allusion, as well as wry observations about such cultural constructs as consumerism, organized religion, and economic development, Veselka examines the choices individuals make when they feel consumed with helplessness. Throughout, readers will find insight into the human condition, where the goal of "zazen," the Zen Buddhist practice of seeking a place of peace and refuge through meditation, may prove illusive. VERDICT Readers will be delighted by Veselka's wit and social commentary and engaged by Della's personal journey. Recommended for anyone interested in a perceptive analysis of modern society and the evolution of the human character.—Catherine Tingelstad, Pitt Community Coll. Lib., Greenville, NC

Product Details

BN ID: 2940172875724
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 10/19/2021
Edition description: Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I went to work and a guy I wait on said he was leaving. He said everyone he knew was pulling out.
“Canada is just not far enough. Mostly Mexico. A bunch to Thailand. Some to Bali.”
He always orders a Tofu Scramble and makes me write a fucking essay to the cook. No soy sauce in the oil mix, no garlic, extra tomato, no green pepper. Add feta. Potatoes crispy and when are we going to get Spelt. He holds me personally responsible for his continued patronage. I hope he dies. I’d like to read about it.
My brother Credence says people who leave are deluding themselves about what’s out there. I just think they’re cowards. Mr. Tofu Scramble says I should go anyway, that it’s too late. I want to but I can’t. Maybe when the bombs stop, or at least let up. Nobody thinks it’ll stay like this. I call it a war but Credence says it isn’t one. Not yet. I say they just haven’t picked a day to market it. Soft opens being all the rage. My last few weeks down at grad school it was so bad I thought everything was going to shake itself apart. I tried to focus on my dissertation, follow the Diaspora of clamshells but every night it got worse. It’s not any better here—here, there, now, tomorrow, next Wednesday—geologically speaking it’s all the same millisecond. The gentle rustle of armies crawling the planet like ants. Anybody with any sense knows what’s coming.
I was in yoga yesterday and this girl started crying. Raina, who teaches on Mondays, went over, put her hands on the girl like a faith healer, her fingers barely grazing the shoulders. She closed her eyes and let the girl cry while she breathed. Everyone was watching like they were going to see sparks or something. I was anyway. I would have liked that. The girl calmed down. Her breath was hard and her eyes swollen. Raina talked about being okay with how you find yourself on the mat and I thought there’s no one here who’s okay with that. If you took the roof off we would all look like little gray worms, like someone lifted the rock; too close, hot bent and wet. Well, maybe not hot because of the mud but that’s still what I thought when the girl was crying. I was glad it wasn’t me.
Credence says if half the privileged white marketing reps in my yoga class voted for something other than reductions in their property tax, something might actually happen. I’d like to see something happen. Something big that wasn’t scary, just beautiful. Some kind of wonderful surprise. Like how fireworks used to feel. Now I’m no better than a dog.
Still, there’s something true in that yoga manifestation thing because I feel different when I believe different things. Only I don’t know how to go back to feeling how I did because I can’t re-believe. When the first box-mall-church went up in the blackberry field I wanted some kind of rampant mass stigmata with blackberry juice for blood. It didn’t happen. It’s not going to. They win; they just roll, pave and drive over everything that’s beautiful: babies, love and small birds. On summer nights with the windows open I hear joints cracking like crickets.
I wake up sometimes and feel the nearness of something but then it’s gone and I’ve started to wonder if it was ever there. Lately, I’ve become afraid that the feeling I used to feel, like something good was waiting, is what people mean when they say “young” and that it is nothing more than a chemical associated with a metabolic process and not anything real at all.
I waited on Mr. Tofu Scramble. He had a date at lunch and they both ordered blackberry smoothies. Vegan. I thought about slipping his date a note telling her that he was a big old cheese eater when she wasn’t around. But who am I to stand in the way of love?
I went into the kitchen and pulled a five-gallon bucket out of the fridge. They stack the tofu in soft blocks at the bottom of a bucket of water. With dirty hands I scooped out the tofu and threw a handful into the blender, little white clay hearts. Then I filled it to the brim with blackberries. I pressed the “chop” on the blender because it’s louder and takes longer and in a second the blackberries stained those little white hearts and turned them dark as a bruise. I left the blender on. It took over the restaurant. Everyone tried harder and harder to ignore the noise but the more they did, the longer I let it run. There should be some price to pay for all of this ugliness, especially the pretty kind; especially the kind you don’t always see.
Mr. Tofu Scramble looked around and I thought, yeah, that’s right, it’s you, you Big Old Cheese Eater When She’s Not Around. His cheeks reddened and his jaw shifted side to side. He started to look so much like a little kid staring down at dirty candy that I turned the blender off. It’s not all his fault. It’s not his fault he’s in love and wants quiet blackberries. It’s just not his fault.
Even Credence fell in love and got married although I think he secretly wants a medal for falling in love with a black woman. Our parents were so proud. Now, if I could only abandon my heterosexual tendencies as uninvestigated cultural preconditioning and move in with some sweet college educated lipstick-dyke bike mechanic, they could all finally die happy.
I’ve lived with Credence and Annette for almost three months now. At first I thought that because Annette was black I wasn’t ever supposed to get mad at her. It was like living with an exchange student that spoke English really well.
“Jean-Pierre, what do they call baseball in France?”
“Annette, do you like macaroni and cheese?”
“Daisuke, how is the rebuilding going?”

Credence has a missionary belief in community organizing. He says, “grass roots” like bible thumpers say Jesus.
Hallelujah.
Credence and I stopped a Wal-Mart from opening once. It was earlier in the year and it lasted about a minute. Four months of door-to-door organizing, leafleting, town meetings, petitions, land-use hearings, senators, phone calls, cold, free doughnuts, and sermons to the choir in the rain with balloons whipping around our faces in the wind while we chant and people drive by in heated sedans and look confused. Take pictures and send it out to everyone who couldn’t come to the rally. And it worked. For about a minute. It’s hard to do the same thing twice. It’s hard to feel the same way you did, especially when you really want to. We just set them back a couple of months on their timetable. Chipped teeth, flags, crosses and white sugar.

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