Set in the suburbs of present-day New Jersey and also New York City, FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION traces the demise of three talented poets and their determination to continue their work despite overwhelming odds. Each of their lives converge when one of the poets, a middle-aged bard of traditional verse, is sent into the bowels of the turbulent inner city where he is ordered by his publishers to mentor a young, radical African-American slam poet and transform his poetry into verse that is more acceptable to mostly white, affluent audiences. To do this, he enlists the help of his beautiful ex-wife who reluctantly agrees to let the slam poet audit her poetry workshop at the local university. Their lives are forever changed when the young African-American slam poet falls for his mentor�s ex-wife. And when the publishers decide to pull the plug on the slam poet�s career, the three of them must confront the hard realities of living in the turbulent urban ghetto while facing uncertain futures as poets.
Part comedy and part interracial romance, FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION has direct appeal to those who love poetry and the poets who write it, those who appreciate high quality literary fiction, and those who crave remarkable storytelling about equally fascinating characters.
"Mr. Havel has a powerful command of the language and a wonderful ability to create environments that move. He lets us into a dynamic universe, dealing with subtleties of both emotion and art, while at the same time revealing powerful interactions between characters in a common vernacular."
Ken Van Rensselaer
Poet and Author of SOMETIMES EVER WAS
"Havel is ambitious enough to directly engage the number one contradiction in American history: race, and he does it by daring to make one of his central figures Black and one white and presenting successive episodes in which the third person narration alternates between their contrasting perspectives. Havel is no less ready to engage the contrasts between men and women, old and young, upper and lower classes in this richly-textured novel. His plot is played out against a background of literary conflict: academic traditional verse as opposed to spoken word performance poetry. He set himself the task of producing convincing dialogue from a broad variety of characters: the upright aging black mother, the university feminist, the street hustler, several varieties of artists in words. And he includes as well convincing passages of description and of social analysis. A nicely plotted narrative, in which the myriad issues that bear on the characters' identity and motives never assume primacy over fundamental human psychology. None of the people in the book are morally exemplary; none are altogether wicked. Rather like life."
William Seaton
Writer and Teacher
Author of Tourist Snapshots
Harvey Havel is a freelance writer, novelist, and teacher. His first novel, NOBLE McCLOUD, A NOVEL, was published in November of 1999. His second novel, THE IMAM, A NOVEL, was published in 2000. Both of his novels were published by the First Amendment Press International Company, which is now defunct. Previously a journalist, Havel is a former staff member of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and CBS News Radio. He also writes a blog, which can be found at www.harveyhavel.blogspot.com.
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