Virtually his only interactions with people are facilitated by a world created in his traumatized teenage imagination. In return, Sean sends them a typed description of their surroundings and options and, when they send their next move, he replies with the corresponding outcome. Players subscribe for a few dollars a month. Their goal: Reaching the Trace Italian, a heavily fortified outpost of humanity on the Kansas plains, blocked by thousands of miles, radiation sickness, marauding mutants, endless choices, and Sean himself.

“Trace Italian” confronts players with the kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland young Sean loved and forces them to fend for themselves. He soon transforms that world into a play-by-mail role-playing game called “Trace Italian.” Literally unable to do anything other than stare at the blandly institutional ceiling above his bed, Sean creates a world that he invests with meaning and purpose. Failing to kill himself, Sean’s face is a hideous ruin, so disturbing that he becomes a reclusive adult, the only person who regularly sees him - excluding even his parents - a home-care nurse.ĭuring Sean’s hospital stay following what he calls his “accident,” months consumed with reconstructive surgeries, physical therapy, and sessions with mental health workers, he finds hope in his fantasies. Capping one of his happiest days, 17-year-old Sean commits the act that defines his life: he shoots himself with his father’s hunting rifle. Howard’s pulp hero Conan), and enthusiasms for hard rock and fantasy/science fiction novels. Beginning as a lonely and bullied kid, Sean spends days and years immersed in rich worlds spun from his imagination, elaborate fantasies of his own power (his favorite: himself as Robert E. Wolf in White Van chronicles the life of 40-something Sean Phillips. The face of James Vance and the power of hidden messages reverberate throughout Wolf in White Van, the powerful novel by Mountain Goats songwriter and guitarist John Darnielle. In the absence of satisfying answers, in the vacuum of meaning, they latched onto an absurd idea: that subliminal, backwards messages encoded in the Judas Priest album “Stained Class” urged listeners, including their sons, to “do it” - kill themselves. Vance and Belknap’s families sought reasons for their sons’ actions. The 20-year-old Vance did the same thing with the same gun, but survived - tremendously disfigured, his face incompletely rebuilt after multiple surgeries. Near the merry-go-round, 18-year-old Belknap put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, killing himself.

23, 1985 drinking and smoking pot, and then went to a church playground in Reno, NV, with a 12-gauge shotgun. James Vance and Raymond Belknap spent Dec.

Wolf in white van reviews