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Genres:
Podcast Episode
The Id Paradox
Fiction
After disastrous experiences in law and education, Jake Kazmareck tries to disappear into a menial job picking melons on a farm in the Rio Grande Valley.
An estranged friend tracks him down, however, with news that their mutual bosom buddy is not dead but rotting in a Mexican prison. The stage is set for his rescue.
Jake, Connors McClain, and Artie Cavazos’s friendship was forged during an almost fatal canoe trip in which only Artie’s genius for survival kept them alive. Their brush with death, however, unleashed in Jake a primitive beast that has never stopped plaguing him.
A few years later, the three engage in an attempt to rescue Artie’s uncle and family from the Mexican drug cartel that had forced his uncle to work for them. Jake mistakenly attributes their failure, and Artie’s death, to Connors’s betrayal.
When Connors later contacts Jake, he shares some startling news. Connors, now the Texas attorney general, has discovered that Artie is still alive and imprisoned in a Mexican jail.
The harrowing rescue is successful, but Artie’s experiences have effectively destroyed his spirit. Jake and Connors now reconciled, they enlist the aid of psychiatrist Judith Neuwirth to try to piece back together Artie’s shattered self.
In the process, Jake is again confronted with the beast in himself. Will he learn to accommodate it, or will it destroy him? Is it an essential part of us that must be accepted? Or must it be fought to the death?
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Jan Notzon
Jan Notzon, one-time actor (Another World, Matlock, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) and now playwright and novelist was born and raised on the Mexican border in Texas. After a stint in The Big Apple, he now makes his home in Charlotte, NC.
Author of seven full-length plays, a one-act and a children's story (The Gift of Arbol Ceiba), he has recently turned his attentions to the novel.
His first, The Dogs...Barking, is the coming-of-age story of a boy growing up in challenging circumstances and how, as he grows into a man, he learns to deal with the devils his upbringing has instilled in him. His odyssey takes him from the staid, conformist 1950s to university life in the wild-eyed, rebellious '60s and on to the raw, frenetic power of New York City to pursue dreams of stardom. Amazingly, he finds the resolution to his quest in that same sleepy little town on the Mexican border where his journey began.
His second novel, And Ye Shall Be As Gods, traces the story of Jake Kazmareck, his quest to discover the evil that plunged his beloved baby-sister into despair and his lost love into madness. After a journey filled with agonizing self-discovery, he finds what he seeks in a most astonishing place.
Next is The Id Paradox, the tale of three friends, their almost fatal adventure canoeing down the Rio Grande, their frustrated attempt to sneak one's family across the Mexican border that ends in the apparent death of one and the consequent estrangement of the other two. When news reaches them that their bosom buddy is not dead but rotting in a Mexican prison, they come together to launch a rescue attempt. The endeavor is successful and heals the rift between the two. Now the challenge is to rebuild the broken spirit of their friend.
Jan's fourth, Song for the Forsaken, chronicles how the loss of faith brings the relationship of two dirt-poor sisters in Appalachia to the brink of disaster, and shows the family history that led them to that pass.
He has now added two more: "Suffer Not The Mole People" is a fictionalized story of the author's Polish ancestors and their flight from their homeland and the despotism of their Prussian masters, to the wilds of untamed Texas in the mid-nineteenth century. "ONLY THE DEAD (Know the End of War)" is a story of the bloody founding of the Mexican and Texas Republics
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