'Krakow Melt' - Daniel Allen Cox

A review of one of the books shortlisted in the GLBTQ category of the Indie Lit Awards.

‘Krakow Melt’ - Daniel Allen Cox

Radeck is a gay man and artist who lives in Poland. He plans pieces of activist art which are centred around fire. While setting a popsicle model of Chicago on fire at a gallery he meets Dorota, a student, a political activist and artist (although as far as we know she doesn’t make art outside of her activist exploits with Radeck). Together they set fires for activism and explore life, all in the midst of tumultuous political and artistic times.

One thing I liked

The diversity of self-contained stories in this one novel is really interesting. There are regular chapters that describe YouTube videos, which appear as contained short narratives separate from Radeck’s first person narrative story. The narrative voice transfers twice to Dr Krzystof Mazurkiewicz (who is also gay) working in surgery and at least one of these (when he finds himself working on the Pope) feels fully separated from Radeck’s storyline. It’s an intriguing way of emphasising the political aspects of the culture that Radeck’s personal story exists in (the homophobic culture in Poland, the social suppression the Pope’s authority keeps in place) and making sure that the wider political aspects don’t get swallowed up by the readers interest in Radeck’s specific personal storyline.

Also worked into Radeck’s first person narrative is a retelling of a significant event form his past, which again sits like a separate short story that utterly transports the reader away from a story being retold to a story that feels like it is happening right then.

One thing I didn’t like

I can’t believe I’m going to say this for a bunch of reasons, the chapter about Nino the elephant (an elephant who has been used as a gay symbol because he seems to prefer male elephants) having sex with a female elephant. Elephants having sex is too much for me. I have been writing here for a while now so maybe you know that I like to read books with sex in them. I might also add that sometimes I like a high level of sexual detail. Such a high level of detail was probably needed in the chapter where the elephants had sex to push an artistic point home, but this level of detail on this one occasion, where there was sex between elephants, left me feeling personally squicked out .

Question

Radeck and Dorota attend a march for gay rights, which ends up using arguments like ‘God made me this way’. Radeck does not approve as he says:

'I had long refused to be part of any Divine Plan, and I don't see the point in borrowing and redressing arguments the church has devised. Subversion as cowardly that way. Sure, Ninio could help the gay cause, but his silkscreened image could do little for transphobia. And it was an anathema to atheists.'

Do you think Radeck is unnecessarily seperating himself from other members of the march as his friend Tomek suggests, or do you sympathise with his argument?

Any opinion mentioned here is my opinion and not the opinion of the whole panel, or the organisers of the Indie Lit Awards.