DIESEL MOON
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His dying father, a disillusioned right-wing vet, fumes that the America he’s leaving isn’t the one he fought for. Cap’s dead buddy Harrow Conroy, whose apparent murder in 1968 was for Cap the final disillusionment in a bad year, shows up early and often. A character who seems based on the wily trickster of Indian lore, Harrow tries to lure Cap into an act of violence against soulless American consumers, Harrow’s posthumous prey. So Cap has to die, symbolically, a second time–this time at the hands of his friend.
Diesel Moon has no drive; it lurches from one speech to another, in an order that seems all too arbitrary. It’s like sitting through a very obvious Sam Shepard play, with the imagery elaborately annotated and the characters ready to explain not only everything they’ve ever felt but all you’re meant to. But nothing gets dramatized.
