Jef Wilhelm

When I Was a Potato in a South American Soup Jef Wilhelm

Publisher Marketing: Landing in South America on a one-way ticket and resolved to keep possibility wide open, Diego refuses to make plans and finds himself stumbling into national strikes, near-death, cracked teeth, and an explosive riot. The young narrator wields a cool facade, but is increasingly losing composure as he frets over frivolous and sometimes absurd concerns, like whether or not he is a bastard and whether he'll get fat and go bald before finding a mate with whom to create some "cuddly genetic replicas" he doesn't even want. When a cryptic woman arrives on the scene to travel with Diego and entice him with the prospect of love, he must reassess his commitment to an impromptu life. She'll be leaving soon and will take with her a possibility greater than all the opportunities Diego imagines himself to be keeping in play by not committing to any one of them. So he questions his values and examines his experiences, seeing them as models containing the skeletal structure of life itself: A beginning, growth and change, followed by an end whose moment may be uncertain but whose inevitability is never in doubt. His musings proffer fresh perspectives, but saving himself from his own indecision may lie beyond Diego's ability or wishes. Ranging from comedic to reflective and somber, When I Was a Potato blends adventure with existentialism, evolutionary psychology, and idiocy as it explores how the "soups" we find ourselves in impart flavor to the "potatoes" we become.