Kevin Wilson’s Now is Not the Time To Panic is a beautifully nostalgic trip back to when I was a teen and tried to do the same things our protagonists succeeded in, yet decidedly didn’t want to. The story is about two kids in a will they/won’t they relationship and a small town tormented by confusing folk-art grunge garage-made photocopied posters that could mean anything from the community being infiltrated by a satanic cult right under the noses of the guardians of decency, to perhaps buzz marketing some underground band no one heard of, to…. well… absolutely nothing.
Behind these posters are two unassuming teenagers, Frankie and Zeke, tipping the first dominoes of discovering their adolescence and their relationship that unintentionally carries through to their adulthood by their unintentional cult following. The center of the narrative is the posters, innocuous mixed-media collages that hang around town without explanation or context. These small gestures and creations bring vibrating replies in the media and the town that span repulsion to awe, dividing the community and eventually spreading throughout the country. Over twenty years as our protagonists drift apart in two seemingly different directions, it becomes clear that this small childhood quirky activity reverberates into a bedrock of cultural importance being profiled by a curious investigative journalist intent on getting to the bottom of its mysterious, anonymous origin.
I loved this book, if only for the nostalgia that resonated through the small, secret reality of these characters. I can think of two friends I had in the same years where we were trying to utilize the group paranoia of the pre-9/11 grunge age where we attempted social engineering with music, throwaway art, and late-night wandering in the city to wreak havoc on the status quo… As complicated as tapes we left with a simple “play me” and music and spoken word weirdness, or as simple as supergluing a can of spam somewhere impossible to reach. Ours was not the kind that did any more damage or attention than a simple turn of the head or removal of a sticker. In the years since companies have coopted this same energetic subversion to terrorize our cities with Ads for late-night Adult Swim cartoons, and politicians convince people that a “FJB” emblem on your truck makes some kind of statement about… anything of any substance.
Times have changed. The powers have claimed the magnetic, curious, cool, guerilla subversion of what this story explores and made just as mainstream as the mainstream. Nothing feels like it means anything as gravitational as this anymore; perhaps that is where Wilson is most talented here, creating three-dimensional characters wandering through a world that at one time could use a lot of attention and energy on a message such as Frankie and Zeke’s anonymous activity that went from being a prank at the very worst to a nationwide obsession with their little friendly diversion. Everything always changes, as does their relationship and the nation throughout the novel. We learn that uncovering the truth, memories, and an innocent relationship can ripple through time even when you aren’t paying attention… and these ripples can connect despite swimming to the other side of the lake of time.
This was a great novel that combined nostalgia, a feverish excitement about guerilla art, and how time affects everything in our past, everything that never was, and everything that comes next.
Garrett Zecker 