This is a visual experience. There are very few words in Flood!: A Novel in PIctures. Drooker paints a stark portrait of the artist as a human being isolated from his community, although his community is New York City with its millions of denizens.
These are not images created in the mind, these are images that reach out and grab the mind. From the sight of Manhattan on a turtle's back to the vision of a New Age ark floating near the Empire State Building, this book serves as a reminder that not all is well with the world.
The protagonist is a struggling artist who gets laid off from a factory job. His life is forced into a downward spiral in which his only escape seems to be his creative mind and a blank page he can fill with drawings. The emptiness of his life is shown through a variety of dreams: his escapades through history as he travels on a subway. His descent into a personal life is vividly portrayed. His dreams are hellish.
Yet there also seems to be a glimmer of hope. He ascends into a world full of rain, a sign that perhaps the isolation will be washed away. The artist climbs the stairs out of the subway and into the rain. He obtains an umbrella to give him some shelter, then gives what he can to a downtrodden citizen.
He finds solace in his apartment with his cat. He begins to draw. Things may not be so bad after all.
Then the flood comes.
Drooker's experimental novel may seem depressing, but it ends with the transfer from oblivion to hope and love. Yes there are sharp images of decay and tragedy, but there is also a dream that things can change. We just need to wash away the filth.