Geoff Herbach

Local author and Electric Arc Radio player Geoff Herbach's first novel, The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, is very much like a Bob Newhart bit. You know, the ones in which he is carrying on a conversation, but the audience only hears Newhart's half of it, with comedic results. Only Herbach's one-sided chats take the form of transcripts of conversations between a priest and the suicidal T. Rimberg, who spends the course of the novel recounting his descent into self-destruction through letters and diary entries. The priest is convinced Rimberg was part of a miracle in Green Bay (no, it's not Bret Favre coming back for another season), and wants to understand the strange man. But that's not to say that Herbach's book isn't funny. How could any tale of a suicidal, recently divorced, mysteriously wealthy Minneapolitan traveling the globe looking for an appropriate way to kill himself not have some seriously amusing elements? Rimberg is worthy of both sympathy and hatred; you feel bad for him that his wife left with the kids, but you curse him for having an affair to prompt his divorce; you don't want him to die, but you question his melodrama. He's a man who tells everybody he wants to die, but might have too many interesting things to say to actually let it happen.
Tue., April 15, 7 p.m., 2008