Richard Melo's Jokerman 8, a slick sleeper of a novel now reincarnated as a cult classic, was published by Soft Skull Press in 2004. It spent several weeks as the number one bestseller on Powell's Books small press list in the October of that year and Melo traveled up and down the west coast on a reading tour. Jokerman 8 has been compared to works by Ken Kesey and Tom Robbins. Al Gore and Bono have been spotted sporting copies.

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"My first thought when I started reading Jokerman 8 was, 'Damnit, why didn't I write this book?' Then I set to work trying to figure out how to plagiarize it. Finally, I had sit back & give in to its crazy brilliance--which is all its own and unstealable. Written with love for all of us babies blinking in the silent home movies of the 60s and 70s, Jokerman 8 reminds us of who we meant to be and how we intended to live in this wack-ass world."

--Ariel Gore, author of Atlas of the Human Heart

"Like the Dylan songbook its title invokes, Jokerman 8 is freewheeling and deeply felt, moving and cymbal-crashing funny. It is also that rarity: an angry, politically-minded work of exuberant high spirits. A great first novel."

--Andrew Lewis Conn, author of P the Novel

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Alix Ohlin in the September 2004 Believer:

[The Jokerman 8] "are, in fact, the sweetest, most loving, most purely moral collection of characters on the planet. Born in the late sixties, they are heirs to all that's best from that time: the belief in social change and the spirit of rock and roll."

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From the Portland Oregonian, November 21, 2004:

"'Jokerman 8' moves from voice to voice in an easygoing style and storylines are merged as Melo moves from the 1960s to the 1990s. U2 fans will enjoy Melo's subtle references. It's a wonderful book with rich, unforgettable characters and carries the message from beginning to end: Live happy."

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From The Portland Mercury:

"Melo has a way of making the most preposterous event seem plausible, and Jokerman 8 avoids melodrama and never loses its carefreee spirit. In his first novel, Melo produces a work that is sweet and stirring, like taking a long weekend furlough in the Siskiyou Forest before setting some SUVs on fire."

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From Cosmik, by Erick Mertz:

"Portland author Richard Melo has tapped into that consciousness with his sprawling novel of eco-revolutionaries, Jokerman 8 a work filled with ciphers and secrets and more than a few trap doors. The preoccupations of Melo's work evoke images of a handful of authors, most notably Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Ivan Doig and Ken Kesey, luminaries of rollicking humor and keen observation."

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From Resonance, Issue 43:

"Melo has the rhythm and grab-bag ambition of Tom Robbins."

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From Rambles:

"Richard Melo manages to pull it all off. Music ties the adventures of the eco-saboteurs together, from the Beatles and a daughter named Jude to U2's Joshua Tree, complete with a several-page analysis of "With or Without You." The lyrics and allusions in Melo's prose made me want to run out and listen to these albums."

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From Inkaholic.com:

This is one of those books that you read and you know you’ll be returning to in the future. I had to put it aside near the end because I couldn’t bear the thought of it being over. It’s that good.

The Jokerman 8 are kids of the sixties, young people roaming the back woods and liberal arts campuses of the 1980s, united by a love for nature and a despair for the values of modern culture. They believe in laughter, possibility, randomness, and the essential rightness of the universe. They are what today we would call eco-terrorists: they drive spikes into trees, they disable bulldozers, they sink whaling ships. As Melo explains in his manifesto-like introduction, they are the jokers in the deck of the Green movement.

Our narrator is a shadowy figure at the edge of the group. He introduces us to a cast of instantly likeable characters. Jude, the former track star, the quiet TS, the sad but determined Eleanor Cookee, all seem like people we might once have known, or perhaps met once and never saw again. The sense of time and place is flawless – Melo offers perfect descriptions of Oregon’s Kalmiopsis wilderness, as well as a passionate defense of U2’s Joshua Tree album. The story of the Jokerman group veers from farce to tragedy to adventure to the thrills and disappointments of real life, lived fully.

All this is very nearly beside the point. The remarkable thing about Jokerman 8, the thing that makes you want it to go on forever, is Richard Melo, his voice and his philosophy. He’s got a wise innocence, or what the Zen folks call “crazy wisdom”. He embraces the world with all its thorns and fights negative with positive. His characters transcend themselves again and again. The lyrical joy and optimism of his prose calls to mind the best passages from writers like Tom Wolfe, Tom Robbins, and Kurt Vonnegut, but Melo is at once tougher and more gentle than these writers.

The real surprise, to me, was putting down this beautiful, life-affirming novel and finding myself shaking with rage. Without fanfare, hyperbole, or rhetoric, Melo has brought forth the story of the rape of our natural world by forces who have always known exactly what they are doing. He writes with sympathy toward working loggers, sailors and crane operators, but makes no apologies for his conclusion : if we destroy ourselves as a species, all the “legitimate” issues of liberal politics (civil rights, international relations, poverty) don’t mean a damn thing. We are literally tearing away the ground beneath our feet.

A passionate protest, a moving examination of all different kinds of love, a wilderness adventure to beat the band, Jokerman 8 deserves to be read and reread by everyone who has ever been outdoors. - CK