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I’m dipping my toe into the wonderful world of ebook publishing. My novel The Hermit (a delightful, surrealistic romp through sex, spirituality, politics and mass media) is now available for the Kindle. Those of you who are interested (and Kindle-enabled) can click here and, for a mere $3.99, enjoy an electronic rendition of the timeless tale of a hermit who somehow becomes mixed up with a promiscuous young lady.

C’mon, it’s a steal at twice the price!

I recently pulled my copy of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America up out of the basement for a reread.

The experience was sort of like a chance encounter with an old friend. You chitchat for a few minutes, catching up, and he tells you a few genuinely interesting things, things that maybe give you a different impression of who you thought he was, and then you both go on your way. Having read this book at different times since I discovered Brautigan in the early 70′s, it comes across as a different creature each time.

My first brush with Brautigan came when I was a high school kid on the lookout for weird stuff. I had managed to see some Stan Brackhage and Maya Deren films. I had Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte books. So when I ran across Richard Brautigan in a bookstore, he looked like the writer for me. At the time, I was impressed by the weirdness. It was an imaginative tour de force the likes of which I had not seen before. As much as it pains me to use the expression, I can only say that it “blew my mind.” Is it experimental? Avant-garde? Surrealistic? Dada-istic? Postmodern? Just plain weird? I don’t know. Although any of these labels might seem to fit to some extent, none of them fit comfortably. But when you’re dealing with something as highly original as this, who needs a label, anyway?

First, a comment on the writing. This is the first-written (but second-published) novel by a writer who had been establishing himself as a poet. And this is very much the work of a novelist who was thinking like a poet. In one anecdote, Brautigan talks about mowing an old woman’s lawn; a few weeks earlier, an itinerant looking for work had cut off three fingers using the lawnmower: “I was always careful with that lawnmower, knowing that the ghosts of three fingers were living it up in the grand spooky manner. They needed no company from my fingers. My fingers looked just great, right there on my hands.” At another point, we’re told that “The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said, ‘Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper,’ and put the coin in my hand, but never came back.”

It’s good to find out that someone looks at the world in that way.

Trout Fishing in America has no linear story of any sort. It’s a collection of vignettes, variations on the theme of Trout Fishing in America. Through the course of the book, we see the phrase used not only as the title, but also as an activity, the name of an entity who’s sort-of a character (the narrator exchanges several letters with someone identified as Trout Fishing in America), a disguise worn by a murderer (yes, he dresses as trout fishing in America), and (of course) a theme or metaphor that runs throughout.

In one chapter, Brautigan recalls an incident in which he and some of his friends in the sixth grade were on the playground at recess one day, and they started writing “Trout Fishing in America” in chalk on the backs of the first graders, much to the chagrin of the school administration and parents. In another chapter, the narrator goes to the Cleveland Wrecking Yard to check out a trout stream they’re selling in sections. One chapter is titled “The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America.” And some of the chapters are simply reminiscences of camping in the great outdoors.

It’s easy to look at the book as a jumble of disjointed and meaningless ramblings set to the page by some heavily-drugged hippy type, but I think that if you spend the time it takes to read the book, you owe it to yourself to think about what you’ve just read. Brautigan is inviting us to take a look at how we relate to one another and to the world around us. For example, reading the Cleveland Wrecking Yard chapter leads one to the observation that there are plenty of businesses that would, were it possible, rip a trout stream out of its surroundings and sell sections of it from a warehouse. That we abuse our environment in various ways isn’t exactly an astounding or profound revelation, but it is a point that needs to be made over and over again. Here, we get it in a fairly imaginative and entertaining way.

Trout Fishing in America is a slim volume, easily readable in a single sitting if you have a Saturday afternoon to give it. But I would also say that after finishing the book, you would do well to go back and read it again sometime soon, while it’s still fresh in your mind.

I’d like to write a clever little poem about it, but I’m not inclined to spend the time or effort it would require. I am moved to say this, however: The Swiss Army Knife is without a doubt the best tool that you can use with your pants on.

After reading Rev. Steven Rage’s book Brutal Bible Tales, I’ve finally gathered a few thoughts and posted a review on Amazon. Here it is:

Brutal Bible Tales is a fascinating book. It’s violent, confrontational, and might even be uncomfortable in places, depending on your sensibilities. Rage takes a selection prominent Biblical figures and and puts them in a contemporary world full of drug dealers, gangsters, pimps, prostitutes, perverts, and even vampires. But this is not just a facile, updated retelling of old stories, nor is it shock value simply for the sake of shock.

Rage uses the Biblical material as a starting point to tell his own stories. This book is well-thought-out, told in a distinctive and confident style that keeps the reader turning pages. If you want to complain that some of the sex and violence is gratuitous, I won’t–I can’t–argue the point. I’m not sure I’d want to say that “gratuitousness is the point” is ever a valid defense, but then again, I would insist that in a book like this it’s better to go too far than not to go far enough.

The book gives us a new context for looking at this source material (if I may call it such), like a cynical Sunday school teacher telling the kids, “This is what these stories are really about.” And maybe it is, if you can approach the book with no expectations and just let it be what it is–tales of greed, ambition, betrayal, cruelty–and ultimately, salvation. In other words, As I said earlier, this is not shock value simply for the sake of shock. But if it shocks you, maybe you needed to be shocked.

It’s a novella. No, it’s a collection of short stories. No, it’s a novella AND a collection of short stories.

My upcoming book, Soft White Underbelly, follows the adventures of Thor and his friends Collier Figg, Chickenfeet, a large, stuffed panda and various other assorted characters. Prepare to be amazed in jaw-dropping astonishment as they…

Overthrow the government from the comfort of Thor’s home.
Go to a yard sale and find a weapon so powerful that it can’t be used.
Encounter a soul-stealing snack machine at the airport.
Take inventory of everything on the planet.
Circulate a petition for a Better America.
Embark on a plot to assassinate Satan.

…and more, much more! Soft White Underbelly is on track to be released on August 25, 2010. Mark it on your calendar.

The Ramones, with one of their many classics. Enjoy!

I’ve been working more Bizarro books into my reading list recently (something I would recommend for anyone who’s feeling the need for some unconventional reading material). Here’s my review of You Morbid Westphal by Rev. Steven Rage, as posted on Amazon:

This is a short book; you could read it in a single sitting, as I did–twice. Even so, Reverend Rage somehow manages to give us a story that has the scope of a full-blown novel without skimping anywhere. It’s fascinating, scary, out-and-out repulsive at times, and even amusing in a few places. (I love Sammy, the crusty old ghost-dad who lives with Westphal.)

The book tells an intricate story, dark and gritty and bizarre–I don’t know if Rage claims them as influences, but it makes me think of Chuck Palahniuk and Philip K. Dick collaborating on a horror novel–set in a world of drug dealers, prostitutes, porn producers and otherworldly beings. This world, as well as the story, is well-realized and full of the kind of detail that makes it feel authentic. Everything is extremely vivid.

Westphal, the central character, is a drug-addicted loser who’s just one screw-up away from losing his job at a hospital, and who finds he’s gotten in over his head with his drug dealer. In fact, I would imagine most of us know, or have known, at least one Westphal in real life. There’s much more to it than that, but talking more about the various threads and themes in the story would be running the risk of giving away spoilers.

Suffice to say it’s a story full of imagination and weirdness, a story that invites you to give a little thought to what it takes to maintain some control over your life, and to take a look at your capacity for good and evil.

Phones are the bane of my life. Alexander damn Graham Bell, I’d shoot him.
–Keith Richards

Welcome to Meta-Reality Crossover Conversations, a series in which characters from different books interview one another. In this, the initial installment of the series, John Plow from Open Stage interviews the Mayor’s Daughter from The Hermit.

John’s introductory comments: I met the Mayor’s Daughter at Olive’s Coffee Shop on a bright, Saturday afternoon when I could have been putting my time to better use hanging out with my buddy Gilbert and drinking beer. Now, I’ll admit that I might have made a bad impression by showing up an hour and a half late, but I was channel surfing and found Scarface. So I had to ride it out. Right? Say hello to my little friend. Anyway, when I showed up, she was sitting there reading a magazine, so, like, you know, it’s not as if she was just sitting there bored out of her skull. Right? She seemed on edge about it for some reason, but she was polite. Well, at least at first.

JP: Well, hello there. I’m pleased to meet you.

MD: Hi. I’m pleased to meet you, too.

JP: No. What I’m saying is, I’m really pleased to meet you.

MD: Uh,  well . . . all right. What would you like to ask me?

JP: [impatient sigh] For starters, what are you doing later tonight?

MD: Okay, look. I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, but I think we should just stick to business.

JP: Is it because I was late?

MD: It seems to me you should have had plenty of time to find a better shirt to wear than “FBI: Female Body Inspector.”

JP: You don’t like the shirt?

MD: Let’s just get on with the interview.

JP: I think we could conduct a better interview at my place, with soft music and a bottle of wine.

MD: I understand that I have something of a reputation, but really, I’m not  desperate to bed down with any goofball who happens to come along.

JP: Okay, I see how it is. I’ll be on my way. I’ll go home and make something up and send it to Ray.

MD: Whatever.

Editor’s comments: At this point, John notes that he doesn’t really need to make anything up because a verbatim transcript of what they actually said will show him to be charming and lovable, and her to be contrary and uncooperative. He then went on a four-paragraph rant about how he could score dozens of hotter babes with better attitudes just by spending fifteen minutes calling random phone numbers. But I’ll spare you that.

Join us next time, when Maxwell from Open Stage interviews the Neuralgia Sisters from Goliath.

I have, sitting on my hard drive, several drafts of a novel called North Star. It’s a story about the same character we see in the published novel Open Stage–Gilbert Ragwater. In North Star, a young fella shows up at Ragwater’s door in the middle of the night and asks Ragwater to teach him the meaning of life. I wrote the first draft before any of the novels you see promoted on this website, and I’ve returned to it periodically. But for some reason I can’t get it to work right. Nor can I let go of the idea. So it sits in an ever-changing sort of limbo.

Here’s an except from North Star. It’s a portion of a scene in which Ragwater tells the young man a story, a sort of parable if you want to call it that. It’s not a verbatim copy-and-paste, though. In the novel, the story is told in dialog, with a lot of give-and-take between Ragwater and Calvin (the young fella). I’ve reworked it here as a “standard” third-person narrative so it’ll stand on its own better:

Once upon a time there was a boy named Bob. Bob was a very bright kid, an overachiever, you might say. Straight-A student. Star athlete. Talented artist. Popular at school. The whole package. He was the kind of kid you want to hate because he has it all and knows exactly what to do with it, but when you get to know him, you can’t hate him.

Needless to say, Bob’s parents were very proud of him. They were proud of him every time he made the honor role. They were proud of him when he landed the starring role in the school play. They were proud of him when he threw four touchdown passes in one game. They were immensely proud of him that time he rescued a baby from a burning building. Who wouldn’t be?

Now, when Bob was a senior in high school, his parents had another baby. By this time Bob had already racked up a long string of impressive accomplishments, and he had done it with a combination of brains, hard work, charm . . . all those good attributes everyone hopes their kids will have.

So this new baby was a boy, and Bob’s parents named him Bob’s Brother. They felt—horribly misguided but sincere nonetheless—that the new kid couldn’t possibly live up to Bob’s unbelievably high standards. They thought they were helping the kid, that giving him a name like Bob’s Brother would reflect some of Bob’s glory onto the younger one.

But of course it didn’t work they way they expected. Bob’s Brother grew up feeling unimportant. He felt that his only reason for being was to be a brother for Bob. As far as he could tell, he was just one more thing that Bob had: Bob had Bob’s room, Bob’s car, Bob’s clothes, Bob’s CD collection, and so on. Bob had all of Bob’s wonderful accomplishments and the expectation of many more in the future. And he had Bob’s Brother.

His parents didn’t realize the effect his name was having on poor little Bob’s Brother. All through his childhood, they kept encouraging him. ‘You can do this, you can do that,’ they told him, trying to get him to audition for plays or try out for sports teams, or trying to help with difficult homework, or whatever. They wanted him to do well. They wanted him to be his own person and make his own mark in the world, but with a name like Bob’s Brother, how could he? As far as he was concerned, the only identity he had was in reference to his brother.

He wasn’t a whole person.

He grew up sullen and withdrawn. He was resentful. His parents thought it was just a typical case of teenage angst. But eventually, they found out different. One year, Bob came home for Christmas. He was a highly successful entrepreneur in a half-dozen different industries, and he flew one of his four private jets in from Paris, where he had one of his seven houses—no, mansions—scattered about the globe, in Paris, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Auckland and Honolulu. Yes, life was sweet for him, and his parents welcomed him gushing with love and adoration. And Bob’s Brother faked his best artificial smile and pretended he was happy as the family went out to dinner and listened to the stories of Bob’s many, many exploits and adventures.

And that night, Bob’s Brother stayed up until everyone else was asleep. He found an old butter knife in the kitchen and killed his parents in their bed. Then he went down the hall and killed Bob. He finished off by carving the words “Bob’s Brother’s Brother” in Bob’s chest.