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Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

Posted by Unknown 4/24/2015

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On visiting a brilliant bookshop yesterday, The Magic Door IV

Yesterday, I finally had the chance to visit a local independent bookshop, The Magic Door IV , that I had been meaning to for years, but its store hours (2:00-8:00 p.m.)* had always made it impractical for me to drop by when I had a regular 8-5 office job working for somebody else. In May, when out of the blue it occurred to me that I had still not patronized the The Magic Door and its hours were no longer an issue, I dropped by on Memorial Day (May 29th), but the store was closed for the holiday. Undeterred, when Father's Day rolled around three weeks later, I decided I'd go then. Almost out the door, though, I thought maybe I better call first, make sure they're open. Sure enough, they were closed for the Father's Day holiday. They were closed, and yet the owner, Dwain Kaiser, answered the phone anyway and urged me to drop by on Tuesday. He was adamant that I — whom he didn't know from Adam as they say — drop by the store on Tuesday, ...

As Taught by Paul Frizler; or, Swan and Shadow by John Hollander

I discovered this masterful poem for the eyes and soul back in the autumn of 1989. I was an undergrad at Chapman University, when I took a course that altered my life's course inexorably, "Introduction to Poetry, 101". The poem above was featured in Poems, Fourth Edition: Wadsworth Handbook And Anthology , a textbook I still own and reference regularly. "Swan and Shadow" by John Hollander was used as an introductory illustration of what was then commonly called "concrete poetry," but today is better known as "visual poetry". The class was taught by the most eccentric and engaging genius of a professor I ever had, the late great, Dr. Paul Frizler , B.A. at the ripe old age of nineteen, Ph.D. in English by twenty-six. Frizler personified lightning. He was eclectic and sincerely outrageous. I remember his regaling us of his encounter with Jim Morrison at UCLA. Unlike Morrison , however, Frizler's eccentricity ...

Excerpts of Early Optimism, Taking Notes on the First Chapters of Ulysses: March 2009

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Exhuming The Body by William Sansom

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Innovative Fictions since 1950

Innovative Fictions Since 1950 Good syllabus. Christmas, no matter what good-intentioned people say, is really about getting lots of cool stuff for yourself! A friend forwarded me the cool link above, and so I pass it on to you all, not in the spirit of seasonal giving, but in the spirit of Freeque's few readers receiving cool stuff that they can have just for themselves. I forgot to turn the heater on last night; no worries, because I live in Southern California, in Perpetual Paradise. We just opened all the windows in the house and let the eighty-degree weather warm the rooms from the outside. I'm wearing frayed, faded denim shorts and ancient Birkenstock sandals today; my wife said she might go topless -- in her glorious buff above the waist -- I wouldn't blame her, and hope she does. Merry Christmas!! I'll happily bare my chest too, in bare man-boobs solidarity. I don't think the grandparents, especially our Tranny Granny, would mind. Obnoxious, ...

A.M. Homes' autograph (Things You Should Know: A Collection of Stories)

I remember reading Salon's 1996 interview with David Foster Wallace about five years after it'd been published — this was just after DFW had been hired by the Claremont Colleges and the L.A. Times had run an interesting piece on his work and arrival to the university, and my interest in this writer that I'd heretofore never heard of, was immediately piqued; and piqued enough, I might add, that I immediately and rather obsessively went online to learn more about him — in which Laura Miller asked DFW who were the contemporary literary writers he read and admired. A.M. Homes was at the top of his list (and this despite labeling her first novel Jack as being "imperfect" — as if his first novel had been perfect! — zeroing in on a short story of hers called "A Real Doll" that had particularly captivated him with what sounded like a bizarre mix of satire and social commentary on the sorry state of our culture's disconnectedness. After re...

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Ten years before Frank Herbert launched himself into the SF stratosphere with Dune , he published his first novel, The Dragon in the Sea (1955), a debut good enough to garner him an International Fantasy Award. But despite the awards and accolades, future publishers saw fit to rename and desecrate the perfect title of the novel, calling it both Under Pressure and 21st Century Sub . The latter concocted title, much rarer in circulation than the former, has become a minor collectible among hardcore collectors. While I've never been a hardcore collector (or even a hardcore SF aficionado), I have been hardcorely obsessed with Frank Herbert since the early 80s, right around the time when God Emperor of Dune came out, and so spent low double digits (as in $12) one day to obtain a much-less-than-in-mint condition looking paperback copy of a book I already had two other copies of, only the two other copies, of course, were titled Under Pressure and The Dragon in the Sea . I wou...

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