In the days I’m urged to call the punk rock shambles of my misspent youth, I would sometimes descend into a paralyzing--if undisciplined and fuzzy--philosophical inquiry concerning a matter of commitment and authenticity many in my tribe considered of grave importance: to get a tattoo or to remain un-illustrated. This was a big deal. It…
Lock up the night-soil men who prowl our secret alleys and cart away our ripest fruit. Kleptomaniacs all, they do their dirty work on our dime. They eavesdrop on confidences exchanged with our BFFs. They sell us offal, call it Ovaltine, then assure us it's a small world after all. Bored with larceny, they muster…
While watching the BBC World News this morning, I caught a report about a new documentary: William Burroughs: A Man Within. The report was built around an interview with the filmmaker, Yony Leyser. What struck me about this interview is how the interviewer from the BBC kept coming back to an assertion that Burroughs was…
Paul West asserts that dialogue in fiction is for the eye, a way of offering the reader a bit of a rest now and then, and little more. I've been accused eschewing dialogue in my own work. But such readers might want to reconsider: could be all my work is composed of a dialogue, with…
While my stubborn, or stupid, or philatelic nature won't allow me to give up, I am fairly reconciled to the reality that my chosen form of creative expression becomes, year after year, ever more an oddity--like an American cricket team, but with fewer enthusiasts.
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 