Category Archives: Books

As both my novels, Cynicism Management and Pendulum Pet, had been reviewed meticulously for any leftover typos and “brain farts” before the corona\samizdat paper editions were published, I have now updated the electronic versions as well. Also, both novels have just been updated and re-released on Amazon. The “Universal Book Link” below (and above) will take you to a page containing links to all online stores that sell them, which hopefully includes your favourite e-book dispensary.

The price for each one is exorbitant, of course, amounting to as much as EUR 3.99. If a particular store sells it for more, it is their arbitrary decision – in that case, please use the links to find a store that sells it for the price I requested.

My second novel, Pendulum Pet, a thoroughly politically incorrect sci-fi/fantasy satire, has just been published in Slovenia in a tangible, paper form as a part of the independent imprint called corona\samizdat. The relatively thick paperback only costs a measly 10 euros plus postage, so if you feel like supporting “the literary cause” that this small press represents, it won’t cost you much. Even if you’re not interested in my book at all, please do consider taking a look at the complete catalogue. You may find something else of interest, as this fine collection of titles, meticulously curated by the US American expatriate to Slovenia, writer and unwavering literary activist Rick Harsch, includes many fascinating works and will certainly keep growing – especially if readers keep supporting it.

Pendulum Pet contains links to music (allegedly) recorded by the fictional musicians appearing in the story. The album that goes along with the book can be found on the relevant Bandcamp page.

The girl from the post office was extremely good once again: recently, she delivered the second part of Rick Harsch‘s communal novel The Assassination of Olof Palme to our currently slightly isolated volcano in the middle of the Atlantic. Both volumes of the rather extensive novel, to which I’ve had the honour and pleasure of contributing quite a few pages, are now available from corona/samizdat.

About The Assassination of Olof Palme from Rick Harsch’s blog:

Induplicatable, uncategorizable, The Assassination of Olof Palme, is a two volume anthological novel, mostly written by Rick Harsch, who orchestrated the contributions of between 40 and 70 writers, all seamlessly absorbed by the novel, the skeleton of which is the autobiographical narration of Rick Harsch, the novelist, and Rick Harsch the character and sometime novelist, who is revived to be enlisted as comrade and investigative novelist, as the concept of autobiographical, at the behest of a Rick Harsch is expanded to include whatever irks or has irked him that relates mostly to three main topics: the post WWII pampering of Nazis by the allies (which means the inclusion of what is known as the Gladio affair and particularly as that relates to Italy’s years of lead and more particularly the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli’s death in 1969, which is known most as the titular accident of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist; second, the degradation of the United States upon the assumption to power of Ron and/or Nancy Reagan, particularly as it relates to the Iran/Contra affair, particularly as that relates to the problem of pampered Nazis; and finally the assassination of Olof Palme in 1986, particularly as the first two topics relate to that murder.
The book makes use of too many tricks of the writing trade to list here, including Tamil Sangam poetry a form from about 2 millenia ago, sonnetry, the government memo, the menippean satirical (doubly so), stage whispers (Nancy Reagan is a star), phone tapping, Dada-guided cabaret thrusts, mimicry, and many more.
Though the book begins to a degree fragmentally it rapidly coheres into a promise no sane reader would expect to be fulfilled that is yet fulfilled in a gutwrenching ending of inordinate pathos.
(Originally intended to be four volumes, Harsch decided the expense would be too great for the reader and limited the number of contributors, compressed a screed, clipped a wing or two, and thus the novel ends with this second volume.)

In its strategic development document titled “Our Diabolical Plan”, the evil megacorporation in my more than ten-years-old comic sci-fi satire Cynicism Management ponders how to force depraved little nanorobots on the entire population and thus transform people into perfect consumers – out of altruism, of course, to prevent any other corporation with poorer commercials from doing it first. Apart from the most standard ways of disseminating nanotechnology (the food chain, waterworks, chemtrails) they also consider cooking up a deadly flu pandemic and vaccinating everyone.

A few days ago, the novel Cynicism Management was finally also published in the United States – on actual paper, mind you! – by the publisher River Boat Books. I suppose I should be happy that this extensive collection of particularly preposterous jokes has aged so well… But instead, I am overcome by horror, as in the meantime, it has in fact become completely impossible to write comic sci-fi satires any longer: now, it appears that many more people than ever before actually BELIEVE such particularly preposterous nonsense.

Lately, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I no longer write satires, but rather perform in them – probably for an audience of naughty pangalactic jokers, who are rolling on the floor laughing.

The best way to grab a copy is through Amazon.

I won’t conceal the fact that I know Rick Harsch – the author of The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas – personally. What’s best about that – apart from being able to enjoy Rick’s sunny disposition and roguish good looks first-hand, of course – is that sometimes he lets me read his work before it’s published. So I happened to read Eddie Vegas more than four years ago (judging from my history on Goodreads), but, of course, the lazy slob that I can be, I didn’t bother to write a review. The convenient excuse that I told myself was that I found it just the tiniest bit weird to express opinions about an unpublished book. Which is true, but still: now along comes Eddie, having recently been published by River Boat Books – which is fabulous news, as I’ve always cheered for this novel – and I’ve wound up owing Rick a review all this time later. Which worries me, because I usually don’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

I’ve started writing this worried that rummaging through my mind for things I remember about Eddie Vegas would be frustrating – and yet, completely unexpectedly, I find myself remembering all these vivid details for some reason. As this is, sadly, definitely not true of every book I happen to read, apparently Eddie has made quite an impression. So let me see what I can remember from more than four years ago.

The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is a formidable tome in terms of length and complexity, yet it reads effortlessly, smoothly, and very quickly – especially once you get the hang of Rick’s trademark linguistic stunts. I’ve had the fortune of reading much of what Mr Harsch has written, and I don’t suppose he ever disappoints in this regard – but I found that Eddie was truly on (a yet) another level. Still, I don’t feel that Rick ever crosses that fine line between good taste and gratuitous fanciness: while he is indeed an impressively eloquent linguistic delinquent, he is also as hilarious as he’s unrelenting. And his lists, for crying out loud, the lists! They are poems, really: from dirty, drunken ditties to dazzling diatribes such as the horrendous thirty-page list of moronic, imbecilic, and idiotic names – truly pure-blooded American names – for doomsday devices. What am I going on about, you ask? Well, Rick approaches the rather sensitive subject of nuclear tests with the immediacy of a battering ram: instead of wasting any time yammering about it, he just hands us a list of names of each individual nuclear bomb that Americans have ever blown up on their own soil. There is a truckload of them – the list goes on forever – and seeing so much human idiocy in one place is about as bizarre and disturbing as watching the news or checking out your favourite social media stream.

However, Eddie Vegas is undoubtedly far from being all fancy bells and whistles and no substance. Four years after I read it, I still remember it as a magnificent, intricate, urgent spectacle spanning two continents and multiple timelines, a political thriller, a (noir) crime novel, an absurdist comedy, a love story, a drama, a poetry collection, a dictionary of languages forgotten and newly invented, an epic historical novel, and even a Western (I haven’t read a Western as good as parts of Eddie for a very long time, if at all) – all of this at once.

In short, Rick Harsch’s newest novel is not only a treasure cove of language porn – it is also a narrative rollercoaster, artfully fashioned by a whimsical narrator you simply can’t help admire even when he gets intentionally annoying. In times somewhat different than the current age of Twitter tweets and rampant split-second attention deficit disorder I can easily imagine this becoming a part of the canon. Kids in secondary schools and universities all over the English-speaking (or English-learning) world could easily be pestered with this instead of Finnegan’s Wake, for example – only that in case of Eddie, they might even be interested in making it further than the cover.

The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is NOT available on Amazon. It can, however, be ordered directly from the publisher, River Boat Books, which kindly offers two links: head here for U.S. purchases; and here for international orders (everywhere except the United States).

The novels Cynicism Management and Pendulum Pet have both been updated and released in most e-book stores. Pendulum Pet, previously exclusive to Amazon, has now been removed from Amazon out of solidarity with my new U.S. publisher River Boat Books, and both novels are now available, in electronic form, in most e-book stores except Amazon. The price of both books has been set to $ 3.99. Find the universal book links that will take you to the lists of all the stores the novels are available in below each cover.