The Manifold Destiny of Rick Harsch

Support Corona\Samizdat Press by donating here or contact Rick at Rick DOT Harsch AT gmail DOT com.

 

Support Corona \ Samizdat Press

Support Corona\Samizdat Press by donating here.

 

flip book

At about minute 18:40, we learn that magnificent force of literature Rick Harsch will publish an Alex Kudera "flip book"; I believe that may mean Rick is publishing two works in one volume. Please donate to Corona \ Samizdat if you can. To do so, contact Rick at Rick DOT Harsch AT gmail DOT com.

from the great Gary Amdahl

W.D. Clarke posted an article by Thomas Pynchon, Corona\Samizdat's Rick Harsch delivered a new video, and a couple months after finishing Gary Amdahl's Across My Big Brass Bed, I opened Gary's I AM DEATH to find these kind words. In other news, Eclectica Magazine is soon to publish "A Day's Worth"; it's my latest short story about surviving in America.

popped right over

"I had feared and despised the [Vietnam] war, but I would have pooped in my pants and popped right over had someone told me to do so—"

~~ from Across My Big Brass Bed by Gary Amdahl

Across My Big Brass Bed by Gary Amdahl

I set this one down for a week, but now I'm back into it and almost finished. It's good.

Young Man Luther II

"She quoted liberally from two books by Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther and Gandhi's Truth, and then, in an incredible act of generosity spurred by her recognition of me as a genius . . ., gave me her copies [which] were underlined and annotated to the point where the pages were blackened and bloodied with her thoughts."

~~ from Across My Big Brass Bed by Gary Amdahl

Young Man Luther

It was only weeks ago that I'd retrieved my copy of Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther from my storage space; at that point, I'd been separated from the mass market paperback by seventeen years. This past week, thusly, when I ran across a sighting of it on page 173 of Across My Big Brass Bed by Gary Amdahl, I felt reunited again with Erikson's psychoanalytical portrait of a young man; it was one of my favorite assigned readings during my first year of college, one of the greatest reading years of my life. Other writers on that year's history list included Herodotus, Thucydides, Peter Laslett, Karl Marx, E. P. Thompson, and Edmund Wilson. Wilson's To the Finland Station remains one of the most gripping books I've ever read.

small obligations and petty worries

"Oh how I let things pass in those days. I was becoming well known as a hot-head and my instinct urged me unmistakably to never let them think they understood me or could predict my behavior. It did not occur to me then that I would consequently never be trusted. No. It was far more important that I never be trapped by small obligations and petty worries."

~~ from Across My Big Brass Bed by Gary Amdahl

lawns

"Spring had finally come and I had begun the first mowings of the lawns of my family's neighborhood. Lawns now, I know, are mown by small businessmen, even by subsidiary companies of large corporations, but in 1968 boys mowed lawns, If they were hard-working, or saving money to buy some big-ticket item, they mowed many lawns."

~~ from Across My Big Brass Bed by Gary Amdahl

Gary Amdahl

Portrait of Gary Amdahl's Visigoth: Stories and I Am Death: Two Novellas.

 

The Creative Writers

The Creative Writers by Gary Amdahl is available wherever books are sold.