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| $21.00 CDN 290 pp. ISBN ISBN 978-1-926617-05-3 |
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Icehouse page one...
Tension building up. Short wave, long wave, FM, cybernetic, TV.
Alternating. Wind rubbing a close-to-the-house oak tree arm against
the roof, like a squeaky shoe, cosmic giantess out-in-the-snowstorm-
moan.
The Manhole Covers:
We know it’s coming and although it’s late,
We know that all we can do is wait.....
For what?
Iridescenting blue-green sound-fish floating through the static-sharp
woolen-abounded storm-air, then flipped to the Kid Billy Old Fashioned
Repertoire Impromptu Electronic Sideshow: Kid Billy dancing with
Enormous Norma (5’1”, 534 lbs., on a cool day) while an old player
piano jangled through Nosey Rosie O’Grady....sudden break, a hand on
the screen, letter jiggling around in the palm:
NOW
INTO THE
JOIN THE
NOW
GENERATE THE
NOW
GENERAT-.......
Dog food or deodorant? Pulled back the multi-blue-colored-sari-cloth
curtain, looked out. Snow flaking through the around-the-streetlight-
glow-area. Old image.
And Mrs. Mouse upstairs squeaking the floorboards. Exercising. Black-
laced mummy. Not just not doing (certain) things, but not doing them
at certain (the right) times.....
THE CAMELOT CARMELCORN COURIERS (CD):
Your face fills up the entire sky,
Don’t know where or don’t know why,
We’re here in the middle of time and the sun
Spinning on, in the middle of time and.....
“YOU’RE A LOUSE, MRS. MOUSE!”
Sat down at the piano (old dark-enameled upright), played a few
Thelonius Monkish chord progressions. Trapped in that (Shostakovitch-
Monk) too....
Copy of the VOLCANIC MOUTHWASH TAPEWORM on the coffee table:
THE BOMB, RIOTS, POLLUTION, GENERAL USING-UP OF
ALL RAW MATERIALS. OR JUST OLD-FASHIONED CANCER-
Tension building up. Short wave, long wave, FM, cybernetic, TV.
Alternating. Wind rubbing a close-to-the-house oak tree arm against
the roof, like a squeaky shoe, cosmic giantess out-in-the-snowstorm-
moan.
The Manhole Covers:
We know it’s coming and although it’s late,
We know that all we can do is wait.....
For what?
Iridescenting blue-green sound-fish floating through the static-sharp
woolen-abounded storm-air, then flipped to the Kid Billy Old Fashioned
Repertoire Impromptu Electronic Sideshow: Kid Billy dancing with
Enormous Norma (5’1”, 534 lbs., on a cool day) while an old player
piano jangled through Nosey Rosie O’Grady....sudden break, a hand on
the screen, letter jiggling around in the palm:
NOW
INTO THE
JOIN THE
NOW
GENERATE THE
NOW
GENERAT-.......
Dog food or deodorant? Pulled back the multi-blue-colored-sari-cloth
curtain, looked out. Snow flaking through the around-the-streetlight-
glow-area. Old image.
And Mrs. Mouse upstairs squeaking the floorboards. Exercising. Black-
laced mummy. Not just not doing (certain) things, but not doing them
at certain (the right) times.....
THE CAMELOT CARMELCORN COURIERS (CD):
Your face fills up the entire sky,
Don’t know where or don’t know why,
We’re here in the middle of time and the sun
Spinning on, in the middle of time and.....
“YOU’RE A LOUSE, MRS. MOUSE!”
Sat down at the piano (old dark-enameled upright), played a few
Thelonius Monkish chord progressions. Trapped in that (Shostakovitch-
Monk) too....
Copy of the VOLCANIC MOUTHWASH TAPEWORM on the coffee table:
THE BOMB, RIOTS, POLLUTION, GENERAL USING-UP OF
ALL RAW MATERIALS. OR JUST OLD-FASHIONED CANCER-
Thirteen Keys page one...
When Chris woke up, he didn’t know he was Chris. He didn’t know
anything, wasn’t anything. It was just all black, blank emptiness. Just
eyes opening on darkness and a slow awareness that he WAS. An
unfolding of a sense of being, existence. He was, but had no idea of
what he was, this awareness of being flowing out from his mind, let’s
say it flowed out from his mind/brain… this awareness flowing out into
his organs, into his bowels, his muscles, his skin, slowly IT becoming an
entity enclosed and encased in an envelope of sentient elasticity,
although he didn’t know ‘skin’ was still pre-verbal, just kinesthetic,
moving toward tactile… felt a something in his mouth, tongue,
swallowed… bitter-sour, the sense of taste, he was a definite being
extended in space and he could taste himself, moved a hand and
touched his leg… a ‘trigger’ attached to his hand that activated a TV
screen in front of him, first static, bands of staticy dots, and then a
face, long, thin, with this enormous beak of a nose that came to a
letter-opener point, this aureole of fuzz-ball hair, wrinkled forehead,
wrinkles around the enormous, frightened, angry eyes, voice like a
glass-cutter scraped across a piece of glass:
____“I will repeat this message three times. I... I should say we... me
and the technicians aren’t absolutely certain that you’ll understand this
message even after three times. You’ve been brain-laundered, not just
washed, but wiped totally clean, ‘disinfected’ from all past, all thought,
sense of self, and we’re not certain just how much ‘language’ will
remain...”
____Chris wants to answer back. Of course he understands It’s just
THERE, the gestalt is complete, his sense of HIMSELF is one thing, his
sense of WORDS something else. But when he tries to talk it doesn’t
come out right.
____“Of under course stand thingever…” he says.
____Not that the image on the screen is interested in his response, or
can even respond to it.
____It’s difficult to define what he feels but it’s something like the
immensity of time, time vaulted, stretched, stretching out from him… He
hangs on to the taste of his own bitterness because it gives him a
sense of reality... But that small reality-speck is surrounded by a larger
sense of antiquity… Like the face on the screen is long dead, isn’t it? It’
s out of another time, isn’t it? He’s survived that face, that face speaks
out of a distant, antique past.
____Aloneness, that’s what he’s feeling, isn’t it. No tribe, touch, just
the evil face-voice in front of him, speaking out of ancient death. And
then the voice, as if anticipating his thoughts/feelings, slashes on:
____“I will be long dead when you awake in our Space Cub NH43. How
long? Again the experts disagree… I will be dead in another few
months, the Month of the Knife, 33453… look at the counter on the
lower left of this transmitter just below the screen and you will see the
current year, if they are still using the same year-system when you
finally wake up...”
When Chris woke up, he didn’t know he was Chris. He didn’t know
anything, wasn’t anything. It was just all black, blank emptiness. Just
eyes opening on darkness and a slow awareness that he WAS. An
unfolding of a sense of being, existence. He was, but had no idea of
what he was, this awareness of being flowing out from his mind, let’s
say it flowed out from his mind/brain… this awareness flowing out into
his organs, into his bowels, his muscles, his skin, slowly IT becoming an
entity enclosed and encased in an envelope of sentient elasticity,
although he didn’t know ‘skin’ was still pre-verbal, just kinesthetic,
moving toward tactile… felt a something in his mouth, tongue,
swallowed… bitter-sour, the sense of taste, he was a definite being
extended in space and he could taste himself, moved a hand and
touched his leg… a ‘trigger’ attached to his hand that activated a TV
screen in front of him, first static, bands of staticy dots, and then a
face, long, thin, with this enormous beak of a nose that came to a
letter-opener point, this aureole of fuzz-ball hair, wrinkled forehead,
wrinkles around the enormous, frightened, angry eyes, voice like a
glass-cutter scraped across a piece of glass:
____“I will repeat this message three times. I... I should say we... me
and the technicians aren’t absolutely certain that you’ll understand this
message even after three times. You’ve been brain-laundered, not just
washed, but wiped totally clean, ‘disinfected’ from all past, all thought,
sense of self, and we’re not certain just how much ‘language’ will
remain...”
____Chris wants to answer back. Of course he understands It’s just
THERE, the gestalt is complete, his sense of HIMSELF is one thing, his
sense of WORDS something else. But when he tries to talk it doesn’t
come out right.
____“Of under course stand thingever…” he says.
____Not that the image on the screen is interested in his response, or
can even respond to it.
____It’s difficult to define what he feels but it’s something like the
immensity of time, time vaulted, stretched, stretching out from him… He
hangs on to the taste of his own bitterness because it gives him a
sense of reality... But that small reality-speck is surrounded by a larger
sense of antiquity… Like the face on the screen is long dead, isn’t it? It’
s out of another time, isn’t it? He’s survived that face, that face speaks
out of a distant, antique past.
____Aloneness, that’s what he’s feeling, isn’t it. No tribe, touch, just
the evil face-voice in front of him, speaking out of ancient death. And
then the voice, as if anticipating his thoughts/feelings, slashes on:
____“I will be long dead when you awake in our Space Cub NH43. How
long? Again the experts disagree… I will be dead in another few
months, the Month of the Knife, 33453… look at the counter on the
lower left of this transmitter just below the screen and you will see the
current year, if they are still using the same year-system when you
finally wake up...”
Description: Literary Fiction, Postmodern, Fantastic
Conscious memory abandoned — including sense of self. Reality removed… completely… for one
thousand years. Awakened by a millennium old cybernetic ghost, aboard a vessel bound for
nowhere and light-years from home… his questions abound. Guided through thirteen galaxies to
answer thirteen ancestral riddles — each one a key to open a passageway to the holds of his mind
— eventually he again starts to realize his self....
Review quotes:
The thoughts and words of Hugh Fox, will cause the reader’s mind to pause, slow down, expand,
ponder for himself/herself, perhaps wander along un-imagined-before avenues, and down dusty
lanes. What more could any sentient author want?
~ Ibbetson Street Review
Like Charles Ives, like Herman Melville, Hugh Fox is an American original. There is no one else writing
like him today.
~ Richard Morris
Author Comment:
Dada, vorticism, futurism, surrealism, then an immersion in the Beat Revolution, the work of the
generation I named The Invisible Generation, ten years watching avant-garde films and everything
else while I was teaching at Loyola University in L.A., then a fellowship at Brown University in
Providence immersed in the craziest, avant-garde collection of literature I had ever seen, most of
which I’d never heard of before, then a year studying at the University of Buenos Aires with
friends like Jorge Luis Borges and Edgardo Antonio Vigo.
~ Hugh Fox
BIO:
Hugh Fox is the author of over 85 books of fiction, poetry, archaeology, cultural history and criti-
cism, and more. He was one of the founding forces behind COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine
Editors and Publishers) where he remained on the board of directors for 28 years. His magazine,
“Ghost Dance: The International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry”, published from 1968-1995, is
considered to be among the highest rated journals of avant garde literature from all time. Hugh is
listed in “Who's Who: The Two Thousand Most Important Writers in the Last Millennium”.
Conscious memory abandoned — including sense of self. Reality removed… completely… for one
thousand years. Awakened by a millennium old cybernetic ghost, aboard a vessel bound for
nowhere and light-years from home… his questions abound. Guided through thirteen galaxies to
answer thirteen ancestral riddles — each one a key to open a passageway to the holds of his mind
— eventually he again starts to realize his self....
Review quotes:
The thoughts and words of Hugh Fox, will cause the reader’s mind to pause, slow down, expand,
ponder for himself/herself, perhaps wander along un-imagined-before avenues, and down dusty
lanes. What more could any sentient author want?
~ Ibbetson Street Review
Like Charles Ives, like Herman Melville, Hugh Fox is an American original. There is no one else writing
like him today.
~ Richard Morris
Author Comment:
Dada, vorticism, futurism, surrealism, then an immersion in the Beat Revolution, the work of the
generation I named The Invisible Generation, ten years watching avant-garde films and everything
else while I was teaching at Loyola University in L.A., then a fellowship at Brown University in
Providence immersed in the craziest, avant-garde collection of literature I had ever seen, most of
which I’d never heard of before, then a year studying at the University of Buenos Aires with
friends like Jorge Luis Borges and Edgardo Antonio Vigo.
~ Hugh Fox
BIO:
Hugh Fox is the author of over 85 books of fiction, poetry, archaeology, cultural history and criti-
cism, and more. He was one of the founding forces behind COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine
Editors and Publishers) where he remained on the board of directors for 28 years. His magazine,
“Ghost Dance: The International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry”, published from 1968-1995, is
considered to be among the highest rated journals of avant garde literature from all time. Hugh is
listed in “Who's Who: The Two Thousand Most Important Writers in the Last Millennium”.
| $16.80 |