Steve Katz was one of the founders of Fiction Collective. He started the short-lived PIIF (Projects In Innovative Fiction) with Walter Abish, Clarence Major, and Michael Stephens. The critic, Jerome Klinkowitz, says he “…pushed innovation farther than any of his contemporaries.” He taught Creative Writing and literature at Cornell University, Brooklyn College, Queens College, The University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Colorado in Boulder, from which he retired in 2003.
Steve’s three sons have given him six grandchildren, one living in NYC, two in Portland, Oregon and three in New Mexico, near his ex-wife, Pat, writer of the monumental cookbook, The Craft Of The Country Cook.
Steve currently lives in Denver, Colorado where he will not ski, nor rock climb, and has put away his bike. He continues to study and practice Chinese internal martial arts, and occasionally schmoozes at Pablo’s coffee shop down on the corner, just across Sixth.
About me:
Click HERE to read THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY, an excerpt from my new book, Kissssssssssss, from FC2.
Like a soapbox preacher on a poetic rant, Steve Katz declares, "Dysfiction is right now and beyond." Kissssssssssss is a miscellany swarming with American kooks and modern primitives who demonstrate the absurdity of our reality. A man's head detaches during cunnilingus then continuously recites scientific formulas of flight. In a parallel universe Los Angeles, a young boy embarks on a strange bildungsroman to avoid being eaten by his parents. An African Grey parrot pontificates on the plight of parrots in war-torn countries.
Applying syncopated language and Anthony Burgess-esque hyper-slang, Katz interweaves the iconic traumas of the 21st century with prescription drug commercials and sub cultural body modification, reflexively avowing that the absurd is our reality: "In our times the trivial is typical, and the typical is not what we need." Like Katz's characters, we choose to sit quietly amidst the horrific banality of the world or purge our fears with sick laughter.
Ronald Sukenick interviews Steve Katz - Rocky Mountain Writers series
Steve Katz was born in May of 1935, and that's all there is to it. That was in the Bronx, and he couldn't help it. Then some kid with a stiletto stabbed his basketball and that was CREAMY & DELICIOUS (eat my words in other words), published in 1970 by Random House, that started the avant-snack movement in the pre-postmodern revolution.
But before that in 1968 he published at Holt, Rinehart & Winston, THE EXAGGGERATIONS OF PETER PRINCE (yeah, three g's, do something about it), the likes of which novel has never been seen since, a Manhattan kind of a book, provincial and puckered with graphics, full of skidmarks, false turns, pictures of boats and midwifing instruments, a whole section crossed out, another overprinted with dreams. It's a hell of a book. You read it and your life turns to garbage, blessed garbage. But even before that, he published THE LESTRIAD in Lecce, Italy, a novella of immense innovation, recently reprinted by Bamberger Books.
Meanwhile he was living his life, three great kids and a great wife. He lived it in Eugene, Oregon, in Winnemucca, Nevada, in Lecce, Italy, and in Verona, in Ithaca, New York, in New York City; and he worked for the forest service, and in a mercury mine, and as many different kinds of waiters, and construction work, and bartender and other things, and then he started teaching, which was subversive, because he always hated school, was never good at student life. He does that even today, living in Denver, Colorado. And he has studied Chinese internal martial arts, and he still does, so he knows how to hurt himself.
And he published SAW at Alfred Knopf, a sci-fi swat team of a novel that demonstrates how a hippopotamus evades an astronaut, and safe sex with a sphere, and how oblivion comes when a cylinder's on the loose. And as a Fiction Collective pioneer he published MOVING PARTS, a book that among other things, zeroed in on the number 43, and was the first work of retrojournalism, in which the author writes an enormous, fantastic story, called Parcel of Wrists and then keeps a journal as he tries to live that fiction.
Then he took a small bite out of the ass of Hollywood, writing with Leo Garen a film called Grassland, later rented out as Hex, though the best that came of it for himself was CHEYENNE RIVER WILD TRACK, a book of poems focussed on making a feature film in exotic South Dakota.
Very quickly the new and improved STOLEN STORIES came out, a book of yarns classic as godzillo riding a hunch from noter dame, such stories of spiritual dread and mortal triumph as never before squeezed into a tube of instant language paste. (Available from the author in convenient family size for sexual avoidance or indulgence, as you wish. 43 bucks.) Sun & Moon Press, bless its enthusiastic, evasive, courageous little publishing heart, produced an unparalleled threesome of books -- WIER & POUCE, FLORRY OF WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, SWANNY'S WAYS. This triad, sexier than a hockey rink blanketed with doorknobs, warm as all humanity hovering in helicopters above the volcanic rift, is a brand new look at the art of narrative, and an heroic assessment of our times.
Then JOURNALISM, a book of poems -- prison, New York City, Hollywood, Cape Breton -- so compassioned, so germane. And Sun & Moon did 43 FICTIONS, swiping passages from all his books, and including some new works of mind expanding, free-fall honesty and free speech.
Today Steve Katz has given up writing to volunteer for a program that puts him in feathers, transforms him from a human being (of which there is an enormous glut), into a california condor (of which there be a pitiful few). So if you feel the shadow pass over your body as you stroll in Santa Monica or Borrego Springs, and happen to look up to find its silent source, it could be steve katz that poopoo in your eye.
Warming up for St. Patrick's Day! Stop by our site and check our March schedule for a gig near you. Hope to see you at a show. Enjoy our new video "Whiskey Tonight" and stop by our site for a FREE download of the new song. Cheers!
J'm pas les birthday party (sauf si l'on parle du groupe en question) par contre ma passion c'est de faire la queue je peux mater en attendant ou penser que je ne pense à rien de spécial
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Plus besoin de l'attendre, A LA QUEUE LEU EST SORTIE. CLIQUE POUR EN SAVOIR PLUS. ..
Hey Mate! It's time once again to help the Irish rock the vote...VOTE FOR "THE INDULGERS" IN THE 2008 WESTWORD MUSIC SHOWCASE AWARDS. The band has been nominated in the "Best World Music" category. Your vote is appreciated. You can support the THE INDULGERS and irish/scottish celtic music in Colorado by voting online at: http://westword. com/polls/musicpoll/ ***** Or you can go to our web site at "shamrocker. com" and click on the link for the Westword Music Showcase Awards. Online voting must be received no later than noon Monday, June 16th. Cheers to you for being our friend and your time and effort!
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday tooooo Yoooou. Haaaapppppy Birrrrrrrrrrrthdaaaay, Haaaapppppppy Birthhhhhdaaaaaay, Happy Birrrrrttthhhdaaaaaaaaay toooooooooooooo Yooooooooooooooooooooou! Celebrate and dance with gusto. Drink good wine or have (chocolate) whatever. And CAKE! Don’t forget the CAKE!!!
Y SIN EMBARGO magazine #15 [ inter-visto issue ] ON PAPER · PDF (free) mar.abr.may. 2008 otoñosurprimaveranorte La estructura de YSE #15, "inter-visto issue" gira alrededor de 15 entrevistas a ’autores’ y 15 interpretaciones gráficas de estas entrevistas por otros ’autores’. La noción que subyace y sobrevuela es la de "diferencia & repetición".
The structure of YSE #15, "inter-visto issue" is based on 15 interviews of ’authors’ and 15 graphical re-readings of these interviews by other ’authors’. The notion is "difference & repetition". Each interview has the same 15 questions, sent one by one by each of the interviewed ones who have chose to answer them all or just a few. And each one has been graphically re-read by another 15 authors.
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And if you create a GUD Magazine acccount, you'll get a full story or poem from the issue free, just to show you what we're made of!
Issue 2 celebrates Heaven, Earth, and Space in-between; it is touched by religion, grounded in technology and comfortable with the occult.
Including a language-stretching piece triggered by the Talmud from the legendary Hugh Fox, poems by haiku heavy-hitter Jim Kacian, the surprisingly touching “By Zombies; Eaten” from Christopher William Buecheler, and an alien perspective on human spirituality by Tina Connolly in the remarkable “The Salivary Reflex”
— all part of a drool-worthy two-hundred page selection of over twenty authors and artists.
