Ronald Sukenick Reading

[Jack Foley]

PYNCHON FANS IN THE WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA!!!

If any of you would be interested in hearing Ron Sukenick, another writer in
the same universe TRP inhabits (HOUSTON POST: "A kind of cross between
the Sterne of Tristram Shandy and the Thomas Pynchon of V, Sukenick
combines fantasy and parody and satire brilliantly."), Sukenick will give a
reading and talk about "The Contemporary Avant-Garde" (in particular the
movement Avant-Pop, which claims Pynchon as one of its Godfathers) on
Friday, November 3, at 7:30 p.m., at Niel's Books, 1615 17th St., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. (2nd Floor).

For those of you not familiar with Ron Sukenick:   He publishes Black Ice
magazine and American Book Review, and since 1989 has been one of the
two permanent directors of the writer--managed press, Fiction Collective Two. 
His Down & In, a history of literary bohemia after WWII, won an American
Book Award in 1988.  He has also published a book on writing called In Form:
Digressions on the Act of Fiction (1985), as well as a critical work on the
poetry of Wallace Stevens (Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure, 1967). 
But above all he is a novelist: Up (1968), Out (1973), 98.6 (1975), Long-Talking
Bad Conditions Blues (1979), and Blown Away (1986).  His shorter fictions
have been collected in Death of the Novel and Other Stories (1969), The
Endless Short Story (1986), and Doggy Bag (1994).

	Sukenick's theory and practice  are both featured in two recent
publications, the summer 1995 issue of Black Ice entitled "Degenerative
Prose" (now also an FC2 book) and the new Viking Penguin "avant-pop"
anthology, After Yesterday's Crash.  "Avant--pop" (a word Sukenick and
anthology editor Larry McCaffery appropriated from a Lester Bowie jazz album)
is a tag for both:  (a) the observed tendency of popular culture since the early
1960's to co--opt and repackage avant--garde techniques from art, literature,
and film; and (b) a highly unorganized but now self-conscious literary
counter--movement to expropriate the expropriators and invade, rip-off, subvert,
and explode mass market genres (like noir, sci-fi, porno), in hypertext as well
as in print.  Sukenick calls his own fiction, and much "avant--pop" fiction,
interventive: i.e., "aggressive, interactive, ... leading to action or even itself
overflowing into overt gesture, performance, theater, or practical organization,
including its own production and distribution."

	Plus his stuff is very funny and a lot of fun to read.

         Yes, I'm an organizer and promoter (a happy volunteer) of the reading. 
Y'all Come!  If you can't, get hold of one of RS's books.  I think 98.6, which
among other things deals with the commune experience of the late '60's, is
one of the major American novels (however slender) since WWII.  But Doggy
Bag is probably easier to obtain and, along with Up and Long Talking Bad
Conditions Blues, has the most in common with TRP.

         Enjoy!

Jack Foley