Matt Ruff

[Paul DiFilippo]

Have we talked about Matt Ruff on the list yet?  I can heartily
recommend his latest, SEWER, GAS & ELECTRIC (the latest in the 
"ampersand-in-the-title race).  It's what INFINITE JEST might 
have read like if DFW was funny and unpretentious.  I bring him
up on the list for his TRP connections, of course.  Ruff is a 
Cornell alum.  His first novel FOOL ON THE HILL (1988) is set
there.  It explicitly ref Farina, and at one point Benny Profane
and his band play at a campus party.  SG&E has a TRP endorsement on
the cover--"A post-Millennial spectacular--dizzingly readable".
("Dizzingly"?  Shouldn't that be "dizzyingly"?  Or, in M&D-speak,
"dizz'ingly"?)  In the novel, TRP is cited as "the guy who wouldn't
let his picture be taken", auhtor of a book no one reads that
features alligators in the sewers (a motif in Ruff's book).  Oh, and
there a walk-on character, Thomas Pinch, an upstate NY marijuana
farmer.

--
Paul Di Filippo & Deborah Newton/2 Poplar St./Prov., RI 02906
"So far as the interests of the capitalist go it does not matter
whether he invests his money at home or abroad; it does not matter
whether his goods are manufactured in London or Timbuctoo." HG Wells