KGBBarLit

Finishing The Job: Collins Completes Spillane Swan Song

MQui — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:41:21 -0700

Halloween is a time of tricks and mischief. This past Halloween marked the release date of a special treat for crime fiction fans: a new book by Mickey Spillane, the godfather of the pulps. Dead Street (Hard Case Crime) bears a number of resemblances to a trail he first blazed with I, The Jury in 1947. There are Spillane’s signature descriptions of violence, so visual and percussive, the undercurrent of desire, passion, and sexuality, and there is the loner anti-hero at the center of this maelstrom—Jack Stang. But if there is a single theme that threads through Dead Street—and, in fact, all of Spillane’s books, including the Mike Hammer series—it would be friendship.

But wait a minute: there’s more mystery here than just Dead Street’s gorgeously lurid cover painting by Arthur Suydam. Mickey Spillane died in July of 2006, and at that time, only 8 of the book’s 11 chapters were complete. The rest of the story was an elaborate jigsaw of notes, plot outlines, and characterizations. Who finished the job, and helped bring the book to publication 16 months later?

The novel’s hero, Jack Stang, is named after a real-life cop and old friend of Spillane in upstate New York—a clue as to how central friendship and loyalty were in his life as well as his fiction. Fittingly, it was another old friend who helped bring Dead Street completion: Max Allan Collins.

While perhaps most famous for his graphic novel The Road to Perdition (later made into the popular film directed by Sam Mendes), Collins is one of mystery’s Renaissance men. He has written novels (Two for the Money, The Last Quarry), comic strips (Dick Tracy), comic books (Ms. Tree, Batman), and television novelizations (CSI, Dark Angel),

“There’s a misconception that Mickey and I wrote together,” clarifies Collins. “We didn’t. Mickey was fiercely protective of his writing.” Yet the pair has worked creatively before. The two developed the Mike Danger comic book together; Spillane appeared in two of Collins’ independent feature films, Mommy and Mommy 2; and for the documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, was “generously given full access” by the author.

Collins admiration for Spillane is evident. “On the projects we did together, he was gracious and generous, often deferring to me. I could select stories for the anthologies and he'd just read them over --he never rejected any. His trust grew out of our friendship. I was probably the only writer of my generation who would sit and talk craft with him. We'd talk deep into the night about writing, a subject he couldn't explore with any of his friends or family there in South Carolina.”

While Spillane’s books exceed 130,000,000 sold (at one time, he was one of the best selling novelists of all time), they also tend to get dismissed rather easily by crime fiction readers. Sure, people love to cite Dashiell Hammet’s Maltese Falcon (1941) or Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye as classic books of the genre, but not I, the Jury. These “attacks on Mickey obviously grew out of what was perceived as the overtly violent, sexual nature of the novels,” Collins explains. “These were, in the context of the times, ‘dirty books’.” Though the first seven novels in the Mike Hammer series remain shocking in their intense, emotional violence, Collins thinks that their sexuality must seem pretty mild in our “post-Larry Flynt world.”

“If Mickey hadn't been such an intense and vivid writer, his success wouldn't have offended so many,” Collins continues. “Mickey didn't write lean like Hammett, or with the careful poetry of Chandler. He had a first-person style that seemed effortless, and a surrealistic, expressionistic way of describing Hammer's nightmare world that simply puzzled and offended most literary critics.”

And while the numbers speak for themselves, and the name of Spillane remains synonymous with hardboiled, Collins earnestly believes Mickey needs to be re-read for his craft as a writer. “He liked to pretend writing was unimportant to him, just a way to make a buck,” Collins explains, “but this was a defense mechanism and part of his jovial tough guy image. He loved storytelling. When he was discussing writing, or better still, spinning a story out loud that he hoped to write, he was on fire with enthusiasm.”

That enthusiasm must be infectious, as you can tell that Collins’ completion of Dead Street was done in the furnace of friendship. The resulting work is seamless: only someone who was intimately knowledgeable about Spillane’s process, thinking, motives, and patterns could have filled in the blanks.

How did Collins finish the job?

“The editing was tricky,” Collins admits. “Mickey had written Dead Street over a period of time … and no matter what he said about never rewriting, he did in fact polish and shape his work. All I did was try to keep Jack Stang's voice going and make sure that the proper, hard-hitting, shocking end-of-the-book Spillane approach came into full play.”

Collins reveals that Dead Street is not the end of the story for Spillane fans. An adventure novel he was working on simultaneously with Dead Street, entitled The Last Stand, is coming up soon.

And there is a lot more Mike Hammer in the future. Otto Penzler is publishing “the half a dozen half-finished Mike Hammer novels that I’ll be finishing” at Harcourt, Collins reveals. “I'm working right now on The Goliath Bone, the last Hammer that Mickey was working on.” There’s also The Big Bang, a Hammer manuscript from 1965, as well as The King of the Weeds, which Spillane was also working on before he died. All of this in addition to Collins own writing, most recently his novel Deadly Beloved (Hard Case Crime), published in December 2007.

Max Allen Collins wrote the graphic novel Road to Perdition, later made into a film starring Paul Newman and Tom Hanks, and his novels The Last Quarry, Two for the Money, and most recently Deadly Beloved have all been published by Hard Case Crime. He lives in Iowa with his family.

Brendan McCall is a freelance director and writer based in New York City.

Here There and Nowhere: Cuba, Part 2

MQui — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:22:29 -0800

I commenced begging. "Listen, I'll pay it, please, that's my flight. I have to go on it."

"Forget it, you're antisocial, the flight's closed," she said.

She gathered up some papers and started walking away. There was no one else left at the counter, no one else with whom I could plead or beg. This was Cubana Air-owned by the Cuban government-not the friendly skies. There were no customer service opportunities.

I might have just taken my luggage, climbed back in a cab, gone back to the shitty little room I had been renting in Havana and waited for the next flight. I happened to know, though, that there wasn't another flight on Cubana Airlines for four days.

And I was absolutely tired of being extorted. Five times in the previous twenty-four hours I had been stopped while riding a rented moped by Cuban cops looking for payoffs. Even so, under normal circumstances, I could have tolerated the extortions. It's to be expected in failing economies, and I had had similar experiences all over Central America, even in countries with whom the U.S. is more friendly.

The present situation was, however, amplified by a number of things. Aside from having the worst case of intestinal bacteria of my life, I had gotten up at 4:00 AM for two days in a row. The day before, I had arrived at this airport at 5:30 AM for the same flight, only to discover that it had been canceled.

At that point I returned, along with my intestinal condition, to the comfort of the toilet paperless bathroom of the Cuban home where I had been renting my room. Not to mention that, on my way over to Cuba from Costa Rica two weeks before, I had been back and forth to the San Jose International airport five times over the course of three days for the same flight on Cubana Air, which had been rescheduled or canceled—5 times. There was never a reason cited for the cancellations. Just canceled, postponed, rescheduled. No one answered at any of the listed phone numbers. Nobody at the airport had any information. You just had to come back to the airport to the check-in counter at the time the little sign reported. Then, when you came back, there was another sign that said come back again at yet another posted time.

Or sometimes there was no sign, you just had to ask the personnel at the counters for other airlines who told you, "I think it's postponed, come back tomorrow," or more depressingly, a mere, "I don't know." These were the joys of flying the state-run Cubana Airlines, and the repercussions of being too cheap to eat the five hundred dollars I had paid, in cash, for the round-trip ticket.

Instead of just letting this airline employee disappear into the bowels of the Havana airport terminal like I should have, I followed her. What did I think I'd accomplish by this? I've racked my brain, and I can't come up with an answer.

Did I think I'd file a formal complaint with Fidel, that he would issue me a personal refund and a promise that the next time I wouldn't be extorted? I wasn't thinking clearly.

"Ma'am, what is your name? I'd like to speak with your supervisor," I said walking briskly behind her.

"I don't have to give you my name."

"Then I'll follow you to the office where I'll speak to your supervisor."

I've observed situations like this in airports in the United States. Some pushy, rich tourist will shout in broken English about their rights. "Me wait all day. Want go now!" I realized I probably sounded something like this.

"I am my supervisor," she said.

Never mind that my own father had died in a plane crash years before. I was determined to get on that ancient, rickety Russian jet. On my way over from Costa Rica, the pilots had insisted all the passengers pack onto the back of the plane during take-off so that the nose of the old jalopy would start to lift on the way down the runway. So they could actually get the plane off the ground. They had been kind enough to let us spread out into seats toward the front of the plane once we were airborne.

Her ID was clipped to her shirt. I grabbed it and held on, leaned into get a glimpse of her name. This was a mistake. She wheeled around, screamed, flapped her arms, and pulled away before I even knew what was happening. I was left holding the ID.

It had torn off of her shirt. I let it drop to the floor as if had fallen accidentally. Then I picked it up again and offered it to her. Now she didn't want it. She just screamed some more. Suddenly I felt very nervous. I looked at the ID as she went on screaming as I tried to commit her name and employee number to memory before I dropped the badge on the floor. But now the writing on the badge looked to me like gibberish.

It's amazing what adrenaline can do to the body. It can, for example, in milliseconds give a man the strength of a gorilla, the strength to lift a two-ton log off of a loved one. It can also render a person of reasonable intelligence gorilla-like in their mental capacities. Though I haven't explored this scientifically, it seems to me that adrenaline has its most profound affect on the brain's language center.

This was my experience here in the Jose Marti International airport in Havana. My Spanish, which I actually speak reasonably well, simply vanished. It was gone. There was no question about it. Suddenly I couldn't understand a word. Even in my native tongue, my thoughts were suddenly rendered to one or two word sentences.

"THINK."

"ASK CALL."

"NEED EMBASSY."

"NO NERVOUS."

"NO RUN."

Now dumb, I simply handed the ID back to her and walked back to my luggage, which was still next to the check-in counter. The Cuban cabbie who had insisted on helping me carry my bags in was standing there guarding them.

"Let's go," I said.

We made it about halfway across the terminal when I saw the suits coming. I considered walking more briskly, but where was I going to go? What was I going to do? Rush out of the airport, run to the Havana shoreline, and swim home? The Cuban security officers, in suits, swarmed.

"It's okay, I just wanted to get her name," I told them.

"Why was she screaming?"

"I don't know." I paused for effect-and because I couldn't think of an explanation that wasn't incriminating.

"I'll be going now," I said.

"Just wait here," they said.

"My taxi is waiting."

"No, stay with us."

They just kept coming. More and more Cubans in suits with wires in their ears.After about ten minutes of standing around, attempting to explain the situation in my suddenly horrendous Spanish, the police arrived. One Russian Lada, then another, then a cop on a Russian URAL motorcycle. Now there were twelve uniformed Cubans with guns surrounding me.

Stephen Byler was born in Lancaster, PA. His first collection of fiction, Searching for Intruders, was a New York Times Notable book.

MY SECRET LIBRARY: Visit the Second, Where We Lazily Deconstruct the Novel

MQui — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:03:12 -0800

Late afternoon in The Secret Library, patrons mostly nestled in the window seats with leather-bound editions of Swann’s Way, browsing the dusty curio shelf. Late afternoon, late in the season, and many patrons have fled for the seaside, or to the family bower, to places where people eat and fight and retreat into reading. At the checkout desk, they murmur vaguely of “upstate,” where people have gone to read secretly for ages.

Your Secret Librarian can hardly be bothered with what some call “holiday reads"—I spent last holiday tangling with a certain, much-ballyhooed historical novel detailing a scandalous episode in the life of an early-20th-century architect that was somehow akin to eating mediocre pizza. It's enough to make one swear off the "Best Of" lists" and give-in to the Netflix queue. Not so fast. Now is the hour when I—as any discerning reader is hereby commanded to do in such situations of incipient ennui—turn to the Secret Library’s locked stacks for solace.

At this late hour of the afternoon, it does seem rather quaint—and not to mention tedious—in this age of the e-book and the memoir-as-literature, to start a discussion of the nouveau roman, a.k.a the “new novel.” I prefer to delve into the shorter version: Once upon a time, it was thought fashionable to dispose of plot, character and narrative in favor of something, well, new or id est whatever was left. Think Duras, think Robbe-Grillet. Or don’t. Think, if you plan on getting out alive—Nathalie Sarraute.

Tropisms, first published in French in 1939 is this deceptively small 71-page book of big, mind-blowing “moments.” Sarraute borrowed the word “tropism” from biology‚ it roughly means “the movements of an organism when acted on by external stimulus,” like when a tree grows as a response to light. Sarraute's tropisms resemble short stories—each lasts a few pages, characters converse and react, and from time to time, themes emerge. But don’t be fooled. Sarraute intended her characters as "mere props" for manifesting those photosynthetic movements of the unconscious of which we are barely aware. She chronicles those tiny movements that happen underneath the surface of life, the things we don’t notice or articulate because we can’t, but which we might describe later as a feeling or a sense—an imperceptible movement in consciousness, like a branch growing or a leaf opening its stomata to the sun.

Yet, reading a tropism is like looking at life on pause. She begs us not to pay attention to character or narrative, but just to perceive or intuit what happens in each vignette. Indeed, any attempt to tease out actual people from pronouns, or a plot from what seems to be an event, prove fruitless.

It sounds weird and arduous, but encountering a tropism is almost a passive activity. Rather than engaging with the text, you lie down and let the sensations it provokes happen to you. Like “getting” John Berryman for the first time. Or Gertrude Stein. It’s quiet, low-impact reading, lizard-brain peregrinations, detecting instead of inspecting, open to the sensations but not actively seeking, as you (if you’re anything like me) do with a conventional narrative.

[H]e senses percolating from the kitchen, humble, squalid, time-marking human thought, marking time in one spot, always in one spot, going round and round, in circles, as if they were dizzy but couldn’t stop, as if they were nauseated but couldn’t stop, the way we bite our nails, the way we tear off dead skin when we’re peeling, the way we scratch ourselves when we have hives, the way we toss in our beds when we can’t sleep, to give ourselves pleasure and make ourselves suffer, until we are exhausted, until we’ve taken our breath away…

In this passage, a man eavesdrops on his wife gossiping, but the content of the overheard rant is dross; Sarraute is concerned with the feeling it inspires. Whether she is describing the feeling of being influenced by someone else, the feeling of being simultaneously repulsed by and hinged to one's books, or, more often, something seemingly ineffable, Sarraute (divinely and idiosyncratically translated in the Braziller edition of 1963 by Maria Jolas) worries the minutiae of a moment. She picks apart a freeze-frame of the human heart (if you'll permit such a cinematic flourish). By comparison, the novel as we know it seems flowery, a peacock, overadorned. A tropism is a perfectly architected structure unto itself; to build a novel around it is to gild the lily, but we do it anyway, even though Sarraute and her nouveau-romanian cohort would have rather we just let the moments be.

Tropisms appeals to the poet in me, buried under the calculus of cynicism and matter-of-fact and subject-predicate frogmarch that pays the rent. You know the me that I’m talking about, even if you don’t know me—even if you don’t write for money, you do something for it. In these dark, quiet, inspired, insomniac moments, from The Secret Library, extract Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute. In these hours she speaks your language, she lifts off the plotline scaffolding from your life and agrees, yes, that it—whatever “it” is tonight—is indeed possible. Now off you go, make something. Do us proud.

Also in heavy circulation in the Secret Library as of late: Back issues of Cabinet.

Suggestions for My Secret Library? Send them to mysecretlibrary@melissakirsch.com.

Melissa Kirsch, is the author of The Girl's Guide to Absolutely Everything (Workman, 2006). Her poetry has been published in such journals as Northwest Review, Fence, Nerve, Indiana Review, Drunken Boat and in the insomnia anthology, Acquainted With the Night (Columbia University Press, 1999). She has received fellowships from the Camargo Foundation and the Château de La Napoule in France and the Fundación Valparaíso in Spain. She lives one block from KGB.

CRIME CORNER: Busted: Ken Bruen & Jason Starr Kill The Lone Wolf Enterprise

MQui — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 07:54:24 -0800

Essayist Edward Hoagland once told me that writing was a ‘real lone-wolf enterprise.' Obviously, crime fiction authors Ken Bruen and Jason Starr missed that memo.

In 2006, the duo wrote Bust (Barry Award nomination for "Best Paperback Novel of the Year"). This fall, its sequel Slide has appeared in stores. Both books are published by Hard Case Crime, an independent house that re-issues out of print classics as well as new works in paperback originals, with gloriously pulpy covers. There are rumors of a third book in this series already in the works.

Both Bruen & Starr are hot crime writers on their own; it's not as though they need the extra work. The two have published nearly 30 novels and won over a dozen awards. But Bust and Slide are far more than ‘hybrids,' where each is playing at half their game, or simply writing alternate chapters. This is a true collaboration. And what's remarkable is the unity of voice, the congruity of style. The characters are absurdly sexy, ridiculously violent, and uproariously fun. You'll find yourself recoiling in horror on one page, and then laughing your tail off on the next. So much for the ‘lone-wolf enterprise.' Death to the lone wolf!

I interviewed these criminally successful guys to get some clues as to how they pulled off this literary heist. Their story is like any good crime story: it began over drinks, at the Mansefield Hotel."One evening we went for dinner with Charles Ardai [editor of Hard Case Crime]," smiles Mr. Bruen, "And by the end of the hours we had a deal, a title, and a plot." The smile widens. "Well, sorta plot."

"We wanted to do something that could combine our strengths, take types of characters we were known for in our own work, and try to reinvent them for a joint novel," recalls Mr. Starr. The two had been admirers of each other's books for years, and when they finally met at the Edgar Awards Convention in 2003, they just began ‘riffing off of one another.'

And what a jam session: their individual gifts with writing seemed to harmonize fiendishly well. "I usually start with plot," reveals Mr. Starr. "Ken starts with character." Bruen adds, "I like to see where the characters will take us."

The two did not necessarily intend to pen a sequel after they finished writing Bust, "We just enjoyed the characters so much, as well as working together, that we couldn't let it go. We're deep into book three."

"And already talking about a fourth," adds Starr. Good news for readers of the series!

Crime fiction allows them a distinct freedom to continue this series as long as they choose. "There's no safety net for the readers [in crime fiction]," explains Starr. "Something bad can happen to any character at any time, which I think really amps up the suspense. The big advantage of having recurring characters—it helps build anticipation for the next book." Bruen agrees. "It's terrific to deepen the characters already there," he said.

Perhaps the collaboration between Bruen & Starr has been augmented by their mutual love for many masters of crime fiction and noir. Both love James M. Cain and David Goodis, Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith, among many others. And both exude a mutual respect for each other's gifts and talents.

"Ken has taught me a ton about character, about economy in style," says Starr. "Ken can get more into one page than some other writers get into an entire book. And like [Elmore] Leonard and Thompson, he writes great scenes."

Bruen admits that he has learned ‘a hell of a lot about plotting and humor' from writing with Jason. He also adds emphatically that Starr ‘gave me a whole new appreciation for The Odd Couple.'

Ken Bruen, born in Galway, Ireland, is the author of more than a dozen extremely dark crime novels. His book The Guards, which began the Jack Taylor series, was nominated for every single award in the mystery field, and won the Shamus Award. Mr. Bruen has a PhD in metaphysics and taught for 25 years in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.

Jason Starr, born in Brooklyn, has been compared to Jim Thompson and James M. Cain. His novel Tough Luck won the Barry Award, and the Anthony Award for Twisted City. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.

Brendan McCall, born in San Francisco, is a director and choreographer and has been performing internationally since 1994. He teaches at the Yale School of Drama (CT) and the New School for Drama (NY), and is currently working on his first novel.

Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

MQui — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:54:22 -0800

Dave Housley’s RYAN SEACREST IS FAMOUS

MQui — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:18:48 -0800

AS YOU WERE SAYING

MQui — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:42:56 -0800

11.4.07: Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier

MQui — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:50:20 -0800

Authors (top to bottom): Boris Fishman, Paul Greenberg and Arthur PhillipsOn November 4, KGB Bar lived up to its name with a reading from Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier, an anthology of stories that explore the hopes and cynicism of the denizens of post-communist Eastern Europe. The readers—Arthur Phillips, Paul Greenberg and Boris Fishman (who edited the collection)—presented faux accents, Czech spies, tadpoles, rolling clowns, Satan the Caterer and Russian toasts.

Paul Greenberg, whose first novel, Leaving Katya, was selected for Barnes and Nobles' Discover Great New Writers series, read from "The Subjunctive Mood" in which a UN bureaucrat moves to Paris with his girlfriend, a clown in training. Returning to Paris from Sarajevo, where two fingers were blown off, he finds clowns rolling on his mattress listening to Daft Punk (a capella accompaniment provided by Mr. Greenberg). "Listen clown," he says to his girlfriend's wine-drinking clown Professor. The Professor, who sounded like Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther, responds "you say clown like it's an insult."

"I'm following Pépé le Peu," Arthur Phillips, the next reader, said before channeling a female Czech spy in his short story, "Wenceslas Square." The spy is a woman with whom the protagonist, a diplomat, has passable sex with while listening to the Beatles in Czech. On his romantic entanglement with a woman he knows is a spy, the diplomat notes, "that there were other realities shrouding this one didn't mean that this one didn't mean anything." Just then, there was a ruckus upstairs due to a theatrical performance all of which Phillips handled with the aplomb of a game-show contestant, "it's the Beaujolais clown," he said smiling. It was difficult not to see in Phillips the Jeopardy champion he once was, standing upright, one hand wrapped around his other wrist, frequently making eye-contact with audience members and rattling off polite self-deprecating jokes. Phillips has also authored several novels, the second of which, The Egyptologist, was a national and international bestseller.

"I have no patience for store-bought dog costumes," one member of the audience said to another during the break. It was, after all, the weekend following Halloween. The other responded, "I was Satan the Caterer."

Boris Fishman, veteran journal born in Minsk, Belarus, read last from his fictional story "The Conversion of the Kaufmans." A young Russian-American man, who upon being sent on assignment to write an article on observing the Sabbath, decides to become a devout Jew, meanwhile being called by his mother, Mother Kaufman, among other things: "cucumber," "porcupine," "tadpole." "eggplant," and "little sausage." When Mother Kaufman says "Die among the Jews, live among the gentiles," Little Kaufman, at first, dutifully obeys his mother, dating a gentile with alabaster legs that wrapped around his neck like "pythons."

"I love to see an author working out his mother issues in public," said Fishman's friend, Steve Zeichek after the reading when Fishman invited the audience members to have some Jack Daniels courtesy of his girlfriend. Over at his table he poured several shot glasses full and passed them around. When the glasses were lifted, Fishman looked at Suzanne Dottino, who didn't have a glass, and said, "in Russia, when someone doesn't have a drink you cheers the nose." And in a spirit that would have made the patrons of any Russian bar proud he lightly toasted her nose with the foot of his glass.

- Rozi Jovanovic

Alexander Kluge’s CINEMA STORIES

MQui — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:18:13 -0800

10.21.07: Harvard Lampoon Writers Return

MQui — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:43:52 -0800

10.21.07: The Harvard Lampoon furnishes much of America's comedy today. It's surprising that it's former members can display such a variety of stylistic persuasion. Yet at KGB on October 21st, the four humorists who read, Simon Rich, Zach Kanin, Colin Jost and Lizzie Widdicombe, were as distinct as Hippocrates's temperaments.

The Harvard Lampoon WritersSimon Rich read from Ant Farm, his debut collection. "It's all about fear and doom," said a melancholic Rich about the subject of his new collection, which though not as gloomy as one would think has a story entitled ":(" that contains the line "i used 2 B a typical teenage girl...that was B4 i contracted hepatitis C." What is the next one about? "It's also about fear and doom. Yeah, I'm surprised my publishers agreed to let me do another book on the same subject." The next book, entitled Free-Range Chickens, about free-range chickens and their day-to-day activities, is due out in August. As an English major, Rich opted out of pursuing English with honors so he could design a more personally tailored curriculum that had "less Shakespeare," and more "black plague and monkeys." Rich, who graduated in June, is now a writer with Saturday Night Live. By whom was Rich inspired? "Philip Roth, T.C. Boyle and The Simpsons. Mostly The Simpsons."

Lizzie Widdicombe, an energetic reader, presented a faux non-fiction work entitled Untold Secrets: A Secret History of the CIA, that purportedly had chapters devoted to hot tub scenes and how the CIA celebrate Christmas. Widdicombe read to much laughter. The narrator was an investigative reporter, who as a child, liked to take things apart to understand how they function and who, upon seeing her baby brother brought home from the hospital began to think of all his parts and joints. It was difficult not to listen to Widdicombe, a reporter for The New Yorker, and not imagine her as a choleric child taking apart her dolls to reveal how they functioned.

Next, a reader of more phlegmatic influence, Colin Jost, claimed he resided "in the hearts of children around the world," and read from scraps of paper in all sizes and stages of yellowing disintegration. Like the Philip Glass of comedy, Jost read off his minimalist creations which had been composed at random on subways and streets: Flow Chart: Bananas-People-Monster Bananas; a quote of Robin Williams's, "My comedy is like an emotional hang glider;" "This one was just something that I was excited about," he said. "Blockbuster, NO LATE FEES." Then, a slogan for shoes, "my feet, my life." "He was like a gay bar; dark and gay." Sometimes his deadpan delivery threatened to slip by, the audience, as if listening to new music, not sure when to clap, or in this case chuckle. Thankfully, Rich was on hand to provide his fellow SNL writer with peals of laughter as cues to usher in the novices and when he did, laughter was proven to be contagious.

Zach Kanin, the sanguine and fun-loving cartoonist for The New Yorker, anchored the evening with a reading from his book, The Short Book: Tall Stories, Freakish Facts, & the Long & Short of Being Small in a Great Big World. He started with ersatz testimonials from the book such as "I heard Zach Kanin is unstable," and "Before I read this book I was short-now I'm tall. You do the math." At one point the self-proclaimed "shortest president ever" of the Harvard Lampoon lifted the book and pointed to a picture of himself as a child to complete a joke and said, "a lot of what's funny is the illustrations; if anything falls flat it's probably because you can't see the pictures." He didn't have to lift the book again.

The writers of the Harvard Lampoon also included role-playing, rap and, like gracious guests, an improvised piece about their host, KGB in their repertoire.

After the reading Kanin said he painted as a hobby, "in oils; figuratively." The four former members of the world's longest running humor magazine gathered, their plans for the evening hanging in the balance.

-- Rozi Jovanovic