A Brief History of Authoterrorism - eight contemporary authors take aim against the hyperbole of the death of print by exploring just how far writers and artists will go to promote themselves in an evolving world where the laws of decorum no longer apply. Prophetic, harrowing, and at times laugh-out-loud humorous stories

A Brief History of Authoterrorism.  ANTIBOOKCLUB, 2011

By Whitney Anne Trettien, Nile Southern, David Rees, Mark Jay Mirsky, Jeffrey Dorchen, Andrei Codrescu, Terry Southern, and Ben Greenman

excerpt

In this short story collection, eight contemporary authors take aim against the hyperbole of the death of print by exploring just how far writers and artists will go to promote themselves in an evolving world where the laws of decorum no longer apply. Prophetic, harrowing, and at times laugh-out-loud humorous, these stories walk the fine line between fiction and fact, art and apocalypse, to chronicle a trend that cannot be ignored.

...a handsomely designed fiction anthology... --Time Out Chicago

 …slightly disjointed, occasionally beautiful… --Gapers Block

Andrei Codrescu, pronounced Code-rescue (codrescu.com) was born in Sibiu, Romania. He was the McCurdy Distinguished Professor at LSU until he retired to the woods in 2009. He has written poetry, novels, and essays, and has broadcast regular commentary for NPR since 1983. Also in 1983, he founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Life and Letters (www.corpse.org). He won a Peabody Award for his film “Road Scholar,” the Ovid Prize for poetry, and the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award.



Jeffrey Dorchen was born in Detroit, Michigan. He is a writer, actor, musician, artist and radio pundit. A founding member of the internationally acclaimed Chicago-based Theater Oobleck, his award-winning, innovative performance and theater work has been produced to critical acclaim in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and South Africa and garnered him a MacArthur Foundation grant. He is a nationally published essayist who for the past thirteen years has delivered political commentary on the weekly public affairs show This Is Hell, (WNUR, Evanston and Chicago). He has also appeared on several episodes of public radio’s This American Life. His one-act play “Ubu Papa” appears in the current issue of The Louisville Review. He is working on a book about the parallels between iconography depicting the Hindu god Ganesh and the Jewish lay and religious exegetical traditions. He lives in Los Angeles.

Ben Greenman is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, Please Step Back, and What He’s Poised To Do. His most recent book is not Celebrity Chekhov. He lives in Brooklyn.

Mark Jay Mirsky is the editor of Fiction, a magazine he co-founded with Donald Barthelme, Max Frisch and Jane deLynn. A professor of English at the City College of New York he has published four novels, Thou Worm Jacob, Blue Hill Avenue (recently listed by the Boston Sunday Globe as one of the 100 essential books about New England) Proceedings of the Rabble, The Red Adam, and a collection of novellas,The Secret Table. Other books of his include My Search for the Messiah, Dante, Eros and Kabbalah The Absent Shakespeare, and the forthcoming, Drama in the Sonnets of Shakespeare, “A Satire to Decay.” He is the editor of the Diaries of Robert Musil in English, and has co-edited the collection Rabbinic Fantasies and a historical volume, The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880. His play, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard was produced at Manhattan’s Fringe Festival in 2007.

David Rees is a freelance wine consultant and budding fashion-industry insider who lives on the cutting edge of innovation and style. You can usually find him at the hottest club or the trendiest new restaurant.



Nile Southern is a writer and filmmaker from New York City. His books include Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (edited with Josh Alan Friedman), and The CANDY Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel, CANDY (Arcade, 2004), which won Colorado’s Book of the Year for Creative Non-Fiction. He has written journalism for STOPSMILING, Cineaste, and the National Herald. His fiction includes The Anarchivists of Eco-Dub (altx.com ebooks), and has appeared in O-Blëk, Open City, Fiction Collective’s Black Ice, and ANTIBOOKCLUB’s A Brief History of Authoterrorism. He manages the Terry Southern Literary Trust, and is currently making a film about Terry Southern. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and two daughters.


Terry Southern (1924-1995) was an influential writer known for his unique, comic voice. His novels include Flash and Filigree, Candy (with Mason Hoffenberg), The Magic Christian, Blue Movie, and Texas Summer. His short stories have been anthologized in the collections Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes and Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, edited by Nile Southern and Josh Alan Friedman. His biting satirical wit displayed in Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider (both recipients of Academy Award®-nominations for Best Screenplay) continues to influence generations of writers and directors. His other film credits include: Barbarella, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, End of the Road, and The Telephone. Michael O'Donoghue once proclaimed, “If there was a Mount Rushmore of American humor, Terry Southern would be the mountain they carve it from," while Norman Mailer called him the “heir to Nathanael West.”

Whitney Anne Trettien is working toward a PhD in English at Duke University. She has created, produced and/or published on seventeenth-century generative writing, moving parts in books, fore-edge paintings, digital poetry, bibliobotanies and early modern plant-animal hybrids. Visit her online at whitneyannetrettien.com.