Essays by Leslie Brody and Gary Amdahl

A Motel of the Mind

Brody, Leslie

Amdahl, Gary

Philos Press

"Amdahl is one whose gifts are staggering and hard won. The stories relate, by the way of guts through grace, the wholeness of a novel too good for philosophy. Gary Amdahl knows sports, men, women, and dogs, thank God, so thoroughly as to make them myth. Camus comes to mind, thought with great muscle." --Barry Hannah

The Intimidator Still Lives in Our Hearts

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Artistically Declined Press

Visigoth is a portrait of the American male — gritty, violent, and fascinating. The protagonists in this collection of stories come from all walks of life — hockey players, middle managers, political hopefuls, and wayward husbands — but all share a tendency to turn towards violence when life begins spinning out of control. In "The Flyweight," an all-star high-school wrestler struggles with his own success and the expectations of others when he begins hearing voices after a schizophrenic breakdown. "Visigoth," the title story, depicts a college hockey player unable to understand that his relationship with an English professor is over. The novella "The Free Fall" focuses on a cycle of escalating violence in small farming and mining towns and the effect that it has on the main character and his family. Sharp, inquisitive, and witty, Visigoth challenges the reader to question the popular glory of violence in all its manifestations.

Visigoth: Stories

United States

MILKWEED EDITIONS *

In I Am Death: Bartleby the Mobster,” muckraking journalist Jack finds himself increasingly over the edge when he agrees to ghostwrite the autobiography of a Chicago mob boss. In Peasants,” publishing employee Walter Rasmussen discovers he’s the victim of sabotage by his coworkers  or is he? As in his stunning debut, Visigoth, Gary Amdahl here isolates his characters in crisis and flux, drawing out their deepest fears. With its vivid wordplay and blend of black humor and pathos, I Am Death demonstrates that Amdahl is a most adept and honest guide into the modern psyche of the American male.

I Am Death: Two Novellas

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

A stylish, mordant, propulsive academic satire and burlesque of the imagination in which "spiritual entrepreneurism" passes for higher education, and an unexpected hero (an adjunct writing instructor), finding he is "powerless to stop the relentless slaughter of well-being," battles deceit and hypocrisy within the Creative Industrial Complex. Unlike anything else, The Creative Writers is a commedia dell'arte performance wrapped in a comic book. Written in lavish, exquisite prose, it is misanthropic, hallucinatory, and side-splittingly funny. A Norman Mailer or a Anthony Burgess would love this novel. Others may find it not at all nice.

The Creative Writers: A Burlesque of the Imagination on Totalitarian Themes in the Manner of Émile Cohl and Les Arts Incohérents Harry Everett Smith, and Hanna-Barbera

Humor & Satire

Galleon Books