Kirjahaku

In the world of 'The Pisstown Chaos', political power is firmly in the hands of Reverend Herman Hooker. He is an American Divine who revels in the sufferings of others as he spouts platitudes to the ever-on-the-move masses.

City Moon is David Ohle's novelization of all 18 issues of his cult 1970s newspaper, heavily edited and re-processed. It is offered for the first time as a single-volume. The neutrodynes, the satire, the mystery cults, as well as Ohle's dada-seance of Americana, are as vivid and intoxicating and seriously funny as ever.In Ohle's world, people (not to mention the many related species, including trochilics neutrodynes and necronauts, as well as cross-species creatures such as the ape of golf) are all part of a continuum of life in which human and animal life forms scarcely differ from each other. --Roger Martin

The end of the road for Moldenke?The Death of a Character is cult author David Ohle's mordant meditation on the trials of the flesh, of bureaucracy, and tenderness. In the company of and old flame, and the neutrodynes Wheaton and Darleen, Moldenke retires to the marshlands, surrounded by snakes, haunted by a mysterious burial mound and harassed by a construction project that might destroy his home. Not only is Ohle's latest his most emotionally poignant, it is also a work of brilliant satire, threaded with bittersweet observations on mortality.

The end of the road for Moldenke?The Death of a Character is cult author David Ohle's mordant meditation on the trials of the flesh, of bureaucracy, and tenderness. In the company of and old flame, and the neutrodynes Wheaton and Darleen, Moldenke retires to the marshlands, surrounded by snakes, haunted by a mysterious burial mound and harassed by a construction project that might destroy his home. Not only is Ohle's latest his most emotionally poignant, it is also a work of brilliant satire, threaded with bittersweet observations on mortality.

Part political allegory, part sci-fi dystopia, ohle's world is disturbing, witty and oddly compelling. After the most recent Forgetting, Ohle's luckless protagonist Moldenke is in possession of only his name and the bare facts of his former life. He finds himself cruising on the Titanic through a bizarre alternate reality where elective deformation is a fashion trend, non-human and human settlers do their best to live together in relative harmony and the only available sustenance is stomach-churning fare. Everyone agrees the Stinkers are troublesome and something must be done. President Ratt not only fails to control the Stinker problem, but he also has a penchant for decreeing absurd laws and issuing random vouchers of innocence. Violators with valid vouchers defer their punishments to guiltless bystanders - a regulation that lands Moldenke and his fellows in prison more than once. Rumours are circulating that another Forgetting is imminent, and that the Forgettings are induced by Ratt's radio broadcasts. The prison guard Montfaucon emerges as Ratt's political rival, and Moldenke, ever the yes-man, finds himself inadvertently involved in a plot to assassinate the president.The rebels hope to return to the "Age of Sinatra", "when happiness was not only considered achievable, but hailed as the ideal state of being."

One Good Friday, Randy crucified a lizard in the schoolyard with Popsicle sticks and push pins. By age fourteen he was an avowed atheist, yet entered a Benedictine monastery until he was expelled for heresy. He liked to piss in the Church's baptismal font and tell elaborate lies in the confessional. His father was a petty criminal, his mother a hopeless schizophrenic. Randy, himself, was committed to a mental hospital on several occasions when we were in high school. This memoir is a record of our life-long friendship, compiled from dusty old memories, letters, and photographs. While I pursued a career in writing and teaching, Randy achieved world-wide fame as an insect physiologist and author of several definitive works on the lives of bees and wasps. -David Ohle, 2024

One Good Friday, Randy crucified a lizard in the schoolyard with Popsicle sticks and push pins. By age fourteen he was an avowed atheist, yet entered a Benedictine monastery until he was expelled for heresy. He liked to piss in the Church's baptismal font and tell elaborate lies in the confessional. His father was a petty criminal, his mother a hopeless schizophrenic. Randy, himself, was committed to a mental hospital on several occasions when we were in high school.This memoir is a record of our life-long friendship, compiled from dusty old memories, letters, and photographs. While I pursued a career in writing and teaching, Randy achieved world-wide fame as an insect physiologist and author of several definitive works on the lives of bees and wasps. -David Ohle, 2024

For a long time I was scared to read Motorman. It had come recommended to me in such hushed tones that it sounded disruptively incendiary and illegal. Not only would the reader of this crazed novel burn to ashes, apparently, but he might be posthumously imprisoned for reading the book-a jar of cinder resting in a jail cell. Books were not often spoken of so potently to me, as contraband, as narcotic, as ordnance. There was the whispered promise that my mind would be blown after reading Motorman. There was the assurance that once I read it I would drool with awe, writerly awe, the awe of watching a madman master at work, David Ohle, awesomely carving deep, black holes into the edifice of the English language. -from the introduction by Ben Marcus This dystopia is a tour de force of scabrous invention. It is also uncomfortably real. As a kid I flipped through Science News and got an unpleasant shock when I inadvertently put my finger on a close-up of a spider's mandibles. Similarly, something about Ohle's prose closes the gap between the representation of a disturbing thing and the thing itself. You feel you ought to wash your hands after touching the page. But if you think that wiping will remove the stain, consider this: Doing time in the French Sewers (don't ask), Moldenke learns that they supply the bakery where edible paper-"for money, for waivers, for wiping, for books"-is made. Shit is books, books are food, food is shit. The conclusion? We're in it. Deep. -Shelley Jackson, from a review in BookForum