The books...
 I
am told that what I'm doing is called book art; but I'm not so sure.
For me, it's a different literary form that I'd like to call GANGSTER.
In my opinion, nothing, absolutely nothing, can stop the ascendancy of
mass mind except GANGSTERISM. For after all, only a criminal mind can
escape mass mind. Now, in Gangster Lit, ugliness is a virtue of sorts.
Think of it, snippings, clippings, collages, fragments of all kinds,
woven, but mostly stitched together, piecemeal, just like Frankenstein.
So Gangster Lit is really FRANKENSTEIN LIT. And to keep with the spirit
of the times, In book three, In the Beginning, there's a two page chapter, "Your
Book Begins Here." Here the reader is urged to take my writings
and to build upon them, to create his or her own monster from all of
the pieces that I have put in place.
Ultimately, these books are dedicated to the premise that today, especially
today, the age of Mass Man, collective thoughts, images, and media memories
pass through our consciousness like food passes through the bowels of
a fleshy body. All our actions then are sort of like collective mental
craps. Individuality is nothing more than a market driven illusion. For
example, I would say that I am the sum-total, the total aggregate of
all things that I have read and viewed. Thus, I can only give you pre-packaged,
regurgitated, literary digestion, nothing really original. Today, I truly
doubt the possibility of original thought (or sin) on any one's part.
And because our current thoughts and ideas are not indigenous to us,
the world is fragmenting, swirling, twirling, departing. It no longer
has a center. At best all we can do is mix and match ideas, as we select
them from a buffet of discarded thoughts (but first you must realize
that Vanity Fair Magazine and The National
Enquirer are two versions
of the same thing). So it is quite possible that what Shakespeare wrote
I may attribute To Sartre, and what Sartre wrote I might attribute to
myself. And what you are thinking might not even be attributed to anything
at all, but just to WHATEVER. All I can say is: "Teachers leave
those kids alone." The time for citing
one's sources is long past; for even if sources were cited, their meanings
would be distorted and perverted, just like my books.
 All
three books, The End of the Modern World, Cobra
Verde's Chinatown, and In the Beginning, comprise one
single novel. Admittedly, these books are in desperate need of an editor.
However, to do so would spoil the flavor of the entire work. So let's
just let it be. Yet I believe that the form of the work, the book art
form, with all the fragmentation, snipping and clipping,
reflects not only stream of consciousness but the dazzling contradictory
life we are mired in. Note that although the entire writing is fiction,
it smacks of strong autobiographical elements. In addition to examples
of the books here, I have included some conventional writings in their
totality in "THE
SAMPLES". I hope you check them out.
Chinatown Frankie P. |
