The Wonderful Stupid Man began life as
a self-published book in 2003 (more on
that in a later post). These stories were
written over the space of 24 years from
Maine to New York, Ohio and on the
west coast again. Despite all the time
it took for this book to grow, I’m hoping
you will see these 39 stories as connected
chapters. I also like to think of them as
episodes in some strange late-night
television show. I spent a fair number
of evenings watching Outer Limits
and Twilight Zone and those sci-fi movies
hosted by vampires. You sit there in that
blue glow and suddenly you’re on a
planet of blackberries, or running
down the street with Pal Tack.
Here's a list of the chapters:
1) Aristotle’s First Car. A talent agent loses his client.
2) A Face in the Industry. The rise and fall of Pal Tack.
3) A Spell of Bad Things. Karen Bindle’s bad day.
4) The Puzzlebird. A dangerous job.
5) Gathering Snails. Advice at a miniature golf course.
6) You’re Always Right. Crumdecker takes an elevator.
7) Do Origami. Fes Smurlo and his ventriloquist act.
8) Real Yellow. It takes a gorilla to unravel Houdini.
9) This Home of the Count. A sofa and a magic show.
10)We’re All Friends. A crooner at the aqueduct.
11)The Wonderful Stupid Man. An ice artist unzips a bubble.
12)The Worrywort. A cab driver picks up a bomb.
13)Flying People. A hypnotist-terrorist changes his mind.
14)All the Space It Took To Sleep Beside Her. A pulp writer’s daughter.
15)The Fence Painters. Two boys paint and one fades out.
16)Watering Garden. An old house in a dead end.
17)Replanting. The girl who holds Costa Rica.
18)Chemistry. A factory town falls asleep.
19)Every Five Seconds I Think of You. Lucy at the sweatshop.
20)Better Weather. Making a flying machine in the cellar.
21)The Ryokan Reader. A Zen poet living on a lake.
22)Medicine Creek. Picking a town at random.
23)The River Shoes. Shoes that will wear you out.
24)No Scavenging. What Bruno Tarkovsky finds at the dump.
25)Pagoda. A world devoted to growing blackberries.
26)Jack and the Sunflower. Where do the birds go at 5:02 A.M?
27)The 1943 Little Pigs. Three gangsters and watermelon.
28)The Kierkegaard Reader. Stan and Marla mess with Melters.
29)The Bird Watchers of Akron. Someone is painting cardinals.
30)A Hundred Birds. A field trip meets a floating giraffe.
31)Passing Through Peru. Roland’s astral projector misfires.
32)The Revenge of Ethan Frome. A librarian shouldn’t burn books.
33)Mental Magic. A businessman meets an ape.
34)Euphonium. Jerry Tupperman makes a hit record.
35)Memory of Bees. The adventures of a truancy officer.
36)Comic Book Creatures. A girl goes to the circus.
37)Voting. A true story with my grandmother.
38)Horses. A husband and wife receive a gift.
39)The $500 Fool. 517 pictures of a water tower.
I sent a review copy to the legendary Ohio poet
Tom Kryss and he had these kind words to say:
"You will identify so completely and on
such a personal level with Allen Frost that
you may resent any characterization of the
work as a fiction as it walks you through
sentence after glorious unexpected sentence,
often to places that are left hanging in the air,
implying their trust in you to complete them.
Frost is indeed traveling here in the company
of kings you may or may not recognize in
the interactive sessions of a logic that derives
as sweetly from a concept of unified physics
as it does from the image of a woman ultimately
liberated by snails she endeavors to teach."
The book will be available Dec. 16th
from Bird Dog Publishing. Stay tuned!
