tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24053904167304426792024-03-13T06:22:45.034-07:00Masturbating at the MoviesMykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-48435015023965006272022-06-03T07:23:00.000-07:002022-06-03T07:23:07.590-07:00<p> See my other web page: <a href="https://mykoladementiuk.blogspot.com/2022/06/holy-communion-novel-by-mykola-dementiuk.html">Mykola Dementiuk: Holy Communion, a Novel by Mykola Dementiuk</a></p>Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-6109618484845847312021-10-10T06:30:00.003-07:002021-10-10T23:09:00.076-07:00<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">More info, stories etc under <a href="https://mykoladementiuk.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-christmas-whore.html">Mykola Dementiuk: The Christmas Whore</a></span></p>Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-38300487838717389452015-10-26T13:37:00.000-07:002015-10-27T01:17:20.358-07:00Vovochka, The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RI0fTpKGeMw/Vi6NLANmA6I/AAAAAAAAjI8/_LAtpDhaT70/s1600/51qi2C50hlL._SX328_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RI0fTpKGeMw/Vi6NLANmA6I/AAAAAAAAjI8/_LAtpDhaT70/s320/51qi2C50hlL._SX328_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
Vovochka, The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant<br />
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by Alexander J. Motyl<br />
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Anaphora Literary Press, Augusta, Georgia 2015<br />
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Reviewed by Mykola Mick Dementiuk<br />
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There is a curious scene in the dim humorous novel Vovochka when the two lead characters, both named Putin and both called Vovochka, are in Communist-controlled East Berlin and decide to hop over the Wall and partake of the heady pleasures of West Berlin.<br />
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To a typical Alexander Motyl reader this may be chuckled at and passed over as a typical playful Motyl-jokesterism but to this reader, walljumping was a dire and deadly risk that East German young men partook of very often, as documented by Peter Schneider in his book The Wall Jumper, published in 1982, seven years before the Fall of the Wall but which as a political science professor Motyl would certainly be aware of. They’d daringly get over the Wall, drink and drug and party, then cross back over and resume their dull, boring lives.<br />
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Hard to fathom this but with a young Putin Vovochka and his buddy, another Vovochka, these daring walljumping events became common place and clearly in their world-view certainly obvious. Their boldness and risk daring sets them apart and in good stead of each other as they grow and function in Berlin, Leningrad, Moscow burrowing their way through the quagmire that is the Soviet government and into the secret service, the KGB. <br />
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But in a world which is rapidly and constantly changing, and with the troubled appearance of an old and senile Brezhnev, a drunken Yeltsin, and an inept Gorbachev, the stage is set for young Vovochka to play his part.<br />
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Motyl shows us Vovochka as an egomaniac ruler of Russia, slowly and horribly taking back the Russian empire which was his under the Tsars and the Communist rulers, but lost and rapidly disappearing in the past decade or so, is getting back to where it was destined to be, under Vovochka’s strict control.<br />
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The first part of the book is humorous, playful as the two Vovochka’s come out, but in the second part the funny cheer becomes humorless, stern and regimented as Vovochka holds his power and strengthens it in every direction. Thus once again becoming what he was destined to be, the supreme ruler of Russia, Tsar Vovochka. If you want to know what Russian history could be or is becoming, I highly recommend this book.<br />
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Alexander J. Motyl (b. 1953, NYC) is a writer, painter, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of six novels, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, Flippancy, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia, and The Taste of Snow, Fall River. He has done performances of his fiction and poetry at the Cornelia Street Café and the Bowery Poetry Club. Motyl’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows in NYC, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is on display on the Internet gallery, www.artsicle.com. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and lives in NYC.<br />
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Reviewed by Mykola Mick Dementiuk<br />
<br />Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-74543231885782851992014-11-08T11:43:00.000-08:002014-11-08T11:44:53.797-08:00The Berlin Wall, 25 years ago<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: #f8cff8; color: #741b47; font-family: 'Fontdiner Swanky'; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
The Berlin Wall, 25 years ago</h3>
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25 years ago, November 1989, I was traveling about in Europe when suddenly the whole scene exploded into cheers and jubilation, the Berlin Wall had come down... What do they say about all the King's horses and all the King's men?<br />
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I had just spent a grueling three years on my first novel, <i>Holy Communion</i>, which did come to win the Lambda Award<span style="line-height: 14.9333333969116px;"> and a nice Christmas break in Europe would be ideal. I was planning to go to the land of my<i> teachers, </i>Strindberg, Ibsen, Knut Hamsen,<i> </i>but in Malmo, Sweden the news was constant, something was happening in Eastern Europe. I took the train to Copenhagen and another to West Berlin, it was November 9, 1989...</span><br />
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These are a few photos of the event I saw during that historic week (a few were shown a week earlier).<br />
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<a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/" style="color: #7d337d; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mykola Dementiuk</a>-web page<br />
<a href="http://dementiuk.weebly.com/" style="color: #7d337d; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">dementiuk</a>-various e-books<br />
Books and E-books under <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_5?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mykola+dementiuk&sprefix=mykol%2Caps%2C1440">Amazon </a><br />
<br />
Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica, 2009/Bisexual Fiction</div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-90668847242744305022014-08-10T04:18:00.000-07:002014-08-10T05:59:58.711-07:00Fall River<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Fall River<br />
<br />
by Alexander Motyl<br />
<br />
published by Alternative Books Press<br />
<br />
reviewed by Mykola Mick Dementiuk<br />
<br />
<br />
In trying to probe into and remember the past, Alexander Motyl, author of Fall River, gives us a new meaning and resonance to the characters who lived so long ago, the 1920s, the 30s and the 40s, lived, worked, suffered and were erased by History.<br />
<br />
There is a faint memory, a theme permeating the entire novel, echoing at certain points but uncertain of what the reality actually is. “ Smo’getsinyorize,” is constantly being repeated over and over by some characters until a Soviet overlord puts a bullet between the eyes, after much torture and castration, and brings the entire charade to an end. The melody is “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and seems to be one of the memories carried by the three main characters, Mike, Manya and Stefa, all brother and sisters at certain points of their lives, as they travel back and forth from nation to nation as if confused where to settle and live, Fall River, New York City or in Poland/Ukraine.<br />
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It starts off with Mike in a new country, learning the new tricks and the language of America and hitting up on every woman he comes upon, Edna, Wanda, or who? Poor Mike, what pain and suffering he brings upon himself.... Between Manya and Stefya, his sisters, they too are confused by the new country but they must work and raise families in the new homeland. But, of course, their father drags them back to Polish Ukraine after their mother’s death, only to live with the German Nazis coming into power in the late 1930s, early 40s.<br />
<br />
Motyl paints a beautiful picture of the confused characters as they struggle to survive in a blustering country at a time when chaos seemed the order of the day. Being Ukrainian myself, I fully understand how almost impossible it may be to track down and isolate the scant moment of that past...<br />
<br />
And Motyl does an excellent job in recreating the tenements, the moods, the feeling that was not only Polish Ukraine but the entire Ukrainian Lower East Side. Again, you could get lost and disappear in it. An excellent job, New York City and the Ukrainian Lower East Side lives again!<br />
<br />
<br />
Alexander J. Motyl (b. 1953, NYC) is a writer, painter, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of six novels, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, Flippancy, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia, and The Taste of Snow. He has done performances of his fiction and poetry at the Cornelia Street Café and the Bowery Poetry Club. Motyl’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows in NYC, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is on display on the Internet gallery, www.artsicle.com. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and lives in NYC.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fall-River-Alexander-Motyl/dp/1940122139">Amazon</a><br />
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<a aria-haspopup="true" class="Object-active" href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT1746_com_zimbra_url" style="color: #336699; cursor: pointer; font-family: monospace; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-decoration: none;" tabindex="0" target="_blank">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a><br />
<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;"> Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica, 2009/Bisexual Fiction</span>Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-55627709706771807882014-08-04T05:35:00.000-07:002014-08-04T05:35:30.820-07:00Baby Doll<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uC-enF2RLm8/U998eNiOG1I/AAAAAAAAYMY/WaDSY0Ql2sw/s1600/Baby+Doll+Front+cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uC-enF2RLm8/U998eNiOG1I/AAAAAAAAYMY/WaDSY0Ql2sw/s1600/Baby+Doll+Front+cover.JPG" height="640" width="420" /></a></div>
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Baby Doll<br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
by Mykola Dementiuk<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />edited by Sally Miller</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
Mykola Dementiuk has again brought us an unusual story of a youth growing up in New York City. Skipping school as a daily routine, the main character of <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Baby Doll </em>finds himself spending time at the East River Park, looking for girls. Instead he finds a pair of pink underwear which take him on an adventure that shapes his future.</div>
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<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Baby Doll</em> gives us a literary look at the complicated psychodynamics of love and sex between a boy and a man in America in the early ’80s (the beginning era of AIDS, sex-offender witch-hunts, and gay/transvestite visibility). Like a good movie, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Baby Doll</em> is definitely worth giving a second (or third) read. Mykola’s mastery at storytelling and excellent writing will keep you engaged the first time through, but subsequent readings will help you understand the complex forces that unfold between the characters. You may question his opinions on femininity and relationships, but you won’t be able to ignore Mykola’s love for words as well as his understanding of a boy’s feelings and behavior.</div>
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One of the best things I'd written, still gets me hard...</div>
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read more: <a href="http://mykoladementiuk.com/publications/baby-doll/">Baby Doll</a></div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-19969500810972793232014-02-08T06:52:00.004-08:002023-07-15T12:59:19.624-07:00Tenement Tales of New York<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Tenement Tales of New
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James William
Sullivan </div>
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reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Pat Murphy, boy
of eight years, whose clothes were dirty, whose hair was tousled, face smudged,
and hands blackened…” Thus begins <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tenement
Tales of New York</i>, an out-of-print book, published in 1895, and whom we
have to thank <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ephemeral New York </i>for
bringing it to our attention. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I enjoyed reading
this book of tales; it brought old New York
to my touch and grasp. Such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slob
Murphy</i>, the rowdy boy of New York
streets in the late 1880-90s, who injures his hand and is at death’s door as a
result. He has remorse for all the street fighting and shenanigans he’s done
over his short years and seeing a vision of his dead mother, says the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord’s Prayer</i> and passes away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit maudlin but I suppose that fits in with
the time. His friends and acquaintances sadly look upon his passing, till
someone says, " Wot's dey a-goin to do wit' his old cloze ? " Each
hungry for getting something or other to take care of them; a shrug at the dead
boy. Meanwhile his father, who is angry, but dares any police office to get at
his son’s dead body. He speaks with a typical Irish accent, reminiscent of
Charles Dickens characters, declaiming, avowing, and swearing. In a way, it
sounds like a pleasant blarney which we no longer hear in these parts. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Oh, how </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> has changed…) </i>We follow the funeral
procession to a solemn burial and what else? his father ends up dead drunk, and
life in New York goes on…</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In another tale, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Minnie Kelsey’s Wedding, </i>a girl sits in
a tenement all bundled up from the chill and looking out a window. “(D)oors
slamming, children wailing, women scolding, boys hallooing, all mingling with
the endless clatter of kitchen labors.” She had arrived in the city expecting a
very different life but very quickly was trapped in its poverty and go-nowhere
existence, nothing but a factory girl working day after day at the same tedious
labor. Still, she has friends who invite her to attend a ball, and though she
isn’t sure of going she says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yes</i>. At
the ball she sees the man of her dreams. At first she intimidated when she hears
other gossiping about his fiery nature and that he has a different girl every
weekend. But alone with her the two-timing man proposes… A schmaltzy story, still
with the rest of the tales in the book it fits right in. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cohen’s Figure </i>is about a sewing machine
operator, a boring lackluster job, but which has been done for countless year
after year, while <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Luigi Barbieri</i>
concerns a new Italian merchant at Mott Street fruit emporium, who arranges
every fruit on his stand but still can’t get any customers, just a few. “If he
could but learn to speak fluently to the Americans, like his padrone, he might
some day become a man of influence himself. He might even aspire to an East
Side grocery store, with a stock of Italian goods.” He helps a
little girl from getting run over by a truck and he himself is struck down. The
only tears someone sheds is the vague obituary "I wonder what killed off
the last one — laziness or bad whisky?"</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leather’s
Banishment </i>is about a boy pick-pocketing a woman on the subway and
disappearing with her screaming behind him; he’s done this countless times and
will do it again. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Not Yet</i> dreamer Ivan,
whose always dreaming of ‘castles in Spain’ reads the paper and takes the
subway each morning to work, where he labors before his sewing machine and
reads reports from Russia and Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
work it’s payday and suddenly he feels cheated, being fined for a ruined jacket
collar which did didn’t do. Is outraged by the injustice but what can he do? He
sinks back into his socialist dreams of the future where the world is all right
and fair. Instead “…from the open doorways of the tenements, and falling into
the broken lines of passers- by hurrying along on the sidewalks, were
poor-looking work-people,— men, women, children.”</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Young Desperado</i> a rich 7 year old boy accidentally
wanders into the poor neighborhood where the poor kids attack him. He meets
other boys; one takes him around the city, on buses and cars and tells him that
he eats about once a week. Teaches him the way of the streets... </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These different
tales about immigrant life in New York City in the 1890s show that the city is
always throbbing and booming, and always one step ahead of everybody. In many
of the stories we get glimpses of what it was like among the poor folk. What
this book does is bring the street life into clear focus and vision, the
different crowds, the traffic on the street, the rubbish, the debris and the
countless other little things which were a part of living in New York, uptown,
downtown, the poor are everywhere, East Side, West Side, all around the town…so
to speak. Still, I enjoyed it very much; captures the mood of New
York and how it was so very long ago. As it is
drastically changing now it has been constantly changing on and on… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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An aside: Though I very much liked reading this there is a
more recent book about New York in the early 1900s<a href="http://www.helenewecker.com/the-golem-and-the-jinni-by-helene-wecker/synopsis-of-the-novel-the-golem-and-the-jinni/"> The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker</a> A book that will certainly set your old New York imagination spinning. A grand
book!</div>
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<br />
<a href="http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/an-1895-book-of-tenement-tales-on-the-citys-poor/">Ephemeral New York </a><br />
<a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a></div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-70290651258841579242014-02-05T09:07:00.004-08:002014-02-05T09:07:52.113-08:00Raiding The Sanctuary <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Raiding the Sanctuary
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Redcatchers in Cambodia,
May 12th-June 25th, 1970</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Robert J. Gouge </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In thinking of
writing this review I quickly realized how little I know about one of the main
characters Ihor Dopiwka, whose jangled voice, one of many, echoes throughout
its pages. I knew Ihor back in grade school for maybe seven, eight years, fifty
years ago, when afterwards we quickly lost contact with each other and went our
separate ways. Adulthood was upon us, holding a job, getting a girlfriend,
playing out our adult responsibilities, like being married, raising kids, or
else going off to war. Ihor went to war and fought; I stayed home and
demonstrated against it. Two paths were taken, two opposite lives were being lived.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This book is
about one segment of the Vietnam War, America’s
secret invasion of Cambodia May-June 1970, but to me the book is about one
soldier in its ranks, Ihor Dopiwka, E/5-12, of the 199th Light Infantry
Brigade, a young man with whom I went to grade school. Ihor found me on the
Internet and I instantly responded. It’s a miracle he didn’t get killed, as so
many with him did in battle, but who had something I didn’t have: the courage
to leave his home behind and go off to fight a war. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the
closest I ever came to the Vietnam War (1961-73) was in going to see the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse Now</i> (1979) in my usual
drunken state. Man, was that film totally weird but in a way was awesomely
great! I saw it a few times afterwards, trailing the complicated story of
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) as he followed the trail through Vietnam
and Cambodia, going
after the elusive American renegade/officer Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who
even the American military wanted dead. This almost existential portrayal of
the characters had me imagining Vietnam couldn’t be such bad place to be in,
deadly and dangerous for certain, but morbidly seductive. Now who wouldn’t want
to be in a Saigon hotel room drinking and fighting your
own demons as Willard was doing in the beginning of the film? What valor, what
pride, what bravado! <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Buaoh! </i>(Throwing
up…)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Shaking my head, I think, “What
drunken idiocy…”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spent most of
the Vietnam War years drunk and inebriated, having successfully beaten the
draft and once in a while going to an anti-war demonstration while trying to
pick up a cute demonstrating girl. But to little or no avail. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No War </i>meant the same as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No Pussy</i>. I did see Ihor at one time as
I marched on Fifth Avenue
screaming/chanting at the blasé crowds sneering at us. Ihor stood looking at me,
shaking his head, “Nicky, Nicky…” he muttered (using my childhood name); I
instantly recognized him but just lowered my head, trying to disappear in the protesting
crowd.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The years went
by; I graduated from college, cleaned my act up and struggled at becoming a
writer. Yet being a writer was a snap, but still no publisher cared with what I
had written, the manuscripts simply kept going out and just as easily they were
returned. Time passed, new wars started, new demonstrations began same as it
ever was. It didn’t matter whether I was old or young the angry world did what
it wanted to do. Eventually, I did make a tiny headway into the publishing
world and won the Lambda Award/Bisexual Fiction for my novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Holy Communion</i>, which was about a young
boy going through his religious ceremony at the innocent age of seven, an age
when Ihor and I would’ve been, when we were just still obedient classmates. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ihor and I spent
one summer together marauding on his street, 9th Street between 1st and 2nd
Avenue, playing tag, hide ‘n seek, stickball, if we could manage that since
they were digging up his street for pipes changes. After the workers were gone
in the evening, the mass of holes on the street must have looked like the
foxholes of Ihor’s inquisitive imagination, a reality of his foreboding future,
a reality that was now quickly approaching. On the street with Ihor lived other
classmates, Bohdan, Zenon, Jaroslaw, and many others. We lived in a
neighborhood which was crowded with other Ukrainians, 6th Street, 7th Street
(where our church and school were), 8th Street, 9th Street, that if you went up
or down a block someone would be there who knew you simply by your nationality;
I myself lived with my parents on 13th Street, we weren’t that much far away
from the Ukrainian community, still sort of living on the edge, you might say. Still,
I played with Ihor and his buddies most every chance I got. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the years came and went and we shuffled in
different directions, other high schools, other girlfriends, other interests
and goals. This was the late 1960s and a new explosive world was beckoning,
calling to us from different directions. Hair was getting longer, skirts were
rising higher and higher, and Love was everywhere in the air. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the draft
was close upon him I suppose Ihor joined the military, as I’m sure many of the
boys in the neighborhood were doing. I myself had drifted to California,
joining the new Haight-Ashbury Hippies movement. Ihor went through boot camp
and found himself with other new soldiers “in the hellhole of the world” (as it
was called in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse Now</i>), the
country of Vietnam,
with constant helicopters going <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chuck a chuck
a chuck a chuck…</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“(With) a unique mixture of whites, blacks, Native Americans
and Hispanics, the average age of the combat infantryman in Charlie (Company)
was 20.5 years old. Nearly all had graduated from high school and a substantial
number of them had earned college credit or had attended trade-schools before
being drafted. Several of the “older” men were four-year college graduates.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really, no
different from the rest of American young society…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ihor’s service
with the Redcatchers was as a sniper, hiding in the bush and firing at an
unsuspecting Viet Cong, while still going through the turmoil of the rest of his
men, waging in a constant battle they were under. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Raiding The Sanctuary</i>, is dated as
May12th-June 25th, 1970 when they killed scores of enemy soldiers but
themselves lost countless close friends and comrades. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if
Ihor continued serving with the Army afterwards or whether he himself was
wounded in battle. All I can say after so many, many years, “It’s great that my
friend, Ihor Dopiwka, is still alive!” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bravo!</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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***</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/"> http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-43514832407078866432014-01-20T09:27:00.002-08:002014-01-20T13:48:17.027-08:00Tollbooth by Bud Smith<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Tollbooth</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Piscataway
House Publications</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Bud Smith</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A manic,
uproarious novel very reminiscent of the drunken novels of Charles Bukowski but
Bud Smith takes his character’s mania a little farther and more deeper than
Bukowski ever could. In Smith the mania is seductive, teasing, after all who
would not want to lead the boring repetitive hum drum existence the toll
collector leads? No wonder he gives in to his depraved madness, I surely would.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The toll collector
lives his rather dull life, taking tolls on a New Jersey highway, mumbling to
himself hour after hour with his wife (in his fantasies), the few friends he
has accumulated over the years and most of all the seductive teenage girls he
knew once upon a time or happens to know right now. Needless to say the reader
can’t help but look at these girls and ask are if they fantasies, these future
hookers which he drools over anyway, big-breasted, high-haired, tight-pants and
very short-skirted, a jerk-off dream come true right before his eyes? Perhaps,
but still this reader was sucked in by the euphoria of that life, following the
tale as it shifted far beyond New Jersey.
The madness held me on every page; I very much wanted to know where he
eventually was going. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
thoroughly enjoyed Tollbooth, even the 300 or so pages seemed too short for the
depravity displayed, I certainly would have read a few hundred more. A
beautiful book, Bud Smith, with the Tollbooth you have collected your final toll and no more are you forced to mindlessly mutter, “Pay your toll!” No, let
the miserable future collectors repeat it for you. Bravo, a great novel! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Available in Kindle but I would get it in paperback, it's something you would want to hold and cherish over the years </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-80046056844830361322014-01-17T08:29:00.001-08:002014-01-17T08:39:32.428-08:00Two Lambda Awards<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lRxSy-K-yqk/UtlY2LiZnQI/AAAAAAAAO8w/yGEQAgOAeek/s1600/hc&fac+apart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lRxSy-K-yqk/UtlY2LiZnQI/AAAAAAAAO8w/yGEQAgOAeek/s1600/hc&fac+apart.jpg" height="508" width="640" /></a></div>
Lambda Awards for Holy Communion Bisexual Fiction 2009 and The Facialist Gay Erotica 2012 (press picture to get full photo)Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-81939005355856797502014-01-08T01:57:00.000-08:002014-01-08T01:57:03.837-08:00Sweet Snow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Sweet Snow<br />
<br />
by Alexander J. Motyl<br />
<br />
reviewed by Mykola Dementiuk<br />
<br />
Much as Dostoevsky's House of the Dead and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag
Archipelago Alexander J. Motyl looks upon Soviet prisoners in his novel
Sweet Snow but these prisoners are very different, since the year is
1933 and the worst enforced state famine, the Holodomer is tearing
through the Ukraine while Stalin sits and smiles, smokes his cigarette
and does absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
Four prisoners are being
transported to the prison camps, a Jewish Communist from New York City, a
German nobleman from Berlin, a Polish diplomat from Lwow, and Ukrainian
nationalist from Vienna. But their Russian guards are notorious vodka
drinkers who crash and overturn their transport truck until the guards
are dead or dying, freeing the prisoners from their captives. And oh,
what a freedom it is! The frozen wasteland of Siberia lies before them,
an emptiness every which way they turn. Still scarred and shaken from
the accident they start trudging their way back, whichever way that
might be.<br />
<br />
The description of the four surviving prisoners is
grueling, even a few times this reader squirmed in revulsion from was
being portrayed, lost men trying to make in back into life, if such a
thing still exists.<br />
<br />
Along their way they do come upon people,
dead children holding on presumably their dead mothers, all emaciated,
their bellies distended and dead of slow starvation. This is not a book
for the careless, fickle reader but one who dares to look upon and learn
what really went on at the time, mass organized starvation by the
powers that be, the 1933 Soviet Elites.<br />
<br />
I've read many of
Motyl's books, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, The Jew Who Was
Ukrainian and others, but never before did I read one such as this,
Sweet Snow, showing him at his masterful powers as a writer.<br />
<br />
Well done, Alexander Motyl, literary greatness is certainly yours!<br />
<br />
<i><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">Alexander
Motyl is a writer, painter, and professor. He is the author of five novels, <i>Whiskey
Priest</i>, <i>Who Killed Andrei Warhol</i>, <i>Flippancy</i>, <i>The Jew Who
Was Ukrainian</i>, and <i>The Taste of Snow </i>(forthcoming); his poems have
appeared in <i>Mayday</i>, <i>Counterexample Poetics</i>, <i>Istanbul Literary
Review</i>, <i>Orion Headless</i>, <i>The Battered Suitcase</i>, <i>Red River
Review</i>, and <i>New York Quarterly</i>; his artwork has been exhibited in
solo and group shows in New York, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is on view at
www.artsicle.com. Motyl teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and lives in </span></span><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">New York</span></span><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">.</span></span></i><br />
<br />
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<i>
<span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">See review for Motyl's Flippancy <a href="http://mydem.blogspot.com/2009/08/flippancy.html">click here</a></span></span></i></div>
<i>
</i>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;"> order My Orchidia <a href="http://www.itascabooks.com/index.cfm?page=detail&isbn=978-1-938144-05-9">here</a></span></span></i></div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-37893906435352505752013-12-09T10:25:00.004-08:002013-12-11T03:16:25.508-08:00The 42nd Street Jerking-Off Club-Out Now!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m5__gpsA8_w/UqYKSTWNc7I/AAAAAAAANyo/SzpOBDw-EB8/s1600/the-42nd-street-jerking-off-club-by-mykola-de-1386093513.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m5__gpsA8_w/UqYKSTWNc7I/AAAAAAAANyo/SzpOBDw-EB8/s640/the-42nd-street-jerking-off-club-by-mykola-de-1386093513.jpg" width="406" /></a></div>
<div>
<i>Another masterpiece of Times Square in its gay heyday by the two-time Lambda Award winning author!</i><br />
<br />
I looked out the window on to 42nd Street. The crowd was still
walking up and down the crazy, forgotten boulevard. Prostitutes,
transvestites, hookers and hustlers of every sort paraded and marched
back and forth on the hectic sidewalk, looking for another trick as they
struggled through the dawning hours.<br />
<br />
Where would they sleep it off tonight, some shabby Single Room
Occupancy where they could just pass out for a few hours of troubled
sleep, or in a lavish soft Park Avenue apartment where they could relax
and laze in the lovely passing warm morning hours?<br />
<br />
New York is like that, seeming to be at one moment a successful
businesswoman going after deals, while at other times a deranged whore,
slut, trollop, grabbing and stealing whatever she could get from you. I
suppose that's why I liked it, the uncertainty of what can suddenly
happen, a kiss on the lips or a stab in the back, same difference. In
the end, a shrug and another day is stretching, yawning or else going
back to sleep.<br />
<br />
I noticed the lettered reflection of the window before me, even this
high up it showed off what the window contained inside but at this
angle, they were all mixed up, a reverse from what they actually
spelled. I smiled, <i>The 42nd Street Club</i>, as if someone had forgotten the <i>Jerking-Off</i> part.<br />
<br />
I smiled again and yawned. Yeah sure, but that's what I'm here for, jerking off!<br />
<br />
***<br />
Get it on <a href="https://sizzlereditions.com/the-42nd-street-jerking-off-club-by-mykola-dementiuk/">Sizzler Editions </a></div>
<br />Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-48558337280958367172013-11-05T10:15:00.000-08:002013-11-06T02:21:10.149-08:00American Hipster<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UWoXNe9RIXY/Unkzzl4kXKI/AAAAAAAANH4/aKlCEXpw89M/s1600/american_hipster_hi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UWoXNe9RIXY/Unkzzl4kXKI/AAAAAAAANH4/aKlCEXpw89M/s640/american_hipster_hi.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
American Hipster</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The Times
Square Hustler</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Who Inspired The Beat
Movement</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
A Life of Herbert
Huncke</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Magnus Books</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Hilary Holladay </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
review by Mick Mykola
Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a
photograph of Herbert Huncke in New York’s 42nd Street, his eyes somewhat shut,
a unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, his facial cheeks all puffed as if
from pummeling he may received from another's fists or else simply just the
hazards of falling down in the big city streets. The picture was taken by Allen
Ginsberg in the 1940s, when Ginsberg was himself an unknown poet and straggling
through Columbia University
while hanging out with the seedy shapers of life in Times Square.
It shows the drug addicted user-friend Huncke, who would eventually come
to be known as the originator and drive behind the Beat movement of the 40s and
the 50s, influencing such writers as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, along
with Ginsburg who he knew first hand, even at times going to jail for Huncke’s
crimes and compulsive shenanigans. These three would come to be known as the
Fathers of the Beat Movement, while the originator, the real soul, Herbert
Huncke was left behind in the dirt and debris of 42nd
Street.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This wonderfully
written biography, American Hipster by Hilary Holladay beautifully and
patiently examines Huncke’s life in the dregs of society, though I focus mainly
on 42nd Street, but it does not pass judgment of whether that life was well
worth it or not. After all, it was a chaotic time in America after the war, the
complacent 1950s exploding into the experimental 1960s when drug use was very
carefully prevalent and society was cast into turmoil with the Civil Rights
movement, demands for Women’s Rights, Gay Rights coming out and all forcing
their way to the top which had been repressed and held back for so long. Huncke
himself was notoriously queer but Gay Rights wasn’t his bag yet he didn’t suddenly
appear on the street scene, that scene, 42nd Street
was always there, which the wasted drug addict Huncke was always trying for one
more fix. But this time Huncke came upon the scene with a coterie of young potential
writers just hanging on to every word that he uttered to them. What they were
looking for was to be like just him, to be a beatnik, mouthing things like, “Cool,
heavy, beat…” with Huncke nonchalantly muttering the words they were hungry
for, “Cool daddio…” They must have been charmed and fascinated by the somewhat
illiterate drug addict, with a new hip language and giving them a different look
upon post-WW2 life in America, which had shown itself as nothing but boring
complacency and middle class deadness. No wonder they went on the road looking
for adventure and very quickly found it too. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much as the movie
character Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy who gives a very good idea of what
Huncke was like and could’ve been a direct mimeograph of his Times Square
existence yet Huncke was no mere movie character/hustler he was for very real,
so much that he would steal you blind and even take the clothes off your back
while blinding you as you’re looking right at him. A low down thief is what he
was.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much as I
experienced the seediness of 42nd Street
and Times Square in the 1960s and 70s, when the sexual
revolution was upon it, I don’t know if I ever met or saw Herbert Huncke in
those shady movie houses, every slimy Times Square
denizen looking just like him, and there were lots of them around. Going into a
sex movie in those years was going into a standing room only venue; every seat
was taken by men hungry for motion picture sex and intently watching close-ups
of vaginal muscles, the lubrication released by female flesh heightened by the
erotic scent smelling to high heaven, or it least it did to me. I’d sit and
watch as sooner or later someone would change seats in the auditorium. After a
while, as I moved aside to let them pass, I realized my wallet was missing, had
I dropped it unknowingly while being so aroused just staring at the flesh on
the screen? Wait a minute, what about the disheveled guy who sat next to me, of
course, who else but him, he ripped me off! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who knows if I ever
came across Herbert Hunckey or not? Had no idea who he was at the time or would
I care? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phantom of Hubert Huncke still slithers
down the balcony stairs of ghostly 42nd Street
movie houses… Just let the chimera go past. Wait a minute, why’s it stopping
and slithering closer? Oh no, time to get out of here! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herbert Hunckey
lived 1915 to 1996, pretty much stoned and wasted all through his years. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Mick Mykola Dementiuk is a two-time winner of the Lambda Award, and his
collection, Times Square Queer, was a finalist for the 2012 Bisexual Book
Award. He is also the author of Times Queer, about 42nd Street, and The 42nd
Street Jerk-off Club which will be released
shortly. Visit him at <a href="http://dementiuk.weebly.com/">http://dementiuk.weebly.com</a>
or <a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a>Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-35650579364646781452013-10-15T10:46:00.001-07:002013-10-15T10:46:38.499-07:00Contraband, a review<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s0SzvzQjdZQ/Ul1-9u3qcpI/AAAAAAAAM2g/-5NUCzLxU2U/s1600/2940011257391_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s0SzvzQjdZQ/Ul1-9u3qcpI/AAAAAAAAM2g/-5NUCzLxU2U/s640/2940011257391_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG" width="412" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Contraband</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Queer Mojo/Rebel
Satori Press</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
By Charlie Vazquez</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
A New Literature? </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the somewhat-near future and we are in
the dark smoky world of Contraband, a novel by Charlie Vazquez, (and which has
nothing to do with drugs) but which in a way reminds me of Louis Ferdinand
Celine’s books Journey to the End of the Night or his Death on the Installment
Plan, or perhaps even Franz Kafka’s The Castle or The Trial and others of that
ilk where you can never know where you are, what you’re going to get or what’s the
point of it anyway, since you just might as well puke your guts out. In much the
same way the writings of Charlie Vazquez are an unclear, uncertain mystery,
leaving a bad taste in your soul since it describes such an unknown world, one either
in healing recovery or exposing its sores as it festers to its ugly conclusion
but Vazquez surges on ahead determined to reach its end, no matter what that
end might bring, total change or further boring rotting stagnation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It opens in Emerald
City as Volfango is waiting for a
train to take him back home after work. He is accosted by a dirty beggar, while
other passengers complacently avoid looking at them but Volfango follows the
beggar into a subway tunnel. Volfango is a government employee but has leanings
to the other side, the rebel side. The beggar is a ‘lunar’, or “profane in the eyes
of the Revolution” meaning he’s not one on them, as is also Volfango, but Volfango
already has feelings of escaping underground, that’s why he goes after the
beggar. The outside world is torn between those who follow orders and obey and
those who able to survive and are hidden in the darkness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually Volfango
leaves the tunnel and goes to his mother’s house, the beggar has stolen his
attaché case but he was the beggar’s long stick which gets him strange looks from
the other riders. Two cops get on board but he shows them his government ID and
instead they go after another sleeping beggar. In getting to his mother’s house
he uses the walking stick defensively, ready to hit anyone who asks him what
he’s doing. Outside, in the hills skirmishes break out between the rebels and
government troops. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Visits with his
dentist, Doctora Valdez, for an aching toothache and has a tooth pulled in a
dilapidated slum/doctor’s office with rats scurrying about the floor. The city
is totally fallen apart, infected with dirt and rats everywhere. He has a
brutal ugly tooth extraction as two big males nurses/aides hold him down; the Doctora
pulls the bad tooth out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the night he
goes to a barroom where he knows he’ll meet someone who will help him to the
underworld; he no longer wants to remain in the straight world. Volfango meets
the young man Alto in the bar where the crowd is hugging and kissing when
suddenly the government starts shooting on them. Volfango and Alto, with a few
others run and get away. A host of different characters come on the scene, lasting
for a few days then they are killed off by the government. It might have
nothing to do with the future or is might have everything to do with it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He meets up with
Teodoro, his half brother, and both fall into the hands of The Hidesman, a sort
of a boss of the underworld, who holds Volfango chained to him. Volfango breaks
away and kills The Hidesman. He signs to work on Lednov’s ship, which is headed
to disembark at Sun City.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Sun City
Teodoro talks and talks and it goes on for pages and pages. People come and
people go. While in Sin City
he is assigned by Don Carlos to do paperwork while Teodora takes care of the
animals in the zoo. Sin City
is the New Orleans, Vieux Carre,
French Quarter, and for a time they work with the circus animals but the Republicans
are getting closer, when at night in fears of them taking over, Don Carlos
commits suicide. Later it was discovered he secretly was a woman under his
manly disguise. The Republicans shoot at the brothers but they get away from
Sun City making their way to a safer place, but still more dangerous in other
ways, the Emerald City. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re under
the impression that this might be about a new version of the Wizard of Oz, well,
I have news for you, it isn’t, it’s a brutal horrible tale about surviving in a
new land, a land with a town known as Emerald City but where the familiar will
totally cease. In Emerald City
a woman shoves a gruesome baby into Fandago’s arms and disappears. The baby is
covered in disgusting smeared excrement but he holds on to it, though he
desperately wants to throw up at every moment. Crawling through a tunnel it
seems he’s crawling through an anus, a rectum, a disgusting orifice. He makes
it back into Emerald City,
a city waiting for him or is it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contraband takes
place in the future and it’s a prediction of what could be or what might be if
we don’t watch it. If you like futuristic novels with the world having fallen
apart or on the verge of collapse this one’s for you. Sort of like the films
Blade Runner or Total Recall but with much more gruesome and uglier protagonists,
as all wars usually tend to be ugly as sin. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first I had a
hard time of reading Vazquez, even a few times setting it down and offering the
book to another reader but I kept thinking and returning to it in the same way
I once had difficulty with Celine. His two nauseous books, Journey to the End
of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan only made me want to puke but I
knew that Celine had certainly reached a higher level of literature than that
which is consumed by today’s fickle childish readers. And I sensed that Vazquez
reached the same point and had to be read, that is, pored over page by page. In
this way I steeled my nauseous feelings and returned to the book, and I’m sure
glad I did, for Vazquez is a new form of literature, a higher form of writing,
one that is despicably disgusting but still it has to be read and savored, as
uncomfortable it might make you. An excellent story and a great job, Charlie
Vazquez, I’m hungry to read still more of your future work! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mick Mykola Dementiuk is a two-time winner of the Lambda
Award, and his collection, Times Square Queer, was a finalist for the 2012
Bisexual Book Award. Visit him at <a href="http://dementiuk.weebly.com/">http://dementiuk.weebly.com</a>
or <a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a></div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-91690104186604612152013-10-11T05:47:00.000-07:002013-10-11T05:47:56.735-07:00King of Angels review<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QsMVmWhP6_o/UlfxJX4CTNI/AAAAAAAAMzg/bWGnJjQaOrE/s1600/15958342.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QsMVmWhP6_o/UlfxJX4CTNI/AAAAAAAAMzg/bWGnJjQaOrE/s640/15958342.jpg" width="412" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
King of Angels</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Bethue Press</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Perry Brass</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
A Saintly Who Done It</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Jewish boy,
Benjamin ‘Benjy” Rothberg is growing up in Savannah, Georgia with his father
Robby/Leon, and his non-Jewish Episcopalian mother Caroline, who sits around drinking
too many gin and grapefruit Salty Dogs with her girlfriends. Robby/Leon is a
salesman and works mostly out of town, while Caroline stays taking care of the
house with a black maid on the side, such as women used to do in those years. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every time Caroline drives over to pick Benjy
up from school the car radio is always blasting some Beatles song on the car
radio as she happily sings along. She loves the music of the era, makes her
feel young and alive, Benjy is always embarrassed. The time is the early 1960s
and JFK is president just before he was assassinated. In the novel Benjy is
starting to learn about life and eventually his homosexuality. What can a thirteen
growing boy do but get a little ass, that is, suck a little cock and have his
own sucked off, too? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Learn to be a man,
as his father Robby stresses, so Benjy is sent to a Catholic school where he
befriends Tim, an Irish lad who comes from a large boisterous family and
Arthur, a good looking Puerto Rican boy from a very poor family with a drunken
father who takes it out on his son, Arthur. There are many other boisterous dangerous
boys in the school but it seems that Benjy is pulled to these two. He follows
Arthur sneakily home one evening and gets lost, wandering into a bar (at the
time ‘gay’ bars were still unheard of) with shady characters sitting around and
drinking cheap beer. One drinker smiles lasciviously at Benjy but does take the
time to show him where Arthur is staying; a poor worthless Puerto Rican dump and
Benjy is very embarrassed but goes go in after his friend. In surprise Arthur
is stunned to see his classmate but the Puerto Rican boy’s father comes in and
asks crude questions of the visitor. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, Benjy has
to undergo a bar mitzvah according to Jewish tradition and he asks Father
Alexis, one of his teachers to guide him since the priest had taken courses in
Judaism, and in surprise Father Alexis agrees to teach him. When suddenly on
the last day at the retreat he went to the beautiful Puerto Rican boy Arthur is
missing. The police find his body drowned in the lake when suddenly Benjy also learns
that his father is being accused by his employer of embezzlement. Faced with
two disasters at one time, Benjy is devastated, plus a few other boys are suspected
by the police in having a hand in Arthur’s demise. It all comes boiling down to
a fitting satisfying conclusion. A beautiful Southern drama and one of little
boys intermixed with the depravity of the time, the bustling confusing era of
change with growing older parents and superiors. One night Benjy returns
to Father Alexis for more bar mitzvah training but he smells alcohol on Father
Alexis’ breath, he doesn’t feel odd when the priest kisses the top of his head
yet he still is forced to leave, a bit confused. Why did the priest kiss him Benjy
wants to know, was that part of some ritual but he does
suspect the priest was after something more and it wasn’t Benjy’s friendship. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The cops close
the case of dead boy Arthur since there is nothing there but Benjy is determined
to find out for himself about what really happened by putting a stake-out at a
little used library bathroom that he’s certain the slayer will be visiting
again. Meanwhile, he makes it with Nathan, an older boy at the age of seventeen
who takes him to a ‘gay’ club but who tells him to stick with the Catholic boys
instead of perverts like him. Benjy is amazed that such ‘gay clubs’ exist in
the 1960s, still his hard throbbing penis makes him feel otherwise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed this
wonderful satisfying novel is nicely written and easy going, even with the
inner confusion and accusation which will comes later. At first I thought it would be
heavy duty and philosophical, what with the sub-title, A Novel About the Genesis
of Identity and Belief, but no, it was written about our hero Benjy, a young
man, in a style which is reminiscent of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie
March or Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, two books about young men growing up and
looking out at an evil, benign world glaring and sneering back at them. The
other great thing about the book is that the boys are masturbating and
ejaculating at the proper age of thirteen, fourteen and fifteen unlike the
fictional characters in other books by some publishers who will only bring out
a book or e-book when the main character is portrayed in their pages as
sexually confident at the rightful adult age of eighteen or some such. What rot
and rubbish! Thirteen is the perfect age of self discovery and anything older
is an evident publisher’s fear and bullshit. ‘I orgasmed at the age of
eighteen’ is a lie. I know of some men who have experienced ejaculation at the
age of eight, nine, ten, and who’s to say at what age it can’t be for real. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More honest books
like this by authors such as the bold Perry Brass and we can send these timid scared
publishers where they belong, into the rubbish heap. Great job Perry Brass, you
and your publisher Bethue Press deserve high praise for your courage and daring
in bringing out this very real-life novel, King of Angels. You are royalty
itself, bravo! </div>
<br />
Mick (Mykola) Dementiuk is a two-time winner of the Lambda Award, and his
collection, Times Square Queer, was a finalist for the 2012 Bisexual Book
Award. Visit him at <a href="http://dementiuk.weebly.com/">http://dementiuk.weebly.com</a>
or <a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a><br />
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-58029913333960261002013-10-07T03:55:00.000-07:002013-10-07T04:42:36.097-07:00My Life with Blondie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xQbNWLZWrAo/UlKRptdCbqI/AAAAAAAAMxA/Z8sI1FWFeRg/s1600/MyLifeWithBlondie257x390.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xQbNWLZWrAo/UlKRptdCbqI/AAAAAAAAMxA/Z8sI1FWFeRg/s640/MyLifeWithBlondie257x390.jpg" width="420" /></a></div>
<br />
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
My Life with Blondie</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Cervena Barva Press</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Jiri Klobouk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hey, drop
everything Blondie is coming to town! That’s how Jiri Klobouk, author of My
Date with Blondie, begins his comic/tragic novel about Harley Davidson, who has
a thirty-three year love-infatuation with Blondie, singer/movie star and lover
of his dreams, or so he thinks. Even though they’ve never met Harley now has
the chance to finally come face to face with his idol, and he imagines settling down
with her for the rest of their lives. But does Harley really stand a chance?
And how much of this fantasy is real?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harley Davidson,
yes, that’s his name, is a man in his fifties who has had this infatuation since
his teens. Since his early days in Vienna when he first saw her picture in a movie
magazine, holding onto the memory through war torn Vietnam, on to Germany where
he got married (for the second time), into Portugal where Blondie lived her
young years, and now eking out his life but always with the dream and vision of
Blondie. Oh boy is he eager and ready for her! Even Harley’s current long time
girlfriend Amanda, so he tells us, is just as eager to meet her. Still, Harley
claims Amanda is upset because she lost her kitten Tiger and not because Blondie
is so close nearby. Well, maybe…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harley is able to
get his old job back at the Royal Arms Hotel, which he calls an old four story
flop house but which Blondie is sure to visit, and in between Harley is faced
with the daily problems of working in the hotel with his supervisors and fellow
employees, who seem to have stepped out of a loony bin. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>McCarthy, owner
of the hotel, comes back from Brazil
and has the handyman Melvin, who cares for the hotel, build a Brazilian rain
forest in the owner’s fourth floor room. Besides the gay hotel person Jacques
and the chambermaid Ella the entire staff is there. And how they run the hotel,
what a farce! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Going back in time
Harley was eighteen in Vienna when he
got married to Ilona, an older girl whose parents had been tortured and killed
by the Hungarians. Harley doesn’t care for her since he already is dreaming and
waiting to meet Blondie, who he is certain he will get married to but instead
he agrees with her offer of a proposal. They get married, or as another
character says, Harley has a screw loose from the Vietnam War. And an old war
buddy also asks, “(I)t could be a sign of some kind of mental disorder. Have
you ever thought about that?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harley was
conceived on a Harley Davidson motorcycle as his parents went tearing around Europe
at the time when the Jews were being butchered by the Nazis. And Harley finds
out from an old librarian his parents were bank robbers desperate to get away
from the Nazis. Harley’s life is just as messed up and confused as is the
stigma he lives under, being in love with that vague chimera he has never met,
Blondie. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, he gets
married to Ilona but after five years he separates from her and marries Helga
in Frankfurt, Germany,
a singer who is also a little nymphet escorted by her Canadian parents. But
after they have a kid Harley leaves her but she quickly gets married to another
man.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For years Harley
and his now-girlfriend Amanda have been seeing a psychiatrist, and Harley has
high hopes for some kind of cure, but after falling in ‘love’ with Amanda it’s
clear that she is as whacky as he is, apparently a bit of a nutcase, as one
character says about him. Still they make a perfect couple except that he’s in
love with the mystical Blondie, his stigma from the past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a
sad/funny, moving novel. You can’t help but think about the guys you see
wandering around town, living out their lives in menial jobs, with menial
relationships, that is if they have any, and just existing from day to day.
Well, I suppose they do have someone to love, for better or for worse. But where
is their Blondie? Is she the one that away? I hope Harley finds her in his lunacy,
and with a little something thrown in just to make life a tiny bit interesting,
much like in the spit and vomit of this beautiful, fantastic happy novel. Hip
hip hooray! Here’s to Harley, dream on!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://dementiuk.weebly.com/">http://dementiuk.weebly.com</a>
-various e-books</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica,
2009/Bisexual Fiction</div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-7258576529515714172013-09-11T06:23:00.002-07:002013-09-11T06:32:36.338-07:00Pleasure Trout<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3gD7EVYfgzs/UjBtczFGfEI/AAAAAAAAMjs/s1GBjeMAiYg/s1600/8544_10201551148727970_1837406243_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3gD7EVYfgzs/UjBtczFGfEI/AAAAAAAAMjs/s1GBjeMAiYg/s640/8544_10201551148727970_1837406243_n.jpg" width="406" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Pleasure Trout</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Gloria
Mindak/Mindock</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
review by Mick Mykola Dementiuk </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I approached
this chapbook it was with a sense of trepidation after all it reminded me I had
once taken a poetry class in college, Introduction to Poetry, reading the
sonnets of Shakespeare, the verses of John Donne and the poetics of T.S. Eliot,
and came out of it with a feeble grade of C for my efforts. I knew I<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>would never try that again, I could
never make any sense out of poetry. I shook my head and went on with my life. But
over the years I did look into the words of Allen Ginsburg or the drunken works
of Charles Bukowski, finding some comfort and solace therein, because they
“spoke” to me unlike the others who “poetized” and never made any sense.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So when I found
out the Gloria Mindock had a new book coming out, “Pleasure Trout” I smiled and
knew I was going to order it. Gloria is the founder/editor of Cervena Barva
Press but I know of her from her bookstore The Lost Bookshelf, which carries a
few copies of my Lambda Award winning novel “Holy Communion” amongst others in
its racks. I eagerly opened her book, reading page by page, and becoming bemused,
befuddled and totally lost. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What the
hell?</i> Then I again read her introduction where she says, “Don’t try to
understand what is written here. Just enjoy the nonsense.” Well, of course, if
I had heard this thirty years ago my poetry class would come out different, it wouldn’t
seem that bad at all. I laughed, because I love the language that poetry uses,
the rhyme, the meter, the words, which I use daily anyway. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This baby is heaven and</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
this baby is something</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
you ain’t got</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If Mindock used exclamation points her last sentence would
demand it, I’m sure. That’s what I love, nonsensical poetry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day you feel dull</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and uncharming</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are lying</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually you are largely</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
undeveloped</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
cooked up out of</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
fiction</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you could write, you</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
would be absent on noise</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My arms are a huge</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stall to entangle</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
your pedal, your feet</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I get rough, I can</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
diagnose your pulsing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
solitude</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once you begin to
stop looking for meanings, in its absence, a meaning will surely come. Just
shut up and listen, I think.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ok, so this is only a</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
thought, a tale, a struggle</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
not to cease</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hey, we have all out lives</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks Gloria,
who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">woulda thunk</i> it, poetry
appreciation this late in the game, you made a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> new</i> poetry convert, that’s for sure! Love your book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mick Mykola Dementiuk<br />
<a href="http://dementiuk.weebly.com/">http://dementiuk.weebly.com </a><br />
<a href="http://www.mykoladementiuk.com/">http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com</a><br />
Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica, 2009/Bisexual Fiction </div>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-83641170259584615682013-05-26T07:42:00.001-07:002013-05-26T07:42:33.182-07:00Sissy Godiva<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JGGt1diZZaw/UaIeua6_CCI/AAAAAAAAMG0/pPwII1VsdJ4/s1600/Sissy_Godiva_400x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JGGt1diZZaw/UaIeua6_CCI/AAAAAAAAMG0/pPwII1VsdJ4/s640/Sissy_Godiva_400x600.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
My newest one, Sissy Godiva, to be out from JMS Books in a month or so. Hmm, I wonder what's that about?Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-55474445658486311172013-02-06T12:17:00.002-08:002013-02-06T12:17:14.440-08:00Lola Dances<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XTUM7r1XlJQ/URK4wBcOgyI/AAAAAAAAK8E/bKNsf5go004/s1600/9781934531426_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XTUM7r1XlJQ/URK4wBcOgyI/AAAAAAAAK8E/bKNsf5go004/s640/9781934531426_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Lola Dances</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
By Victor Banis</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
reviewed by Mykola
Mick Dementiuk</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There have been
books which over the years have become very dear to me, to be read over and
over, and always coming upon something new in them. Authors such as
Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck, Victor Hugo, I.B. Singer and Henry Miller, just to
mention a few, have been able to hold me for days, weeks, months so I could
read them and over and over again. Titles such as Brothers Karamazov, Grapes of
Wrath, Les Miserables, Family Moskat, Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn etc., have held
me repeatedly in my quest and rediscovery of some item I must have already
read. In the reading of a book it’s inevitable you will overlook some
paragraphs or passages which you will be aware of the next time around, mumbling
to yourself, “Aw damn, now how did I miss that?” Books are like close friends
we have known over the years, we tend to skim through and overlook them at
times. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lola Dances by
Victor Banis is one such book, I’ve read it maybe five times and, of course, each
time found in it something new. Another reader might grimace and mutter, “So you’re
not as well read as you think…” Well, yes, I know that, or as Henry Miller in
The Books In My Life asks, “Who is?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Lola Dances we
meet Terry Murphy running away through New York’s
Lower East Side streets from the bullies after him.
“Sissy!” they shout. 18 year old Terry, living alone but having an elder
brother, Brian, had been on his way to dancing lessons before he had gotten so
rudely interrupted by the bullies. Still, dancing lessons in New
York’s 1880s were very expensive, but somehow Terry comes
up with the tuition for the dance classes. In his flight from the bullies he
meets up with Tom Finnegan who takes him down alleys which the bullies know
little of and Tom shows him a few new things, like himself being soft, tender
and caring, which they both know very little about. Terry likes Tom a lot, as
Tom does him, whereby they both confusedly blush.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Terry’s
brother Brian, wants to leave New York and head out West, where he can get rich
fast, this eventually finds them in Alder Gulch, Utah, a mining community with
loads of miners digging for wealth but very few showing any sure results. By
that time in the story, the two brothers have gotten physically close to each
other and nightly Brian would bugger Terry as he just lay there. Brian uses
that as an excuse for his brother’s homosexual lusts, saying to himself that
he’s doing it to keep that fruit Terry in line and at bay from the other horny
miners. Still, Terry enjoys these trysts with his brother and even thinks of
himself as a woman. He recalls Tom Finnegan back in New York as the red-headed
boy peed, “with his fly hanging open…a glimpse of its bush at its base, like
spun gold, gleaming in the dawns yellow light.” (p68) Every time he closes his
eyes he imagines Tom as being there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas, happy dreams
in life hardly ever exist; still there were other handsome men at the camp. For
one Joshua Simmons was there, who Terry gives his first blowjob to but Joshua
is in shock from what Terry just did and runs away. Sad tearful Terry awaits
his return but it wasn’t meant to be.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Terry tries for a
job at the Lucky Dollar when their star singer leaves for San
Francisco, leaving behind her dresses and gowns. Belle
Blessing recognizes Terry’s femininity, Terry gets the job.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Something
happened that had never happened before at The Lucky Dollar. The room went
silent, a thunderous silence. No one spoke. Even the slap, slap, slap of the
cards at the poker table went still. A hundred mouths hung open, a hundred pair
of eyes were suddenly riveted on the little figure standing before them. Like a
rose, suddenly appearing in the filth of that dirty room.” (p89) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lola Valdez comes to life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now Terry/Lola
refuses Brian’s demands for ass fucking, having becoming a real liberated woman
by saying “No!” Certainly, way before her time, that’s for sure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that night,
Brian gets his revenge on Terry by taking the money that Terry had saved up and
leaves for Butte, Montana,
taking a confused Joshua with him, still at a loss in trying to understand what
Terry’s blowjob really meant. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lola continues
working/singing at The Lucky Dollar until a somewhat neighbor she knows from
town, Reverend Davidson, sees her changing from Lola’s clothes back into
Terry’s. Of course he wants a blowjob from Terry and comes at her/him. Terry
fires her Derringer and stops him cold. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Five years go by
and after traveling and singing in the camps, “the rose of the mining camps”
she was known, is now living and singing at the Barbary Coast in San Francisco.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One night she recognizes Tom Finnegan from
New York who has become a
gambler, club owner, but who is stunned at seeing her, becoming a total confused
mess. It also threw me, until I read the passages a few times over the years
and finally did understand what was occurring… I’ll leave that to the reader to
find out for himself what was occurring but it certainly brought the novel into
better focus and I look forward to reading it many times again. Sometimes life
wants you to accept what is, don’t you think? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And Victor Banis
certainly knows how to write a good, thoughtful and worthy novel, after all,
this classic has been pored over many a time by this reader and will be with me
for many more years to come. And I know that many readers have done the same. Lola
Dances is simply exquisite! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There she goes,
watch her dance…. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ooh la la!</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
****</div>
<br />
<br />Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-59093861880969863362013-01-23T08:05:00.002-08:002013-01-23T08:06:54.911-08:00The Bookstore Clerk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JIOCXgqTzn8/UQAIrXkijFI/AAAAAAAAKjw/cCcuuTic4wA/s1600/The_Bookstore_Clerk_400x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JIOCXgqTzn8/UQAIrXkijFI/AAAAAAAAKjw/cCcuuTic4wA/s640/The_Bookstore_Clerk_400x600.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
<br />
My newest one, The Bookstore Clerk, from JMS Books, will be out very shortly. About the days when I worked in Doubleday, Scribner's, Brentano's bookstores on NY's 5th Avenue and a few down in Greenwich Village. Boy, those were my reading days, and I sure read a lot, besides other things, too ;) Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-84922906783433487462013-01-13T03:58:00.001-08:002013-01-13T03:58:12.235-08:00Always Looking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--8G3XNxXJ6Q/UPKgPKfc8kI/AAAAAAAAKF8/DX5FLDaztag/s1600/Always_Looking_400x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--8G3XNxXJ6Q/UPKgPKfc8kI/AAAAAAAAKF8/DX5FLDaztag/s640/Always_Looking_400x600.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
My newest one, Always Looking, from JMS Books.<br />
<br />
"I started going out early with girls and guys, not for sex because at that age, who the hell knew what sex was?"<br /><br />With
those words, Danny's coming-of-age begins. From the gloomy, stifling
hallways of high school in the 1960's to the vast expanse of 1970's New
York, young Danny explores the complexities of love and lust in the arms
of Luba, a girl he believes himself in love with, and then in the
company of various men, from whom he learns his true nature.<br /><br />Raised
by a poor, single mother whose upcoming marriage to a second husband
threatens Danny's shaky world, Danny finds that accepting -- and
ultimately embracing -- the unpredictability and promise of his future
means letting go of the past and taking the leap of faith he knows he
needs in his journey to maturity.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.jms-books.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=29&products_id=685">JMS Books </a>Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-76909932531089372982012-12-14T01:33:00.000-08:002012-12-22T13:03:42.227-08:00Minnesota Strip<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jJL5wLgrhho/UMrxuJAT__I/AAAAAAAAJCY/b6iIhAOAqAI/s1600/Minn-Strip-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jJL5wLgrhho/UMrxuJAT__I/AAAAAAAAJCY/b6iIhAOAqAI/s640/Minn-Strip-copy.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">New
cover of my Minnesota Strip, 1970s Times Square area on 8th Avenue
between 40s-50s Streets teeming with whores, hookers, dykes, trans and
you name, all out for a buck. So that's where my money went in those
days, eh? Out now from Sizzler Editions Berkeley, CA</span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><a href="http://shop.renebooks.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=DEMENTIUK-04">Sizzler/Renaissance eBooks order now! </a></span></span></h5>
Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-8236754124123463902012-12-11T11:43:00.002-08:002012-12-11T11:58:33.813-08:00Always Looking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eLcqmtpjHMM/UMeMCOlfawI/AAAAAAAAI74/EjdCVZiNfBg/s1600/Always_Looking_400x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eLcqmtpjHMM/UMeMCOlfawI/AAAAAAAAI74/EjdCVZiNfBg/s640/Always_Looking_400x600.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
Always Looking, cover of my next e-book, due out from JMS Books in January 2013Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-74712141487268255312012-10-22T07:28:00.001-07:002012-11-27T00:55:52.659-08:00Kinky/Pubes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nDACPueyhW0/UIVWHbk7rOI/AAAAAAAAHyQ/aXaRnVejRRU/s1600/Kinky_Pubes_400x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nDACPueyhW0/UIVWHbk7rOI/AAAAAAAAHyQ/aXaRnVejRRU/s640/Kinky_Pubes_400x600.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>
<br />
"Kinky/Pubes" is out now! Autobiographic novella about a young man lost in alcoholic consumption until he meets a man who will set him straight and refuses to take any crap from him. A short novella but more truthful than anything I've ever written before. From JMS Books.Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405390416730442679.post-47384766140615084522012-09-18T12:52:00.000-07:002012-09-20T02:07:39.588-07:00My Orchidia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AVDDeqW0pLo/UFjO5QKwcCI/AAAAAAAAHFw/gft8s6gNJ2o/s1600/orchidia3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="365" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AVDDeqW0pLo/UFjO5QKwcCI/AAAAAAAAHFw/gft8s6gNJ2o/s640/orchidia3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<i>The Orchidia<br />
corner of 9th St. and Second Ave., NYC</i><br />
<br />
<br />
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My Orchidia</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
by Alexander Motyl</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
reviewed by Mykola (Mick)
Dementiuk</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two very talkative gentlemen wander through
the streets of the East Village
and mostly through the Ukrainian neighborhood discussing Art, History,
Creativity, and most importantly, where to get some good varenyky or pierogis.
Their mouths water as they discuss the Orchidia, the famous Ukrainian/Italian
restaurant which has served the Ukrainian community for years and years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the book, My
Orchidia, really is a walk back in time, with historical figures making an
appearance, Nikolai Gogol, Lenin, Mahkno, Simone De Beauvoir, TS Eliot, and a
host of others. Alexander Motyl feels very much at home with these characters,
as he surely should, they are<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> his</span>
characters and this is<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> his</span> book, and
an uproarious book at that, too. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love the many
different characters making an appearance as the two prime characters continue
making their way to the Orchidia. One of the best and funniest, is the poet
Allen Ginsberg complaining to his landlady and howling with rage, “What does
she think we are--a beet generation?” The beet an intentional misspelling and this
had me howling and laughing on the floor…plus there are many gems such as that
one. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The low price of
the paperback book, $10.00, is ideal for today’s almost non-existent book market
and it is well worth the laughs you will get from it. I highly recommend it.
You’ll laugh, you’ll chuckle, you’ll simply sigh with amazement at all the
characters coming through the East Village of New York as Motyl’s characters
make their way nearer and nearer to the Orchidia. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In all the years
that the Orchidia was on that site I had the lucky fortune to at least be there
just one time, stepping in from the Ukrainian Festival just a few blocks away
and knowing the bartender who invited me in to have a drink on the house. I
felt the mood of the place was comforting, merry but peaceful too, and the
constant jabber of Ukrainian was like I was at home because for a moment <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I was at home… </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>There will never be a place like the
Orchidia, that’s for sure. But at least this book will give you a peek at what
was going on there. I’m sure that many characters sat at the Orchidia tables
discussing Life, as it was pondered by the two vareneky hungry gentlemen. Sure
hope they eat heartily. </div>
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<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">Alexander
Motyl is a writer, painter, and professor. He is the author of five novels, <i>Whiskey
Priest</i>, <i>Who Killed Andrei Warhol</i>, <i>Flippancy</i>, <i>The Jew Who
Was Ukrainian</i>, and <i>The Taste of Snow </i>(forthcoming); his poems have
appeared in <i>Mayday</i>, <i>Counterexample Poetics</i>, <i>Istanbul Literary
Review</i>, <i>Orion Headless</i>, <i>The Battered Suitcase</i>, <i>Red River
Review</i>, and <i>New York Quarterly</i>; his artwork has been exhibited in
solo and group shows in New York, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is on view at
www.artsicle.com. Motyl teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and lives in </span></span><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">New York</span></span><span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">.</span></span></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;">See review for Motyl's Flippancy <a href="http://mydem.blogspot.com/2009/08/flippancy.html">click here</a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="A3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon;"> order My Orchidia <a href="http://www.itascabooks.com/index.cfm?page=detail&isbn=978-1-938144-05-9">here</a></span></span></div>
</i>Mykola Dementiukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02267125930152870083noreply@blogger.com0