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‘Black Cracker’ by Josh Alan Friedman and new books from Chris D. and Wyatt Doyle

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‘Tales Of Times Square’ author Josh Alan Friedman has written a delightfully bent memoir of what it was like being a white kid attending an all-Black elementary school in Long Island during the early 1960’s. In ‘Black Cracker’, Friedman combines his usual sardonic humor with a surprisingly sweet tone and the result is both very funny and touching. It also deals with race in America by hewing to real life details, avoiding broad sentiment and proselytizing. The truth is really in the telling. This is a very funny book and an immensely satisfying one. Who knew that Josh could be such a warmhearted ol’ fuck.  

South School, 1962: The last segregated school in New York. Their teacher moonlights on ‘Lawrence Welk’, the lady principal wears boxing gloves, and the student body is all-Negro . . . except for first grader Josh Friedman. He’s white, but he’s working on it. Center stage in the unflinching and frequently hilarious funhouse tour of Friedman’s Long Island boyhood is a rogues’ gallery that includes Bobo, precocious third-grade dropout and boy prince of the ghetto; his bumbling (and alarmingly potent) ne’er-do-well Uncle Limpy; Mumsy, the smelliest shoeshine boy in Penn Station; Mrs. O’Leary, the menacing Irish nanny; her son, Drake, an etiquette-obsessed, switchblade-totin’ clammer overwhelmed by the tides of racial progress; and the impoverished Wilshires, the bone-white, nigger-hatin’-est crackers in town. At once heartbreaking and hysterically funny, ‘Black Cracker’ delivers a fearless account of adventures in the now-forgotten poor Black shantytowns of Long Island, exploring the singular ugliness of racism, the intrigue of janitorial whodunits, the tragic limits of friendship, and the inexplicable seductive powers of croco-print footwear.

‘Black Cracker’ is published by Wyatt Doyle/New Texture. Wyatt has also unleashed Chris D.‘s (The Flesheaters) ‘A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die’ and his own collection of short stories called ’ Stop Requested’.  Chris D.‘s anthology is comprised of his song lyrics, poetry, short stories, dream journal entries and excerpts from as-yet-unpublished novels. Chris was in the heat of the action during L.A.‘s 1970’s punk explosion and his book is street smart and unruly, filled with noirish surrealism and rock hard beatitudes that ache with yearning, anger and red hot eroticism. Shelve next to Patti Smith and Nick Cave.

Doyle’s ‘Stop Requested’ is a series of rueful, witty and occasionally heartwrenching stories about the fellow passengers that Doyle observes while riding the bus in L.A.. These are folks living on the margin between nothing and everything, stuck between Rodeo Drive and The Highway To Nowhere. Doyle’s gift is in capturing those tiny dramatic moments that linger for a brief moment on the periphery of vision. He has a Zen-like ability to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter (and everything matters), he finds consequence in the inconsequential. He’s Bukowski without the nasty streak. And he’s real good. Profusely illustrated with drawings by Stanley J. Zappa . Highly recommended.

Support indie publishers. Buy these suckers.

Completely unrelated to his book ‘Black Cracker’ (but so much fun I had to include it here), Josh has written a musical based on the life of Ed Wood Jr. Here’s an excerpt for your amusement.    
 

“Bela Lugosi” by Josh Alan Friedman (BLACK CRACKER) from New Texture on Vimeo.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.01.2010
02:28 pm
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