Underrated Writers

Jack Butler

Our pal the Rake sends along a nomination for Jack Butler, saying "A guy who once wrote a strange and funny and deadly serious novel about martial arts and race relations.  I will not stop mentioning him until Jujitsu for Christ gets back in print."

More about Jack Butler
+  The Jack Butler page at The Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project of Starkville High School
+  A few poems by Butler
+  Butler's books at Powell's

Stephen Dixon

About Stephen Dixon, who was nominated by the Rake, another one of our underrated writers, J. Robert Lennon, writes:

Dixon is always clever, but never precious. He will try anything. He'll write a pornographic story with all the dirty words misspelled ("Milk Is Very Good for You"). He'll write a story with all the dialogue removed, but the dialogue tags left in ("Said"). He'll write a monologue containing half a dozen nested quotes (30, his best novel). He'll write a story about himself losing the National Book Award then fantasizing about winning it ("The Victor"). Never is he doing this to impress you, though you are impressed; he is making the mechanics of the prose answer to the fears and flaws of his characters. He is showing you the comedy of sex, the futility of words, the stratiation of thought, the perils of vanity. Critics have called Dixon difficult, perverted, pretentious. Their hearts are pitifully small. You have to go into a Dixon book the way you'd go into a game of strip poker: ready to end up naked. He gives it to you straight, and means every word. He is the least pretentious living writer.

More about Stephen Dixon
+  Jonathan Lethem on Stephen Dixon
+  An Interview with Dixon
+  Rake's review of Dixon's Old Friends
+  Stephen Dixon reflects on his life's work
+  Dixon's literature map
+  Buy Dixon's latest novel, Phone Rings

Stanley Elkin

According to the Literary Encyclopedia, Stanley Elkin (selected by Rake) "profoundly influenced many avant-garde American and European fiction writers through the example he set as a craftsman ferociously dedicated to his art and to his stylistic innovations, through his counsel in university and writers’ conference settings, though his radical innovations with the possibilities inherent in language, and through his substantial, varied body of fiction, charting the evolution of American middle-class culture from the Great Depression to the beginning of the 1990s."

More about Stanley Elkin
+  Elkin interview in The Paris Review (DNA of Literature)
+  Center for Book Culture: Interview with Elkin
+  "Reading Stanley Elkin" by Rick Moody
+  Audio interviews with Elkin
+  An interesting Washington Post Book World discussion from 2001 about Elkin's Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers
+  Elkin has a spot on the St. Louis Walk of Fame

Steve Erickson

Rake had this to say about Steve Erickson:  "Absolutely no one like him, in my opinion.  Has a wild imagination and uses fantastic recurring elements in his fiction that are, nontheless, always grounded in (and, in some sense, are manifestations of) common human feelings: lust, grief, loss, fear, desire, and so on."

More about Steve Erickson
+  A thorough page on Erickson, including a biography, bibliography, and links, from the Complete Review
+  More Erickson links
+  Rake's Q&A with Erickson
+  Beatrice's interview with him
+  Erickson's appearance on KCRW's Bookworm to discuss Our Ecstatic Days
+  Erickson's literature map

J. Robert Lennon

This writer was nominated by Your Pal, the Rake for the list. Lennon has published four novels, The Light of the Falling Stars, The Funnies, On the Night Plain, and Mailman, and a collection of stories. It's this collection of stories, Pieces for the Left Hand, that the Rake singles out for praise. YPTR describes Lennon as "not a prose poet, exactly, but a guy with great skill at miniature narrative." The collection consists of 100 short shorts, its title an echo of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand. Indeed, Lennon is also a musician and recorded a CD of 100 short songs as a companion piece to the collection. Fascinating stuff, reminding one of a cross between the B-52s and the end of They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18.

More about J. Robert Lennon
+  An excellent review of Pieces at nthposition
+  Lennon's website and his briefly run, but-still-worth-a-read blog
+  The CD that is designed to accompany Pieces (tracks can be streamed here, as well)
+  Lennon reads "The Accursed Items" in Act V of This American Life (at about 51:30--you've got to hear this)