About Me
I am a novel by American author D. Harlan Wilson . I was published by Raw Dog Screaming Press .I call myself a memoir. But I'm really a work of fiction. Aren't all memoirs really works of fiction? Isn't everything a work of fiction? Here's the description of me on my book cover:Rutger Van Trout has worse problems than his mundane existence in the all-consuming, all-suppressing Vulgaria of Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's not that his son might be turning into a werewolf, or that his daughter might be a nymphomaniac. The problem does not lie in his obsession with transforming his middle-class estate into a three-ring barnyard, nor in the shrunken head collection under the bed. He doesn't even mind his wife's (possibly) haunted skeleton or the freak-of-the-week superheroes and window-jumpers populating his neighborhood. The complication has invaded his community in the form of a new breed of serial killer, one who stalks from house to house throughout the Vulgaria leaving a bloodbath that would make Jack the Ripper himself blush. The killer's name is Mr. Blankety Blank, and Rutger Van Trout's neighborhood is on the wrong end of a killing spree.Here's what my author said about me in a short interview:Here's my author reading my first chapter in Chicago, July 10, 2008, at Quimby's Bookstore. The reading is in two parts. In the first part, author DAVID AGRANOFF provides an introduction:Here's what a few other authors have said about me:"'Destroy time so that chaos may be ordered' was the instruction more than half a century ago of Mailer's Man Who Studied Yoga and D. Harlan Wilson has taken that advice seriously; here is a novel which implodes and conflates autobiography, biography, history, quasi-history, alternate history and Occam's Safety Razor in a fashion which I find utterly original and utterly discommoding. The exquisite tilt of this novel runs us all off the board and on; its originality is a weapon. Firing at that bullseye on time." BARRY N. MALZBERG, John Campbell Award-winning author of BEYOND APOLLO & PHASE IV"Be not embarrassed to laugh out loud at this nasty book. Wilson has reinvented the genre of demonic sci-fi slapstick. Nothing close to it since the unwritten Portnow's Restraint. Intelligent, wicked, erudite, maniacal. What a talent. And this is the first ever cross species collaboration. The pages penned by his companionable ape are achingly close to humanoid. Read this book and bask in the energy of a living imagination." STEVE KATZ, America Award-winning author of SWANNY'S WAY"If you had a time machine and could secure the living brains of James Thurber and Andre Breton ripped untimely from their skulls, run them through a juicer, then mainline the blended liquid neurons, you might become a writer like D. Harlan Wilson. In fact, I know with certainty that this is how he actually got his start. As evidenced by his new 'Memoir of Vulgaria,' BLANKETY BLANK, we are facing a writer who can evoke howls of pity and tears of laughter on the same page, and generally within the same sentence. In this 'multimedia' novel, suburban inanity and insanity are depicted in loving and intimate depth, resulting in a furiously animated canvas equal parts Bosch and Tex Avery. Imagine an episode of THE SIMPSONS scripted by Robert Coover and Donald Barthelme, then directed by Michel Gondry, and you won't be far off the mark. If this be 'interstitial' fiction, then it's a case of the interstices expanding like a galaxy to overwhelm whatever bland shores once flanked them." PAUL DI FILIPPO, author of COSMOCOPIA"BLANKETY BLANK is both vulgar and vulva—a masterful DJ mix of the sounds and sights of avant-pop, avant-porn, critifiction, and (yes) post-cyberpunk sensibilities. Mixing the academic with the asylum (i.e. academentia), Blankety Blank shoots forth ficto-history, the post-essay, and celebrity reality TV form the barrel of its Magnum Opus. Indeed D. Harlan Wilson holds the Avant-Prof Chair vacated by Lance Olsen, briefly held by Mark Amerika, and passed up by David Foster Wallace. A fine promotion, I say with the possibility of tenure for ten years. Consider, please, if you will, what Jean Baudrillard's ghost channeled to me via Channel 3: 'Tenure is better than manure!' Translation: there's a lot of shit being published these days, but this tasty novel ain't crap. It's cake. So, to quote Marie Antoinette, eat it!" MICHAEL HEMMINGSON, author of THE DIRTY REALIST DUOMy cover was designed by graphic artist, filmmaker and musicion BRANDON DUNCAN. See more of his work at Corporate Demon .Here's my author's banner:
