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OLIVER NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2010
THE NINTH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 AND ADAM ENGEL'S I HOPE MY CORPSE GIVES YOU THE PLAGUE
ABOUT ADAM ENGEL
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 ERIC LARSEN, FOUNDER & PUBLISHER
"The Nation's Last Truly Independent Press" 
9/11
 
AND A NEW BOOK BY ADAM ENGEL,
 
 I HOPE MY CORPSE GIVES YOU THE PLAGUE: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH ERA OF GHOSTS
 
Those two simple numbers, nine-slash-one-one, having grown iconic over the past nine years, are, for everyone who sees, hears, or recalls them, fraught with ugliness, fear, terror,  murder, cold-bloodedness, ruthlessness,  and abomination. And yet many, many fewer people per capita in the United States know the truth about what actually happened on that date, September 11, 2001, than do proportionate numbers of people in the world's other nations.
 
Americans alone  remain the most un-informed, disinformed, and anti-informed about the true nature of 9/11 and what happened on that day.
 
This purposely-created ignorance is as great a crime as 9/11 itself, or even a greater one, since that perpetuated ignorance is what has made possible ancillary, resultant, and on-going crimes against humanity immeasurably greater even than the ghastly crime of 9/11 itself.
 
The Oliver Arts & Open Press sees this anniversary of 9/11 as an occasion to be  met by every single one of us with the greatest of sobriety and reverence, and with an unflagging seriousness constituted in equal parts of the emotional, the intellectual, the humane, and the political.
 
Accordingly, the Oliver Arts & Open Press has chosen September 11, 2010, as the official publication date of one of its most important books so far, a collection of pieces  by Adam Engel that were written, for the most part,  during the  first four years (and a bit beyond) of the George W. Bush presidency. These essays--or pieces--aside from being invariably and consistently brilliant in their own artistry, wit, and inventiveness, are both timely and important for other reasons as well. Assembed under the remarkable title of I HOPE MY CORPSE GIVES YOU THE PLAGUE: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH ERA OF GHOSTS, these pieces never fail to address and analyze their subject in anything other than the same four ways it behooves us to look at 9/11 itself: Intellectually, humanistically, politically, and emotionally.
 
The writings of Adam Engel are a literary achievement of an extremely rare kind and daring. They are a monumental example of writing--serious, impassioned, and above all truth-telling--that is no longer permitted, welcome, or tolerated in the realms of what is still inaccurately called "mainstream publishing."
 
For these reasons, Oliver celebrates and praises CORPSE. And it also celebrates its own great fortune in being able to make available a book so vital, courageous, death-defying, and--above all--truth-telling as this one. We can only hope that this freedom--not only to publish inimitable excellence, but to publish truth--that this freedom will not soon perish also, as so many of the freedoms that are salient and intrinsic to our nation and its origins have already done.
 
Corpse Cover LargeIf you, as we do, value these lost freedoms, rights, and dignities, decry their having been taken from us, and live in the impassioned hope of their restoration, we pray that you will buy, read, talk about, pass around, give away--and even enjoy (for, among its many other virtues, it is laugh-aloud hilarious) Adam Engel's magnificent and important book, I HOPE MY CORPSE GIVES YOU THE PLAGUE: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH ERA OF GHOSTS.
 
 
 
ABOUT ADAM ENGEL 
                                                                            
Photo credit: Peggy Carter
 
At one time, Adam Engel wrote this of himself:
He was once sixteen and roamed tree-lined streets and wide green schoolyards under cerulean suburban skies. He believed he was Shelley, and that his tiny girlfriend, who worked in a shoe-store, was Mary Shelley. Now he is probably only you, or someone you know. Who knows, really? He could be anyone, maybe even me. . . But he is no longer Shelley, nor will he ever know Mary again.
And then, at another time, he wrote this:
Adam Engel grew up in Jericho, Long Island. About twenty-five years after that, he finished his first masterpiece, Topiary, a Novel. Corpse is his second. He is working on a third. He'd probably get along reasonably well with your mother, but hate your father, due to unresolved conflicts that have nothing to do with current realities.