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OLIVER NEWSLETTER MARCH 2013
IS THERE HOPE? (1)
IS THERE HOPE? (2)
IS THERE HOPE? (3)
IN THE MEANWHILE. . .

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 ERIC LARSEN, FOUNDER & PUBLISHER
ADAM ENGEL, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
"The Nation's Last Truly Independent Press" 
 FOR A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS  FROM
THE OLIVER ARTS & OPEN PRESS

IS THERE HOPE? (1) 

THE WORLD IS ENDING, SOME SAY;
OLIVER CHOOSES TO STAY

It's a great question: "Who's minding the store?" Certainly not the dead body  that some people still call "Congress." Ditto for the Executive Branch, a selection of whose mottos might include "Kill 'em first, think about it later--if at all," "Full Drone Ahead," and "Down with the Constitution." And the "Judiciary?" Enough said. 

 

Man Falling from Balloon   

 

We at Oliver, however, even in times as malignant, horrendous, and terrorizing as these, choose to remain on the side of hope. We choose, that is, practically speaking, to keep and hold our faith in the significance and strength that we still believe can be created by the best (not most base) expression and creations of the unified human mind and heart, particularly in literary forms.

 

To wit. See (and read) The Phantom of dev/nul  Followers of Oliver's publications will be familiar already with The Phantom, whose writings--and recommendations for reading--may seem to snort only dragon-cinders of despair. In actuality, however (as any who look will find), they drink from the sunlight of hope, eat the foods of truth, and sing in the syllables of high courage.

 

To wit. The Phantom introduces a writer of world importance and directs you to a piece of her work called "Suicidal Girls." We speak of none other than the great Barbara Mor. Please look, read, ponder, and admire.

 

To wit. In his wisdom, The Phantom runs a poem--"Education"--by writer Alan Salant, author of the laconic-philosophic short novel Ablong and the philosophic-laconic book of poems The Expedition Sets Out.

 

To wit. The Phantom, again in his wisdom, introduces the brilliant and enigmatic writer known as--well, allow The Phantom to introduce him:

 

Dr. Spaeiouk (pronounced "spake, speak, spike, spoke and spook" according to both class and dialect in various regions of his native land), has been a researcher and perception manager since immigrating to The Nation many years ago. He might or might not be working on his memoir, "Spaeiouk, Memory," which might or might not be plausibly denied. Don't know him? Not to worry. He most certainly knows you. Very well. Very well indeed...

 

Read more by Dr. Spaeiouk here, in the pages of the respected and important magazine, Dissident Voice. 

 

 IS THERE HOPE? (2) 

PAUL LEVY'S DISPELLING WETIKO

IS A SECOND CAUSE FOR HOPE

  
 

If you haven't heard of Paul Levy--well, heads up!! It's time to catch up with this extraordinarily important thinker and writer. And, after you're done catching up, it's time to spread the word about Paul Levy to any and all, everywhere in the world, who seek life on the side of hope and the repairing of humanity.
  

Permit us to be orderly in our presentation. 

  

First, Levy is author of The Madness of George W. Bush, A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis (2006). Simply, this book is indispensable to any who would like to understand the nature of evil, first, and the exact nature, second, of evil's place in our leaders today, in our politics, in our wars, and in ourselves. Infinitely superior to, infinitely more perceptive, and infinitely more durable than the once-popular Bush on the Couch (Justin A. Frank, MD; 2005), The Madness remains every bit as relevant today as it was in the abysmal depths of the second Bush administration. Read about the book here and here.

 

Second, Levy is author of the newly released Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil  (North Atlantic Books). This volume, like its predecessor, is not only fascinating, riveting, and, like all Levy's work, consistently crunchy and prickly with thought, but it is also, in two words, overwhelmingly revelatory. What's it about? In a line or two:  

 

There is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus--which Native Americans have called "wetiko"--covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests. An inner cancer of the soul, wetiko flavors and manages our perceptions by stealth and subterfuge so as to act itself out through us while simultaneously hiding itself from being seen.

   

A guarantee: Neither while reading nor after reading Dispelling Wetiko will you again look at the world around you the same way as you might have before. 

 

Go here for a sample from the Introduction by Catherine Austin Fitts, for a wonderfully clarifying description of the book's central tenets, and for part of what the famed performer, Sting, has to say about it. And click on the blue initials below the telephone to read what Oliver's publisher and editor, Eric Larsen, had to say about it.

  TELEPHONE PLAIN 

EL

IS THERE HOPE? (3)
THE NOVELS OF ETHAN COOPER

 

In Control (1999)

Smooth in Meetings (2003)

Tom's Job (2008)

Trip at the Top (2012)  

   

Is  it still possible--in this "age of simplification and deceit"--to find real fiction? That is, does fiction still exist that genuinely knows what its subject is and remains true to it; that's not politicized in all the worst meanings of that word; that's unfalsified by the brutish tyrannies of trend, fashion, pose, fad, and "market"? Is it still possible, in other words, to find that culturally invaluable--and oxymoronic--gem, "honest fiction"?

 

Imagine our pleasure at stumbling upon the work of Ethan Cooper, a quartet of novels about corporate life that pass every test of the real thing: They remain true to themselves; they remain true to their own aessthetics; they remain true to their own subjects; and they remain true to their own reason for being--at least if that reason for being is the same as Oliver's definition: Namely, that the purpose of fiction is to tell the truth about existence in a way that itself is also true.

 

These four novels may not compete in the ersatz-glitter and razzle-dazzle realms of, say, the Mailer/Pynchon/DeLillo leagues; what they are, instead, are books that capture life as it is; that refuse to misrepresent or distort that life; and that chronicle it with the authentic, dedicated, impartial, painstaking accuracy that raises narrative to the substantiality and durability of--yup, art.

 

The foundation-stones of these books may be Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert, or, equally, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and John O'Hara. They're built on stone. Cooper's renderings of corporate life aren't the typical sort of thing that in most fiction passes for "real" while having its actual birthplace in television, soap opera, the movies. Cooper looks, carefully and steadily, at the thing itself and offers us genuine and unadorned accuracies of lives lived daily inside--and inside the individual lives--of the business world. The novels of Ethan Cooper, in short, are a rarity today: Fiction that's real, true, penetrating, and--hang onto your hat--free of any affectation whatsoever.

 

First in the tetralogy is the Minneapolis-set In Control (1999), followed by the also-Minnesota-set Smooth in Meetings (2003). Tom's Job (2008) splits its time between Minneapolis and New York, while the wondrous and adept Trip at the Top (2012) takes as its turf Midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side.

 

Here's a test for real fiction, the kind, that is, far too rare, that's written by grownups for grownups: If the first page draws an alert and intelligent reader not only on to the second page but all the way to the end of the book--and if it does so without hype, without psychological shortcuts, without phony and pre-fab characters, and without tie-ins to "current events" and a thousand-and-two consumer products--if a book passes this test, it may be a good book.

 

Ethan Cooper's books are good ones, all four of them. Pick them up and see for yourself. And then--spread the word. 

 

IN THE MEANWHILE. . .

 

OLIVER AND ITS GRACIOUS BENEFACTORS
  

Working without assets, endowment, or reserves, The Oliver Arts & Open Press aims to publish works of high merit and importance that are ignored or suppressed by mainstream publishing. If you care about this cause and are able or would like to help with it, we at Oliver would be enormously grateful, as would the authors whose work we seek to celebrate and make known. To donate, make a check or money order out to "Eric Larsen Press" and mail it to: 

The Oliver Arts & Open Press

2578 Broadway (Suite #102)

New York, New York 10025

 

Our deepest thanks to these kind, generous, and thoughtful benefactors

of The Oliver Arts & Open Press:

 

Michael Fahey

Roxanne Griffith

Michael J. Rivard

Helen Tzagoloff