Raymond Federman
SHHH Twilight
of the Bums My Body in Nine
Parts The Voice in the Closet
Raymond Federman (1928-2009) emigrated to the United States in 1947. In
some 30 works self-described as "surfiction," "playgiarism,"
and "laughterature," he built a myth of himself out of his life
story and its constantly changing and reinterpreted particulars, questioning
language's ability to fully represent experience while at the same time
continuing a passion to tell stories in new and inventive ways. His novel
Double or Nothing won the Frances Steloff Prize for Innovative
Fiction in 1971, and his Smiles on Washington Square won an American
Book Award in 1985, in addition to numerous recognitions his books have
received in Germany, France, and elsewhere.
FEDERMAN'S BLOG ["The
Laugh that Laughs at the Laugh"]
FEDERMAN'S MYSPACE PAGE
["I play ping-pong alone from both sides..."]
FEDERMAN
INTERVIEW : RAIN TAXI REVIEW OF BOOKS : FALL 2006
SHHH - $18
SHHH: The Story of a Childhood
SHHH tells the incredible story of Raymond Federman's
escape from the round-up of French Jews in Paris in 1942, during the Holocaust.
As French police came up the stairs to the family's apartment, Federman's
mother said, "Shhh," and pushed the then-14 year-old boy into a closet. The
other members of his family, his father, mother, and two sisters, perished
in Auschwitz.
But no story by Federman has ever been simply told, and SHHH
is no exception. Defying conventions of both the memoir and the novel,
Federman tells stories of his childhood that may or may not be true, but
can never simply be called false, either. The result is a complex and masterful
work by a writer whose final works may be his best an author who, while
too avant-garde for the tastes of American publishers, is considered a major
writer in Germany, France, and elsewhere in the world, and has had a small
but dedicated following in the US for more than three decades.
"In Chut, Federman tells the final chapter of
the biography he has been recalling for some forty years. The original
'shhh' of his mother as she pushed him into the closet. To the question
'why me?' he still doesn't have an answer, but he dedicates the book to
this person who saved him. And he tries to rebuild his childhood with blocks
of words. This childhood is inevitably full of holes not only because
he doesn't remember it entirely, but also because he makes digressive lists
of things to remember and then forgets things off them. He makes lists,
promises to tell other stories later, doesn't tell them but then benefits
from the non-telling to make a poem. In short, full-blown 'Federmanism.'
With contempt for chronology, he describes a childhood without beginning
or end." - Le Monde (Paris), July 11, 2008,
in a review of Chut, the French version of the
text Federman has "transacted" into English as SHHH.
PUBLICATION OF SHHH: THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD
IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY A GRANT FROM THE MELODIA JONES CHAIR OF ROMANCE
LANGUAGES AT UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO.
The Twilight of the Bums - $16
Twilight of the Bums
by Raymond Federman and George Chambers, illustrated by T. Motley.
More than 80 riffs, rants, and microfictions by two old bums, er, that is,
MASTERS - perfectly complemented by the avant-comic artistry of T. Motley.
Renowned throughout Europe and with books translated into 14 langauges, Raymond
Federman is considered a major figure in world literature. In The
Twilight of the Bums he teams with fellow-innovative fiction pioneer
George Chambers (the two share the same birthday and shoe size), for a collaborative
send-up of buddy-fictions from Waiting for Godot
on down. At turns tender, hilarious, iconoclastic, and maddening, Twilight
of the Bums is exemplary of the lettres de merde
style Federman has designated laughterature.
"Stan & Oliver. Frog & Toad, Bud & Lou, The Sunshine Boys, Bill
& Ted, Bouvard & Pécuchet - but most of all Vladimir & Estragon
- stand behind this book like defrocked priests at an inquest. Old men rule!,
at least in the glimmer of a watery eye and inconstant heart." Charles
Bernstein
George Chambers was born in Cambridge, Mass., in
1931. He is the author of four previous books, including Null
Set (Fiction Collective, 1977).
Raymond Federman was born in Paris, France, in 1928.
He is the author of over 20 individual titles in English, including the novels
Double or Nothing, Take it
or Leave it, Smiles on Washington Square,
and Aunt Rachel's Fur, and two books published
by Starcherone, The Voice in the Closet
and My Body in Nine Parts.
T. Motley wasn't born at all but sprang fully formed
out of an inkstand. The creator of Hector, Aline the Alien, and many more
comics and characters, he has been creating comics for over 20 years. More
of his work can be seen at tmotley.com.
He lives in Brooklyn.
ISBN-13 978-0-9788811-3-9. 120 oversized (8.5"x11") pages.
Print run: 2,000. Price: $16.00
Official release: May 15, 2008
Contact: Ted Pelton, Starcherone Books, PO Box 303, Buffalo, NY 14201. Phone:
716-885-2726. Fax: 716-885-2726. ted@starcherone.com
Distribution through Small Press Distribution.
My Body in Nine Parts - $16
My Body in Nine Parts
For over thirty years, Raymond Federman has been dazzling readers with his
unique brand of "surfiction" - throwing words all over the page and inserting
himself into every fiction, often through such zany alter egos as Moinous
and Namredef. Now comes the greatest self-referential work of all as Federman
spins all manner of tales off various parts of his own body, recounting his
childhood in France, adult life in the US, Jewish heritage, and career as
a writer, with no effort made to distinguish between fact & fiction, memory
& imagination.
Previously published in France as Mon corps en neuf parties,
Federman's masterpiece is now available for the first time in English in an
oversize 7x10 inch edition, with augmented translation by the author and ten
photographs by photographer Steve Munez.
"A man of such joyful vitality that he will sweep anyone away." L'Humanité
(France)
"Raymond Federman, inarguably one of the most significant vanguard writers
of the second half of the twentieth century and first years of the twenty
first, here writes through and about the text of the body in order to celebrate
how after forty every piece of us is an achievement and a nearly unbelievable
fiction, and to offer us an hilariously digressive and wildly exuberant Fuck-You
to the idea of aging." Lance Olsen
"One could expect Federman's text to be narcissistic and self-absorbed --
but Federman's an artist, and his meditations go all over the place. On speaking
French-accented English and being accused of speaking English-accented French;
on his large, Semitic nose and the insults it's been forced to endure; on
the distinct characters of his ten toes -- Federman's work always takes on
larger issues of exile and home, nature and nurture - with disarming humor."
Janet Holmes, Humanophone.com
"Raymond Federman's My Body in Nine Parts once
again shows why he's widely considered to be the most radically innovative
and narcissistic (in the best sense of the word) of all contemp-orary American
authors. I realize that my own body parts are far less memorable than Federman's,
but nonetheless I would like to add: TWO THUMBS UP!" Larry
McCaffery
The Voice in the Closet - $9
The Voice in the Closet
The Voice in the Closet is at the very center
of the work of the work of Raymond Federman, a writer whose worldwide importance
is unquestioned. The Voice in the Closet is a
20-page single-sentence text which simulaneously tells and refuses to allow
a simple telling of the author's most formative experience: how, as a 14 year-old
boy, when the French police came to his family's parents' apartment to initiate
their deportation to the death camps, Federman's mother pushed him into a
closet where he was able to escape detection and thus lived while his parents
and two sisters were put to death.
"The Voice in the Closet astonishes . . . nothing
in his previous work prepares us for the obsessive immediacy of this." Peter
Quartermain
Reprinted from the long out-of-print Coda Press edition of 1979, Starcherone
Books's edition also includes reproductions of two collage paintings by artist
Terri Katz Kasimov, from her Federman Series, as well as an introduction by
Gerard Bucher and a note on the text by Starcherone founder and director,
Ted Pelton.