An Array of Utopian Flowers
-
The Literary Labyrinth of Stephen T. Vessels
Posted on November 27, 2022 | No Comments - Indigenous Voices from the Northeast: Past, Present and Future
Posted on November 26, 2022 | 1 Comment - Microplastics Are Everywhere: What’s The Risk?
Posted on November 22, 2022 | No Comments - Solving the Climate Crisis Through Global Soil Health with Didi Pershouse
Posted on November 20, 2022 | No Comments - Visionary Art of Lakota Sundance Chief Marvin Swallow
Posted on November 14, 2022 | 2 Comments
-
WilderUtopia in 102 Languages
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in SBLitJo
Santa Barbara Literary Journal released ‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’ in June 2019, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Buy the book!
literary fiction Archive
-
The Literary Labyrinth of Stephen T. Vessels
Posted on November 27, 2022 | No CommentsCheck out this Jack Eidt interview with the late author Stephen T. Vessels on his childhood fascination with the collective unconscious, his use of the I Ching for divination of the present, and other stories. -
The Fortunate One – A Short Story by Jack Eidt
Posted on October 5, 2022 | 1 CommentCheck out this excerpt from Jack Eidt's short story, "The Fortunate One," published in "Oh, Fortuna! Volume 7" from the Santa Barbara Literary Journal. -
Corridor of the Surreal: Silver Webb and Jack Eidt Talk ‘City of Illumination’
Posted on January 27, 2021 | 3 CommentsJack Eidt talks with Silver Webb on his surreal trip to the Underworld story "City of Illumination," published by Borda Books in Delirium Corridor, A Dark Anthology, curated by Max Talley. It includes fifteen tales of psychological suspense, altered states, noir crime, and the surreal. -
Courting Delirium: Max Talley and his Dark Zeitgeist
Posted on January 9, 2021 | 2 CommentsJack Eidt from WilderUtopia.com had a chat with novelist Max Talley about the recent book he curated and contributed two stories to, called Delirium Corridor, A Dark Anthology, from Borda Books/Santa Barbara Literary Journal. -
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in Santa Barbara Literary Journal
Posted on June 3, 2019 | 4 CommentsSanta Barbara Literary Journal releases Bellatrix: Volume 3 this June, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt's psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Join us for readings and other entertainments in SB on June 14. -
Mild Satire, Outrage and Hostility, with Philip Roth
Posted on June 2, 2018 | No CommentsHis alter-ego Zuckerman, unconsciously frightened of success and of failure, frightened of being admired and also despised, frightened of being frightened, he unconsciously suppressed his talent, frightened of what it might do next. On the passing of Philip Roth, we look into his often black comic chronicles of an imagined life, his taking down and reshaping the meaning of 'Jewish American', and his play at historic re-creating the zeitgeist within the form of the novel. -
Stranger in Tangier: Paul Bowles Under The Sheltering Sky
Posted on November 14, 2017 | 3 CommentsPaul Bowles during his life (1910-1999) remained aloof from all the hipsters and hypesters of U.S. letters. Living in self-imposed exile in Tangier, he had cast a spell over such talents as Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg. We revisit an essay penned by Jay McInerny in 1985, on how the inimitable expatriate writer-composer's dark arts retain their power, even more so 32 years later. -
Jack Eidt’s ‘The Blue Basement’ on Luna Review
Posted on June 18, 2017 | No CommentsAn excerpt of Jack Eidt's recent novel 'Nowhere Beckons' was published in the Luna Review. Called 'The Blue Basement', it narrates the protagonist T.'s visionary descent into the urban underworld, where ideas, light, and color blend, and surviving on the journey to the end of the night is everything. -
Max Talley Story: A Secret Utopia Called Devorah
Posted on July 28, 2016 | 1 CommentMax Talley's surreal and disturbing story posits a lone traveler who stumbles into an eerie alternative universe, a quiet utopia, or a slow death trap. Read the entire story for free online at Chantwood Magazine. -
Monte Schulz’s Beautiful Jazz Age Tragedy in ‘Crossing Eden’
Posted on June 14, 2016 | 1 CommentMonte Schulz's literary novel Crossing Eden (Fantagraphics Books), sweeps across the Midwestern U.S. landscape through the story of a family pulled apart in the Jazz Age summer of 1929. A failed businessman, seduced by city lights and the dream of wealth and power, divides himself from his wife and children, while a troubled farm boy runs away from home in the company of a gangster. -
Geo-Fauvism and Anthropocene: Altered Planet, Wild Literature
Posted on June 4, 2016 | 3 CommentsWelcome to the Anthropocene age, where humans have transmogrified the planet, its oceans and atmosphere, caused mass extinctions and wholesale contamination that will remain for millennia. Beyond the politicians and scientists, the way forward remains in the hands of writers, artists, and designers taking inspiration from wild earth in a movement called Geo-Fauvism. -
B. Traven: Underground Anarchist in the Mexican Jungle
Posted on March 27, 2016 | 4 CommentsB. Traven, German underground author, anarchist and writer of the Treasure of Sierra Madre, purposely obscured his origins to evade consequences from his revolutionary past in Germany and to stoke his literary mystery that hinged upon his words: "An author should have no other biography than his books." -
Jack Eidt and the Bison: Words to Save the World
Posted on March 20, 2016 | 1 CommentJack Eidt, reading from a literary vision quest called "Medicine Walk," Part of Environmental and Activist Poetry/Fiction at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, CA. 12/5/2015, from the Vision LA 2015 Climate Change Arts Festival. -
The Ambiguous Colors of Haruki Murakami
Posted on March 14, 2016 | No CommentsA documentary on Japanese literary postmodernist Haruki Murakami, as well as a folktale from his novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage." As the Guardian puts it: "Full of ambiguity and sex – all Murakami's signature flourishes are here." -
Death By Misadventure: Malcolm Lowry’s Gin-Sopped Volcano
Posted on October 22, 2015 | 1 CommentMalcolm Lowry’s 1947 masterpiece "Under the Volcano," about the fervid last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico, is set to the drumbeat of coming internal and external conflict. Autobiographical and reflective of the expatriated trust-funder in a futile search for an artistic home, the perpetually inebriated master got lost along the road toward his own abyss, and died under suspicious circumstances, out-of-print. -
Gabriel García Márquez on Latin American Dictatorship and Liberation
Posted on April 18, 2014 | No CommentsWe celebrate the late Colombian magical realist Gabriel García Marquez, exploring some of the highlights from his Nobel Prized Literary career. -
Jorge Luis Borges: On Literary Magic and Garden Labyrinths
Posted on January 29, 2014 | 7 CommentsJorge Luis Borges forged into the realm of literary magic, he led his readers down through the Garden of Forking Paths, wandering the red and tranquil labyrinths in Elegy, growing old in so many mirrors, seeking in vain the marble gaze of statues, compiling regrets of a fantastic nature. Watch the BBC profile on him as an elder of strange destiny who had seen nothing, or almost nothing, but the face of a girl from Buenos Aires, a face that does not want you to remember it. -
Dead Sparrow Awakening – By Jerry Collamer
Posted on December 4, 2013 | No CommentsJerry Collamer muses on the sanctity of life, the impact and burden of death, and the awakening of a child to the reality of the world. -
B. Traven’s “Macario” – Magical Realist Journey on Day of the Dead
Posted on September 7, 2013 | 4 CommentsThe Mexican film Macario (1960) weaves a tale of magical realism - with special appearances by God, the Devil and Death. It all begins on the Day of the Dead, when a campesino named Macario goes on a hunger strike. B. Traven, the mysterious German writer exiled in Mexico, wrote the story, inspired from indigenous folk tales. -
E.T.A. Hoffmann: The Soul’s Adventure on New Year’s Eve
Posted on December 31, 2012 | 2 CommentsE.T.A. Hoffmann's Literary Gothic: Every New Year's Eve the Devil keeps a special treat for me. He knows just the right moment to jam his claw into my heart, keeping up a fine mockery while he licks the blood that wells out. -
Nikolai Gogol: Magical Ukrainian Fairy Tale on Christmas Eve
Posted on December 24, 2012 | 3 CommentsDevilry and mischief pervades a cold winter holiday night in Nikolai Gogol's magical ode called The Night Before Christmas. A dark entity absconds with the moon hidden in his pocket. Thereafter, he roams around tormenting people as he pleases. -
Matt Pallamary: Guaraní Shaman’s Quest for “Land Without Evil”
Posted on December 17, 2012 | 3 CommentsMatthew Pallamary's acclaimed novel "Land Without Evil," recently performed as an aerial acrobatic stage show, narrates the true story of a young shaman of the Guaraní people of South America facing European conquest and conversion to Catholicism in the 1700s. -
William S. Burroughs – Commissioner of Literary Addictions
Posted on June 21, 2012 | 6 CommentsBurroughs wanted to free people from the slavery of addiction, whether to heroin or money or sex. "The Garden of Earthly Delights" was his shorthand for the diseased saturnalia of American affluence. From his earliest writings Burroughs foresaw a time when human beings, drenched in orgasmic "freedom," would be reduced to their bodies, their minds completely manipulated by advertising and mass media. -
Book Review: Monte Schulz’s Roaring 20s Memory Palace “The Big Town”
Posted on April 4, 2012 | 1 CommentSchulz crafts an extraordinary picture of urban life in the Roaring 20s, where modern dreamers and their romantic illusions collide with American wealth and decadence on the eve of the Great Depression. -
Monte Schulz: Dreaming Jazz America in “The Big Town”
Posted on April 2, 2012 | 1 Comment"Monte Schulz's *The Big Town* exposes decadence, wealth and consumption in Jazz Age America as spiritual myopia -- where desperate, haunting characters hinge their lives on impossible dreams. This lyrical, gripping novel is as close to 1920s America as it gets, and penned with such frightening realism that the chaos of a bygone era erupts from its pages." - Simon Van Booy
