The following posts include (1) "footnotes" for The Doris Piserchia Website (link at left), (2) texts-in-process that will eventually appear there, (3) texts from other websites, and (we hope) (4) stimulating discussion threads. The picture to the left is the back cover of The Spinner (book club edition), depicting a citizen of Eastland "hanging out" while Ekler the cop and Rune the idiot-superman look on.
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Justin E.A. Busch publishes a small fanzine (as in physically small -- each issue is 4 1/2 x 3 inches) called Dreams Renewed: Essays on Rediscovering Neglected Pleasures of Fantastic Fiction. His first issue discusses Doris Piserchia's 1981 novel Earth in Twilight. Here's an excerpt:
Some critics bracketed [Piserchia] with the New Wave. [Her] breathlessly paced prose, combined with an underlying sense of anger about humanity's indifference to its own destructive choices and actions, does occasionally resonate with the tone of Michael Moorcock's New Worlds. Now, though, it is clear that she is really a literary descendant of A.E. Van Vogt, pursuing complicated plots across vividly imagined landscapes portrayed through constantly shifting perspectives. Her aliens, especially, act in ways bizarre in a human context commonsensical on their own mental and physical terms. Unlike most of Van Vogt's work, though, Piserchia's is imbued with a mordant sense of humor, which adds an appealing touch of grotesquerie at apposite moments...
For information on this and other essays in the Dreams Renewed series, write to Justin E.A. Busch, 308 Prince St., #422, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55101.