Heresies and Seditions

HERESIES AND SEDITIONS can best be described as intelligent fun. The Latin word satura means both satire and a mixed dish or medley. My book is a salmagundi of insolent satires, wacky improvisations, decarboxylated yarns, imaginary interviews, fugitive visions, crystalline lyrics, mystical runes, rhymes and misdemeanors. . . . It generally avoids the standard narcotizing narrative of popular fiction and should appeal to readers with a sense of humor who aren't afraid of the literature of ideas. The "e;heresies"e; part of the title refers to writings on themes drawn from esoteric religions, especially Gnosticism. The book combines fiction and verse in a rather original way. Prose pieces are followed by poems, which modulate between sections, and there is a structural logic and flow from beginning to end, as in a musical composition. The movement is from sheer farce ("e;Strange Doings"e;) to parodies of Swift ("e;Another Modest Proposal"e;), Stevens ("e;Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Yuppie"e;) and the King James Bible ("e;The Book of Mammon"e;) to a caustic critique of the American nightmare ("e;Mr. K. and the Demons"e;) to the philosophical satires of "e;Conversation with an Archon"e; and "e;Mythos."e;I write what I have to write and not what I think an editor or niche audience will like. Since some of the topics I deal with are potentially depressing, I have chosen to treat them in a humorous or fanciful way that expresses sobering truths without dispiriting the reader.