I’m like 50 pages from the end of Fran Ross’s 1974 Oreo and I simply don’t understand how this novel is so erased or ignored in most discussions of postmodern classics. (It could be ignorance—mine for sure—or erasure, or sure, structural racism in publishing and literary criticism—I mean, I feel like every list that compels someone to read Thomas Pynchon and Kathy Acker and John Barth and Stanley Elkin and Ishmael Reed and Robert Coover should include Fran Ross, Fran Ross’s novel Oreo, Fran Ross’s only novel Oreo, why is there only one novel by Fran Ross, Oreo? What I’m trying to say is: Why didn’t I read this until now? Although reading it now has felt like a gift of some kind.)
This thing—Oreo, that is—zapped me on like page three or four with this ditty–
I mean, c’mon!
I owe Oreo a proper write-up, if I can ever muster such a thing again, which maybe I can’t.
I also picked up, almost entirely at random, Grace Krilanovich’s novel The Orange Eats Creeeps. The spine and title struck me, I saw it was a Two Dollar Radio publication, and when I fished it from the shelf, I read Steve Erickson’s blurb and just went with it. Here’s Two Dollar’s blurb:
A girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along “The Highway That Eats People,” stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks’ “Bob” and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl.
I also found a Donald Barthelme collection with an Edward Gorey cover:
Business card for the NC-based artist Hannah Dansie, likely obtained at an arts fair in Asheville, NC, late 2018. Inside Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South, pages 106-07. Did I finish The Dog of the South? Yes I did.
An actual bookmark from the indie publisher Two Dollar Radio, obtained in 2020 when I purchased their edition of Rudolph Wurlitzer’s Nog. Inside Rudolph Wurlitzer’s Nog, between the cover and the first page. Did I finish Nog? Yes I did.
Entrance ticket for Wat Pho, obtained in Bangkok, Thailand, in the fall of 2002. Found inside Thomas Pynchon’s V., pages 228-29 (the beginning of “Mondaugen’s Story.” Did I finish V.? Yes I did.
Postcard from the Greek indie publisher Pilotless Press celebrating Allen Kechagiar’s chapbook The Mundane History of Lockwood Heights. Obtained via the publisher in 2012. Inside of Barry Hannah’s Long, Last, Happy, page 254-55. Did I finish The Mundane History of Lockwood Heights? Yes I did.
Card #30 (from Airtight Garage) of a set of Moebius collector cards, circa 1993. Obtained in a pack of Moebius Collector Cards purchased from Floating World Comics in Portalnd, Oregon, in July of 2019. Inside Jim Dodge’s Fup, pages 24-25. Did I finish Fup? No I did not.
Biblioklept 