To compare Willeford to Fitzgerald is barking up the wrong
dead white man literary
legend (sorry about that). Kafka is more like it; Willeford
worked in the absurdist
tradition. I also think that he bears comparison to his
contemporaries Terry
Southern and Bruce Jay Friedman in that he was a master of
black humor.
COCKFIGHTER, a retelling of episodes from Homer removed to
the underworld of blood
sport in the American South, is about as absurd as you can
get. And it's a terrific
book. (I take that back: Writing a memoir about hemorrhoid
surgery is about as
absurd as you can get; of course, Willeford did that,
too.)
I'm not convinced that there will be people around in 50
years who will know how to
read -- or at least people with a long enough attention span
to be able to read an
entire book. But if there are, I suspect someone will be
reading Willeford.
Kip
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.