Tag Archives: Ron Riekki

Tell our readers about U.P. What do they need to know?

Uh, I don’t know what to say.  What they need to know?  Umm, it’s gotten great reviews in every publication that’s reviewed it except for one publication in Alabama, so I think that pretty much says it all.  If you like Alabama literature, you won’t like my novel.  Every other state and we’re golden–although Mississippi’s a bit of a debate.  The Alabama critic implied that my novel made him want to vomit, which I’m going to take as a compliment.  You know in The Fly–the Cronenberg version–where the baboon goes through the telepod and comes out the other side turned inside-out.  Well, take a Fannie Flagg novel, put it in the same machine and, if a similar malfunction occurs, then you’ll have U.P. (But if the machine is fixed, then you’re just gonna get the same Fannie Flagg novel back, and you don’t want that, so it’s better if the machine is broken.  Except with baboons.  With baboons it’s important to fix the damn machine.)  If you’re more into Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, Harry Crews, Mark Leyner, Richard Allen, Jack Kerouac, Tama Janowitz, Philip K Dick, or Clarence Cooper, Jr., then pick up my novel.  I don’t know what else to say.  Plugging my book always feels weird.  I tend to ramble about other things than plugging the novel when I do interviews.

John Casey said, “I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to read U.P. He’d love it.”  And Casey was actually friends with Vonnegut.  You need to know that.  It’s very, very important to your life that you know that. Continue reading →