New Releases by William Kotzwinkle

Coalville is on fire--from below. The old mines are burning, and everyone has poison gas in their brain. Maybe that's why the town is so corrupt. Now that he's a Benedictine monk, Tommy Martini never wants to see the place again--hell-raisers there hold a grudge till they die, and he's on their wish list. But a girl he once loved has gone missing, and his best friend from childhood has been murdered. Among the living is a shy girl from Tommy's past, who wants to help. Together, they learn the secret of the elephant's graveyard, and it's not in Africa. At the heart of Coalville is Parade Square, with plenty of pigeons, drugs, and child prostitution. It's the new small-town America, where Dionysus is dancing once again. William Kotzwinkle's insight into this paradigm shift is shot through with the humor he is famous for, and the result is a spicy brew, a bloody martini--just one sip may keep you up all night.

Horse Badorties se lève et se couche dans sa turne du Lower East Side, navigue du Bronx à Chinatown, plane sur les hauteurs de Brooklyn. Son immense parapluie sur l'épaule, son merveilleux ventilateur à la main - le fan man rafraîchissant - pour rester cool en toutes circonstances, Horse arpente les rues mythiques du New York sixties, maestro en quête de jolies recrues pour la Chorale de l'Amour, sa principale lubie. Sous ses allures clochardesques de Yogi foutraque, Horse garde le coeur d'un jeune homme. Sa petite santé, ses grandes idées ont la démesure héroïque de l'Ignatius de Kennedy Toole. Son langage infusé aux drogues douces, la coolitude hilarante du Big Lehowski des frères Coen. Grand roman comique, Fan Man est comme une parenthèse enchantée, un message beat enregistré, une musique éternellement juvénile. On attendait depuis 1974 la traduction française de ce livre culte.

Il était une fois un ours qui voulait devenir un homme... et qui devint écrivain. Ayant découvert un manuscrit caché sous un arbre au fin fond de la forêt du Maine, un plantigrade comprend qu'il a sous la patte le sésame susceptible de lui ouvrir les portes du monde humain - et de ses supermarchés débordants de sucreries... Le livre sous le bras, il s'en va à New York, où les éditeurs vont se battre pour publier l'oeuvre de cet écrivain si singulier - certes bourru et imprévisible, mais tellement charismatique ! Devenu la coqueluche du monde des Lettres sous le nom de Dan Flakes, l'ours caracole bientôt en tête de liste des meilleures ventes...

This World Fantasy Award winner in the vein of Animal Farm delves into a lab worthy of a mad Nazi scientist—but run by a brilliantly sadistic rodent. In the annals of American literature, there has never been a character quite like Doctor Rat, PhD. From one of the most indispensable storytellers in speculative fiction, this biting satire introduces a narrator of learned charm and humor, and a twisted logic that is absolutely chilling. Doctor Rat is a credit to his species. A survivor of the most refined scientific experiments, now removed from the maze, he has become a valued and productive member of the academic community. When he must administer a lethal dose, he comforts his fellow rats with his compassionate slogan: "Death is freedom." But everything changes when animals worldwide begin to rebel, refusing to accept their proper places in the natural order of things: as test subjects, pets, or food. And only Doctor Rat has the courage to defend mankind from the ungrateful animal kingdom. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "dazzlingly original" and "occasionally quite beautiful," Doctor Rat is a sly and stylish indictment of fanaticism in mice and men. "A truly imaginative impresario . . . [ Doctor Rat] teases your conscience with educated wit and versatile improvisation, not to mention the casual flick of the tail about to be cut off." — Kirkus Reviews

In this "psychological mind bender," a Kafkaesque crisis of identity transports a famous actor from 1980s Hollywood to Nazi Germany ( The Washington Post). At forty-five, Hollywood film star David Caspian should be basking in his success. Instead, his career is souring as he stresses over the next generation of actors eager to replace him. Losing himself in waking fantasies, David slips through a crack in time, awakening in the back alleys of Hitler's Berlin. He is no longer David Caspian. He has become Felix, a ruthless black marketeer. With the Gestapo closing in on him, David races against time—and space—as he fights to take control of Felix before Felix takes control of him. Witty, macabre, and utterly thrilling, The Exile is a mesmerizing novel that will leave readers wondering where reality ends and fiction begins. People wrote that when William Kotzwinkle "is the author, readers can be sure only that the book in question will be different from everything else." But even among the award-winning author's work, this bracing satire stands out for the sweep of its vision, full of "comedy, despair, horror and technical storytelling delight" ( The New York Times Book Review). "The book becomes glued to the reader's hands as the devastating climactic scenes pile one on another. . . . Powerful writing." — The Washington Post Book World

Once upon a time in rural Maine, a big black bear found a briefcase under a tree. Hoping for food, he dragged it into the woods, only to find that all it held was the manuscript of a novel. He couldn’t eat it, but he did read it, and decided it wasn’t bad. Borrowing some clothes from a local store, and the name Hal Jam from the labels of his favorite foods he headed to New York to seek his fortune in the literary world. Then he took America by storm. The Bear Went Over the Mountain is a riotous, magical romp with the buoyant Hal Jam as he leaves the quiet, nurturing world of nature for the glittering, moneyed world of man. With a pitch-perfect comic voice and an eye for social satire to rival Swift or Wolfe, bestselling author William Kotzwinkle limns Hal’s hilarious journey to New York, Los Angeles, and the great sprawling country in between, where a bear makes good despite his animal instincts, and where money-hungry executives see not a hairy beast with a purloined novel, but a rough-hewn, soulful, media-perfect nature guy who just might be the next Hemingway. By turns sidesplittingly funny, stingingly ironic, and unexpectedly tender, The Bear Went Over the Mountain captures the zeitgeist of the 1990s dead-on, in a delicious bedtime story for grown-ups.

"Midnight Examiner" débute par une constatation élémentaire : la vie du journaliste de base est dure (et son corps est mou). Surtout s'il travaille pour quinze journaux à scandales, que le patron des publications est un cinglé qui tire à la sarbacane sur tout ce qui bouge, que le directeur artistique se borne à "ombrer" les photos licencieuses et à peindre des vaches en tutu sur les murs, que les gangsters viennent semer la panique et que le taxi qui relie les chapitres entre eux (et sauve la vie des héros) est arabe, fils de pilleurs de tombes et aveugle aux beautés du code de la route. L'action se passe à New York, évidemment. "A la première page, on peut sourire. A la deuxième, rire. A la troisième, glousser. Après, sauve qui peut." (François Forestier, L'Express)

Walter the Farting Dog is now a hero of the high seas! Everybody is having a great time on a cruise . . . until a terrible odor permeates the ship. All signs point to Walter, and so he is first banished down below, with the stinky cheeses, and then into a lifeboat to float behind the ocean liner. Then catastrophe strikes! How long will the great cruise ship and its frightened passengers be marooned on the high seas? About as long as it takes Walter to digest that cheese!

Everyone's smelly dog is off on another adventure, this time holidaying at the beach with the family. When his smelliness can no longer be tolerated by other holidaymakers, he is banned from the beach. Walter consoles himself with some uncooked tropical fruit... Gasses start to build. Then the family become marooned on an island... Can Walter save the day?

Professor Kompressor visits Walter's family, offering a remedy for the dog's digestive disorder: special food that must be mixed in his Kompressatron. Unfortunately, the professor's cure doesn't work, so Father has to take matters into his own hands. Father's combination of ingredients has a strange effect on the pooch—Walter blows up like a balloon and floats out the window! Just when it looks as though Walter's paws may never touch earth again, he encounters a flock of butterflies in distress. Only he has the hot air that can save them from an icy death. Once he lets it rip, Walter's flying days are over (or are they?). Plenty of laughs and cheers will arise from this story that takes walter to new heights.

When Professor Kompressor attempts to cure Walter of his evil farting tendencies, the plan backfires. Instead of being fart-free, Walter simply fills up with wind. He eventually floats high into the sky and knows the only way to come down is to fart but he's got severely trapped wind.

Retrouver sa Planète Verte, son home : le bonheur ! Eh bien non, voici E.T. blâmé et renvoyé aux travaux des champs. Certes, il lui reste des amis, et les fleurs lui parlent, lui sourient. Mais en vain. E.T. est malheureux : Elliott, son ami terrien, lui manque. Son seul recours consiste à lui envoyer d'affectueux messages télépathiques. Mais Elliott ne semble pas les percevoir. L'a-t-il déjà oublié ? Dès lors, E.T. n'a plus qu'une idée en tête : rejoindre la planète Terre. Mais comment ? C'est le début d'une équipée où la tendresse des plantes, le courage des amis et le génie d'E.T. font alliance pour qu'un jour ce projet fou se réalise...

The Return of Crazy Horseis the story of one of the last great chiefs of the Oglala Sioux, and of a sculptor's determination to carve a huge statue of the fearless warrior into the Black Hills of South Dakota. William Kotzwinkle captures the sadness of the defeat of Crazy Horse and then takes readers to the site where, in 1948, Korczak Ziolkowski takes on the gargantuan task of sculpting Crazy Horse from a mountain. Kotzwinkle's prose vividly describes the creation of a monumental work of art as well as the mystical certainty that Crazy Horse will ride again.

" Toute personne qui tentera de trouver une intrigue à cette histoire sera fusillée. Toute personne qui tentera de trouver une morale à cette histoire sera condamnée à l'exil ". C'est sous cette double mise en garde de Mark Twain que Kotzwinkle place les aventures de Jack Twiller, qui se prend pour divers héros de " comics américains des années quarante. Jack s'intéresse également de près à la vie sexuelle d'Olive Oyl ou de Nyoka, la fille de la jungle. Malheureusement, ses rêves ne tiennent as longtemps la route, dans une pauvre ville minière de l'Amérique profonde, et le super héros va devenir un adulte désenchanté... On ne présente plus William Kotzwinkle, l'un des écrivains les plus éclectiques qui soient. L'auteur de E.T., Fata Morgana, de Midnight Examiner et du Jeu des trente fait une sorte d'autobiographie collective de l'adolescent américain des années cinquante, qui allie de manière remarquable l'humour à l'émotion.

C'est l'aube du jour qu'ils ont tant attendu, et sur les chemins glacés d'une forêt du Maine un homme et une femme se mettent en route vers la maternité. Si près d'eux, pourtant si lointain encore, dans la " mer secrète ", un petit nageur se débat pour venir à leur rencontre. Longuement, interminablement, soudés par la force démesurée de leur attente, ils l'encouragent à les rejoindre, se trouvent l'un l'autre tels qu'ils furent, tels qu'ils sont devenus, face à cet avenir inespéré, précaire, incertain. Car le scénario n'est jamais joué d'avance, et l'aventure de la naissance peut à chaque instant imposer à l'espoir un désaveu aussi tragique qu'inexorable. L'art de William Kotzwinkle nous fait témoins d'une sincérité et d'une rigueur peu commune. Il faut ici en prévenir le lecteur : ce court texte est sans doute l'un des plus beaux et des plus bouleversants qu'il nous ait été donné de publier.