WHO IS THE AUTHOR?

Every few years the Author pulls out his well-worn copies of the novels "Garden of Sand" and "Tatoo" and rereads them. He rereads them as frequently as he does "Huckelberry Finn" and "The Christmas Carol". Garden of Sand and Tatoo are as seminal to the Author as his birth certificate and his passport.

These novels were written by Earl Thompson, a Kansas writer that died woefully premature, in 1979 at the age of 47.

As a teenager the Author read Thompson and found a voice that sounded like his own. Thompson gave the Author a simulacrum of "permission" to put down his own thoughts.

HERE I AM, HERE I WILL BE, AND HERE I WILL FIGHT TO REMAIN.

Thompson was quoted in an interview with Esquire magazine in 1970.

My persisting values are those of that class which is trapped
between poverty that is a personal moral failure and the lure
of material reward for citizenship they can never achieve. A
class that is a persistent pain in the ass to all representative
societies, whatever their ism. People who are so early frightened
by violence anything short of death is a personal victory. And
all have been wounded.

Or, as the Author had often said, people just smart enough to stay in business, but too dumb to make any money. My people, my legacy, my fate.

The Author highly recommends these two novels. They are available on Amazon.

Reet Sausage, from the Desert of the Real!