Sy Safransky

The Sacred And The Profane

Shall we throw Hustler and the Times into the fire? And, years from now, when these words and this argument are forgotten, shall we make into a funeral pyre the “spiritual” tracts we now so revere, those that spell out for us the right way, when we’re all heading the same way?

Six Stories

The life insurance salesman will be here soon. He will put it to him bluntly: he has responsibilities. In his case, there are photographs of the funeral. He is a handsome corpse. He feels flattered.

Editor’s Note

Dirty For Dirty: The State Vs. Larry Flynt, Or All In The Bloody Eye Of The Beholder

Hustler isn’t sex, but an advertisement for sex. And, like all advertisement, it must be judged, like it or not, as art.

Selected Poems

About Time

I am running out these hours like a man condemned to live them. But life is eternal, sings the wind; everlasting, whispers the rain.

The Pyramids, from a distance

1977

New Year’s Day. No television, or newspaper, to remind me of the world outside. No news-of-the year in review. I can tell myself better lies than that. Nineteen seventy-seven. Seven years to 1984.

what’s left

On Selling Advertising

Advertising, hmmm. Never thought I’d be an advertising salesman, but it comes with the territory. When COSMEP South — the newsletter of the Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers — asked for my thoughts on advertising, I pulled this out of my bottom drawer.