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Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Karl Grossman
Karl Grossman is trying to make ends meet as a Long Island newspaperman and a humorist, which is pretty funny.
Fiction
Journey To Ishpeming
The person they called The Wizard and I were standing in the grimy men’s room of the Greyhound Bus Station in Ishpeming, Michigan. This is where The Wizard met visitors.
December 1976
Fiction
Star Klutz
Commander Arthur Wazu, a broken man, sat disconsolately on the spaceship veranda, gazing at Shlerpy, one of the nine moons of planet 4-b.
November 1976
Fiction
Tales Of Politics
“What are you — a weirdo?” the man in the cowboy hat and plastic clogs asked me. For hours I had been hanging around the foul-smelling men’s room of the Greyhound bus station in Ishpeming, Michigan waiting for The Wizard. The Wizard was to tell me about the secrets of politics on this planet.
October 1976
Fiction
Mandrake’s Root
My academic career was in ruins. I had just been expelled from McDonald’s University having been caught in lewd acts with Ronald McDonald, that depraved clown.
September 1976
Fiction
Sex Is Not Strawberry Jam
My thumb was out and Interstate 86 out of Providence, Rhode Island was getting hot. Me and my St. Bernard, Roger, were thumbing across America. It had been a messy morning.
July 1976
Fiction
Fortune Cookies
I was looking up monasteries in the yellow pages when she knocked. I was living at this time in Jersey City, N.J., on top of a meat market. It was the dingiest of places. I got up from my fleabitten couch. I opened the door to a dazzling darkhaired woman.
June 1976
Fiction
Eat Your Heart Out
My friend, Arnold, is having a fight with the stewardess. “I will make you into salami!” he is screaming. I’m making believe I don’t know Arnold. I bury my face in a magazine, “Modern Maturity,” a few seats back from his. We are flying Astral Coach to Venus.
May 1976
Fiction
Lou, Turn Up Your Hearing Aid
Birth and death is a continual cycle. Like corn, you have a season. You grow, flower, give seed, fade away. But the energy within you keeps going — like the energy of corn. Have you ever been in a corn field and felt that energy?
April 1976
Fiction
When A Home Is Not A House, Or, News From Swamis Local 486
I was born and brought up in a cave. This was in a former life, of course. I remember to this day lying there in a dent in our kitchen wall, only hours after I was born, watching my dad throw stones at the wolves outside.
March 1976
Fiction
Spinach Wilts
It was The New Age and there I was on the elevator — 68th floor, 15th floor, 43rd floor — thinking: bongs will never totally replace joints. Bongs have their place, sure, a big place. But a joint is a . . .
February 1976
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