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About UsThe Dragon Press, the Home of Arsenal Ink., offers a new vision of literary fiction, novels that have a daring edge which few mainstream publishers would dare to touch. Our commitment is to bring high quality experimental literature to an international community. Catherine Foulkrod, Editorial Director, is a graduate of Brown University with a major in semiotics and creative writing. She is an editor at large for KGB Bar Lit and the Associate Editor for Ballyhoo Stories. She is currently working on a radical underground novel designed to explode in 2007. KC Trommer, Editor, is a writer, visual artist, and freelance editor, KC lives and works in Ann Arbor , Michigan where she holds a Colby fellowship in poetry the MFA program at the University of Michigan . KC has received poetry fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Prague Summer Program. In 2006, she was the recipient of The Meader Family Award in Poetry from the University of Michigan ’s Hopwood Program. Jodi Panas, Coordinator of Events, is an artist, psychoanalyst and freelance creator. She maintains a private practice as a contemporary analyst in Tribeca and organizes numerous events which involve the interface between arts, writing and psychoanalysis. Michael Barton, Intern, is currently completing his B.A. with a concentration in American Literature at Sarah Lawrence College. His senior thesis is on the notion of the detonation of phallic symbols as portrayed in high modernist fiction and how this relates to the corruption of the current political administration. Events and on
SubmissionsAll manuscripts must be sent electronically. No manual submissions will be considered. Include a plot synopsis as well as a brief statement about your goals as an author as well as why you think your work would be suited to our line in publishing. Please sent your electronic submissions to thedragonpress@aol.com. Contact UsMediaFROM AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW THE ANTIVILLAIN The voices of fiction are sometimes repetitive, as narrative is too often overpopulated with distant and cool third persons, pompous omniscients, and self-deprecating first-person speakers who revel in making quirky observations and quips (at least until the end of the day, when those clever narrators chose to do “the right thing,” since they’re nice and pleasant on the inside, like so many toasted marshmallows.) Without realizing that other narrative styles exist, we readers suffer through these bland voices of forced quirkiness and measured distance until once in a great while we strike upon something sturdy enough to set us ashudder. A rarity in literature, and consequently intriguing, is the villainous narrator. Jason Compson, Patrick Bateman, Valmont, Humbert Humbert – all are among our greatest narrative voices. When done adroitly, the results are unparalleled, as great villains become life-size manifestations of our own cruel instincts. It is a breathless thing to eavesdrop on the gleeful transgressions of criminals daring what we do not, liberating to witness their unflinching guiltlessness. They charm us with immorality, and while more celebrated literary characters like Daedalus and Dalloway, like Huck and Fuckhead, and Zuckerman, all reflect the conflicted ups and downs of daily existrence, it is the more grim characters who stand watch at the darker edges of life as our moral sentinels, our boundaries. And so we are thankful for the arrival of another villain, bastard Hermann Kapp, narrator of Henry Grinberg’s novel, Variations on the Beast. Kapp’s self-told story is at first glance a traditional bildungsroman – boy without father, raised by his mother, blessed with prodigious talent at the piano—and he rises from a teen concert pianist to the greatest conductor in all the land. Early on he tells us frankly, “The simple truth is this. I have a gift, a knack for conducting,” but the true core of the novel is no musical coming-of-age. The story is darker: Kapp’s own ascension parallels the rise of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, and the cruel world in which he exists is perfect accompaniment to his amorality, the blanket that covers his soullessness. Kapp openly reveals this callous calm late in the book, saying, “Jews were wrapped in an evil mystique. Did I still share those beliefs? Frankly, it depended on what day of the week you were to ask me.” As his career flourishes, Kapp’s sins of inaction grow: he indirectly causes a girl’s death, doesn’t protest while a rival’s head is bashed in, hjappily accepts money from Nazis while allowing them to expel superior Jewish musicians from the orchestra, carries on adulterous affairs, and is hardly ruffled when his wife is crushed in a hotel bombing. Kapp is without a moral center, a witness to and happy beneficiary of the surrounding terror. He just wants more success: when obstacles appear, he matter-of-factly hates them until they are eliminated by circumstances beyond his control. Then he simply forgets them and moves on. Time and again, other characters shudder as they realize how empty he is: a prostitute says that he embodies “misfortune”; a professor slowly realizes that “there is something…loathsome about you”; and a superior tells him frankly, “On one hand, you appear humble and respectful…on the other hand, it turns out that you are really arrogant and hateful – without having earned the right.” At the novel’s end Kapp’s lover saves him at great personal risk, he gives her neither thanks nor goodbye, but just goes whistling out the door, never to see her again. Calmly he tells us, “What could I say? The times were what they were.” This blankness gets at the novel’s most unique aspect: Kapp benefits from many atrocious deeds but rarely does he delight in them. He is not actively cruel, nor is he an example of banal evil; more he is a character who shows that an absence of emotion can itself be a manifestation of evil. Rather than feeling guilt or sorrow or even joy when he witnesses cruelties, Kapp is generally relieved – because his life has been made easier. What Grinberg has done with Variations on the Beast is given voice to a strange and singular narrator: a man callous, talented, ambitious. Kapp is a pleased witness to a horrible world, and as the stars arrange themselves to thrust success upon him, he enjoys it all without glee and without guilt. He frustrates our expectations of what a villain should be; this is not the broad cruelty of Humbert or Compson…and so, it is not, then, a cruelty we recognize, a border we’re familiar with. And there, in that unfamiliar territory, is where the success of the novel lies: while we expect something more – joy, guilt, something—we get nothing, and this is perhaps the most unsettling thing of all. San Bernard is a fiction writer and professor at the University of La Verne. NPAP AUTHORS An Interview with Henry Grinberg By Jim Rubins NPAP member Henry Grinberg has just published a novel, Variations on the Beast (The Dragon Press, NY, 2006). It follows the career of a genius conductor in Germany and Austria, Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder, from the pre-war rise of Nazism, through the war and into the post-war period. We spoke with Henry about his book shortly before its release on December 16. You love music and hate Nazism. Why bring them together in this novel? You explore that question from the vantage and experience of Hermann. What is his experience, as you tell it? What are the personal referents, for you, in this book? It seems curious that you choose a thoroughly despicable, anti-Semitic character as protagonist. Is there something of you in Hermann? How did you research the book? I’ve always been a voracious reader, taught English for 42 years in college, and so it was natural to try my hand at writing. A serious component of writing fiction is the ability to alter facts, particularly if by doing so, I may reach a deeper truth. If I’m lucky I’ll find an audience for my untruths. What’s a “lie” in this context? |
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David reads from The Dolphin Smiles on March 16th at KGB LIT 7-9 PM