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Cistern Tawdry
A giddy mixture of Lawrence Sterne and Tristan Tzara, Cistern Tawdry uses graphics, typographics, poetry, and prose narration to tell the story of a man who dies and is reborn in a quest to save his unborn child. Eckhard Gerdes is a writer whose energy and wit are always in the service of emotional and heartfelt storytelling; that he accomplishes this while also working at the very edge of the avant-garde is an almost unbelievable bonus. There is an excitement to reading his work which comes from the discovery that the freedom and power of the novel form are greater than the reader ever suspected. Cistern Tawdry is Eckhard Gerdes' magnum opus, his greatest work to date.
250 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2002
13 people want to read
About the author
Eckhard Gerdes
45 books65 followersEckhard Gerdes is an American-born novelist & editor. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He's author of fifteen published books of fiction:
Projections ['86 Depth Charge] a novella
Ring in a River ['92 Depth Charge] a novel
Truly Fine Citizen ['89 Highlander] a novel
Cistern Tawdry ['02 Fugue State] a novel
Przewalski's Horse ['06 Red Hen] a novel
The Million-Year Centipede, or, Liquid Structures ['07 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
Nin & Nan ['08 Bizarro] a novella
My Landlady the Lobotomist ['08 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
The Unwelcome Guest and Nin and Nan ['10 Enigmatic Ink] two novellas
Hugh Moore ['10 Civil Coping Mechanisms, '15 Heroinum] a novel
Three Psychedelic Novellas ['12 Enigmatic Ink] three novellas
The Sylvia Plath Cookbook: A Satire ['12 Sugar Glider] a long short story
White Bungalows ['15 Dirt Heart Pharmacy ] a novel
Marco & Iarlaith ['18 Black Scat] a novel in flash fiction
The Pissers'Theatre ['21 Black Scat] a novel
two volumes of poetry:
23 Skidoo! 23 Form-Fitting Poems ['13 Finishing Line]
Blues for Youse ['15 ATTOHO]
a play:
'S A Bird ['13 Black Scat]
a work of creative nonfiction
How to Read ['14 Guide Dog]
His work reflects experimental technique, sometimes ignoring time, space, or causality in the service of stories of individuals struggling to transcend fear & limitation. His recent work has been associated with the Bizarro Fiction movement, of which he is one of the leading proponents.
Reviews of his work have appeared in Rain Taxi, Notre Dame Review, Dream People, Review of Contemporary Fiction & elsewhere.
Eckhard Gerdes is the editor of The Journal of Experimental Fiction, issues of which are usually Festschrifts on a single writer (e.g. John Barth, Raymond Federman, Harold Jaffe). He has also written on modern & post-modern literature for Review of Contemporary Fiction, Hyde Park Review of Books & other magazines.
Gerdes has been awarded an &NOW Award for Innovative Fiction and has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award for excerpts from Przewalski's Horse. The Million-Year Centipede was selected as one of the top ten mainstream novels of 2007 in the annual Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. He has also been a finalist for both the Starcherone & the Blatt fiction prizes for his unpublished manuscript White Bungalows. For Cistern Tawdry Gerdes was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Fiction Category. He lives near Chicago. He has three children and five grandchildren.
He's author of fifteen published books of fiction:
Projections ['86 Depth Charge] a novella
Ring in a River ['92 Depth Charge] a novel
Truly Fine Citizen ['89 Highlander] a novel
Cistern Tawdry ['02 Fugue State] a novel
Przewalski's Horse ['06 Red Hen] a novel
The Million-Year Centipede, or, Liquid Structures ['07 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
Nin & Nan ['08 Bizarro] a novella
My Landlady the Lobotomist ['08 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
The Unwelcome Guest and Nin and Nan ['10 Enigmatic Ink] two novellas
Hugh Moore ['10 Civil Coping Mechanisms, '15 Heroinum] a novel
Three Psychedelic Novellas ['12 Enigmatic Ink] three novellas
The Sylvia Plath Cookbook: A Satire ['12 Sugar Glider] a long short story
White Bungalows ['15 Dirt Heart Pharmacy ] a novel
Marco & Iarlaith ['18 Black Scat] a novel in flash fiction
The Pissers'Theatre ['21 Black Scat] a novel
two volumes of poetry:
23 Skidoo! 23 Form-Fitting Poems ['13 Finishing Line]
Blues for Youse ['15 ATTOHO]
a play:
'S A Bird ['13 Black Scat]
a work of creative nonfiction
How to Read ['14 Guide Dog]
His work reflects experimental technique, sometimes ignoring time, space, or causality in the service of stories of individuals struggling to transcend fear & limitation. His recent work has been associated with the Bizarro Fiction movement, of which he is one of the leading proponents.
Reviews of his work have appeared in Rain Taxi, Notre Dame Review, Dream People, Review of Contemporary Fiction & elsewhere.
Eckhard Gerdes is the editor of The Journal of Experimental Fiction, issues of which are usually Festschrifts on a single writer (e.g. John Barth, Raymond Federman, Harold Jaffe). He has also written on modern & post-modern literature for Review of Contemporary Fiction, Hyde Park Review of Books & other magazines.
Gerdes has been awarded an &NOW Award for Innovative Fiction and has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award for excerpts from Przewalski's Horse. The Million-Year Centipede was selected as one of the top ten mainstream novels of 2007 in the annual Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. He has also been a finalist for both the Starcherone & the Blatt fiction prizes for his unpublished manuscript White Bungalows. For Cistern Tawdry Gerdes was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Fiction Category. He lives near Chicago. He has three children and five grandchildren.
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November 28, 2009
Read early version when we attended SAIC together.
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