Gary Kern
Letters From
Dwight
ISBN 1-879378-35-3 (paper),
336 pages, $15.
Transcribed from audio tapes sent to friends and relatives during the period
of 1984 to 1991, these "cassette letters" report on a nether world
both familiar and strange, both funny and deadly: the slum we normally drive
by. The author, an ex-professor of Russian, rents rooms to an incredible series
of oddballs, meanwhile striving to maintain contact with his distant family,
to find romance and to keep up with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's
down and out, not in Paris and London, but on Dwight Avenue in Riverside,
California.
GARY KERN is the author
of Misfortune, a memoir published by Xenos
Books, The Mad Kokoschka (also published
by Xenos), and The Last Snow Leopard, a novel published by Ghost Dance
Books (soon to be available from Xenos). He has written widely on Russian
affairs and translated eight books by Russian authors. Letters from Dwight
continues the story of his sojourn in California, begun in Misfortune,
but is an independent work. Kern's most recent work is the critically acclaimed
study, A
Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitksy and the Stalin Terror (Enigma
Books, 2003).
Selected list of contents:
"The Lawn Manager" (who insisted his neighbors keep their
lawns green and well-mown), "French Benefits" (a pair of
French roomers), "The Whistling Troubadour" (who sang and
whistled through his teeth), "Gorilla" (a Halloween story),
"Scripture Says" (the rantings of a religious fanatic), "The
Russians Are Coming!" (Russian émigrés with kooky ideas
for success), "The Big Search" (for love and you-know-what),
"The Mail Slot to Eternity" (hospital stories).
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