With A*HOLE, Hilton Obenzinger has created an experimental fiction readers will experience as much as read. He draws from sources as varied as Mark Twain, the Patty Hearst story, the Biblical story of Abraham & Isaac, Melville's Ishmael, detective fiction, his own experiences as a father and a teacher on Yuork Indian reservations, Hollywood, the porn industry and more, which he swirls together around the vortex created by the pull of his central hole. A young boy wakes one morning to discover he is sinking into the earth despite the new sneakers his parents promised would save him. A young woman begins reviewing films before they are made. A postal worker named Gary fulfills his occupational cliché and attacks Danny DeVito. A father writes letters to his wayward and far-flung sons. An archeologist finds evidence, perhaps, of the permeance of time as well as earth. A detective accepts a case requiring him to connect Patty Hearst to her other self. Though the story in A*HOLE is in continual flux, Obenzinger skillfully braids the multiple narrative threads into a novel which is much larger than its physical size, lyrically beautiful, and absorbing through and through.Hilton Obenzinger writes fiction, poetry, history and criticism. His books have received the American Book Award and other honors. His book, Treyf Pesach [Un-kosher Passover], is a collection of holy blasphemous poems. He has also published How We Write: The Varieties of Writing Experience, based on the series of “How I Write” public conversations with Stanford faculty and other advanced writers. His other books include the autobiographical novel Busy Dying, a* Hole, Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust by Zosia Goldberg as told to Hilton Obenzinger, an oral history of his aunt’s ordeal during the war; American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania, Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco, New York on Fire, a history of the fires of New York in verse, and This Passover Or The Next I Will Never Be in Jersualem.
