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Trick Or Treat?

Trick Or Treat? image
Parent Issue
Month
October
Year
1991
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held By
Agenda Publications
OCR Text

 

Trick or Treat?

by Jay Pinka

  This is the month that makes you look behind you twice as you fumble with your keys at the lock, makes you wonder if you really know what's in the attic when tree branches fall like amputated limbs with the haunting winds of October.

   Halloween. Cliche enough, all right, but the visitation of David Sosnowski to the Guild House Writers Series on Monday October 7 will haunt listeners through the 31st.

   "Writing is as close as we get to alchemy in this world," says Sosnowski. "It Iets us turn the garbage of our lives into gold - or at least, prettier, better organized garbage." In his writing, Sosnowski works out serious issues such as addiction, fear of physical contact, alienation, psychiatric illness, and incest with a touch of black humor that makes it tolerably entertaining, while simultaneously haunting. Yet, Sosnowski puts on more than the mask of the speaker in his writing.

   "When I write - especially when I write fiction, I think primarily in terms of narrative voice," says Sosnowski. "Each story has its own teller, who is ultimately some exaggerated, mutated particle of me."

   From the galaxy of freaks Sosnowski brings the dissected hearts of creatures tured in publications such as The National Examiner (Surgeons Sew Man's Head Back On). But before you turn away in dismay or disgust, force yourself to look hard again at characters which reveal parts of your own psyche. There is a method to Sosnowski's madness and if the stitching job of this poetic Dr. Frankenstein doesn't win the Miss America Contest, it certainly manages to mirror the patchwork of personae comprising mankind.

   "The wonderful thing about writing is that it doesn't cost much to do and is still legal in most states," says Sosnowki. David Sosnowski's writings have been published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Heartland, Passages North, The MacGuffin, Creative Computing, Confrontations, and Alaska Today. He has earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska.

   Sosnowski could be plunging and lifting us from the dark depths of human nature for the purpose of reorganizing and re-ordering our lives, or he could be dredging up a skeleton so fascinating to play with you've never touch Barbie again. Only you can find out, at 802 Monroe at 8:30 pm, on October 7.

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