Author: Robert Freeman Wexler

Locus Recommended Reading

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Every year, Locus Magazine posts their recommended reading list plus year-end summaries by various reviewers and others. The list is here. The Silverberg Business is on it, which is very pleasing.

Graham Sleight, in his summary, says: “The Silverberg Business by Robert Freeman Wexler (Small Beer) was a striking surprise: a bizarre fantasy of the 19th-century American West that stayed with me like a dream.” He also put it on a list of his top ten books of the year.

Ian Mond, who’s September review has already been linked on this page, says: “Wexler’s book is possibly the most original work I read all year.”

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Surreal Books of Southwestern Gothic Horror

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Books, The Silverberg BusinessLeave a comment

Article by Sam Reader for the Tor Nightfire blog and including books by Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen Graham Jones, and The Silverberg Business.

“Wexler uses the history of Texas (in particular the 1900 Galveston flood) and a series of repeated images and motifs to build his own original mythos, one where the eldritch forces of chaos and decay attempt shady land grabs and the wrong door can send you into a bizarre alternate dimension.” 

I haven’t read any of these other books but will get started soon. The article is here.

Locus Review #1

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Books, Reviews, The Silverberg BusinessLeave a comment
Photo of my publisher‘s copy of the issue.

Gary K. Wolf’s review of The Silverberg Business from the August issue of Locus magazine is now online.

Locus is a combination trade journal and fanzine for the fantasy/horror/science fiction community. It presents publishing industry news, personal items, convention reports, book and magazine reviews, lengthy interviews, etc.

I renewed my subscription a couple of years ago, after letting it lapse for many years. Even without a subscription, I was able to read reviews online. Book reviews run in the monthly print (or e-book) edition and later are added to their website, for free.

At first, I subscribed to the print edition but switched to e-book. Print is more convenient, for me, a non-smart phone non-e-reading device person, but I would rather not have all the paper piles.

I hadn’t realized until recently that the magazine is having difficulties. The editor, Liza Groen Trombi, explains the situation in more detail than I can here, in her editorials from July and August.

If you go to the Locus website, to read the occasional review or obituary, consider making the occasional contribution to help keep the place going.

Below are quotes from one of Trombi‘s editorials, with more information on how to help.

If you have the means, please consider making a charitable contribution to Locus this year, whether a one-time or monthly contribution, we really want to keep making the magazine, and we are under the gun right now. We also have a Locus Legacy Society for people who would like to name Locus Science Fiction Foundation in their will, you can find out more information about that on our donate page.

Subscribe, or renew your subscription, today.

Please consider donating to the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Donations support Locus magazine as well as a variety of related SFnal projects. For more information, and to make donations through Paypal, please visit our website.

Silverberg, Houston, Texas, and an Interview

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Food, Life, The Silverberg Business, WritingLeave a comment
Old sign, from trail behind the building.

New interview up here.

While I was in Houston for my reading at Brazos Bookstore, I went to my old neighborhood. The house I grew up in was demolished and replaced with a big ugly thing sometime in the last ten years. I knew that, so no shock. Fortunately, Three Brothers Bakery is still where it has been since 1960, on the banks of Braes Bayou in Southwest Houston.

Front.

The brothers (Sigmund, Sol, and Max) survived the Holocaust and opened their bakery in 1949, in a different location. At their current building, they have survived multiple floods, fire, covid lockdowns, and losing their Kosher license.

Bathroom wall history.

An article about how they’re doing appeared in the Houston Chronicle a few days before my trip. I only had time for one visit and a coconut custard danish. I had meant to go back the next morning but ran out of time.

Arthur Machen’s The Chronicle of Clemendy

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Art, Books, The Silverberg Business, WritingLeave a comment
“Rubrican’s First Tale,” facsimile edition of 35 numbered and signed prints. 11.5” x 8.25” on heavy, acid-free paper, available from Yard Dog, along with other prints from the edition.

Tomorrow (August 23, 2022) is the official release day of The Silverberg Business. Today, I’m writing about some of the book’s interconnected underpinnings.

My main character is a Jewish detective named Shannon (family name originally Chanun, Americanized by immigration). He’s from Galveston, Texas and lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Most of the book takes place in Texas.

Allan Pinkerton founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago in the 1850s. I chose Chicago as Shannon’s home and made Shannon’s boss a former Pinkerton agent.

The writer Dashiell Hammet worked for a time as a Pinkerton agent; I used Hammet’s Continental Op character as a base when I began formulating Shannon.

I love the weird fiction writing of Welsh author Arthur Llewellyn Jones, who wrote as Arthur Machen. I decided to name Shannon’s boss Arthur Llewellyn.

Scottish-born Pinkerton was a Chartist. Before reading about Pinkerton, I hadn’t known about Chartism, which was a working-class political reform movement in Britain from around 1838 to 1857. In 1839, the Newport Rising occurred, in Newport, Wales. Police arrested Chartists, protests followed, soldiers shot miners. (This is an oversimplification; for more information on the Newport Rising, please look elsewhere, including the book listed a few paragraphs down.)

I decided that my Llewellyn was a former Chartist who moved to the U.S. after the uprising. As fellow Chartists, it would make sense for him to have worked with Pinkerton.

Jon Langford is Welsh, from Newport, and lives in Chicago. His skull-head art was one of the formative elements for the novel and he created the Silverberg cover art.

Bringing more elements together, Three Impostors, a small publisher based in Newport, Wales, has been publishing special illustrated editions of Arthur Machen’s work. In March 2022, they released The Chronicle of Clemendy, first published in 1888, with ten illustrations by Langford.

Lovely editions of many Machen books are also available from Tartarus Press.

Three Imposters also published a book, Render the Chartists Defenceless: John Frost’s Voyage with Dr McKechnie to Van Diemen’s Land in 1840, by Les James, about the transportation to Tasmania of the leaders of the 1839 Newport Rising.

Is it coincidence that The Chronicle of Clemendy came out the year that The Silverberg Business is set? I doubt it.