Lewis Warsh's recent books include Ted's Favorite Skirt (2002), The Origin of the World (2001), Touch of the Whip (2001),  Debtor's Prison (a collaboration with Julie Harrison, 2001), and Money Under the Table (1999).  A double CD, The Origin of the World, appeared in 2005, from Deerhead Records/Ugly Duckling. He is co-editor, with Anne Waldman, of The Angel Hair Anthology (2001), and  editor and publisher of United Artists Books. He is Associate Professor in the English Department at Long Island University in Brooklyn.

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EXCERPT:

{7}

They say that the novel was based on something that
happened to the author, so that in order to understand
what we’re reading we have to read the story of the
author’s life, side by side. It would seem that every piece
of writing should be accompanied by the journal that
the author kept at the time he or she was writing. To create
a new level of artifice? Maybe, or maybe as a way to absorb
the pain of trying to extract a tincture of reality from the
smokehold of the imaginary. Never say “should.”