When I Finish A First Draft, It's

Rueful, Bittersweet, Funny, Written With Tenderness And Bite, Merrill Feitell's Stories, Like So Many Classic Short Stories, Are Made From The Plain And Painful Stuff Of This World, And Haunted By The Possibility, And The Impossibility, Of A Better One.

It Drains The Bars And Cafes After Hours, Concentrates The Wicked And The Guilty Along Its Chipped Formica Counter, And Thrums With The Gossip Of Criminals, Policemen, Shtarkers,and Schlemiels, Whores And Night Owls ... Three Or Four Floaters, Solitaries, And Drunks Between Benders Lean Against The Sparkly Resin Counter, Sucking The Tea From Their Shtekelehs And Working The Calulations Of Their Next Big Mistake.

[comics] Were Viewed As The Literary Equivalent Of Bubblegum Cards, Meant To Be Poked Into The Spokes Of A Young Mind Where They Would Produce A Satisfying But Entirely Bogus Rumble Of Pleasure.

Undressing Her Was An Act Of Recklessness, A Kind Of Vandalism, Like Releasing A Zoo Full Of Animals, Or Blowing Up A Dam.

What Smells Strongly Of Crap To One Generation - Victorian Penny Dreadfuls, The Music Of The Archies, The Lone Ranger Radio Show, Blaxploitation Films Of The Seventies - So Often Becomes A Fruitful Source Of Inspiration, Veneration, And Study For Those To Come, While Certified Great And Worthy Art Molders And Fades On Its Storage Rack, Giving Off An Increasingly Powerful Whiff Of Naphthalene.