{"id":1148,"date":"2024-02-11T10:01:55","date_gmt":"2024-02-11T16:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/?post_type=product&#038;p=1148"},"modified":"2025-09-05T12:51:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:51:02","slug":"the-conduit-and-other-visionary-tales-of-morphing-whimsy","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/product\/the-conduit-and-other-visionary-tales-of-morphing-whimsy","title":{"rendered":"The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>by\u00a0Richard Gessner<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<style>\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t#tab_container_1146 {\r\n\toverflow:hidden;\r\n\tdisplay:block;\r\n\twidth:100%;\r\n\tborder:0px solid #ddd;\r\n\tmargin-bottom:30px;\r\n\t}\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1146 .tab-content{\r\n\tpadding:20px;\r\n\tborder: 1px solid #e6e2cc !important;\r\n\tmargin-top: 0px;\r\n\tbackground-color:#fffbe5 !important;\r\n\tcolor: #000000 !important;\r\n\tfont-size:16px !important;\r\n\tfont-family: Open Sans !important;\r\n\t\r\n\t\tborder: 1px solid #e6e2cc !important;\r\n\t}\r\n#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs {\r\n    border-bottom: 0px solid #ddd;\r\n}\r\n#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li.active > a, #tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li.active > a:hover, #tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li.active > a:focus {\r\n\tcolor: #000000 !important;\r\n\tcursor: default;\r\n\tbackground-color: #fffbe5 !important;\r\n\tborder: 1px solid #e6e2cc !important;\r\n}\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a {\r\n    margin-right: 0px !important; 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\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1146 .tab-content{\r\noverflow:hidden !important;\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n@media (min-width: 769px) {\r\n\r\n\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li{\r\n\t\tfloat:left !important ;\r\n\t\t\t\tmargin-right:-1px !important;\r\n\t\t\t\t\t}\r\n\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs{\r\n\t\tfloat:none !important;\r\n\t\tmargin:0px !important;\r\n\t}\r\n\r\n\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li {\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t}\r\n\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav{\r\n\t\t\t}\r\n\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n@media (max-width: 768px) {\r\n\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li {\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t}\r\n\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav{\r\n\t\t\t}\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n\t.wpsm_nav-tabs li:before{\r\n\t\tdisplay:none !important;\r\n\t}\r\n\r\n\t@media (max-width: 768px) {\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t.wpsm_nav-tabs{\r\n\t\t\tmargin-left:0px !important;\r\n\t\t\tmargin-right:0px !important; \r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t}\r\n\t\t\t\t#tab_container_1146 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li{\r\n\t\t\tfloat:none !important;\r\n\t\t}\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t}\t\t\t\t<\/style>\r\n\t\t\t\t<div id=\"tab_container_1146\" >\r\n\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t<ul class=\"wpsm_nav wpsm_nav-tabs\" role=\"tablist\" id=\"myTab_1146\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li role=\"presentation\"  class=\"active\"  onclick=\"do_resize()\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"#tabs_desc_1146_1\" aria-controls=\"tabs_desc_1146_1\" role=\"tab\" data-toggle=\"tab\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>Overview<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li role=\"presentation\"  onclick=\"do_resize()\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"#tabs_desc_1146_2\" aria-controls=\"tabs_desc_1146_2\" role=\"tab\" data-toggle=\"tab\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>Introduction<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/ul>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t\t\t  <!-- Tab panes -->\r\n\t\t\t\t\t  <div class=\"tab-content\" id=\"tab-content_1146\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div role=\"tabpanel\" class=\"tab-pane  in active \" id=\"tabs_desc_1146_1\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.audible.com\/pd\/The-Conduit-and-Other-Visionary-Tales-of-Morphing-Whimsy-Audiobook\/B09414J82M?asin=B09414J82M\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">buy the audiobook<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\"I like the way you have gradually added layer upon layer of detail\u2014Grandma\u2019s maple syrup, ancestors, country dance steps, various animals- to make a densely swirled piece of fiction. Reminiscent of William Burroughs. My favorite line was: 'Poop chute\u2014parachute\u2014somersault\u2014sleep\u2014ventricle snow\u2014do-si-do.'\"<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\" style=\"text-align: right\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\u2014Allen Ashley, author of \u201cThe Planet Suite\u201d British Fantasy Society Award Winner<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\"What Gessner does best, perhaps, is create microcosms\u2014self-contained worlds in which he has made up the rules and established the action. I'm reminded of a drop of water, which, under van Leeuwenhoek's microscope, turned out to be teeming with alien creatures possessed of varied modes of swimming. I am reminded of Blake: Gessner dramatizes the Romantic poet's belief that there is a world in a grain of sand. <em>The Conduit<\/em>, one of the more visionary pieces, demonstrates Gessner's ability to expand space and uncover its inhabitants in a seemingly infinite regression...<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\"He is also relentlessly funny. Virtually every paragraph in <em>Excerpts from the Diary of a Neanderthal Dilettante<\/em>\u2014the title is self-explanatory\u2014presents the reader with material worthy of a stand- up routine.\"<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\" style=\"text-align: right\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\u2014Vincent Czyz<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1147 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/richard-gessner-headshot.jpg\" alt=\"Richard Gessner\" width=\"200\" height=\"250\" \/>Richard Gessner<\/strong> 's fiction has been published in\u00a0<em>Air Fish: an anthology of speculative work, Rampike, Ice River, Coe Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Happy, The Act, Sein und Werden, Skidrow Penthouse, The Pannus Index, Fiction International<\/em>\u00a0and many other magazines. A collection,\u00a0<em>Excerpts from the Diary of a Neanderthal Dilettante &amp; The Man in the Couch<\/em>\u00a0was published by Bomb Shelter Props. Gessner's drawings and paintings have appeared in Raw\u00a0<em>Vision, Courier News, Asbury Park Press, Rampike, Skidrow Penthouse<\/em>, and exhibited at Pleiades Gallery, Hamilton Street Gallery, Cry Baby Gallery, The Court Gallery and the Donald B. Palmer Museum. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div role=\"tabpanel\" class=\"tab-pane \" id=\"tabs_desc_1146_2\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p style=\"font-size: 125%;text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy<\/strong><\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>Introduction by Vincent Czyz<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">The Montclair Book Center has been on Glenridge Avenue in Montclair, NJ, for decades; how many exactly I don\u2019t know, but I\u2019ve been foraging among its shelves since the late \u201980s. For a number of years the shop supported Page One, an on-premises caf\u00e9, which became the haunt of local artists, writers, and savants. In 1997 I was in Page One when I saw, on the community bulletin board, a posting for a writers\u2019 group recruiting new members. I\u2019d always worked alone, but I liked the idea of a loosely organized collective and found a seat\u2014a metal folding chair\u2014at the next meeting.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">The group consisted of eight or nine writers working in poetry and prose, from the fantasy novel to the personal essay. Generally we took pages home with us, but at the second or third meeting I attended, several members read their work aloud. One of the authors was a tall man with thick glasses and a stentorian voice. He read a story about a sleepwalker skating on a single rusty skate across frozen rain puddles, his eyes \u201cblind to an inky tutu fungus of old newspapers encircling his waist, flaking into yellow dust with each thrust and turn.\u201d If I found the subject matter a bit unusual, I also found the language striking. I forgot the name of the story, and I forgot the names of most of the group members, which held together for about a year, but in the twenty or so years since I listened to Richard Gessner read from \u201cThe Sleepwalker,\u201d I never forgot that newspaper tutu.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I was to discover that Gessner\u2019s head is a sort of cavern piled high with such wonders\u2014original images, fresh metaphors, mind-stretching scenarios, and alternate world orders. A sampling of the narrative set-ups in\u00a0<em>The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy<\/em>\u00a0hints at what the reader is in for: A war criminal takes refuge in the hollow of a tree and accretes a helmet of bird droppings; the authors of books housed in a multi-storied library are imprisoned in its basement and cross-bred to produce hybrid literary forms; platypus eggs multiply in the scrotum of a unicyclist:<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Shining through the scrotal sac, twinkling in stars far and near,\r\nswarms of bluish eggs bulge over the saddle of the nomad\u2019s unicycle,\r\nmaking pedaling most difficult.<\/em><\/span><\/blockquote>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">The surreal aspects of Gessner\u2019s stories recall the work of French author Raymond Roussel (1877-1933). In Roussel\u2019s novel Locus Solus, for example, we encounter a scientist who has invented a balloon-powered, road-building machine, which, using human teeth of varying hues of brown, is assembling a mosaic of a Native American warrior. While this is the sort of oddity a reader shouldn\u2019t be surprised to turn up in a Gessner fiction, the language Roussel uses is Victorian in its formality and almost scrupulously objective\u2014at least in translation\u2014as might befit a scientist. Roussel\u2019s novel is carried not so much by his style as by an array of ingenious curiosities. Gessner strikes a more equal balance between the poetry of the prose and the parade of strangeness, between whimsical wordplay and the relentlessly funny. Virtually every paragraph in \u201cExcerpts from the Diary of a Neanderthal Dilettante\u201d\u2014the title is self-explanatory\u2014presents the reader with material worthy of a stand-up routine:<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Just recently we have been learning to draw Picasso running toward us holding a small pad of paper; who or what Picasso is remains to be seen. According to the professor, he doesn\u2019t exist yet. [\u2026] Since I, the professor and my fellow students will all be fragments preserved in glass cases in natural history museums by the time Picasso is born, we have no way of knowing whether or not he was somehow involved in the arts. Perhaps I should be more skeptical, for all I know Picasso might be a ne\u2019er-do-well who lives at the Y.M.C.A who is in a constant state of trepidation over the fact that he might be an immense ruffled pair of anthropomorphic bloomers in a world inhabited by omnipotent seamstresses who are vehemently against ruffles.<\/em><\/span><\/blockquote>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\u201cThe Zoo-brary,\u201d mentioned above, will also produce, if not belly laughs, certainly a few inner chuckles.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Writers of different type, ability and degree of stature are paired up in opposite cells with facing bars so they can view only each other. Parking-ticket scribblers face classical versifiers\u2014Subpoena makers face street poets to produce spontaneous legal writs\u2014Seminal \u2018inventives\u2019 face shopworn \u2018derivatives\u2019 to make an accessible would-be radical with a pioneering gloss. [\u2026]Scholarly treatise writers face gossip columnists to make high-pulp crops of academic sensation\u2014A zoo-breeder wanders through the maze of hallways listening to the congress of burgeoning tete-a-tetes caught up in an infectious meld of snowballing ideas.,<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\/\u201cThe ancestors of the victim and assailant line up in rows facing each other, linking pinkies in a twilight square dance.\u201d The spiraling dancers create a kind of vortex, drawing in, among other things, a \u201cmillennial scorpion,\u201d transpersonal memories, reborn kamikaze pilots, opportunistic remoras, whole countries, a chorus of birds, \u201can old mossback snapping turtle of an unknown forbear.\u201d This is not, however, a chaotic collection of imagery summoned up to no visible purpose, but a transcendence of the familiar relationship between subject and object, the seer and the seen, victim and assailant, told in hallucinatory prose. In the end the story invites both reconciliation and redemption.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Many readers shy away from the avant-garde, finding it inaccessible, confusing, absurd, arbitrary to the point of meaningless. I myself have these issues with Andre Breton\u2019s prose experiments, Antonin Artaud\u2019s surrealist poetry, John Ashbery\u2019s later work, many of the stories in Yoko Tawada\u2019s Where Europe Begins, and a dozen other contemporary books that defeated my attempts to engage with them. Gessner\u2019s writing is not of that ilk. While his literary creations don\u2019t always obey the laws of classical physics, they have an affinity for the quirks of quantum mechanics, and though they dispense with the logic of Aristotle, they replace it with the logic of dreams. Moving sometimes in a straight line, sometimes in an arabesque, the stories progress nonetheless, and the writing stirs beauty at unlit depths\u2014like echolocations that sound out shapes in the psyche we didn\u2019t know were there. Endlessly inventive, Gessner is not interested in the arbitrary thrill; rather, he is out to inspire us to rethink our assumptions, to reframe our perspectives, to renew our ways of seeing. His writing is a funhouse mirror, distorting the empirical world in ways that, paradoxically, help us see it better.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n <script>\r\n\t\tjQuery(function () {\r\n\t\t\tjQuery('#myTab_1146 a:first').tab('show')\r\n\t\t});\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\tjQuery(function(){\r\n\t\t\tvar b=\"fadeIn\";\r\n\t\t\tvar c;\r\n\t\t\tvar a;\r\n\t\t\td(jQuery(\"#myTab_1146 a\"),jQuery(\"#tab-content_1146\"));function d(e,f,g){\r\n\t\t\t\te.click(function(i){\r\n\t\t\t\t\ti.preventDefault();\r\n\t\t\t\t\tjQuery(this).tab(\"show\");\r\n\t\t\t\t\tvar h=jQuery(this).data(\"easein\");\r\n\t\t\t\t\tif(c){c.removeClass(a);}\r\n\t\t\t\t\tif(h){f.find(\"div.active\").addClass(\"animated \"+h);a=h;}\r\n\t\t\t\t\telse{if(g){f.find(\"div.active\").addClass(\"animated \"+g);a=g;}else{f.find(\"div.active\").addClass(\"animated \"+b);a=b;}}c=f.find(\"div.active\");\r\n\t\t\t\t});\r\n\t\t\t}\r\n\t\t});\r\n\t\t\r\n\r\n\t\tfunction do_resize(){\r\n\r\n\t\t\tvar width=jQuery( '.tab-content .tab-pane iframe' ).width();\r\n\t\t\tvar height=jQuery( '.tab-content .tab-pane iframe' ).height();\r\n\r\n\t\t\tvar toggleSize = true;\r\n\t\t\tjQuery('iframe').animate({\r\n\t\t\t    width: toggleSize ? width : 640,\r\n\t\t\t    height: toggleSize ? height : 360\r\n\t\t\t  }, 250);\r\n\r\n\t\t\t  toggleSize = !toggleSize;\r\n\t\t}\r\n\r\n\r\n\t<\/script>\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by\u00a0Richard Gessner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1150,"template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[29],"product_tag":[47],"class_list":{"0":"post-1148","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-fiction","7":"product_tag-richard-gessner","9":"first","10":"instock","11":"shipping-taxable","12":"purchasable","13":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}