Last Bender

This website is dedicated to my poetry and fiction. I don’t attend workshops, retreats or conferences. I am a working writer and a passionate reader. Writing as Buzz Callaway, I’m the author of Specimen Tank and The Last Bender. Specimen Tank is published by Manic D Press. The Last Bender is published on this website.  

What Kind of Things Do You Write?

Like most writers I’m allergic to labels. I consider myself to be a literary writer and don’t really care what genre I do or do not write in. If I’ve done my job my books could go on any number of shelves in a bookstore and I’d be happy to have them there. But, I think my Buzz Callaway books can be comfortably described as Low-Tech Noir. The term Tech Noir is used by Jonathan Lethem to describe one kind of Sci-Fi. That’s not what I write.

Low-Tech Noir

Low-Tech Noir is a novel set in the future that doesn’t concern itself with technology and gadgets. It sees the future as the same grubby place as the present and follows the hapless descent of a friendless boob into hell, often guided by a femme fatale. It is a paranoid world full of random violence and despair and bad television. Everyone takes drugs. It is not the world of Kathy Acker and William Burroughs. It is more the world of Richard Yates and James M. Cain, of Jim Thompson and Philip K. Dick.

My other novels are written under my real name. They are The Man Who Can’t Die and Endangered Species. I have no idea how to categorise these and won’t even try except to say that Endangered Species is a cross between Henry Green and Green Henry, and The Man Who Can’t Die is a revelation about another world simultaneous with this one, one Henry Corbin among others writes about, the Hurqalya, Blake’s Beulah.

Poetry

Poetry has been my vocation since 1976. I think the poetry business is totally fucked and hate all aspects of it. I post for those who care. Really, poetry is hopeless. John Donne was a great poet. Charles Olson was not.

The Vietnam Project

The Vietnam Project is an evolving obsession. It includes book reviews, musings, fiction, notes, delirium. No one will mistake me for a scholar, but I do hope the links will help non-professionals find books, papers and articles on the history of Vietnam and Southeast Asia, as well as materials relating to the American War there, and, of course, the Ancient Kingdom of Champa.