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T h e
F i c t i o n O f R. F. Dietrich |
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Earth
Angel is a
wryly narrated nostalgia piece about the laughable but lovable 1950s in small
town America. On movie dates then the
hormonal honey pot was constantly stirred by the likes of such voluptuous
Hollywood angels as Marily Monroe, Liz Taylor, Jane
Russell, Sophia Loren, Brigette Bardot, Jayne
Mansfield, and on and on. This was
especially tormenting if you dated a girl who looked like Marilyn
Monroe but whose angelic ambitions were only of the biblical sort. This is the fate of the novel’s hero,
“Reverend Steve,” a young lad considering the ministry and with biblical
ambitions of his own but struggling with an erotic imagination that is
over-stimulated by the appearance in his Ohio town of so many gorgeous
angels, both onscreen and sitting right next to him at the drive-in
movie. Well, where could this lead to
but to out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy?
The twist here is that the teen who gets “knocked up” is the virginal
“Reverend Steve.” So what did the baby
look like? The last virgin birth
gave rise to a whole new epoch; is that the case here? “You know, Lord, if you don’t want any
other gods before you, you shouldn’t make sexy girls.” —Reverend Steve Berlin |
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Earth Angel is available in paperback and hardbound at www.authorhouse.com or at www.amazon.com, www.bn.com, or at www.addall.com and at other bookstores and websites. Look under ISBN # 1-4033-5793-5 for the hardbound and # 1-4933-5702-7 for the paperback. It is also available as an e-book from AuthorHouse. |
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Religion from Zoroaster to Billy
Graham has featured an apocalyptic “Final Solution,” an idea given a very
ugly twist by Adolf Hitler but true to the meat-cleaver, judgmental spirit of
the tradition. While the apocalyptic
“End of Days” had previously been wishful thinking, Hitler’s Nazis revealed
that a purely man-made apocalypse would someday be technologically
possible. With weapons of mass
destruction becoming increasingly available, the Apocalypse needs now only a
handful of True Believers to pull it off.
In fact, with the rise of religious intolerance in the world, a
Holocaust of Humanity is becoming increasingly likely, waiting only for just
the right Beast of the Apocalypse to cue The End. R. F. Dietrich’s The Final Solution is
the tale of the “slouching toward Bethelehem” of
just that rough beast and Wolf Berlin’s desperate attempt to forestall him.
This struggle is thrown into doubt by the irony that this rough beast is an
old soul mate of Wolf’s, who tempts Wolf with the roles of Peter and Paul in
his new, post-Apocalypse religion. Or
so Wolf tells us. Can Wolf, a
card-carrying member of Actors’ Equity, be believed? “Religion is going to be the death of us,
if the lack of it doesn’t get us first.” —–from Wolf Berlin’s Holy Wars |
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The
Final Solution is available in paperback at www.iuniverse.com, www.amazon.com, www.bn.com, and www.addall.com. Look under ISBN # 0-595-13263-1. For more on this novel, see www.rfd2.htm/publisher_final_solution/index.html |
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SUMMARY
OF ALPHABETICAL ORDER Alphabetical Order is a contra-PC look at the simultaneous farce and
melodrama that is higher education in America. It uses the extremes of the classroom
absurdities from the 1970s on to dramatize the highly comic standoff among
teachers, students, and administrators at all times and in all places that
always ends in the same old shootout, never mind polite appearances. Professor Dog, President Staffuk
and the campus cops, and the know-it-all, mind-of-their-own,
not-interested-in-education students, led by the voluptuous, mini-skirted,
make-love-not-war Eve Alpha and the always politically motivated reactionary
Bob Beta, will remind you of the anarchy that always lies in wait in every
classroom and the way that it is always smashed. And thereby projects an image of the larger
world. Times change, the forms of
anarchy change, but the eventual suppression of it is always
"alphabetical" in the sudden application of arbitrary power when
things get out of hand. Alpha, sit
here! Beta, sit there! Gamma, sit
here! But you won't be able to
sit still as this laugh-out-loud school daze drama plays itself out. Professor Dog: “The A students gave me As, the C students gave me Cs, so from now on I
give everybody As. It's called ‘grade inflation.’ Everyone shall be created equal, or else! |
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Alphabetical Order: A Melofarce in Two Acts is available
in paperback at www.iuniverse.com, www.amazon.com, www.bn.com, and www.addall.com. Look under ISBN # 0-595-36470-5. |
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ABOUT
THE AUTHOR: R. F. Dietrich is an
English Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa where he teaches
a course in “The Apocalypse in Modern Literature & Film.” His first novel, The Final Solution,
is a prophetic evocation of the Armageddon lust that consumes some people as
they employ apocalyptic terrorism to vindicate their religious beliefs. Its tale of messianic ambition foresaw the
events of September 11, 2001, and predicted an even darker future. In Earth Angel, his second novel,
the author shifts from dark to light, from looking into a devilish future to
looking wryly back upon a youthful search for love that would reconcile earth
and heaven. Both novels derive from
the author’s realization that literature can still serve a religious
function, as at its origins; it’s just a question of getting back to a
religion that celebrates human creativity as part of divine creativity, as
religion did at its origins.
In his latest work Dietrich turns to playwriting, dramatizing in Alphabetical
Order a free-for-all shootout among professors, students, and
administrators in American higher education that is presided over by the Lord
of Misrule and suggests why an apocalypse might not be a bad idea. |
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