Bilfreddis “Bill Fred” Beckybutcher ("Three for the Nevermore") made his bones writing outrageously successful and socially erosive screenplays about charismatic pirates ’n’ mobsters before retraining his pen to the impressionistic interpretation of classic literary styles.  Much of the resulting work showcases the pronounced tension between the author’s duty to form and his impatience. “As a writer I am challenged by incurable disrespect for audiences,” Mr. Beckybutcher concedes.  (“Call me Moby, you d*ck,” opens his corpulent narrator Fishmale Whaley in Gut the Gaffer, styled by USA TODAY “a 700-page drift on stormy seas.”)  “Readers generally do not know, do not care, what’s best for them, nor is coddling them any fascination of mine.”          

Jack Derriere (“‘The Killers’ and the Death of Sleep”) is internationally known as the Papa of Reconstructivism, that long-exploded, rancid tissue of folly, linguistic confusion and mendacity.  This specimen of his critical acumen was committed to paper on the famous U.S. tour of 1967, in which he and his sidekick Werner von Ümlaut spread the fatal spores of their new mental fungus to all the fabled Ivy League idiot compounds.

Professor Loose (Frosty Mug Lecture #005), having been rescued at the last possible second by his zoot-suited Groupie Troopers, parachutes into another Mug session to rap a minute with the Wundervölker and toss back a sudsie. Seems he bumped his head and now he's on about the whole Creation thing...

William J. Schafer (“Three Places in the Great Meadow”) has appeared numberless times in these pages and needs no accolade or introduction.  Nuff sed.

Bartleby de Scrivener (“Up Jumped the Devil”) is a remote descendant of Danton’s left-hand man, Pierre the Marquis de Scrivener, known as “The Blood-Drenched Tallyman of the Guillotine.”  Our man, however, is somewhat more peaceable and has restricted himself to writing (under the pen name of Matt Finnish) a half-dozen novels in the Jack Flash series of Cold War thrillers, which have racked up a collective sales figure (in hard and soft covers) of some 30 million copies.  Well done, whacker!