Publicity
Audio Excerpts
James J Patterson reads from Bermuda Shorts
With one foot in Canada and one in DC — the “Capitol of the Empire” — James J. Patterson is a man of two very different worlds. But, no matter what happens, those Canadian roots bring him back to Earth. “Lovesick Lake” is the opening story from Bermuda Shorts.
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When his buddy Gordo wants to talk about God, Patterson relates a tale from an airport bar that shows the troubled face of our modern times. This excerpt is taken from “Gordo, God & Ghandi,” a story from Bermuda Shorts.
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A tale from Patterson’s days as “Jimmy Pheromone.” This excerpt is taken from “That Was Then, This is The Pheromones,” a story from Bermuda Shorts.
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Patterson’s musing on art, inspired by Ferlinghetti’s quote “Sculpture isn’t for young men.” This excerpt is taken from “Sculpture Isn’t…,” a story from Bermuda Shorts.
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Love on the rocks? Don’t get trapped in the Conjecture Chamber! This excerpt is taken from “The Conjecture Chamber,” a story from Bermuda Shorts.
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Patterson, founder of Sportsfan Magazine, talks about one of his favorite subjects — sports. This excerpt is taken from “The Conjecture Chamber,” a story from Bermuda Shorts.
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That Paris Year — Coming Soon!
ASP Flickr Feed — October 22nd, 2010 Book Launch
- Check out photos from the launch party on Flickr
Podcasts & Radio
- Rose and James talk about poetry, publishing, and ASP on Grace Cavalieri’s webcast, “The Poet and the Poem.” Listen to it right here
Videos
Jimmy Pheromone for President — Pheromones music video:
The Pheromones — Yuppie Drone video:
Press Releases
Blogs & Reviews
Most of the essays include vivid portrayals of Patterson’s experiences mixed in with some of his ruminations about life. In “Lovesick Lake,” he talks about his deep connection to his family’s vacation home outside of Toronto. In “Sculpture Isn’t …,” he recalls an afternoon of thought and contemplation while sipping wine and reading the poems of Lawrence Ferlinghetti at a restaurant. In “The Nearest Thing to Perfection,” the author outlines his mother’s lifelong love affair with baseball.
-Brooke Kenny, The Gazette
I can’t recommend “Bermuda Shorts” any more highly. Patterson is a terrific writer, and has some great stories to tell.
-Hank Thomas. Find the full review here.
Bermuda Shorts is a great book: it has that feel and verbal texture of classic American writing about it. The thing I admire most is the way each piece becomes a real short story: wherever it begins, it gradually winds in to an increasing focus and ends with an image — the chopped-down Esso sign, the final handshakes of the ‘Old school’ guy and his friends; or indeed the Haunted Crucifix itself in that basement with the children. Probably what Joyce would have called ‘epiphanies’. They certainly stay in the reader’s memory — like good poetic images, which in a way they are.
-Grevel Lindop
His essays are by turns insightful, funny, poignant, polemical and intimate. Above all, they are conversational. You find yourself engaged in a conversation that you really don’t want to end, so you stay with him in a dimly lit bar somewhere, one that never seems to close, and glass in hand, you’re good for another round.
Some of the essays are the literary equivalent of the Buddhist meditation on the skull, which is meant to use the sense of impending death as an impetus to love the juicy, impermanent life at hand. How fortunate for the reader that life, for this author is music.
-Dr. Katherine Williams
You will, of course, enjoy the shenanigans that Jimmy Patterson has created and encountered along the course of his exuberant life. You will love the characters he has recalled and you will be taken inside yourself to bring forth old feelings of your own through the transformative power of his pure narratives. This is a tour de force performance by an immensely talented, engaging and brilliant writer.
It is like sitting down with a very intelligent friend and having the kind of conversation you’d always wanted to have. And it stirs one’s own conversations – or imagined ones – or reminds one of the strange coincidences that life offers.
-Myra Sklarew