RAY FEDERMAN
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
[English & Comparative Literature]
Born in France (1928), I am a bilingual writer. I emigrated to the U.S. in 1947. After serving in the U.S. Army in Korea and Japan (1951-54), I studied at Columbia University under the G.I. Bill (B.A. Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1957); graduate studies at U.C.L.A. (M.A., 1958, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1963 -- doctoral dissertation on Samuel Beckett).
1959-1964, I taught in the French Department, at the University of California at Santa Barbara; 1964-1973, in the French Department at The State University of New York at Buffalo [promoted to Full Professor in 1968); 1973-1999, as a fiction writer in the English Department at SUNY-Buffalo. In 1990, I was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor, and in 1992, I was appointed to the Melodia E. Jones Chair of Literature. I retired from SUNY-Buffalo in July 1999. Distinguished Emeritus Professor, 2000.
Though I have published several volumes of poems (Among the Beasts,1967; Me Too, 1975; Duel-Duel, 1990; Now Then,1992; 99 Hand-Written Poems, 2001; Future Concentration, 2003; Here & Elsewhere, 2003); four books of criticism on Samuel Beckett, three collections of essays, a collections of plays, numerous articles, essays, and translations, I consider myself primarily a fiction writer.
To date I have published eleven novels: Double or Nothing (Swallow Press, 1971, winner of the Frances Steloff Fiction Prize and The Panache Experimental Fiction Prize); Amer Eldorado (written in French, Editions Stock, Paris, 1974, nominated for Le Prix Médicis, re-issued in 2003 by les éditions Al Dante in Paris); Take It or Leave It (Fiction Collective, 1976); The Voice in the Closet (Coda Press, 1979); The Twofold Vibration (Indiana University Press & Harvester Press Ltd., 1982, reprinted by Sun & Moon Press, 1996); Smiles on Washington Square (Thunder's Mouth Press, 1985, awarded The American Book Award by The Before Columbus Foundation, reprinted by Sun & Moon Press, 1992); To Whom It May Concern (The Fiction Collective Two, 1990); La Fourrure de ma Tante Rachel (written in French, Éditions Circé, Paris, 1997). Loose Shoes (Weidler Verlag, Berlin), 2001; Aunt Rachel's Fur (FC2, 2001); The Twilight of the Bums (Altx, 2002).
My novels have been translated into German, Italian, French, Hungarian, Polish, Dutch, Rumanian, Serbian, Greek, Portuguese, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, and soon to appear in Finnish and Turkish.
My fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in numerous literary magazines both in the U.S. and abroad, including Partisan Review, Paris Review, Chicago Review, Fiction International, North American Review, Mississippi Review, Formation, Caliban, The New Boston Review, Virginia Quarterly, Tri-Quarterly, The Denver Quarterly, Black Ice, TXT, Le Monde, Esprit, Schreibheft, Texturas, Lettre International, Rampike, West Coast Review, and many others.
1966-67, I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship; in 1977, I was a fellow in residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; 1982-83, I received a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel as Writer-in-Residence at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; I was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction in 1985, and a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for fiction in 1986; 1989-1990, I was invited by DAAD (The Berlin Kunstler-Programm) to spend a year in Berlin as Writer-in-Residence. During that year, DAAD published in a bilingual edition a collection of some of my experimental poetry and prose entitled Playtexts-Spieltexte, and The Stopover Press in Berlin published Duel-Duel, a trilingual volume of poems. In 1995, I was awarded Les Palmes Académiques by the French Government; in 1998, my play, The Precipice, had its world premiere in Jyvaskyla, Finland, and was adapted as a radio play by Deutschland Radio in Berlin. All my novels have been adapted into radio plays in Germany.
From 1973 to 1976, I was a member of the Board of Directors of The Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. 1979-82, I served as Co-Director of The Fiction Collective, and I am currently on the Board of Directors of The Fiction Collective Two. 1978-1981, I served on the Literature Panel of the New York Council on the Arts, and from 1980 to 1983, on the Board of Hallwalls. I also served as a judge for fiction for CAPS in 1980, for the Massachusetts Arts Council in 1984, and the Wisconsin Arts Council in 1988, and as a judge for fiction for the New York State Foundation for the Arts in 1986-87. In 1995, I was one of the judges for the American Awards for Literature. I have been a member of the International PEN Center for many years.
For the past forty years or more, I have read from my work in most major U.S. Universities, and I have lectured in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Japan, Turkey.
Several full-length books and numerous articles have been written about my work, and several doctoral dissertations. In 1998, a 400 page casebook entitled Federman From A to X-X-X-X by Larry McCaffery, Doug Rice, and Thomas Hartl, was published by San Diego State University Press. In 1999, my collected plays were published in Austria in a bilingual edition (English/German) under the title The Precipice & Other Catastrophes. In 2002, The Journal of Experimental Fiction published a 500 page special issue, The Laughs that Laughs at the Laugh : Writing from and about the Pen Man, Raymond Federman.
I am listed in Who's Who in America, Contemporary Fiction Writers, Directory of American Poets & Fiction Writers, World Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors Autobiographies, and several others. I am an Honorary Trustee of the Samuel Beckett Society.
My website is - www.federman.com
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MY NEW CLOTHES
Did you people take advantage of the post-Christmas sales?
Yesterday my wife dragged me to the mall to retool me sartorially. Or I should say, to re-dress my body. After all, clothes are also part of the body. Clothes make the man, it is said.
First I bought a new pair of slippers, reduced from 19.95 to 9.95. Excellent savates lined with wool. Black to match the black robe de chambre my wife got me for my birthday. She likes for me to be always well coordinated in colors.
Then I bought a new Geoffrey Beene black shirt made of special fabric that never wrinkles and never shrinks. That's what the label in the collar says. That's important if you don't want to look like a big sausage that slept in his shirt all night.
I only wear Geff's shirts. They fit me well. Size 16 ½/32. I have short arms.
I only wear black shirts now when I perform publicly, as I will in Paris end of March. It was
inevitable that one of these days the French would remember me, and invite me to perform. Or as Jacques le Fataliste used say : It was written above.
I must look my best that day. Show how good America has been to me. I'll wear all black. Shoes, pants, shirt, coat, tie, socks, even the underwear. All black for the return of Prodigal son. Not that I want to show my dark side. But considering how France treated me, I cannot return looking like a bouquet de fleurs.
My wife insisted that I should also buy a new pair of pants, perhaps another color than black. I made her understand that I did not need a new pair of pants.
That I only wear black pants when I perform. The two black pairs I now have are still in good condition, and not too tight around the waist.
I'll only wear black in Paris. A symbolic gesture on my part. As if finally I was emerging from the dark into French reality.
Excuse the pirouette into symbolism, but it just happened like that.
So I bought this Geoffrey Beene black shirt. Now, I have seven black shirts, I explained to my wife. One for each day of the week. This way, when I
am on the road for a week, I have one clean black shirt for each day.
And what happens, my wife asked with a little sourire sournois, if you are on a two week trip, or a three week trip? Does that mean you have to pack 15 or 21 black shirts.
No, there is another way to solve this problem. I wear the same shirt two or three days in the row, depending on the length of my peregrination.
As always, very logical Federman, my wife retorts. You idiot, then why don't you take only one shirt with you when you travel and wear it the number of days you are away. That would save you a lot of aggravation packing, less to carry, less to unpack, less to take care of. And this way you would have more room in your suitcase to pack copies of your own books so you can sell them to those who come to listen to your preposterous stories. The giggly girls who look at the famous writer with humid admiration.
You see how you twist everything, I said.
I hate shopping because your wife always wants to dress you so you look younger, less fat, taller, stronger, more virile.
The new black shirt I bought was reduced from 42.50 to 19.95. Can you believe that? They must have had a huge surplus.
Most people prefer to buy Van Heusen shirts because they are cheaper. Personally I find that the Van Heusen fabric is not of the Geff Bean quality. It does not hold. That's why they are cheaper.
Before I got married I never payed much attention to the name of the guy who made the shirts I wore. Any shirt would do. But I suppose the reason I can tell the difference between a Geoffrey Beene and a Van Heusen in terms of the fabric must be because at one time or another I must have had a Van Heusen. This is why I have a memory of the Van Heusen fabric in me.
Without wanting to sound psychic, I'll just say that by instinct I know the Beene fabric is better than the Heusen. And we'll leave it at that.
After the shirt we went to the department des caleçons.
There, an enormous decision was taken. Normally I wear briefs. Only Calvin Klein's. Of various color, though my favorites are the black ones.
But lately I have not been totally comfortable in my Calvin Klein briefs.
To put it quite bluntly, my cock and balls feel squeezed in these Calvin Klein briefs. They cut into my groin. They hang below my waist. They crawl up my ass.
So there in the department of men's underwear, Erica suggested I should try boxer shorts.
Boxer shorts! I screamed. Are you kidding. How can you suggest something like that. I suffered enough in boxer shorts when I was in the army. You had to wear them. It was regulation. Color caca d'oie. You cannot believe how your cock and balls feel in one of them boxers. They whirl around, banging against each other, and against your thighs. You go crazy wearing a boxer short all day.
As soon as I got out of the army, I switched to the brief. In those days it was Jockeys.
I liked Jockeys because, when you need to piss, there is a little slit in front to stick you dick through it. It's a nice sensation when you stick it in the slit.
But then I switched to Calvin Klein when I discovered that they don't have a slit in front so that when you have to piss you have to take your dick out on the side. On the left or on the right depending on which side you carry. And I'll tell you something. It's even more sexy than through the Jockey slit.
Anyway, here we are, my wife and I, debating the dilemma of underwear, and trying to decide what would now be best for me, the most comfortable, now that the private parts are hanging lower than when I was less flabby, less rounded, and in better control of my private parts.
My wife finally comes up with the right solution for my comfort. Just a solution, not the final solution I hope.
She suggests that I try one of those shorts that look like the kind athletes wear to protect their groin.
Long John! I cringed.
No, not long John, shorts that go half way done down the thigh, and are tight around the thighs, she explains.
Oh one of those that has like a pocket in front into which your cock and balls fit.
Fit perfectly and comfortably, I am told. Without twiddling all over the place.
How do you know that? Who told you? With whom do you discuss such matters, I inquired.
I read about those types of underwear in a woman magazine. It's the latest style.
Oh!
Well, it was decided that I should try one of those caleçon.
So I bought two for a try out. A white one and a grey one. Size medium. Yes I'm still medium around the waist.
As soon as I got home, I tried the new underwear. Well, let me tell you, they are so comfy, and sexy too. Feels good to be in them. Everything fits. The wife was right. She knows best.
So now I am in my fourth underwear transition. Fourth because I neglected to mention the long johns I wore at times in my life when I lived in the snows of Buffalo. On certain unbearable days I wore long johns, just for protection.
I will not go into the details of how it felt to be wearing long johns. The remembrance of those frigid days would depress me.
So four underwear transition in my life. From Long John to Boxer, from Boxer to Brief, and now from Brief to .... how shall we call this new type of protective gear?
Oh by the way, they are Italian, these new biancheria personale, as they are called in Italy.
They are not Calvin Klein. They are call Primo.
That's what I'll call them. Primos!
By the way the Primos were not reduced for the post-Christmas sale. I suppose the store sold out most of its stock before Christmas. They must have sold large quantity of Primos because there were only a few left my size. Medium. Probably because these Primos make a fantastic Christma gifts. They are so comfy and so sexy. The wives and girl friends know how to get to the core of the body they love. And they went for Primos.
That's all I bought. We did look at sport jackets, and I even tried on a dozen, but none seem to make me look better or younger or more frivolous. So we skipped the sport coats. And we went home so I could try on my new Primos.
Later today we are going back to the mall, but this time to the ladies' department for the post-Christmas sales.