FlashPøint is again on the horizon!

     The 6th issue will be released on November 15. This EXTRA! #2 provides a teaser of what's to come. "Hideous Beauties," the title of Lance Olsen's latest collection of fiction, and theme of the interview with him here, could also caption what FlashPøint is preparing for you. The lead piece, "The Short Happy Life of Lee Harvey Oswald," I'll address in a moment. The special treat of the upcoming issue is a very generous serving of the works in poetry, prose, and paint of the late British artist, Morris Cox, whose "The Slumbering Virgin" itself exemplifies the fascination that "hideous beauties" can evoke.

     We have Contributing Editor Bradford Haas to thank for this extraordinary introduction to Morris Cox. (Haas has also contributed not only an essay ("David Jones: the Poet’s Place and the Sleeping Lord") to earlier issues, but also his own poetry ("An Appraisal of Accidents" in FlashPøint #4), as well as many reviews.)

     Lance Olsen, in my opinion, is one of the most exuberant, adventurous, and hilarious writers of serious fiction today, to put it mildly. "Hideous Beauties", the most extensive interview he has given, will introduce the pleasures, challenges, and striking diversity of his work to those who are new to it, as well as insight into new directions it is taking to those who are familiar.

     When I first read the two biographies of Lee Oswald in the Warren Report, shortly after it was published, I was struck by the echo in its prose of Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. Every rereading found the same note of ritual realism fresh. Only many years later did I happen upon the "fact" (every "fact" in the Oswald case needs to be hedged by quotation marks) that Hemingway was the only American writer ever mentioned in the manuscripts ascribed to Oswald among the Warren Commission exhibits. There are two remarks, one referring to The Old Man and the Sea as a "touching story," the other "explaining" Oswald's two years in the Soviet Union as a mere temporary expatriation like Hemingway's in Paris. I have more to say about the Oswald-Hemingway "connection" in the essay, "Lee Oswald: Deep Classic American Hero," which is a companion to the story that wraps round it, "The Short Happy Life of Lee Harvey Oswald". Both together explain and extend each other better than I can here. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains the greatest unsolved murder of the American Century. The 40th anniversary is upon us.

     We hope this EXTRA! will tease your appetite for the full 6th issue.