Great Cornhusker's Lotion! I examined this anecdote with the quizzicality of a man who has discovered caterpillar tracks in his mother-in-law's funeral wreath!

Thank you, Mr. Ebert! I am waiting for new members to flood into the HSK Society. (But not too many--we relish our esoteric knowledge.)

By the way, the Sun-Times did a very nice pictorial on Harry in 1943. You have broken 67 years of silence.

Thanks so much, Roger. Very odd, but Keeler just come to my attention recently, although I hadn't until tonight known of this big website his society has. I adore the very idea of the man, his webworks, his writerly reliance on massive amounts of coincidence, the fact that not one but two of his wives wrote the occasional chapter for him. Perhaps you've seen these names, attached, all of them characters from his book The Iron Ring. Just yesterday I sent them off to my friend John Ashbery, they seem the kind of ridiculously delightful things he might adore, too. So your email is uncannily timely. I love that little short, perhaps the shortest thing with Keeler's name attached to it, by far. It reminds me a bit of Italo Calvino's Cosmicomix. And that really peculiar visit to his grave! What the..?
I'm now inspired to make the highly inadvisable move to convert my next feature film script into a webwork!

How did you know that Harry S Keeler was an interest of mine? I have never been able to finish one of his sublimely ill-written books, but have made it through most of the HSK READER.

You may know that the admirable William Poundstone is also a Keeler fan. He too maintains a wing of his site devoted to the man.

http://home.williampoundstone.net/Keeler/Home.html

And Ramble House has reprinted a remarkable number of HSK's books.

http://www.ramblehouse.com/

Once more a convergence of our, admittedly sometimes nutso, interests.

eeww..

BOOOOM-

ERRR-

RANG?

I'm the guy who is assisting Harry to tweet from beyond the big black turnstile that turns one way only. I am shocked and delighted by this recognition. Please excuse me while I process.

Ebert: You know, I think Harry may have found his ideal medium.

In Twitter, that is, and in you.

Ebert: Readers, follow @HarrySKeeler

Wonderful! I shall forward the address to my brother, a long-time Keeler devotee. I, too, am fascinated by this alley in the metropolis of popular culture, but I know this will make him even more delighted than I am.

As a Keeler fan, this made my weekend. I like to imagine his ghost hovering over your keyboard in glee as you typed this post.

Dear Mr. Ebert, yo are the greatest cinema critic of the world. And I mean it! The first time I saw ande heard you was on tv in Chicago in 1985, where my mom use to live with her husband. She was a big fan of you! I've always enjoyed yor comments and your movie ranking (the stars...). I have re- discovered you right now in yahoo news and immediately reached you blog here. I was delighted with this foreign movies review you have made,thanks! Please, can you make a review of "THE MILK OF SORROW", one of the foreign films nominated to the Oscar? Is a peruvian film directed by a peruvian girl named Claudia Llosa ( its is her second film, which has winned the 2009 Berlinale!). Her muse is a young native indian girl from our highlands named Magaly Solier, a survivor of the war against terrorism and a fine person. We all peruvians are thrilled with this Oscar's nomination and we are longing to get the Oscar for the very first time in our history! But besides this wish, Iill be very glad to read your opinion. Thanks a lot, God bless you for being such a nice and brave human being, the World need more people like you! And I promess to be a all-time fan of your blog and any other critics. Love and kisess from Lima, Peru!!

Roger, do you have any recommendations on where to start? Thanks to you, I may have discovered a new favorite author; however, I'm a little overwhelmed by the... prolificacy of Mr. Keeler's work?

Any suggestions on which novel(s) to read first or that you've enjoyed would be greatly appreciated.

I thought the wine stains and the word of some random strangers, was conclusive evidence and being the rash risk taker that I was, I was just about to castrate the rabbit I thought I had by the nerts, when the trip took a turn for the worse, suddenly I saw the rabbit which had given me such a hard on, shifting shape and realizing that this moment contained some very valuable information [or maybe I was high off my own farts again, I couldn't really tell, I had real problems with restraint and an awful digestive tract], I jerked the surgical knife upwards and bisected my own organ and testes instead with a flatulent honk which would've made a bull blush. I tried to insert the rabbit which I had bled all over, into my USB port to see what information I could find, but this was some kind of futuristic device which gave out all kinds of weird numbers like 8080, 99999, 69696...it gave me a bad headache, plus the place where my junk had been needed a tourniquet, so I shrugged and said, rabbit, I can't figure you out, castrating you could sink my career, which isn't really worth the risk. I'm going to stop biting down on bricks that look like chocolate, my dental plan doesn't cover bricked teeth, better not threaten any more shape shifting rabbits, or whatever that creature was, ever again.

It wasn't the first time the rogue phallus had gotten me into trouble, besides, I had a bum ticker anyway. Good riddance I thought, now I can concentrate on my three favourite childhood passions: castrato singing, recording my numerous and great thoughts to be published in fine reputable journals after my death [which was a long way away, unlike what I had wished on someone I'd grown tired of and consequently tried to push them towards, or maybe I'd failed badly the tests I'd been set by them, who knows, the wind from my behind, which had powered my flight up Fleet Street to visit some old friends still had me floating up on high] and the last, but by no means the least – returning to writing sanchismos for the many quixotic adventures of my famous friend and valued business partner. I also like communicating with spirits like Carlos used to, but don't tell anyone about that, people will make fun of me, you know, because I'm constantly lecturing people on various scientific methods and what not...

Ebert: Harry S. Keeler rules.

I've drownded myself Mandrake, that's what I've gone and done, in my own precious bodily fluid no less and the smiles of a summer night, turn slowly into winter light.

Ebert: Harry S. Keeler rules.

I couldn't agree more, in fact I think I might just have proven that Harry S. Keeler rules.

There's a look in Mrs. Keeler's eyes, which just says it all. I think it says - one day, one day darling, people from all over the world will appreciate you for the great genius that you are.

Well Mrs. Keeler, you were right!

As one of the four people on earth who have read all 92 of Harry Keeler's novels -- some of which I read three times in a row while editing them -- I have my opinion on which Keelers to read first. It's at www.ramblehouse.com/wheretostart.htm

Thank you, Roger, for remembering one the best ambassadors for Chicago's claim to be the London of the West. For anyone who wants to get to know the real Harry Stephen Keeler, not just the magnificent master of webwork plotting, I recommend Francis M. Nevins' incredible collection of Harry's Keyhole Newsletters (said to be the world's first blog). Harry speaks his mind for over 400 pages. And what a mind it was.

I've devoted the last ten years of my life to publishing Harry and it's gratifying when men I admire, like Roger Ebert, Bill Pronzini, Richard A. Lupoff, Neil Gaiman, Bill Poundstone, Peter Straub, Matt Groening, Harlan Ellison, Ed Park, Ken Keeler (no relation but the brains behind Futurama and author of the two funniest Keeler pastiches ever), Mike Nevins, Art Scott, Bill Crider and Jon Breen read one of my humble editions.

If you stay away from THE BOX FROM JAPAN, THE MATILDA HUNTER MURDER, THE BIG RIVER TRILOGY and Harry's skience friction novels you should have no trouble reading and finishing a Keeler. Please save the hard Keelers until you are a bona fide Keeler-a-week junkie. JAPAN nearly killed me.

Ebert: Okay, which one do I start with?

The snappy and representative RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELLING SKULL is the usual point of debarkation. Keeler himself liked to hand out the more extreme SKULL OF THE WALTZING CLOWN.
The Marceau cycle, in which the case of the flying strangler baby is solved over and over in ever more preposterous ways, is a modernist masterpiece: THE MARCEAU CASE; X. JONES--OF SCOTLAND YARD; THE WONDERFUL SCHEME OF MR. CHRISTOPHER THORNE; Y. CHEUNG, BUSINESS DETECTIVE; I, CHAMELEON. CHRISTOPHER THORNE is also useful for providing a context for the racial slurs often hurled about heedlessly in other novels.
The SKULL IN THE BOX quartet is your best bargain, as all four endlessly astonishing classics are available as a single trade paperback.
THE SPECTACLES OF MR. CAGLIOSTRO, presumably inspired by Harry's institutionalization, is his most intense and personal work.
The popular SING SING NIGHTS was adapted into two (count 'em) Monogram features, one featuring Bela Lugosi.
The circus novels are mostly short and wacky: REPORT ON VANESSA HEWSTONE, THE SIX FROM NOWHERE, THE CASE OF THE TWO-HEADED IDIOT.
THE SHARKSKIN BOOK indeed contains the most peculiar solution I've ever encountered in a mystery novel (and I've read the Marceau series). Other favorite jaw-dropping oddities include THE CASE OF THE TRANSPOSED LEGS and THE MONOCLED MONSTER.
The BIG RIVER trilogy--four guys on a tiny island, explaining what they're doing there for many hundreds of pages--is almost as wonderful as it is frustrating.
The enormous, futuristic BOX FROM JAPAN is one rich and inventive doorstop, although damn near impossible to get through. The explanation at the end of the book contains, all by itself, more incident than WAR AND PEACE. For that matter, THE MATILDA HUNTER MURDER has its moments, if you feel like coping with hundreds of pages on the anatomy of the human eye.
Sometimes the book isn't as good as the title: I KILLED LINCOLN AT 10:13, THE FACE OF THE MAN FROM SATURN, THE SCARLET MUMMY. But, usually, it is.
Best Wishes,
Edward Parker Bolman
Editor, the Internet Semi-Collected Wit, Wisdom, Epigrams, Pensees, and Grooks of Harry Stephen Keeler

Not sure whether I should be elated - or offended.

Flashback: This past October you posted a blog titled "Books Do Furnish A Life." One of your moderately popular posts, with comments numbering in the hundreds.
One of those hundreds of comments contained a brief account of the adventures of Fender Tucker and his backdoor entry into the publishing field, using the novels of Harry Stephen Keeler as his rationale.
Said comment, posted on October 8 at 11:31 am, was the work of ... well, me.
(Everybody feel free to go back to the archive and check. I'll wait)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Back again.
Over the weekend I recieved my copy of Keeler News, a pleasant surprise given that in his last previous issue, Richard Polt indicated that he could no longer publish on a regular schedule.
Imagine my further surprise when I read that no less than Roger Ebert his own self had mentioned HSK in our beloved blog.
In February.
And somehow I had missed it!
My excuse: the office ITs recently had to reconfigure my apparatus to fight various viruses; while they were doing this I requested that they make the image slightly larger to compensate for my 60ish eyesight. This pushed your sidebar items out of sight on the big screen, and I don't always remember to scroll over. My Bad.

I first heard of Harry Stephen Keeler back in the 70s, when Armchair Detective, then the leading periodical in the field of mystery-detective fandom, published an article by Bill Pronzini on Phoenix Press, perhaps the lowest of low-end publishers (sort of the PRC of the book world). Phoenix was HSK's last American publisher, and when they gave up on him, that was it.
Bill Pronzini subsequently gathered this and some other articles into two books, Gun In Cheek and Son Of Gun In Cheek; the second title devotes an entire chapter to "The Kracked King Of Keelerland."
My curiousity was piqued, but my disposable income was peaked.

Lap dissolve to 2005.
Bouchercon, the major fan-and-professional gathering in the crime fiction world, was held in Chicago that year, and I scraped together a fat wad of money to register, another fat wad of money to spend, and had the most fun weekend of my life to date - with the added advantage of being able to go home at night.
(I don't like to travel - that's another subject for another time.)
Anyway, in the vast dealer's room, I got to meet Mike Nevins, whom I knew as a fellow admirer of Ellery Queen and Rex Stout, as well as HSK's champion in the critical field. And there, standing next to Mike, was Fender Tucker with a table full of Ramble House publications - mainly Keeler fiction, fact, and fancy, plus other odds and ends that caught his interest. Later on, Nevins and Tucker conducted a panel on Keeler 101; by this time I had bought a few starter items and an order form, and I was hooked. Not long after, I joined the HSK Society and oredered up back issues, plus a coffee mug and a mouse pad (which I'm looking at right now as I type this). I don't claim for a moment to be at the Tucker-Nevins level of expertise, but my Keelerism is maintained from that time to this.

Anyway, Rog, welcome to the Society - and be sure to get the Keyhole Kollection ... the Blog before there was a blog.

I don't know what the hell is going on or really who Harry S. Keeler is and why he may have written "Screaming Skull", but I think I see his books at the store and I keep thinking it is the books written by Garrison Keillor, whose books are also there at the store...and who I really liked after seeing what a consummate professional he was in "A Prairie Home Companion" (which I sometimes listened to NPR...I like to think I'm the real Guy Noir, which isn't something to be proud of).

Ebert: I'm only gonna post this once more:

http://j.mp/bi3w1YN

For your pleasure, the HSK Society hosts a Random Plot Generator. Compare the results to the opening line of Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49.

http://site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/plot.html

This looks like way too many books to put under my pillow for one night, but I shall try to absorb some of this gawdawfulgoodliness through the feathers forthwith. I think I'll start with The Riddle of The Yellow Wooden Spectacled Skull.

Thanks for reminding me, Roger. I first discovered Keeler way back when you could find his books in used book stores at cheap prices, thangod.

There are indeed two known adaptations of Keeler to film - both from his semi-anthology SING SING NIGHTS. The third - and nuttiest - story in the book was likely adapted to screenplay form and may even have been filmed, but I've yet to hear if that mystery has been cleared up. Can anyone help? Speculation points to similarities to the horror feature THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL.

Cheers!

"We are drawn to the unescapable conclusion that Mr. Keeler writes his peculiar novels merely to satisfy his own
undisciplined urge for creative joy."

Nothing could make me want to read the man's work more than that quote. I'd never heard of Mr. Keeler before but I'll be getting to know his work now. Good lookin out, Rog!