Joshenilia (6)

By: Joshua Glenn
December 7, 2015

One in a series of posts exhuming the juvenilia and significant objects of HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn.

In 1983 — either near the end of 9th grade, or the beginning of 10th grade, my friend and neighbor John Dooley Cradock and I began publishing collections of prose, poetry, drawings, and miscellany under the collective noms de plume O’Malley Schwartz and Boylston Schwartz. We also recorded a number of novelty music albums — released on cassette — as the O’Malley Schwartz Three.

We named our imprint Paradise Publications; our logo [seen in the top left corner of Two mroe goode woerks of The LatenGrate O’mAlley Schwartzx, our first* publication, shown here] was an intertwined “J” and “P.” My secret-agent name, in middle school, was “Jack Paradise” — influenced by my French-Canadian maternal grandmother’s maiden name, Paradis — and prior to launching our small press, John Dooley and I had collaborated on some other schemes using this logo.

Also, we may have been referencing the nickname, “J.P.,” of our Boston neighborhood: Jamaica Plain.

So… I have in my possession a small stack — complete? — of Paradise Publications titles. Looking at these 32 years later, the most charitable thing I can say about their 16-year-old co-authors is that they were heavily influenced by the antic prose stylings of John Lennon, Douglas Adams, and Kurt Vonnegut. I won’t reproduce these stories here, but the following notes on Two mroe goode woerks of The LatenGrate O’mAlley Schwartzx will give you an idea of they’re like.

The first page is a stand-alone story fragment, dated 10/16/82. Authored by yours truly, it concerns the science-fictional adventure of Captain Froedrich Anus, and his second-in-command, Green MacTeste. Meanwhile, in the Sahara, a stranded explorer named Bronski farts contentedly; also, we hear the distorted voice of an intelligence living inside a cube of impenetrable force.

There are two short adventures included in this volume, both detailing further exploits of these characters.

In the first, untitled and undated adventure, Capt. Anus’s spaceship crashes into the desert near Bronski, killing Anus. The being (“Frreeoogg,” or “Frog”) in the cube of impenetrable force introduces itself. Green MacTeste, a doglike creature with humanoid hands, assumes captainship of the crashed spaceship, repairs it, and abducts Bronski. A police force from Frog’s world attempts to capture Frog, destroying the spaceship and killing Green. Bronski is stranded on an asteroid.
The second adventure, The Adventures of the U.G. Misdemeanor Mark, dated 10/17/82, precedes the first, chronologically. Here we are introduced to Captain Anus, who is described as a 6′ tall Pillsbury Doughboy; his First Mate, Green MacTeste; and the being Frog. They are sent on a mission to kidnap a Warprincess who turns out to be a sexy beartrap. Anus is almost eaten by sentient Cornflakes, which drives him temporarily insane. Finally, the crew rescues a Preppie who has been imprisoned on the planet Punka. The U.G. Misdemeanor Mark then heads towards Earth.

There is zero literary value to these stories, I’m sorry to report. However, insofar as they offer cryptic and not-so-cryptic commentary on the authors’ friends and classmates (some of whom turn up as minor characters, particularly on the planet Punka), and also our teachers (e.g., our English teacher Bill Bronski), they seem worth preserving. Maybe.

* Was this our first publication? If so, was the “two more” of its title a joke?

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Joshenilia (6)

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