Can you imagine why a pornographer would be shy? Are you satisfied with the state of (a) World Society (b) your soul (c) American writing? Are you in the habit of reading books that could have been written by anybody? Do you really want the truth? Do you know how angels learn to fly? What would you feed a green deer? Do you think a profound social message can be conveyed by a book that is comic in character? When Kenneth Patchen's comic masterpiece, The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer first appeared in 1945, these questions were asked on the dust jacket. They have never seemed more relevant. The hilarious saga of Alfred Budd of Bivalve, New Jersey-a Candide-like innocent and part-time pornographer, written with what Diane DiPrima called Patchen's "tender silliness," should inspire a new generation of readers

"Can you imagine why a pornographer would be shy? ... Are you satisfied with the state of (a) World Society (b) your soul (c) American writing? .... Which do you think is more 'important' - a great poem, or a victory in a war? ... Do you think 'satire by hallucination' is a good description of Patchen's literary method? ... Do you agree that many 'normal' people are really spiritual cripples? ... Do you know how angels learn to fly? ... What would you feed a green deer? ... Do you think a profound social message can be conveyed by a book that is comic in character? ... Have you ever been really carefully examined by a cannibal? ... Have you ever read a nightmare? ... Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be really alive? ... Thirteen years ago these questions appeared on the dust-cover of the original New Directions edition of this most popular of Patchen's prose works. Have your answers changed?" --

In this funny and telling portrait of the artist as a young pornographer, Bernard Wolfe chronicles his own unlikely entrance into the world of letters. The year was 1936, and Depression laden America had no great need for a Yale Phi Bete whose primary talent was for words. After working variously as a secretary–bodyguard for Leon Trotsky in Mexico, a cataloger of the Irving Fisher papers, and a hopelessly inept drill–grinder, Wolfe landed his first professional writing job: turning out piecework porn at $2.00 a page for an Oklahoma millionaire. He credited his pornographic efforts with teaching him to write to specified lengths while facing deadlines: "I acquired the work discipline of a professional writer, capable of a solid daily output."

A chronicle of violent fury and compassion, written when Surrealism was still vigorous and doing battle with psychotic "reality," The Journal of Albion Moonlight is the American monument to engagement.