Conversations and Versifications

The author James Sallis said Marvin Cohens first book The Self-Devoted Friend (1967) is a collection of short pieces [which] are variously narrative dialogue essay epigram-some are surreal some are pastiche and parody some are reminiscent of Baudelaires Petits Poèmes en Prose. Ellipsis is the predominant quality: the reader is asked to accept this material this disparate substance strung together with associate devices . . . Parts are superbly comic [though it does not] afford the reader easy entrance . . . It deserves reading; there is at least nothing quite like it. Cohen is trying to explore the possibilities and expand the limits of the fictional form. For this and for the large measure of success he achieves attention is due him. [New Worlds #181 April 1968]Over fifty years later there is still nothing quite like it except of course Marvins subsequent writings.The first part of this book comes from Marvin Cohens big shoe-box of unpublished typescripts mainly dating from the 1970s and 1980s. The rest comprises dialogues monologues sketches and verse selected from his recent emails to a number of friends.