Bhang,

Ted Pelton has mastered the art of the novella. Having read BARTLEBY, THE SPORTSCASTER it was impossible not to read other works by this highly ingenious writer. Pelton's success is more than a little influenced by his intelligence, his knowledge of the history of literature and of sparks of interest that pop out now and then in his musings, only to find a home in his computer brain as seeds for possible future stories. BHANG for this reader is as successful as Bartleby, The Sportscaster in that Pelton has taken a seemingly off center but rather ordinary occurrence and turned it into a theme of literary melismata, much in the say that a musical artist extemporizes a contemporary cadenza in the midst of a traditional concerto. His writing is not only compelling but challenging in the postmortem phase of reading: finish a story or book by Ted Pelton and be prepared for a period of time recalling and piecing together to various levels of meaning and mental exercise he has initiated.The opening sentence is 'My name is Fried.', not dissimilar from Melville's 'Call me Ishmael.' that opens Moby Dick. Fried, from Chicago, is in New York and hears that his old friend and ex-roommate, filmmaker Antoine has died from AIDS. (There is an odd thing that takes place here at the inception of the story that is either intended or is an editorial blunder: the words of the second paragraph are repeated verbatim, as though entry into the story needs reinforcement!) Fried joins a man named Anders and his wife Sylvia, a percussionist, to the viewing and funeral for Antoine scheduled in Brooklyn. The event takes place in a strange building with a bizarre entrance and once inside Fried discovers that the motif is Indian or Arabic. Fried's observations of Anders give a clue to Pelton's magic of writing: 'The words came out of our mouths into the oily air like large soap bubble, fighting for room with the air molecules and getting bent and pushed, wobbling, higher and away. I followed one of my words with my eyes until it entered the next room, then turned the corner and escaped my sight.'One the rituals of the viewing is accompanied by the drinking of a strange brew call 'Bhang', a coffee like drink that seems to have a mind altering punch, because from this point on the story begins to wander out into the imaginary- the room for viewing becomes a boat, the conversations enter the realm of how Scythians celebrate the first anniversary of a death in a series grotesque, gruesome rituals, and Fried, Anders, and Sylvia enter quasi out of body experiences. In a diatribe about suicides Fried wonders 'What does anyone care about anyone else while they're alive, to hear about them and their story? But let that person kill themselves and all of a sudden the story is worth hearing.' Telling more of the story of this novella would diminish the pleasure of discovery about the ending.Ted Pelton is most assuredly a writer to tackle and to follow. He is an original thinker with the gift for sharing his strange take on the world in exquisite prose. Grady Harp, May 11