βCodrescu has written a tour de force comedy in which he provesβas did Dante and Milton and Goethe and Mark Twain before himβthat Beelzebub is literatureβs best character. He also confirms the internationally agreed-upon notion that America is the Devilβs ripest ground. I laughed out loud.β βMary Karr
Andrei Codrescu (www.codrescu.com) is the editor ofΒ Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & IdeasΒ (www.corpse.org). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry,Β License to Carry a GunΒ (1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest,Β So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968β2012Β (2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novelsΒ The Blood Countess,Β Messi@,Β Casanova in Bohemia, andΒ Wakefield. His other titles includeΒ Zombification: Essays from NPR;Β The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape;Β New Orleans, Mon Amour;Β The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exileβs Story of Return and Revolution;Β Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey;Β The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess;Β Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments;Β The Poetry Lesson; andΒ Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes).
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movieΒ Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.