title
'the devil's doin the same damn thing he's always done'
j. michael niotta
cover photo by Adria
From Vegas to Dago. the brothels of Germany to Doha, Kuwait:
a wild and gritty collection of 14 cuts: both pomes and prose, from the former editor and columnist of 86 and the man who put hard fic on the streets.
the hard core referee/translator/negotiator you’d hire when sitting bookended in a bar between nick tosches and chuck palaniuk.
44 pages, 9 pomes, 4 prose pieces,
3 chapter excerpts from j michael's novel, The Ants, Thirsty.
Limited edition, signed and numbered.
j michael niotta, San Diego.CA
born at the wrong time. born on the wrong coast.
j. michael niotta is a southern california native who hates the sun & never learned to surf. an old soul, the music & american steel of the 1940’s & 50’s have always held a great allure for him, & although homes, jobs, cars & women are in perpetual flux in his life, music & writing have been a constant as long as he can remember. exemplary of this lifestyle, a few jobs off the author’s long odd list include hvac, diazo blueprint maker, doorman, baker, mechanic, firefighter, warehouseman, furniture mover, soldier, border patrol lookout, plumber & telemarketer.
niotta is a member of the conquistadors car club out of san diego, california & frequents custom car shows in & around that part of the map. he has been playing bass in bands nearly half his life & can be seen performing now with embalmers.
while editor of 86 magazine he maintained the edgy column: true tales of bar madness & printed some of the better lesser knowns out there. after the fold of 86, niotta released a small press lit endeavor entitled: hard fic.
j. michael niotta's fiction, pomes, prose, interviews, journalism pieces & essays have been published in such forums as gloom cupboard (UK), saint vitus press, fissure, underground voices, word riot, eviscerator heaven, zygote in my coffee, sinister compendium, sullivan, san diego city beat, the san diego reader, mumbles, lit up magazine, luciole press, the delinquent (UK), gutter eloquence.
www.myspace.com/jmichaelniotta
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$5.00 plus $4.95 International shipping
"Look, the stuff is good. Quite good. Straight up - like a good half-glass of whiskey."
—Dan Fante, author of Chump Change, Mooch, Spitting off Tall Buildings, Short Dog, Kissed by a Fat Waitress and more.
"We really shouldn't be reading this book. We should be drinking it. J. Michael Niotta is as American as bourbon... and he's not some cheap, shitty, piss-like bourbon, no ma’am... he's fucking Jim Beam. No ice, no water, no nothing – drink it straight from the bottle, in just one or two gulps, with a huge Havana cigar and rockabilly/psychobilly music in the background to make your night complete. This guy may have been compared to Bukowski, but he's not your usual wanna-be Bukowski poser...he's actually so much better than Buk - in that he's not JUST a drunkard/philosopher/leg-lover... he's not a mere “poet”, too... - he's a Firefighter Soldier Mechanic, The Door-Man... a man of truth and experience. His book is as real as a cut on the wrist, as a low-down jazz combo in some dirty Polish club. Niotta's poems are Life and Death, universal/individual, eternal: fire, guns, whores, Iraq and American cars circa 1956. The excerpts from his unpublished novel must be the best pieces of prose I’ve ever read from a contemporary author... and I've read a lot of prose last year... get drunk on “The Devil” as soon as you can, and force some bad-ass editor to publish Niotta’s novel...we'll be having the best katzenjammer ever." “Brave new words here. In ‘the devil’s doin the same damn thing he’s always done,’ j. michael niotta dies for our sins and lives to write about it with fearless poetry and prose. In pieces like ‘the time I became robert mitchum’ and ‘space (a)’ he takes us from bar stools to Baghdad to face head on the kind of issues most of us run from. Reminds me a little of Bukowski.”
A.J. Kaufmann, publisher, New Polish Beat, Editor, Eviscerator Heaven, author of I’m Already Not Here, Pilgrims & Indians, Absinthe House, Cellos et Ghosts, Venice on Fire, Siva in Rags, East West Train, Poznan City Gospel and more
-- Hank Putnam, writer, director, and producer for Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Travel Channel, and independent films, including White Trash Cinderella.
