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WORK TITLE: Organ Grinder
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://us.macmillan.com/author/alanfishbone/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Columbia University, M.Phil.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator and writer. Has worked various jobs, including as an English teacher; an aikido instructor; a translator of Spanish, Latin, and ancient Greek; a bartender; a bouncer; a construction worker; and a Classics professor.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Alan Fishbone is an educator and writer. He earned a M.Phil. degree in Classics from Columbia University. Fishbone has worked a number of various jobs throughout his life, including as an English teacher; an aikido instructor; a translator of Spanish, Latin, and ancient Greek; a bartender; a bouncer; a construction worker; and a Classics professor. Fishbone published his first book, Schaum’s Outline of Latin Grammar, in 2002.
Fishbone published Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray in 2017. The book-length essay combines personal experience with philosophical insight into the author’s life and life in general. Fishbone divides the account into two parts with several chapters in each section. In the first section, Fishbone discusses his views on the ideals of freedom, particularly the variety as depicted in Easy Rider. He also recounts a tragic accident that nearly took his life. In the second half of the book, Fishbone recalls a cross-country drive to Death Valley on his Harley. Here he reflects on the Platonic conception of the soul, which balances the sciences and the spiritual explanations as to the existence of the soul. He also discusses birth and animal instincts along this journey.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews observed that “in the second part of the book, Fishbone is a little less descriptive and experiential and more philosophical.” The Kirkus Reviews contributor referred to Organ Grinder as being “a slim book that will resonate with the reader’s inner biker/philosopher.” A Publishers Weekly contributor took note of the numerous occasions of “self-aggrandizing machismo” in the text. However, the critic conceded that “to reduce Fishbone to a chest-thumping intellectual gorilla would shortchange the real pleasures of his bold yawp.” In a review in Spectrum Culture, John Paul reasoned that “while inarguably bright and articulate, Organ Grinder offers little in the way of lasting satiation and instead reads as a quick … mildly entertaining romp through a thought process ostensibly rooted in classicism.” Paul concluded that “it’s certainly fine enough for what it is and has its moments…. But ultimately it seems the only organ Fishbone is truly interested in grinding is not that which sits above his shoulders, but rather dangles between his legs.” Booklist contributor Annie Bostrom lauded that “Fishbone’s mental mazes, irrepressibly personal, sexed-up, funny, philosophical, and unconventionally spiritual, make for thought-provoking, entertaining reading.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Fishbone, Alan, Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2017, Annie Bostrom, review of Organ Grinder, p. 16.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2017, review of Organ Grinder.
Publishers Weekly, January 30, 2017, review of Organ Grinder, p. 191.
ONLINE
Spectrum Culture, http://spectrumculture.com/ (February 20, 2017), review of Organ Grinder.*
ALAN FISHBONE
Alan Fishbone
Aleksey Nuzhnov
Alan Fishbone has an M.Phil. in Classics from Columbia University. He has worked as a teacher of English and aikido; as a translator of Latin, ancient Greek, and Spanish; and as a bouncer, bartender, construction worker, and professor of Classics. He lives and works in New York City.
Fishbone, Alan: ORGAN GRINDER
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Fishbone, Alan ORGAN GRINDER Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Adult Nonfiction) $12.00 4, 18 ISBN: 978-0-86547-
834-3
A book-length essay connecting the profane and the profound, as a biker with a master's degree in classics (and a
translator of ancient Greek and Latin) contemplates a life not always well spent.Though categorized as an essay, the
book has two parts and chapters within them. The first part is mostly about the all-American concept of freedom, as
exemplified in Easy Rider. Toward the end of this part, Fishbone relates the story of his attending an autopsy after
earlier chapters showed how easily he and his friends could have been the subjects of one. "I felt a strange detachment
which I'm not sure ever really left me," he writes of the experience, described in vivisectionist's detail. "I couldn't get
the idea out of my head that we were all just bags of guts, dragging around in the air." In the second part of the book,
Fishbone is a little less descriptive and experiential and more philosophical. It begins with the voices the author has
heard, ones that may or may not be God's, but which he is certain are not his own interior voice. He had been reluctant
to resume motorcycling after a drunken accident that might have--perhaps should have--killed him. Until that voice
says, "Alan, get a Harley and drive to Death Valley." Which he did, even though Death Valley is way across the country
from the upper Midwest and he's never bought into the cult of Harley. The trip turns into a meditation on the Platonic
conception of the soul, as the author weighs scientific evidence that there's no such thing as the soul against spiritual
certainty that there is. "It takes a soul to believe in the soul," he writes. A couple of final chapters on animal instincts
and a birth bring the meditation full circle. A slim book that will resonate with the reader's inner biker/philosopher.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Fishbone, Alan: ORGAN GRINDER." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921688&it=r&asid=455478fc0f63cf65243e726f8cf37112.
Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480921688
10/7/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507413979199 2/3
Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone
Astray
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
113.14 (Mar. 15, 2017): p16.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray.
By Alan Fishbone.
Apr. 2017.112p. Parrar, paper, $12 (9780865478343). 880.
Fishbone, a Columbia-degreed classicist and translator, says that he looks, in profile, "like a beat-up Roman coin" and
once called himself "a secular Jewish boy from Queens, an alcoholic, sex-addicted, hedonist runaway Greek and Latin
scholar." In this rich, odd little book that begs to be read in a single sitting, he writes about the wrecks (the kind
everyone's mother warns them about) that resulted in that bent nose while also exploring nothing less than life, death,
and the idea of the soul. He's witness to a fluorescent-lit morgue autopsy. He hears the voice of God (he knows that
sounds crazy), telling him to ride a motorcycle from New York to Death Valley, and he obeys. Fishbone tells readers
about his friend, a motorcycle casualty, by addressing the deceased friend directly. He considers the relationship
between "ancient Odd Couple" Diogenes and Plato and thinks of the satyr-god, Pan, as the "patron divinity" of this
book. Fishbone's mental mazes, irrepressibly personal, sexed-up, funny, philosophical, and unconventionally spiritual,
make for thought-provoking, entertaining reading.--Annie Bostrom
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2017, p. 16. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490998396&it=r&asid=303646ae354a481e5c9a64620c684dad.
Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490998396
10/7/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507413979199 3/3
Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone
Astray
Publishers Weekly.
264.5 (Jan. 30, 2017): p191.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray
Alan Fishbone. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $12
trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-0-86547-834-3
In this nonlinear memoir, Fishbone, a classical scholar, translator, and sometime bouncer, merges the lyre of Ancient
Greece with the roar of a Harley to fashion himself as the classic literary tough guy. The brief span of pages motors
from a jeep crash in Venezuela to a cross-country motorcycle odyssey--from NYC to Death Valley--prompted by a
mysterious inner voice "from beyond." Along the way, Fishbone addresses plastic surgery, an autopsy, violent death,
and sex of the extremely sweaty variety, each louche anecdote filtered through a hodgepodge of references that include
Plato's Phaedrus, Easy Rider, the skepticism of Diogenes, and a You Tube video of a chimpanzee molesting a frog.
Fishbone moderates his highfalutin asides with earthy language and subject matter (bikes, women, booze). Frequent
philosophical asides show impressive historical range but rarely surpass stoner profundity, and Fishbone displays more
than a smidge of self-aggrandizing machismo in his detailed exegesis of a woman getting off as she clings to him on a
bike, or his recounting of the number of times he has looked death in the eye (Fishbone includes the sentence: "It's
nothing but luck that I'm still here"). Yet to reduce Fishbone to a chest-thumping intellectual gorilla would shortchange
the real pleasures of his bold yawp. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray." Publishers Weekly, 30 Jan. 2017, p. 191. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480195225&it=r&asid=d4c51033715f3b400c62e738e14e1773.
Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480195225
Organ Grinder: by Alan Fishbone
John Paul JOHN PAUL FEBRUARY 20, 2017
The only organ Fishbone is truly interested in grinding is not that which sits above his shoulders.
2 / 5
It’s hard to know where to start with Alan Fishbone’s Organ Grinder. In its subtitle, the book is touted as being “A Classical Education Gone Astray.” There are vague references to Platonic thought and Aristotelian logic, occasional allusions to the works studied in said education. But beyond that, there really isn’t much in the way of substance behind these attempts at modern-day philosophy viewed through the eyes of ancient academics and philosophers. Aside from these sporadic allusions, Fishbone spends ample time discussing his various nomadic wanderings in search of satiation for his carnal desires. There are motorcycles, the life of a rebel and plenty of random fucking to cause the reader to pose the question, “What is the point?”
And that, in essence, is the trouble with Organ Grinder: it, like the titular education, is largely an exercise in self-congratulatory behavior. “Look at how smart I am because of all the things I studied and can make reference to within a modern context,” the book seems to shrug. Too self-involved and enamored of the author’s attempt at a contemporary outlaw lifestyle is much of the text for it to ever really say much of anything other than it’s clear Fishbone enjoys fucking and riding his motorcycle (and women who seem to enjoy the same, or at least the façade Fishbone has created for himself).
Like the philosophy student who proves overly eager to share his insights with a class of fellow intellectuals who just want him to shut the fuck up already, Fishbone prattles on and on and on, bringing up random trivialities steeped in Greek and Roman history. Did you know that wealthy Romans tended to bury their dead along the roadside, not within the city limits, and had a penchant for mildly amusing epitaphs? Fishbone did. What does this have to do with anything with the book’s narrative framework? Nothing, but now you know that he knew. And so it goes. This approach, coupled with his sexual conquests and various travels across the country, makes for a rather dull read for anyone not named Alan Fishbone.
But perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. Sure, I don’t have the classical education and vastly superior intellect on display herein, but I do know when a work is engaging and the writer is operating with a clear, logical objective. There are certainly a handful of sections that do cause the reader to take pause and give greater thought to something that might otherwise have been little more than a blip on our increasingly contaminated daily radars. In “Ecce Pan Troglodytes,” Fishbone sets up to wax philosophical on modern YouTube culture and its contributions to the desensitization of contemporary society to things other generations would have seen as inconceivable and best, horrific at worst. Specifically, he outlines the premise of a video entitled “Chimpanzee Rapes Frog.”
From the title, it’s fairly simple to deduce exactly what the video in question shows. Fishbone goes on to provide a near shot-for-shot extended, vivid description. He then takes a look at some of the comments, playing it up for the humor and general depravity inherent in internet culture. Yet instead of taking a greater look at why viewers were responding as they were to a chimpanzee raping a frog to death, he embarks on an extended tangent on species domination that manages to go from Genesis to Plato to Diogenes to Linnaean species classification, with a brief stopover at Bedtime for Bonzo-era Ronald Reagan, all the while essentially skirting the issue. By the end, the whole things has devolved into a sexual fetish-based bit of Greek Comedy, all again seeming to be in an effort to show how many allusions he can pack in, forgetting much of the original concept and ultimately aiming for the lowest common denominator.
While inarguably bright and articulate, Organ Grinder offers little in the way of lasting satiation and instead reads as a quick (around 100 pages), mildly entertaining romp through a thought process ostensibly rooted in classicism. It’s certainly fine enough for what it is and has its moments – the extended riff on the Plato/Diogenes feud is particularly amusing given the contemporary language applied within the classical setting. But ultimately it seems the only organ Fishbone is truly interested in grinding is not that which sits above his shoulders, but rather dangles between his legs.