Buy Keeler swag
- Harry Stephen Keeler Society Store: your source for official t-shirts, mugs, printed back issues of Keeler News, and more.
Buy Keeler's books
- Ramble House: nearly every novel Keeler ever wrote, printed on demand in paperback, at a reasonable price: what more could you want? This is a great, affordable way to discover Keeler's convoluted world.
- McSweeney's offers a beautiful new edition of The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, with an introduction by Paul Collins. This is a favorite of many Keeler fans, and a great first Keeler to read.
More about Keeler in general
- Harry Stephen Keeler Home Page: more fascinating dope on Keeler by William Poundstone--including a plot summary of The Man With the Magic Eardrums.
- Harry Stephen Keeler First Edition Checklist: an excellent bibliography by Scott Brown. Companion to a fine article by Paul Collins in the July-August edition of Fine Books & Collections, which you can order here.
- Spineless Books includes William Gillespie's thoughts on applying Keeler's plot theory, his own explanation of that theory in plain language, and Keeler's own explanation in exquisitely convoluted language.
- Madness in His Method: an introduction to Keeler by Leonard Pierce, from High Hat.
- A prolific, erratic, idiosyncratic world-builder: James Sallis reports on Keeler for the Boston Globe.
- Web Pages: an article by Village Voice writer Ed Park explores Keeler's compositional techniques.
- Painful Prose is Out There for the Taking: a Dec. 2003 bit by the Austin Chronicle's "Mr. Smartypants."
- Bad Writers Never Had it so Good: an article from the Wall Street Journal, of all places, about HSK and Ramble House. (But Keeler isn't really a bad writer, of course.)
- Steve Edwards interviews Richard Polt about Keeler on WBEZ Chicago's "Eight Forty-Eight," November 1, 1999 (RealAudio). Go to Clip 2 and scroll to the interview. Interview runs from 17:40 to 30:05.
- Keeler as Insolitologist
- The MetaFilter community discovers Keeler.
- Wikipedia article on Keeler
- Harry Stephen Keeler Tribute: a Japanese fan site by Kiichiro Yanashita. A rendition into "English" can be procured here.
- Harry Stephen Keeler Fan Club: another Japanese site, by Daisuke Nishimura. "English" here.
Reviews of Keeler creations
- Very Strange Coincidences: Ed Park on the connection between Harry Stephen Keeler and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
- The Voltaic Yoo-Hoo Acid Test: Devin McKinney reviews The Riddle of the Traveling Skull for the Village Voice.
- The Case of the Lost Logorrheic: John Marr reviews The Riddle of the Traveling Skull for the Chicago Reader and provides a great capsule introduction to HSK (PDF file).
- Bret McCabe reviews Skull in Baltimore City Paper. "A truly bonkers writer this enjoyable, prolific, and unknown is a gift from the Dada gods."
- Krazy Keeler: a Skull review in the Toronto Globe and Mail by Martin Levin.
- The Worst Writer in the World: Otto Penzler's hysterical reaction in the New York Sun to the reprint of Skull has no doubt generated some curiosity. Thanks, Otto!
- Georges Dodds reviews HSK's The White Circle and Y. Cheung, Business Detective, and provides an excellent crash course in Keeleriana.
- Don Webb reviews Keeler's The Box from Japan in the February 2001 F&SF magazine.
- White Men with Tape on their Eyes: Brian Thomas reviews The Mysterious Mr. Wong, one of the two known Keeler-based films.
Meet more unique personalities
- Joel Townsley Rogers: a site created by his son. JTR, like Keeler, wrote bizarre mystery stories full of coincidences--but with a much darker tone. His best-known work is The Red Right Hand.
- Lionel Fanthorpe: A legendary SF hack who churned out hundreds of hilarious pulp novels.
- Raymond Scott: music to read Keeler by.
- Richard Polt: founder of the HSK Society.
Thanks to the following sites for adding links to this site
This site is maintained by
Richard Polt,
polt@xavier.edu