Th. Metzger
BOOKS
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STRONG SONGS OF THE DEAD
The Pagan Rites of Sacred Harp
Underworld Amusements, 2024
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Strong Songs of the Dead delves into the uniquely and deeply American tradition of Sacred Harp singing, exploring its evolution from its origins before the birth of the United States to its renaissance in the twenty-first century. Th. Metzger immerses himself in this vibrant social phenomenon, embracing the raw and raucous sound, which draws singers from beyond the Southern country churches where it survived in obscurity for decades. With a keen eye for detail and a willingness to honor both the elation and the wild dark current that runs through the tradition, Metzger paints a vivid portrait of Sacred Harp singing as a deeply democratic and passionate form of musical expression. Through short, unrestrained chapters, the memoir intertwines themes of grief, loss, and longing with a fervent celebration of life, capturing the essence of a tradition that resonates with the heartbeat of America.
"Thom's book is an authentic and emotional journey into shape note singing. He provides a realistic interpretation of a very personal and profound practice which reflects my own experience of this music. Thom has a writer's eye to pounce on the strongest lyrics which are powerful and full of meaning. I loved this book."
—Kelly Macklin, editor, Shenandoah Harmony
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"An instant classic. Recalling Nick Tosches’ Country and Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain, Th. Metzger’s immersive and confessionally textured study of marginalized American hymnody comes as near as words can to capturing the ungovernable spirit-essence of backwoods-protestant song and ritual."
—Chip Smith, publisher and
editor, Nine-Banded Books
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“Metzger weaves the long past and the present with a gem-studded, coal choked narrative that tells the reader everything they need to know about who sang, who sung, who sings Sacred Harp, and what happens when they do, and why.”
—Steven Sherrill, author of
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
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"Th. Metzger's Strong Songs of the Dead succeeds spectacularly in juxtaposing the fiercely living world of Sacred Harp singing with his parallel theme: ever-present death that resonates through lyrics, rural cemeteries, and the singers themselves.”
–Christian Goodwillie, Director and Curator of
Special Collections and Archives, Hamilton College.
BLOOD AND VOLTS
Edison, Tesla, and the Electric Chair
Underworld Amusements, 2024
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An ax murderer, two of the most brilliant scientific minds of the century, billions of dollars in profit, precedent-setting legal battles, secrets of life and death - all of these come together in the story of the first electric chair.
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In Blood and Volts, Th. Metzger creates a unique synthesis of scholarship, storytelling, and cultural critique. Though it draws from a number of disparate fields-true crime, history of technology, conspiracy theory, criminal law-Blood and Volts presents a clear and compelling story: America struggling to define itself through scientific innovation.
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At the dawn of the twentieth century, General Electric (using Edison's direct current) and Westinghouse (employing Tesla's groundbreaking alternating current) were locked in combat to determine which would dominate the electro-technical fate of the nation. Electricity was thought to be a highly ambiguous force: both godlike creative power and demonic destroyer of life. Metzger argues the electric chair was both harbinger and early pinnacle of modernity, the high altar of the rising cult of progress. In the popular imagination, Tesla and Edison were seen as nearly superhuman beings, and their struggle was not only for wealth and power, but to reshape the face of America.
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This is a second, revised edition.
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“...intriguing ... fascinating”—American Book Review
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“...comparable to The Executioner’s Song and Luc Sante’s Lowlife"—S.F. Eye
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“Disturbing, supremely well written”—Implosion
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“Molding a novelist’s skill for character development with a non-dogmatic journalistic approach, Metzger brilliantly explores the twisted nexus of Victorian technology.”—Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
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“A cracking good read ... fantastically detailed”— Nicolas O’Dwyer BBC-4
HAKIM BEY
Real and Unreal
mogtus-sanlux, 2023
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For a man made of words, it is perversely perfect that none can capture the essence of Hakim Bey. Anarcho-Sufi wiseman, scholar of the unknowable, miraculous monologist, psychedelic shaman: all of this is true. Yet it only suggests - rather than defines - this writer and the long shadow that he casts.
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Th. Metzger was initiated into the Moorish Orthodox Church (resurrected in 1986 by Hakim Bey and ruled by him in perpetuity.) This is the story of their long-distance friendship and their year after year journeys together into the mythic landscape, both real and unreal.
Flaherty's Wake
Abortionist, Lawyer, Boxer, and Priest
Ziggurat 2023
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Father Charles Flaherty was called a saint by his band of followers, and a heartless baby-killer by his enemies. He was, in fact neither, but something far more: serving as a legal advisor and advocate for the poor, arguing dozens of court cases, boxing with the reigning heavyweight champion, accused of statutory rape (and found innocent), then perjury, bribery, fraud, and practicing medicine without a license. After decades of battle with Roman Catholic and law enforcement authorities, he was finally convicted of manslaughter in an abortion case and sentenced to seven years in Auburn State Prison, home of the original electric chair. Here, in secret, he wrote his life story, leaving out none of his unpunished crimes or unsung acts of heroism.
Big Noise on the Astral Plane
Ziggurat 2021
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Hallucinogenic traveler, rock and roll shaman, practitioner of ancient Chinese healing arts, and cosmic clown, Dr. Rudy Kilowatt was all of these - in his own words, "A Big Noise on the Astral Plane." Born and raised in the Burnt Over District (where once, long ago, more wild-eyed religion flourished than in any place on earth), Rudy Kilowatt was the last in a long line of prophets, mystic mountebanks, seers, and mad revelators. Now, Th. Metzger tells all, celebrating his many voyages into incandescent high weirdness with the amazing Dr. Kilowatt.
UNDERCOVER MORMON
A Spy in the House of the Gods
Roadswell Editions 2012
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When a not-exactly-normal guy cooks up a fake name, buys some white shirts, shaves clean, and enters the Mormon church, what does he find? Hearing the word “Mormon,” most people think of Utah. But the real sacred sites aren't in the desert. It all started in the boondocks of western New York State, which was, once upon a very strange time, the hottest hotbed of wild religion in the world. Th. Metzger has lived his whole life in Rochester, just down the road from the cradle of Mormonism. He'd seen the crazy hyper-happy pageants and heard all about the polygamy, getting your own personal planet when you die, and of course the magic underwear. Going undercover as a man on a spiritual quest, he discovers that the answers he's been seeking for decades aren't at all what he expects. UNDERCOVER MORMON chronicles his hilarious, revealing and bizarre search for the truth.
Hydrogen Sleep and Speed
A Verse Tale of Egypt, Rommel, Angry Gods, Caligari and Amphetamine
Poet’s Press 2011
This book-length narrative poem - dare one say “mini-epic”? - mines little-known aspects of World War Two history into a melange of African invasions, raging Egyptian gods, rampant Mormon warriors, and the lord of the sleepwalkers (Dr. Caligari) presiding over the Nazi obsession with not sleeping, ever, until the ultimate triumph (hence, the advent of mass-produced amphetamines.) The book is decorated and illustrated with a collage of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Mormon history and mythology, Nazi-era iconography and American apocalyptic explosions.
Select Strange and Sacred Sites
The Ziggurat Guide to Western New York
Autonomedia 2002
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Travel the Burnt-Over District of western New York State and you find traces of a former world. The weird, the ignored, the inexplicable linger here. The historian Carl Carmer called this terrain a “broad psychic thoroughfare of the occult, whose great stations number the mystic seven.” But there’s twice or three times that many secret and sacred sites in this lost-and-found landscape.
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Renegade historian and novelist Th. Metzger takes you on a wild ride through his numinous home territory. From the Mormon ground zero holy hill to a creepy Victorian psychic village, from the Iroquois Torture Tree to the perfectly-American electric chair, from churches seared by evangelical passion to the austere emptiness of Chimney Bluffs, the Burnt-Over District is rich with spiritual power.
If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, then come along.
The Birth of Heroin
and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend
Breakout Books 1998
Lo - Mighty Heroin! The scourge of modern American civilization! The enslaver and despoiler of all that is good and pure. And behold - heroin's dark ambassador, the drug addict: an obscene degenerate who wallows in a cesspool of disease and debasement. At least that the way they're portrayed today. But it wasn't always so. Heroin has a secret history, and so does the societal archetype of the heroin addict.
In The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend, Th. Metzger tells it all, names names, and backs up the bizarre story with solid research. He traces the drug back to its birthplace, then follows its perverse path as it becomes the most feared pharmaceutical on the planet.
Cooked in a German corporate laboratory, at first heroin was widely used and hailed as a wonder-working “triumph over pain.” But in America, the cult of purity emerged, and heroin was soon demonized. Fused to alien immigration from Asia - the so-called Yellow Peril - quickly the stereotype of the diabolic Oriental drug fiend was fabricated and firmly installed within the white American collective psyche.
In a few short years, heroin came to be the ultimate agent of defilement, devolution, and disease. And the hypodermic needle became a potent symbol of moral and physical transgression. Fearsomely addictive heroin, and the deranged mainlining dope fiend, merged in the American imagination into a two-pronged devil's pitchfork jabbed into society's vital organs.
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“informative and disturbing” - Poppy Z. Brite
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“dense with research” - Eye
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“Opening his book is like opening your cartoon umbrella and leaping off a hallucinogenic cliff ... a whirlwind tour ... a powerful introduction to the subject” - Las Vegas Review Journal
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deeply researched revisionist history with utter objectivity.” - Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
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“highly informative” - Booklist
This is Your Final Warning
Autonomedia 1992
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“Apocalyptic trance ravings” - Factsheet Five
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“An alluring mixture of pop-culture smut and orgiastic religion” - Retrofuturism
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“A baleful, beautiful gift from the Other Side.” - Moorish Science Monitor
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“Metzger is a disoriented archangel soaring earthward on wings of pidgin English, declaring that kitsch, at its most hallucinatory, is a distant reflection of the face of god.”
Jacob Rabinowitz
Shock Totem
Penguin 1990
“Really an amazing book” - Rudy Rucker
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“relentlessly bizarre ... a wild ride of a novel” - Rave Reviews
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“splendidly well-plotted ... the writing achieves the rhythmical poetic frenzy that is Metzger’s trademark.” - Factsheet Five
"Marginal epic disguised as a medical horror novel .. seething craziness ... lurid pulp.” - Peter Lamborn Wilson
Big Gurl
with Richard P. Scott
Penguin 1989
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“The prose equivalent of R. Crumb and S. Clay Wilson stoned on evil speed and sterno.” - Hakim Bey
“Alternatively terrifying and funny ... puts the punk back in splatterpunk” - Rave Reviews
“a twisted and satiric moral fable” - Bob Black
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“striking and original ... by turns zestful and frightening” - Publishers Weekly
“something original, something entertaining, and something not bound by the conventions of the mass market horror novel.” - Toxic Horror
“I love Big Gurl.” - Poppy Z. Brite
As Leander Watts
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Meet Me in the Strange
as Leander Watts
Meerkat Press 2018
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Set in a world of glam rock, spectral aliens, and gender-bendy teens, Meet Me in the Strange is part mystery, part romance and all weirdly cool.
The book is written in a poetic, cadenced style that is almost music in itself. The imagery is beautiful and evocative, from the glister boys and glam girls in the concert audience to the electrum light flowing over the city that only Anna and Davi understand. Sprinkled throughout are lyrics from some of Django’s songs, and the reader can dig meaning from them as the teen protagonists do. Watts understands the need that young people have to belong to something. Rock music and Django himself provide Davi and Anna with a common language that is a launch pad to a higher experience that bonds them and gives them purpose.
- Five stars - Galaxy's Edge Magazine
"A big-hearted and imaginative tale about a glam god's fans."
"Watts writes in an inventive, energetic prose."
"The world of the novel, from its language and geography to its layers of popular culture, is drawn with intricacy and vitality."
- Kirkus Reviews
"In an intoxicating swirl of futuristic and existential inner reflection, Meet Me in the Strange treats music and spirituality as one and the same." "enigmatic ... fantastical ... unique ... wondrous."
- Foreword (starred review)
"This is one unique book ...
"... a beautifully written coming-of-age story
"... a book like no other and, for plenty of questing readers, that will be more than enough. The worldbuilding is subtle, the setting a mix of big city, old world, and some Carnival of Venice flash and style.
"... Davi (whose gender is never specified) is a glorious combination of curiosity, self-doubt and determination, while Anna Z is the long awaited evolution of the manic pixie dream girl."
- Locus
