Bill Fitzhugh

Bill Fitzhugh is a writer. He’s published novels and short stories, has written television and film scripts, and he writes, produces, and hosts a show on the Deep Track Channel of Sirius-XM Satellite radio.

His latest novel is The Exterminators.

Not so long ago I asked him what he was reading.  His reply:

Lately I've been re-reading the Harvard Classics: Essays by Huxley, Freeman, Channing and the like. Really? No, wait, that's what I should be reading but am not and probably never will. And I don't read much crime fiction either except for books I've been asked to blurb. Along those lines, I recently read Steve Brewer's Calabama and The Big Wink. I love how Steve combines humor and violence.

Most of my reading time is spent trying to keep up with The New Yorker. I'm a slow reader, what can I say? Here's a dirty secret: I am not only reading but actually enjoying Adam Carolla's In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks. I've laughed out loud several times much to my surprise. Hard to know how much of this is his real opinion and how much is just the character/persona he's been portraying since The Man Show. But there is some funny, and true, stuff in the book. Sure, some of it's written to a lowest-common-demoninator-pig-ignorant-man audience, but I've got enough of that in me to admit I like it. So there. Harvard Classics? No. Adam Carolla? Yes.

A few notches up the intellectual ladder (maybe step-ladder) I'm also reading The 50 Funniest American Writers (According to Andy Borowitz), a comedy anthology going from Mark Twain to S.J. Perelman to Bruce Jay Friedman to Molly Ivins (who was a fan of my books, thank you very much), to Calvin Trillin, George Saunders and Dave Barry. Both the Adam Carolla and the comedy anthology are excellent bathroom reading, what with them being lots of little bite-size pieces.

I do read short story collections and must recommend one from a few years ago, Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollack. Opening line of the first story: "My father showed me how to hurt a man one August night at the Torch Drive-in when I was seven years old." And a novel I highly recommend from 2002: Polar by T.R. Pearson. Brilliant and hysterical writing. The sentences themselves are genius, let alone how they add up to characters.

Visit Bill Fitzhugh's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Exterminators.

My Book, The Movie: The Exterminators.

--Marshal Zeringue