Slackjaw Online is a selection of columns written by Jim Knipfel. Slackjaw originally appeared in the Welcomat (now the Philadelphia Weekly) on a weekly basis from 1987 to 1994. Slackjaw then appeared in the New York Press, where most of the columns presented here were originally published, until 2006. Slackjaw now appears on a regular basis on Electron Press. Illustration by Russell Christian. Please scroll down. |
"[Slackjaw] is an extraordinary emotional ride, through the lives and times of reader and writer alike, maniacally aglow with a born storyteller's gifts of observation, an amiably deranged sense of humor, and a heart too bounced around by his history, and ours, not to have earned Mr. Knipfel, at last, an unsentimental clarity that is generous and deep. What begins as a cautionary tale turns out to be, after all, an exemplary American life. The Park Service ought to be charging admission. Long may he continue to astonish us." --Thomas Pynchon "Things are bad in this world. Ugly, smelly, nasty--a world full of stupidity and starvation and disease--but things never really get as bad as they should." --Jim Knipfel |