The Zipper Mask

About the Book

Hank Penstable and his wife Quenelle Langland are successful young writer-editors who live in Manhattan’s East Village and dabble in occult matters as novices – unaware of the bizarre demimonde that can lurk beneath such ideas. Before long, they and their teenage daughter Yvonne find themselves drawn deep into a maze of magic and murder that entangles their neighborhood one steamy summer. As it turns out, the season spells an end to innocence for all of them. The story begins harmlessly enough at a downtown Manhattan party, where an attractive Brazilian named Diane da Costa begs Hank to help her find Garrick Marston, a missing friend. Although at first Hank rebuffs her, both Penstables are soon swept up in the mystery as amateur detectives, much like Nick and Nora of Thin Man fame. How does a yellow star from the battered trunk of a Holocaust survivor figure in the puzzle? Is a shady man named Jake Leoni an ally, rival, or foe of Diane’s? Above all, what does any of this have to do with a legendary creature from another time, known as The Omniphore? In Hank’s frantic search for clues, he interviews Darryl Marston, twin brother of the missing man. Darryl believes his brother was murdered while wearing a zipper mask made of black leather. On a visit to Darryl’s apartment late one night, Hank is terrified to catch sight of such a mask lying crumpled in one corner of the room. As the summer deepens, East Village tensions lurch out of control. Goaded by an outbreak of hanta fever throughout the Lower East Side, two opposing paramilitary groups begin to patrol the neighborhood. Their inevitable collision erupts in a last-chapter showdown, leaving mayhem and bloodshed in their wake. In that apocalypse, the now-disenchanted Penstables must risk everything in an ultimate gamble for their own survival.

About the Author

A resident of New York City, Kenneth Pitchford is a poet, a playwright — and a novelist with two novels newly published by Xlibris, The Temple Wall (2001) and The Zipper Mask (2004). His short novel The Brothers was published by Lippincott. His play The Wheel of the Murder was produced by Joseph Papp at the New York Public Theater. A one-act play Shellac for the Wheels of Progress was produced in Paris, translated and directed by Natalie Stern. His work has appeared in more than eighty-five magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry (Chicago), Ms. magazine, The American Poetry Review, The Village Voice, The Nation, The New Republic, Rat, Liberation News Service. His most recent appearance: a sonnet in The Gay & Lesbian Review. His writing has appeared in 19 anthologies, most recently in Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1989), The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature (1998) and The Gay Rights Movement (Gale 2003). He has taught writing workshops at the New School, New York University, Columbia University,. He has given talks and readings at the YW/YMHA, the Manhattan Theater Club, Chumley’s, Shakespeare and Company (Vienna), and the universities of Washington, Minnesota, Kentucky (Lexington), California (Berkeley), Massachusetts, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge. His poems set to music include “Song for Lying in Bed During a Night Rain,” Poems of Love and the Rain, a song cycle by Ned Rorem; “Farewell in a Dry Sum mer,” a song by Lockrem Johnson; “Absence in Winter,” a cantata by Robert Phillips. He graduated from the University of Minnesota summa cum laude, served as an infantry sergeant during the Korean War, and attended Magdalen College as a Fulbright Scholar, where he won prizes for his work in the short story and the sonnet. He worked in CORE during the 1964 Freedom Summer, was an antiwar activist in Yippie, a founder of the profeminist Men’s Movement, a member of the Gay Liberation Movement in its first year, and co-writer of The Effeminist Manifesto as a member of The Flaming Faggots. He currently lives in New York City. Pitchford is a long-time resident of Manhattan. Critical Comments on the Writing of Kenneth Pitchford As a poet, Pitchford is the real thing. —Ned Rorem, The Final Diaries This new version of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus by Kenneth Pitchford is masterful, sensitive, faithful, radiant. It should certainly take its place as the most authentic version in English from now on. —Edward Field I read The Contraband Poems — as I read all of his writing — with intense interest. —Susan Sontag The incantatory eloquence of “Magnificat” is stunning. The Contraband Poems are superb. —Norman Rosten Kenneth Pitchford’s poetry opens new doors of perception. It may have the power to change lives. If that seems an exaggeration, read “Water-Bearer” and see if standards for a human relationship can ever be low again. —Gloria Steinem His is the best possible English translation of Rilke’s sonnets. —Tennessee Williams I feel that Kenneth Pitchford’s novel The Beholding is a truly remarkable book, utterly original, serious, and beautiful. It makes exhilarating reading. Pitchford has created a new kind of male character in the poet Leonard. —Adrienne Rich Color Photos of the Atrocities is an amazing document for a woman to read—and recognize as part of her private chaos, while knowing it is a man writing it, a man deeply human and embracing the female in himself. … In Pitchford’s new collection of poems, we are forced to question our own acquiescence to the often mindless current of the present. —Kathleen Fraser, Book World I liked Kenneth Pitchford’s novel The Beholding so much. I am deeply grateful for the experience of having read it. —Jacqueline Onassis