cover pic for Crad's book, Malignant Humors
“I came back to the earth plane to be a writer, because I didn’t get to be one in my previous life,” said Crad Kilodney, satirist, humorist, author, and reincarnate, who claimed to have been a "rich idler" in his previous life.
He was promised an "unusual" literary career, and was adamant that this lifetime was his last stop before heading to the great beyond to stay.
Born in Jamaica Plains, New York, in 1948, Kilodney, not his real name, studied astronomy at the University of Michigan. He took various menial jobs, including book warehouses and a stint with Exposition, a vanity publisher. This was an early influence, and Crad forever drew from the slush piles, crank letters, the hacks, the tabloids, and the dredges of humanity for inspiration. Where most writers tried to follow in the footsteps of literary giants, Crad took the opposite tact and exposed the raw underbelly of human hopefulness and idiocy. Furthermore, he realized a do-it-yourself approach was a better fit for his personality and was set on exposing the flaws and hypocrisy in the arts and publishing world rather than hobnobbing with its players.
Kilodney created his own imprint, Charnel House Publishing, and took to the mean streets of Toronto, Canada, to sell his work. He became a landmark figure, rain or shine, winter or summer, hawking his stapled and photocopied short story collections to passers by. He wore giant signs that were inflammatory or funny or both, reflecting a grim misanthropy. There was no way he could know it then, but his chosen tactic had enormous influence on the Canadian zine scene that followed and on a flood of underground and indie writers who followed suit and took charge of selling their own work any way they could.
Kilodney wrote and sold dozens of books in this manner, including Terminal Ward, Junior Brain Tumors in Action, Simple Stories for Idiots, Gainfully Employed in Limbo, Bang Heads Here Suffering Bastards, Putrid Scum, Excrement, World Under Anesthesia and more. For almost twenty years he wrote and sold books, unloading some 35 000 copies in this way. He also wrote for magazines like Rustler, National Lampoon, and countless indie or small literary magazines. As an advice columnist for a porn rag, he was the Rev. Crad Kilodney, having mail ordered his ministerial qualifications. Much later, he became the Duke of Sherbourne, a self-appointed designation.
Kilodney tape recorded many of his exchanges with the public, preserving hours of Toronto street culture in the '80s for his particular vantage point, the ultimate "reality" show. But his real target was not the non-literary man on the street- it was the intelligentsia. Kilodney embarrassed the whole scene after mailing off stories and poetry submissions by greats like Hemingway and Faulkner under assumed names. Publishers didn't even recognize the work of their own writers, never mind the works of the supposed greatest writers in history. Only Irving Layton's publisher noticed. All of the work by the world's most brilliant authors was rejected across the board.
In the later '90s, Kilodney retired abruptly to his airless attic garret off of Sherbourne Street. He said he would never write again and took up investing in mining stocks. He also battled cancer twice with success.
Some years into the new millennium, stories by Crad Kilodney began to appear online. Then, he began to study Shakespeare for the first time and embarked on the most important and industrious project of his life- rewriting all of the bard's plays as Shakespeare for White Trash.
He was determined to complete this monumental project before succumbing to cancer. He did.
Crad Kilodney passed away on April 14, 2014.
He was promised an "unusual" literary career, and was adamant that this lifetime was his last stop before heading to the great beyond to stay.
Born in Jamaica Plains, New York, in 1948, Kilodney, not his real name, studied astronomy at the University of Michigan. He took various menial jobs, including book warehouses and a stint with Exposition, a vanity publisher. This was an early influence, and Crad forever drew from the slush piles, crank letters, the hacks, the tabloids, and the dredges of humanity for inspiration. Where most writers tried to follow in the footsteps of literary giants, Crad took the opposite tact and exposed the raw underbelly of human hopefulness and idiocy. Furthermore, he realized a do-it-yourself approach was a better fit for his personality and was set on exposing the flaws and hypocrisy in the arts and publishing world rather than hobnobbing with its players.
Kilodney created his own imprint, Charnel House Publishing, and took to the mean streets of Toronto, Canada, to sell his work. He became a landmark figure, rain or shine, winter or summer, hawking his stapled and photocopied short story collections to passers by. He wore giant signs that were inflammatory or funny or both, reflecting a grim misanthropy. There was no way he could know it then, but his chosen tactic had enormous influence on the Canadian zine scene that followed and on a flood of underground and indie writers who followed suit and took charge of selling their own work any way they could.
Kilodney wrote and sold dozens of books in this manner, including Terminal Ward, Junior Brain Tumors in Action, Simple Stories for Idiots, Gainfully Employed in Limbo, Bang Heads Here Suffering Bastards, Putrid Scum, Excrement, World Under Anesthesia and more. For almost twenty years he wrote and sold books, unloading some 35 000 copies in this way. He also wrote for magazines like Rustler, National Lampoon, and countless indie or small literary magazines. As an advice columnist for a porn rag, he was the Rev. Crad Kilodney, having mail ordered his ministerial qualifications. Much later, he became the Duke of Sherbourne, a self-appointed designation.
Kilodney tape recorded many of his exchanges with the public, preserving hours of Toronto street culture in the '80s for his particular vantage point, the ultimate "reality" show. But his real target was not the non-literary man on the street- it was the intelligentsia. Kilodney embarrassed the whole scene after mailing off stories and poetry submissions by greats like Hemingway and Faulkner under assumed names. Publishers didn't even recognize the work of their own writers, never mind the works of the supposed greatest writers in history. Only Irving Layton's publisher noticed. All of the work by the world's most brilliant authors was rejected across the board.
In the later '90s, Kilodney retired abruptly to his airless attic garret off of Sherbourne Street. He said he would never write again and took up investing in mining stocks. He also battled cancer twice with success.
Some years into the new millennium, stories by Crad Kilodney began to appear online. Then, he began to study Shakespeare for the first time and embarked on the most important and industrious project of his life- rewriting all of the bard's plays as Shakespeare for White Trash.
He was determined to complete this monumental project before succumbing to cancer. He did.
Crad Kilodney passed away on April 14, 2014.
Illustration by Tyler Landry