Wilson began writing fiction in his early twenties when he took a creative writing course with novelist Patricia Powell while enrolled in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Boston.[4] He has since published more than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction.[1]
Wilson is perhaps best known for Dr. Identity,[5] described by Booklist as a "madcap, macabre black comedy,"[6] and the subsequent Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance, both of which he has fancifully categorized as examples of "splattershtick," a literary, comic, ultraviolent form of metafiction. He is also known for helping create and shape the aesthetics of bizarro fiction,[7][8][9] which has been described as a "mélange of elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque."[7] Many of his books are published by Raw Dog Screaming Press, a small press specializing in bizarro fiction.[10][11]
Much of his writing satirizes the idiocy of pop culture and western society, illustrating how "the reel increasingly usurps the real."[2][12] Taken as a whole, his writing is difficult to quantify and he has been said to defy categorization; some critics have called him "a genre in himself."[13]Publishers Weekly has described his fiction as "testosterone-fueled and intentionally disorienting" which "invokes not a dialogue with the reader but a bare-knuckle fistfight."[14]
In addition to writing fiction, Wilson is a prolific reviewer and essayist being frequently published in places such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, the academic journal Extrapolation, and the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.[15]
Wilson is editor-in-chief of Anti-Oedipus Press, reviews editor of Extrapolation and managing editor of Guide Dog Books. He is also emeritus editor-in-chief of The Dream People,[16] a journal focused on bizarro fiction where he previously served as editor-in-chief.[17]
Wilson is the author of Modern Masters of Science Fiction: J.G. Ballard from University of Illinois Press.[1] His other academic books include Cultographies: They Live from Columbia University Press,[1] which the San Francisco Book Review called a "scholarly examination of a cult classic still debated today,"[19] and Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction. He has also written a number of scholarly articles on genre fiction along with entries for books such as The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy.[20]
Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction (2009)
Films
The Cocktail Party[21] (2006): Co-written with director Brandon Duncan, this short, animated, rotoscopedfilm is a highly abstracted and philosophical (post)postmodern meditation on the narcissistic themes of consumerism, redundant self-analysis and rampant hypocrisy. The film won over ten awards, among them Best Animation at ACE Film Festival.
Trivia
Wilson is a direct descendant of James Fenimore Cooper[2] and brother-in-law of D I Smith of the band Pilots of Japan.
^"Tying Notes to Bricks: A Conversation with D. Harlan Wilson" by John Boden, Shock Totem: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted, #3, Shock Totem Publications, page 29.
^Entry on Absurdity by D. Harlan Wilson, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, Volume 1 edited by Gary Westfahl, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005, pages 1 - 3.
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