“ I like flying dreams. I’ve had several, one of which led to a play called “The Dream Of Perfect Freedom.” I like freedom, without which perfect happiness would be impossible. "

 “Fargo Burns, the madly baffled, restless and beguiling subject of Kos Kostmayer’s compelling novel, bounces like a pinball between excess and sobriety—as do we, his unsettled readers. Kostmayer’s visceral account of one man’s quest for quiet normality is dark, tense, playful and deeply affecting.”

—Jim Crace, author of Being Dead 

"Howling and half-naked in his torn and bloody clothing Fargo is a desperate man and dangerous to himself and others. He ricochets around his kitchen, heaving furniture into the street. The street is twelve stories down and Fargo fills the New York air with chairs and tables, lamps and dishes, cutting boards and cabinets, electric fans and plastic caddies, frying pans and double boilers, brooms and mops and metal buckets, canned goods and Pyrex platters, a garbage can, a cookie jar, a toaster oven, even the refrigerator door, which he rips off and throws out the window......"

 Kos Kostmayer’s novel Fargo Burns—the first of his four novels coming out from Dr. Cicero Books—takes its title from the main character, a 32-year-old, Mississippi-born New Yorker who makes two serious mistakes and spends the rest of his life trying to undo the damage. Mistake #1: Fargo goes mad, violently so, and turns into a dog. He finds himself in a mental hospital under the care of a psychiatrist (whom he believes to be Virginia Woolf). Released from the hospital, Fargo makes mistake #2: he begins an affair with a professional killer’s girlfriend. 

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QUOTES FROM FARGO BURNS

“Sometimes Fargo wished he were a Catholic, so he could sit in the cool dark of the confessional pouring out his sins. Sometimes he wished he were a Jew, so he could cover his head with ashes and hurry through the streets of New York in dark clothing, his skin as pale as the belly of a fish. Sometimes he wished he were a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Baptist, a True Believer, a street corner preacher, a man with his mind fastened on the Absolute. Sometimes he felt as if his bones were sharp pins nailing him to his own flesh.” 

 

Kos Kostmayer is a novelist, poet, playwright, and screenwriter. He has four novels coming out in the next two years from Dr. Cicero Books. In 2020 Dr. Cicero Books will publish FARGO BURNS and THE POLITICS OF NOWHERE. In 2021 Dr. Cicero will publish LOST RELIGION and THE AVENUE OF SAD DAYS.

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