The Moose Show

Nobody can push an envelope harder or further than Matthew Licht, though he's not all shock value. There's also intelligence, wit and surprising craft here. -- Dian Hanson, author of Naked as a Jaybird Matthew Licht is an original and a rarity. His writing is smart, warm, engaging but also contains a healthy dose of New York "Fuck you!" -- Geoff Nicholson, author of Bedlam Burning At a time when much fiction reflects the smugness of the zeitgeist, Matthew Licht's work challenges the status quo with a radical transgressiveness. "Is this any way to live?" is the question buried within each of these stories whose social critique is done with a scalpel. His imagination is cunning in the number of ways he can disturb the received view of human relationships and contemporary shibboleths, and in the disturbing dissonances he cheerfully finds in our lives. Because he is funny. Sometimes bitter, sometimes droll, crude and cruel sometimes, but La Comedie Humaine is his undeniable territory and the taking apart of the social fabric his forte. His goal is to disturb rather than enlighten, to impale human folly and absurdity, to unpeel the intellectual bankruptcy of our times - this done with a swaggering, almost reckless style. What these stories lack in charm, they make up in grit and authentic outsider's perspective. -- John Thackray

Licht’s stories are from a world that no longer exists. The lives we discover are unencumbered by computers, cell phones, shiny new automobiles, drugs or lust for money, position, social standing, celebrity.

Readers tired of the latest, the hottest, the most expensive will be glad for a look at grubbier times, grittier adventures than virtual reality or Reality TV can supply. What would happen if you were downsized from that stressful job that takes up so much of your time? Life might be not as bad, or a whole lot worse than you think. Either way, you’d have plenty of time to go to The Moose Show, and the price of admission compares extremely favorably with current forms of diversion. The lives we discover are unencumbered by computers, cell phones, shiny new automobiles, drugs or lust for money, position, social standing, celebrity.

The Moose Show is not what you expect to see, even if you just got off a snowmobile in Saskatoon. There might still be a Moose Show going on somewhere a little closer by, between urban legend and vivid nightmare. Are you sure you want to go in and see what happens?

Here are stories from a world that no longer exists. Or rather, from a world that The World would like you to believe no longer exists. Do the people who buy T-shirts and Big Macs on The New 42nd Street know what was there before, right where they’re standing? Would they still want to eat that greasy burger if they knew?