EP 7: B.H. FRIEDMAN in his new book, SWIMMING LAPS: STORIES AND MEDITATIONS, writes: “These are not ‘stories’, in the sense that my previous collections fit into that category. They are typically less narrative, less explicit, less long. If they fit within any category, it is ‘minimalism’ — a septuagenarian’s alternative to garrulousness.”

B.H. FRIEDMAN, the original biographer of Jackson Pollock, gathers together in his book of fiction, SWIMMING LAPS, twelve “stories and meditations” that cover a thirty-eight year period, from 1961 to 1999. Pre-eminently social and yet Minimalist, poignant and yet severe in his characterizations, Friedman confronts unflinchingly our destiny as human beings. His wry insights force us to face the singular but inescapable conditions of what it means to be always simultaneously at the end and at the beginning of our lives.

B.H. FRIEDMAN, a native New Yorker, has spent many years in the Provincetown and East Hampton art colonies. He has written Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible and (with the research collaboration of Flora Biddle) Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney — both first biographies of these very different subjects. He has also written or contributed to monographs on Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Michael Lekakis, Alfonso Ossorio, Sal Scarpitta, and Myron Stout, among others. One of his novels, Whispers, was recommended by William Gass for a National Book Award, and The Polygamist was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  Friedman’s two previous collections of stories and meditations include Moving in Place and Duplex, which received, respectively, CCLM and Nelson Algren awards.

B.H. FRIEDMAN’s SWIMMING LAPS: STORIES AND MEDITATIONS is the author’s latest book of fiction. First edition paperback, April 1999, 64 pp., sewn, bound and printed in Italy, with a two-color cover and a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece.

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