Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

   (prepublication version, 2023). An echo of the Absurdist English tradition, The Diner at the Dawn of the Universe is 1984 meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , with a hint of Terry Pratchett and Robert Anton Wilson. Existing in an un-time at a 20th-century Americana diner of the mind (to borrow from Ferlinghetti), this fast-paced juke-ramble unfolds in a dystopian/symmetrian universe, somewhere between “the itch and the scratch.” Think Kerouac’s On the Road , Bukowski’s “Nirvana,” and apropos episodes of The Twilight Zone , and you are nearly there, with entropy and quanta juicing up the jazz. Our protagonist is Dave, who came to work at this patina-of-entropy diner and wound up running the show when the owner/caretaker stepped out and never returned. Don’t feel bad for Dave—the food is served by replicators, ala The Jetsons and Star Trek . Note the name Dave. Names are simple here… there are Dick and Jane. Names are all that’s simple… A quarter of the way in...

 (Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus, 2014). ISBN: 978-1-57525-892-8 I still remember the day, seven years ago, returning to my secluded three acres in West Virginia from a meeting with my theatre company in New Jersey, to find a package from Larson Publications. Inside was a note, and a copy of Jon Lipsky’s Dreaming Together: Explore Your Dreams by Acting Them Out , which I promptly read and reviewed. It has never remained on the shelf for any appreciable length of time. I go to it time and time again. Jon Lipsky passed away some months later, before we could talk. It was not until many years later, in speaking with the publisher, that I found out that Professor Lipsky had specifically requested that I receive a copy of his book for review. Perhaps it was the name of my theatre company at the time, New Mystics, or my work with a few theatre companies that used dreams to create plays, that led to my name being placed on the potential reviewers list. Like dreams themselves, how it ...