Crad Kilodney


Crad Kilodney was the pen name of Lou Trifon, an American-born Canadian writer who lived in Toronto, Ontario. He was best known for selling his self-published books on the streets of the city between about 1978 and 1995.

Biography

Early life

Louis Trifon was born in Jamaica, New York, in 1948 to a Greek family. In the autobiographical book "Excrement", he says that February 13 is his birthday. He graduated from Syosset High School in 1965, then obtained a degree in astronomy from the University of Michigan. Instead of continuing in that field, he took a job at Exposition Press, a self-publishing vanity press based in Hicksville, New York. Many of his experiences in that job, and with vanity publishing in general, shaped his outlook on fiction and provided him with material for many stories. The stories "Three Dead Men" and "A Moment of Silence for Man Ray" are examples of this.
He sold a few humor-oriented articles to the Houston Post in 1969, and taking on the name "Crad Kilodney", published very occasional pieces in The National Lampoon between 1970 and 1972. According to information on his unofficial website, Kilodney wrote the first unsolicited short story ever accepted by National Lampoon, a science fiction parody entitled "The Day Saturn Crashed into the Earth". It appeared in their fifth issue.

Move to Canada, and self-publishing

Disgusted by Watergate and U.S. culture generally, Trifon moved to Toronto in 1973 where he worked at a number of other book publishers, mostly in their stockrooms. While doing so, he continued to make very occasional sales of short stories and humor pieces to small magazines, but decided that it might be best to reach people by self-publishing his stories and selling them face-to-face on the street. This he did from 1978 through 1995, publishing 32 books in this manner, using the name Crad Kilodney. Kilodney could generally be found, and indeed was a fixture, on Yonge Street, at the University of Toronto downtown campus and in front of the Toronto Stock Exchange building with a cardboard sign hanging from his neck, holding a book he was selling. His attention-getting signage, always handwritten, might give a book title, or a mocking self-description of his wares.
The books themselves were usually pamphlet-sized collections of short stories, ranging from 32 to 80 pages in length. More rarely, as with Terminal Ward or Cathy the works were single novelette-length stories; Putrid Scum was Kilodney's only full novel. Though the vast majority of the work offered for sale was Kilodney's own, he also edited and sold several anthologies under the banner of Worst Canadian Stories and The Charnel House Anthology of Bad Poetry. Kilodney later admitted that most—although not all—of the Worst Canadian Stories material was written by him in a range of deliberately awful styles, under a variety of pseudonyms. He insisted, however, that the bad poetry he anthologized had been collected from a number of sources, and it was all correctly attributed Though he sold most of his work on the streets of Toronto, in the acknowledgments section of Worst Canadian Stories, Vol. 1 Kilodney thanks his sister Carol, noting that "she sells many of my books in her pizzeria in Westbury, New York."
Kilodney was in a relationship with poet and novelist Gwendolyn MacEwen before she died in 1987.
Kilodney commented that while most writers are inspired by conventionally great literature, he drew inspiration from the exact opposite: the slush pile, the crank letter, and of course the vanity press. He was, however, not interested in being seen as a crank or an eccentric, but simply wanted to find respectable, legitimate work as a writer and be taken seriously for doing so. Nevertheless, he also enjoyed pranks, and in 1988, Kilodney submitted a number of stories by famous writers to the CBC Radio literary competition, many under absurd names. All of the stories were screened out by the jury.
More in line with Kilodney's literary ambitions, also in 1988 Black Moss Press issued a 'best-of' collection called Malignant Humours. A follow-up collection appeared in 1990. These were generally the only Kilodney volumes available in bookstores.
Writing in The Calgary Herald, Glen Colbourn called the stories in Malignant Humours "offbeat, puzzling and, quite frankly, outrageous... Kilodney's absurdist style and quirky humor will limit his appeal largely to adventurous readers. But those readers will find some entertaining stories in the new collection."
Other mainstream critics also praised Kilodney's fiction.
Writing in The Windsor Star, Marty Gervais called Pork College
one of the funniest books of the year, and it ought to be a bestseller... But what is Pork College all about? Well, it's hard to say... There's no high point to it, except perhaps in great one-liners... but then again, it's not meant to develop into anything more than what it Is. And what is that? Just stories of funny bits taking shots at the institutional world. And these are worth reading just for the sheer joy of reading.

Although Evelyn Lau, in an Edmonton Journal review of Girl on the Subway called the book's stories "sadly uneven," she went on to say
Kilodney is at his best when his sense of humor steps in, ironic, mocking and laced with sadness... The Funeral of Lenny Zeller, about the joke perpetrated by an English teacher after the death of one of the students he loved, is an absolute treat. It is infused with bright language and a side-splitting hilarity, as well as an underlying quiet bitterness and tragedy... When Kilodney allows himself, he has sympathy and understanding for people and what makes them work, or not work. In much the same way, The Simplified Existence of Mr. Duggins succeeds because the author forgets himself and enters the spirit of another person trapped in a different kind of world. On the whole, Girl on the Subway contains a few remarkable gems...

In The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Richard Grayson called Bloodsucking Monkeys From North Tonawanda "a collection of short stories by Canada's funniest fiction writer. The title story is the funniest story I've read in years. Kilodney is an undiscovered genius..."
Kilodney also wrote for a variety of publications, Canadian and otherwise, such as Only Paper Today, 'What', and Rustler.
In 1991, Kilodney was charged with selling commercial goods without a licence, making him the only Canadian writer ever charged for selling his own writing. In response, Toronto hardcore band Armed & Hammered released the song "Crad Kilodney Was Innocent" on a 7" single vinyl record.

Audio recordings

At various times Kilodney kept a tape recorder with him and recorded quite a bit of bizarre byplay between himself and prospective customers. He then compiled the oddest or most entertaining exchanges into hand-made cassette tapes which he offered for sale alongside his books. They are extremely rare and are collector's items.
Vol. 3 is from 1991. "Dub 154" of this tape, a representative example, includes photocopied typewritten notes detailing the recording process, transfer technique and equipment used. Kilodney handwrote with ballpoint pen on the cassette jacket as well. Side A has 11 recordings, Side B 16 recordings; four of the recordings are answering machine messages, and the rest are the famous surreptitious encounters with people wondering why this man has a sign around his neck. "Excrement" and "Putrid Scum", as well as several of his stories are also inspired by these experiences.

Retirement from self-publishing and later work

After receiving an inheritance, Kilodney retired from selling his self-published books in 1995. To continue making income, he took up trading mining stocks, which allowed him to live modestly for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he continued writing, and looked for new ways to distribute his material. In 1996, Kilodney's satirical piece "Circumcision Rites of the Toronto Stock Exchange" appeared in the 1996 Pushcart Prize anthology, and in 1998 his previously published story "Girl On The Subway" was included in the mainstream literary anthology Concrete Forest: The New Fiction of Urban Canada, published by McClelland & Stewart. A fan-based website, run by Syd Allan, featured occasional new material from Kilodney up until 2004.
From April 2008 until a few months before his death, new satirical articles were posted on Kilodney's blog. A series of 20 articles on "Exotic Cities" that had been published in 2009 were translated into French by Philippe Billé and collected in the volume Villes Bigrement Exotiques. This was the last of Kilodney's books published in his lifetime.
Kilodney posted his final blog entry, a short story called "Dreaming With Jay", in December 2013. He thanked his readers for their support, and noted that "This is the last piece I will publish in my lifetime."
Kilodney died of cancer on April 14, 2014, at the age of 66. He never married, and left no heirs. The day after his death and at his request, his friend, artist Lorette C. Luzajic, launched the Crad Kilodney Literary Foundation, a website dedicated to preserving and promoting his works. A posthumous collection of his online writings, Strong Meat, appeared in 2015.

Short story collections

Most of these collections contain 3 to 8 stories, and are between 34 and 80 pages in length. Most were self published, and appeared as stapled, photocopied pamphlets, in print runs of 800–1,200 copies. There are exceptions: Lightning Struck My Dick is over 100 pages, contains 18 stories, and was published by Virago Press. Pork College was published by Coach House Press. Strong Meat, issued posthumously, is almost 400 pages.
  • Mental Cases
  • World Under Anaesthesia
  • Gainfully Employed in Limbo
  • Lightning Struck My Dick
  • Human Secrets - Book One
  • Human Secrets - Book Two
  • Sex Slaves Of The Astro-Mutants
  • Pork College
  • Bang Heads Here, Suffering Bastards!
  • The Orange Book: The Bent Humour of Crad Kilodney
  • The Blue Book: The Eccentric Humour of Crad Kilodney
  • The Green Book: The Polymorphus Humour of Crad Kilodney
  • The Yellow Book: The Outlandish Humour of Crad Kilodney
  • The Scarlet Book: The Flame-Broiled Humour of Crad Kilodney
  • Incurable Trucks & Speeding Diseases
  • Simple Stories For Idiots
  • Nice Stories for Canadians
  • I Chewed Mrs. Ewing's Raw Guts
  • Blood Sucking Monkeys from North Tonawanda
  • Junior Brain Tumours in Action
  • Suburban Chicken Strangling Stories
  • ''Strong Meat''

Novelettes

  • Terminal Ward
  • Cathy
  • Foul Pus From Dead Dogs
  • ''Excrement''

Novel

  • ''Putrid Scum''

Travelogue

  • ''Villes Bigrement Exotiques''

Anthologies of previously collected stories

Black Moss Press issued two anthologies, each around 100 pages, of Kilodney's 'selected stories'. Aside from Pork College, these were the only Kilodney volumes generally available for sale in bookstores.
  • Malignant Humors
  • ''Girl on the Subway and other stories''

As editor

  • Worst Canadian Stories, Vol. 1
  • Worst Canadian Stories, Vol. 2
  • The First Charnel House Anthology of Bad Poetry
  • ''The Second Charnel House Anthology of Bad Poetry''

Collaborative work

  • ''Prose Political''