Riding the Unit: Selected Nonfiction 1994-2004

"When we first read Spitzer's bit of lit spite we were amused, seeing in it a certain vitriolic mode all-too-absent from the politesse-ridden Am Po Scene...OK, Spitzer was a rude guest. Nonetheless, we have to say that he only vented in public a tiny bit of that swirling mass of orality that is the 'lives of the poets.'...Spitzer doesn't know mole from brown gravy: it's not his fault. But his point is clear: nobody gossips about his generation. Not until now anyway."

     - Andrei Codrescu, literary icon

"Mark Spitzer's piece, "Dinner with Slinger'...is one sick piece...he may find gainful employment in the swelling ranks of political media Philistines - provided that he gives up those 'ounces of schwagg' and joins the Church of Rushing Newts."

      - Anselm Hollo, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

"Mark is on a campaign to rule the world...[he] is the definition of the mad scribe."

      - Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway

"I want to break his neck."

      - David Gessner, author of Sick of Nature