Hudson Bell

Hudson Bell is not the type of name you are bound to forget upon encountering, especially when the first time you encounter this name you read the following: “Today (I) couldn’t work; (they) didn’t need me - spent last of money from tapes… got rest of stuff out of Van Buren - ate Taco Bell in the cemetery, watched Blue Velvet w/ C, then walked to Square in Speedo, carrying towel & asked shocked passerby if they knew where I could find the Fountain of Youth…” Those are the opening sentences to a story that appeared in the 24th issue of The Minus Times in the Fall of 1998. The tale is simply titled ‘16 February 1997’ and accredited to one Hudson Bell. Previous issues of The Minus Times, a literary almanac created by Hunter Kennedy and published by Drag City, had included classic work from David Berman, Robert Bingham, and Kennedy’s own pulse-pushing prose as well as a bunch of other unordinary literary bandits. However, this was the first flurry of fiction from Hudson Bell and those words, particularly the final sentence, stopped me in my tracks. A new voice with a vision - a hard-hitting vision filled with humor, heartache and what seems to be a desperate sense of story-telling. The words leapt off the page like a life-saving device - all white light and white heat to jump-start the heart. It was almost as if this man named Bell was a defibrillator blending fact and fiction into the perfect electrifying mix. Immediately, his name became engraved in my mind.