Mike Edison is a writer, editor, and musician. He lives in New York City.
“This book is beyond blurbs, so let’s just get to the jack. If you have any interest in pot, pornography, punk rock, or professional wrestling, just buy this f*cking thing. Much more important than food for the table or the starving children of wherever.”— Nick Tosches
"A laugh-a-minute joyride through the back alleys of pre-internet sleaze culture." —Daniel Clowes
"Half the time I spent reading this laugh-out-loud saga of depravity and mayhem, I found myself wishing I'd lived this life; the other half, I was thanking sweet heaven I didn't. In a world where many would-be rebels (myself included) would like to consider themselves or their work ‘anti-establishment’ or 'punk rock,' Mike Edison hasn’t just talked the talk, he's walked the walk. May God have mercy on his soul." —Todd Hanson, writer and editor, The Onion
"Half-intellectual, half-media whore, (and all-man), Mike Edison takes you on the last roller coaster ride through the American counter-culture. Buckle up for a fabulous read." —Josh Alan Friedman, author of Tales of Times Square
“Edison's book is so funny and smart and delightfully filthy that I wish I had written it myself.” --Al Goldstein, Screw founder
“Cooler than Toby Young and more credible than James Frey.”—Andrew Hultkrans, Book Forum
“Will have you alternately envying Edison and being glad you’ve avoided such encounters.”—Patrick Huguenin, Daily News
“The perfect summer reading companion for anyone who would rather lace their weed with the Ramones than with the Byrds.”—J.A. del Rosario, The Rake
“Fucking awesome.”—Joanna Muñoz, URB Magazine
“Over the past twentysomething years, Edison has written for and edited magazines of varying degrees of ridiculousness and decorum: Wrestling’s Main Event, Screw, Cheri, Hustler, Penthouse, and High Times. What better journalistic outlets for a guy with a refined sense of the absurd and the overblown? . . . Edison’s writing style is a gonzo-type rush, filled with hilariously inventive descriptions . . . [He] might never wind up on the masthead of a sunny Condé Nast publication — but why would he ever want to?”—Amy Finch, The Boston Phoenix
“Spectacularly gripping . . . While the subject matter might be lowbrow at best (covering pro wrestling) and downright sleazy at worst (reminiscing at length about penning 28 pornographic novels), “I Have Fun” is a rollicking joyride peppered with rip-roaring anecdotes that will end up eliciting unseemly guffaws.”— Lisa J. Curtis, Go Brooklyn
“If your book’s subtitle is Savage tales of pot, porn, punk rock, pro wrestling, talking apes, evil bosses, dirty blues, American heroes, and the most notorious magazines in the world, you have a lot to live up to—and somehow Mike Edison does . . . Edison seems to have nine lives and enjoys every moment of each of them to the fullest . . . His journey takes him around the world, but he always returns to magazine writing, and his insider scoop on these bizarre workplaces is what, finally, makes this memoir truly memorable.”—Penthouse
“They don't make guys like this anymore . . . high-spirited sleaze, overeducated yokelry, and intensely American egalitarian humor . . . gloriously told . . . surprisingly intelligent.”—Hiya Swanhuyser, SF Weekly
“[Edison’s] an engaging sardonic guide to some of magazinedom’s more disreputable territories.”—Clark Collis, Entertainment Weekly
“Edison doesn’t disappoint . . . From page one, the book threatens to burst at the seams with larger-than-life characters and dirty deeds that might’ve made the late, great Hunter S. Thompson squeamish in their potency and the best part is that, unlike Thompson’s work, nothing is embellished . . . The portrait of existence that Edison paints as he remembers the strange turns that his career has taken is terrifying, funny and elating all at once.”—Bill Adams, Ground Countrol
“Readers in search of a fun ride through recent American cultural and media history will do well to consider Mike Edison’s stunning memoir . . . Edison is a renaissance man among drug abusers and porn peddlers . . . [He] glides along the edges of society with an intense dose of wit and a startling eye for the insane.”— Jason E. Sumerau, Metro Spirit (Augusta)
“[Edison is the] Somerset Maugham of filth . . . the Horatio Alger of trash, and if he doesn’t actually have fun everywhere he goes, he does always learn something, and he reveals it in lively, vivid detail.”—Rodney Welch, Free Times
“Definitely a fun read.”— Lori J. Kennedy, Remix
“One couldn’t hope for a funnier guide to the doped-up, rollicking good cheer of 20 years in outlaw culture.” —Amy Benfer, B&N Spoltlight Review
“Edison’s juicy screed of a memoir is like a kick in the solar plexus: It may hurt like nobody’s business, but at least it wakes you up . . . a beer-sozzled, speed-cranked nail bomb of a book—what everybody’s Saturday night should be like.”—Kirkus, starred review
“This hilarious insider look at fringes of journalism and magazine publishing is written with a gleeful burning-his-bridges-behind-him vibe.”—Publishers Weekly
Courtesy of Mike Edison and the Rocket Train Delta Science Arkestra. Produced by Jon Spencer.
Found in: Specific Groups, High School or College Graduation Books
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