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Anthony Peyton Porter fled Chicago in the mid-eighties, settling first in Saint Paul and then absconding to Minneapolis, where reliable witnesses heard him muttering on Write On Radio!, Twin Cities Public Television, and Minnesota Public Radio. After fleeing Minnesota with his accomplices in 2003, he turned up in Chico, California, doing the same damn thing on KZFR, just like nothing had happened. Having abandoned all originality, now he’s doing a blog. Defying public outcry, the Chico News & Review continues to publish his weekly column, “From the Edge.” A regular reader gushes, “I have rarely been this turned off by an author. In these few columns I have read of his, he has defiled teachers, children, and dogs.” (Mr. Porter has not defiled any dogs since the early ’80s and wishes certain people would get on with their lives.) Mr. Porter finally admitted responsibility for the quotations on the walls of the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial, at First Street and Second Avenue East in Duluth, Minnesota. Carla Stetson designed the memorial, and it’s a stunner. Go see it. That’s right, Duluth. Jump at de Sun: The Story of Zora Neale Hurston, can still be found at Barnes & Noble, amazon.com, and poorly supervised children’s bookstores. A few copies of Can He Say That? are gathering dust at Lyon Books across from the plaza in downtown Chico, Black Oak Books in Berkeley, and Carol’s Books in Sacramento. Mr. Porter has repeatedly been accused of poetry by people who ought to know, and yet he remains at large in California. It figures.
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