I give my name to crime fiction

while I was the special collections curator at Kent State University Libraries   we began receiving the true crime collection of Albert Borowitz.

Al is a collector & writer & former lawyer who lives in Shaker Heights. I was reading one of his crime novels & discoverd that there were characters with the surnames Keller & Tolliver -- the same names of 2 library officials of higher rank than mine. the next time I saw Al I feignd being miffd that I was too lowly a staff member not to have my name given to one of his characters. he lookd surprisd & claimd that the use of those names was completely coincidental & that he'd employ Gildzen in the novel at which he was working. some time later he told me that novel hadn't yet been publishd.

so it was quite a surprise to learn that my literary namesake is now available online. the Law in Popular Culture Collection at University of Texas in Austin is making available e-texts. & one of them is Borowitz's The Beautiful Red Danube (1990).

however   Al still has the last laugh. the character Roland Gildzen is "an enormously fat man with an uncanny resemblance to Sydney Greenstreet but at least two more chins."

I think I'll wear my Borowitz True Crime Collection t-shirt to the gym this morning.