Photo of author by Katherine Kahrs
Photo by Katherine Kahrs

Hans Hans entered history on graduation day in June 1973 when David Bromige and Tom Sharp met in a coffee shop in Rohnert Park and thought of Faceless Fussduck, detective. The form was a set-up, followed by anything that was logically consistent but that broke expectations: “Fearless Fussduck slowly raised the cold revolver. The closet was dark.” This led to more humor and new poetics, to experiments with logic, language, character, and plot. David began to write Tight Corners and Tom began to write about Hans. Hans is ten years younger than Tom, and Tom has maintained contact over the years by writing. So they have grown up together, maintaining between them a constant difference of age that has mattered less and less over the years. If he could choose, Hans would be an Aleut living centuries ago on a treeless island in the northern Pacific, totally free in his mind, but if we could choose the lives we wish, history would get all scrambled up.