Karl Marx Private Eye

Jim Feast helped found the action-oriented literary group the Unbearables, known for such events as a protest against the commodification of the Beats at NYU's Kerouac Conference; annual readings with poets spread out across the Brooklyn Bridge; and a blindfold tour of the Whitney Museum. In the early 1980s, he met and married Nhi Chung, author of Among the Boat People. She introduced him to Chinatown movie theaters, which played the path-breaking Hong Kong noir detective films of those days, giving him a new way to look at the murder mystery. Feast has worked for Fairchild Publications and later taught at Kingsborough Community College. He edited seven books by Ralph Nader, including his three novels, and worked with Barney Rosset on his autobiography. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.