Prior to the advent of Creative Writing faculties as official training grounds for fiction writers, the likes of Norman Frizzle were able to approach nascent publishing houses in the early 1970s, such as Intermedia Press in Vancouver, and release energetic, experimental and non-commercial novels such as The Rape of Mozart (Intermedia, 1973). There is absolutely no indication on the book jacket as to what its content might be. It's a freewheeling memoir by a 20-year-old Vancouverite from Ontario who discovered, at age 16, he was the centre of time. The narrator has schizophrenic and homosexual tendencies, plus a juvenile Messiah complex. The title is derived from a CBC radio interview with the narrator in 1971 in which the narrator claims Mozart died in 1941.

Born in Middleton, Nova Scotia in 1946, Frizzle dropped out of St. Mary's University in Halifax in 1965 to write freelance arts reviews. He made a short film in Montreal called VERA and moved to Vancouver via Toronto.

[BCBW 2004] "Fiction"