JE: We talk about friend of the blog James P. Othmer around here quite a bit, as well we should, because for starters, if I'm not mistaken, it was Jimbo who introduced me and the Three Guys in the first place! If you haven't read The Futurist, JPO's 2006 debut, or Adland, this years hilarious and penetrating adman memoir, you're missing out bigtime--Mr. Othmer is a truly funny man, with a wicked sense of the absurd. This spring marks the release of JPO's eagerly awaited second novel, Holy Water, which we will doubtless be covering here. We asked our friend JPO to participate in our WWFiL series, and here he is:

JPO: After sixth grade, the principal of St. John's the Evangelist School let my parents know that a transfer to public school might be good for all parties involved.  Unruly in Catholic school, I became downright incorrigible in seventh grade in public school.  One day while I was goofing off with a friend in the library, a librarian named Mrs. Dunn pulled me aside and handed me a copy of John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace.  "Sit down, shut your mouth, and read," weren't the words one would expect from a nurturing mentor, but they got my attention.  At the time, my reading consisted of sports books ("Screwball" by Tug McGraw), war books ("The Longest Day") and books read on the sly because they might contain sex or adult content ("Fanny Hill", Lenny Bruce's "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People" -- both of which also profoundly changed me, albeit in non-literary ways).  I started Knowles' book in the library that afternoon and finished it in my bedroom that night (twice, my mother, convinced that an eleven year-old boy that silent had to be up to no good, knocked on my door to check on me). I was transfixed.  The two protagonists, the bookish, self-conscious narrator Gene, and the confident, non-conformist athlete Phineas spoke to both sides of my conflicted adolescent soul. Finny's contention that war was a fabrication of fat old men intent on stopping young people from enjoying themselves had particular resonance in the war year of 1971, and may have been the first political thought I'd consciously considered in a work of fiction.  Then the shenanigans on the oak tree limb.  Two boys in daredevil competition hanging over the briny river.  My God.  Finny saves Gene when he stumbles.  Then Gene.  What the hell were you thinking, Gene, shaking the tree when Finny wasn't ready?  And why, Mrs. Dunn, are you making me cry?  "A Separate Peace" may not have made me a better or more well-behaved student, but it did make me a better, more discerning and fanatical reader."  --James P. Othmer, author of the novels The Futurist and Holy Water (Doubleday, June, 2010).