Robert Riche

The P.r. Guy Robert Riche

Publisher Marketing: "The P. R. Guy" is a comic novel in which a lay-about young narrator running out of unemployment insurance checks reluctantly takes a job as a Junior Account Executive in a P. R. firm that has as its client Alexander's Department store. When the narrator is enticed by a sexy banana heiress into joining a group of left-wing anarchists who regularly picket in front of Alexander's he finds himself in a bit of a quandary. Adding to his perplexity, the banana heiress turns out to be a lesbian and a hooker. Other members of the lefty group include a poet who speaks only in olde English, a stay-at-home husband whose wife supports his horse betting habit, a postal worker (who goes berserk and shoots up the Post Office), a con man who works in the same Alexander's stealing from the cash register, and the leader of the group, a commie apparatchik who tries to leap off the Brooklyn Bridge after Kruschev denounces Stalin. At Alexander's the narrator must deal with a stern female executive who demands sexual favors before approving his P. R. copy. Also on the scene is a gorgeous German aristocrat lady who spent the war years as a guest of Franco, and the narrator's boss who spends his days in the office splattering paint over abstract expressionist paintings. Underneath the craziness there is a sober and serious intent. Contributor Bio:  Riche, Robert Robert Riche has been a newspaper reporter, a United Press Staff Correspondent in New York, a free-lance correspondent out of Paris. He has been a union organizer. As a free-lance writer he has written travel and food feature articles for many magazines and newspapers. He is the author of ten previous novels, several books of poetry and numerous plays. His plays have been produced in many areas of the United States and at the Bristol Old Vic, England. He is a recipient of a NEA grant, Connecticut Foundation for the Arts grant, Advanced Drama Research grant, winner of the Stanley Drama Award. He is a Norman Mailer Writers Colony scholar, Breadloaf Writers Conference scholar. Mr. Riche is married to the painter and photographer Fran Riche. He and his wife live in Connecticut, and spend part of each summer in Provincetown, Mass.