Larry Sloman
Larry "Ratso" Sloman (born July 9, 1950) is a New York-based author. Career. Sloman was born into a middle-class Jewish family from Queens. His nickname Ratso came from Joan Baez who said Sloman looked like Dustin Hoffman's character Ratso Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy". He collaborated with Howard Stern on the radio personality's two best-selling books, "Private Parts" and "Miss America". He also appears in all of Kinky Friedman's mystery novels as the Dr. Watson to Kinky's Sherlock. Sloman wrote an account of Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, "On  the Road with Bob Dylan". He also penned "Reefer Madness", a history of marijuana use in the United States, "Thin Ice: A Season in Hell with the New York Rangers", a 1982 on- and off-ice account of the National Hockey League team's 1979–80 season and "Steal This Dream", an oral biography of Abbie Hoffman. His book "The Secret Life of Houdini", written with magic historian William Kalush, presented research that attempted to prove that early 20th-century American magician Harry Houdini was a spy. The authors also raised the possibility that Houdini had been murdered by a cabal  of Spiritualists, prompting Houdini's great-nephew to call for an exhumation of the magician's body to test for poisoning. Sloman's other collaborations include "Mysterious Stranger", with the magician David Blaine and "Scar Tissue", the autobiography of the Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis. Starting in 1985, for a few years Sloman served as executive editor of "National Lampoon" magazine. On 5 April 2019 he released an album, "Stubborn Heart", that includes a duet with Nick Cave, among others.