Mark Grueter

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Mark Connors Grueter (born 1977) is an American writer. He has done freelance work for publications such as Stop Smiling, the eXile, the Modern Drunkard and The Moscow Times.

Mark in old city Quebec, December 2006

For three years, Grueter co-edited the New York literary journal Me Three, with Sarah Stodola. They put out two issues and ran a variety of online content. Grueter covered the 2004 U.S. presidential race, and attended the Democratic Convention with Boston writer Chris Fara1. Grueter also co-edited New School University's graduate school magazine, Canon.

More recently, American businessman Jeff Lindstrom hired Grueter to start a magazine in Vladivostok, Russia. Grueter moved to the Russian Far East for a year where he started online magazine The Krai. The Krai came to a controversial close in June 2006 after Lindstrom stopped funding the project. Lindstrom and Grueter argued over what the purpose and focus of the magazine should be. Lindstrom pressured Grueter to write articles favorable to certain Russian businesses who were also financial donors to Lindstrom's organization. Grueter refused, and instead published articles of a highly political nature. Another reason Lindstrom stopped funding The Krai was that he was having severe financial difficulties, and claimed he could no longer support Grueter and the magazine.

Grueter is an authority on British-American novelist P.G. Wodehouse. He wrote his masters thesis, which was reviewed by journalist Christopher Hitchens and professor Melissa Monroe, on Comedy and more specifically Wodehouse's subversion of the literary hierarchy. Grueter opened the paper with this passage written by Wodehouse:

I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing', and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at. When I tell you that in a recent issue of The New Yorker I was referred to as 'that burbling pixie', you will see how far the evil has spread. These things take their toll. You can't go calling a man a burbling pixie without lowering his morale. He frets. He refuses to eat his cereal. He goes about with his hands in his Pockets and his lower lip jutting out, kicking stones. The next thing you know, he is writing thoughtful novels analysing social conditions, and you are short another humorist. With things going the way they are, it won't be long before the species dies out. Already what was once a full-throated chorus has faded into a few scattered chirps. – P.G. Wodehouse