Newton Bigelow's career as a writer has been a strange one. He has careened wildly between the mainstream and the underground, winning praise and condemnation from both camps. As a promising young author, fresh out of the writing program at a prestigious Eastern university, he was hailed as the successor to authors like Urquhardt or Kennedy. His utter lack of respect for the literary world soon alienated the establishment, however, and it wasn't long before the only publisher who would touch his work was a little-known firm in New Jersey that primarily published seedy romance novels.

By the late seventies, his work could be found on the sale racks of airport newsstands, where they enjoyed surprising popularity. He gained a small, socially inept cult following, which resulted in invitations to speak at college campuses and 4H Club Meetings. These were short-lived, however, mostly due to his tendency to dismiss unimaginative questions as "profoundly idiotic". By the early Eighties his fan base had dwindled to a small group of diehards, many of whom worked for collection agencies.

Finding himself with little readership left beyond the subscribers to his self-published newsletter, "Dire Pedant", Bigelow left the United States for Paris, where he spent a year trying to live the life of a romantically drunk American writer, only to find that the age of Maugham and Miller had long since passed away. He was on the verge of returning home when the Iran-Contra scandal broke. Watching the hearings on television, he had what he calls "a political psychotic break". It was at that point that he decided to escape to Madrid, where he still lives today.