Desvarío

New Short Story eBook: "Just Like Mosquitos"

2012-02-13T07:56:00.001-05:00

My new short story eBook, "Just Like Mosquitos" is now available in ePub and Kindle Editions. Just follow the links for more information.

Impressions: "Me and You" by Niccolò Ammaniti

2012-02-07T18:42:00.000-05:00

Niccolò Ammaniti is one of my favorite contemporary authors, hands down. Unfortunately, only four of his novels have been translated into English, leaving three others and a collection of short stories left for those who can read and speak Italian; and although I am of Italian descent, I unfortunately cannot speak, read or write it, which is a shame. Blame the relatives. Assimilation was the thing in their day, hence, the old world and old ways were left behind once they got off the boat - more or less, anyway.

“Me and You” is actually a novella rather than a novel proper. It clocks in at around 150 pages in a small, digest sized paperback. It was published in Italy in 2010 (and selling over 600,000 copies in Italy alone) but it’s just now making its way stateside. It’s the first English publication of Ammaniti’s work since 2009’s “As God Commands.” I eagerly awaited this and I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed. It is a wonderful story, at the same time heartfelt and heartbreaking.

Ammaniti returns to familiar themes here - that of adolescence and the misfit who doesn’t fit in. Usually, the protagonist comes from some small town either in northern or southern Italy, poor, from desperate situations. This time the 14 year old protagonist, Lorenzo Cuni, is a 14 year old from a very well-to-do family in Rome, where the story is set. Lorenzo is an outcast, struggling with ‘fitting in’ and desires to spend most of the time by himself. But his parents are concerned that he isn’t making any friends, isn’t like “normal kids” his age. He changes many schools and when he winds up at the regular high school his feelings of alienation grow worse. To satisfy his parents, he makes up a lie that a young student had invited him on a skiing trip with her family and a group of other kids from school. It’s a lie he can’t back out of and he takes the lie all the way up to the day the other children are leaving on the trip. He begs his mother to drop him off a few blocks away from where they are all meeting, not wanting to “look like a dickhead” to all the other kids. But Lorenzo has a plan. When his mother leaves, he puts that plan into motion: to spend the entire week alone in a room in the cellar of the building where he lives, holed up with video games and Stephen King novels. It is the chance for the freedom from his parents and from school that he had been waiting for. To spend a week in his own world. But when his half-sister shows up unexpectedly, wanting to stay with him in the room, all his plans go awry and he learns a lot not only about his mysterious step-sister who he hadn’t seen since he was a child, but about himself as well. It’s a coming of age tale that is both hopeful and tragic at the same time.

Written in very sparse, simple prose, Ammaniti takes you right into Lorenzo’s mind and you live his experiences right along with him. But a lot is being said in this little novel, and Ammaniti manages to say so much with such very few words, something I personally admire in writers. This story ranks right up there with the others in Ammaniti’s catalog and now I eagerly await the other three novels to be translated, that is, if they ever are. He’s a great storyteller and truly a great writer and this quick but very enjoyable read comes highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * *

Impressions: "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon

2012-02-03T06:50:00.001-05:00

What can one say about Thomas Pynchon? “Vineland” (1990) is the follow up to his 1973 novel “Gravity’s Rainbow”, giving his rabid fan base a good 17 years between novels. In all that time, he certainly had a lot he could write about and he returned to the scene with this biting satire of America in the 1960s and the Reagan years of the 1980s. It has all the things one expects from Pynchon: the intricate, puzzle-like plot, the obscure references, the humor, the zaniness, the multi-layered text, and not to mention his amazing writing. In “Vineland” he seems to pull out all the stops, coming up with something that is truly hard to define but the overall effect is nothing short of amazing.

The plot of “Vineland” is too complicated to sum up in this short amount of space but essentially the story is about an aging hippie named Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairie, living in the hinterlands of northern California, 1984, where many ex-hippies still live, all struggling with the consequences of their radical past. News reaches him that his old nemesis, Federal Agent Brock Vond has come to Vineland county, along with his Justice Department strike force and Zoyd immediately goes underground. What Vond is looking for is Zoyd’s ex-wife, who had been in a witness protection program and has now disappeared. Zoyd’s daughter Prairie begins to learn of her mother’s past and consequently, her own. What follows is nothing short of amazing and this genre defying novel has everything thrown into the mix: spy thrillers, ninja potboilers, soap operas, sci-fi fantasies, and numerous pop cultural references (both known and obscure), all coming together in one crazed and manic stew.

The interesting thing to me about this novel is its symbolism and it seeming commentary on American culture from the 1960s to the 1980s and how much things had changed during that time. For instance, Prairie’s mother, Frenesi, seems to symbolize American culture (or the Baby Boom generation in particular, if you ask me) and how it went from being “hippies” to eventually supporting Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The characters of The Thanatoids, who are described as “like death, only different” recalls zombie-like beings, which to me seems to either symbolize “Reaganites” or American culture as a whole, obsessed with television and sort of walking through life oblivious to what is going on around them. But there is much more, like in all Pynchon stories but the over all effect of this novel is its devastating critique of an American era and how it went from radical idealism to complacency. You will have to read this to get all of it and I’m not even sure if one reading alone will reveal all that is lying beneath the surface. It’s a complicated read but a fun and humorous one as well and like the other Pynchon novels I have read thus far, this one comes highly recommended as well.

Rating: * * * * *

New Short Story eBook: "Blue Eyes"

2012-01-31T05:07:00.000-05:00

My new short story eBook, "Blue Eyes" is now available in ePub and Kindle Editions. Just follow the links for more information.

Impressions: "God's Mountain" by Erri De Luca

2012-01-30T06:29:00.000-05:00

More of a novella than a novel. A quick read and a very good one at that. A coming of age story, set in 1960, about a boy in the Neapolitan neighborhood of Montedidio (“God’s Mountain” - the Italian title for this book) who leaves school to work in a shop with a local cabinet maker in order to help earn money to help his poverty stricken family. In the shop, he befriends a shoemaker - a Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor named Rafaniello, who does not know how old he is said to “sprout wings” for a blessed few. He has also befriended Maria, his thirteen year old neighbor who is much more wise than he, and together they begin to explore the first steps into adolescence.

This is best symbolized by the boy’s wooden boomerang which he receives from his father as a birthday gift, something he is constantly practicing to throw, building his strength, but never actually throwing it, “letting go” of it, that is until New Year’s Eve when things begin to happen - or seem to, anyway.

A story such as this is usually in danger of becoming saccharine and perhaps just a little too sweet, but De Luca manages to tell this tale without falling into that trap. It’s a heartfelt story, one that is very easy to relate to, regardless of where one may have been raised.

Recommended.

Rating: * * * *

"November Rust" Interview/Update

2012-01-27T23:08:00.000-05:00

A 2009 interview/review of my debut novel "November Rust", written and conducted by Garry Crystal, has been posted at Expats Post. It is the original interview along with a current update, taking a look back on the novel 5 years later as well as the subsequent novels and short story releases. I want to take the time to again thank Garry Crystal for his time, efforts and of course belief and support of my work. Thank you, Garry.

Impressions: "Everybody's Right" by Paolo Sorrentino

2012-01-25T18:23:00.000-05:00

A raucous, wild ride, and often times laugh out loud funny. It is the story of world renowned crooner Tony Pagoda as he reflects on his life, relationships and his take on the world at large. A sort of “poor man’s Frank Sinatra” or “Tony Bennett”, he regales the reader with stories of his sexual conquests, his nights cooked out his mind on cocaine, his experience with prostitutes. Tony is not a “likable” character at all and he has no qualms about it, and despite it all, you can’t help but like the guy. He takes you from the streets of Naples, to New York, to Brazil, and eventually back to Italy, twenty years later, where his homeland is hardly recognizable after a 20 year stint in a backwater of Brazil. He returns to an Italy of Ikea furniture, foreigners and figo - “cool”. An obvious commentary on Berlusconi’s Italy.

The interesting thing here is that Sorrentino is not known as a novelist but a filmmaker. His previous films include “One Man Up”, “Il Divo” and “This Must Be the Place.” “Everybody’s Right” is his debut novel and what a debut it is. Most definitely a new voice in contemporary literature, European or otherwise. If you’re looking for a wild, frantic, crazy, laugh out loud experience, then you must read this. I loved it and can’t recommend it highly enough.

Rating: * * * * *

Bohemia After Dark

2012-01-22T10:43:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know. “Bohemia.” Not exactly a thing I relate to in any serious way. For one, I’m 45 years old as of this writing and I’m too old to care anymore. Secondly, I never bought into the whole “Bohemian” thing anyway, and lastly, I thought it would make a good title for a series of posts, that is if you don’t take the title too seriously. Some will, I’m sure (that’s just the nature of things these days) but for the record, it’s not all that serious. The title actually comes from an LP by Cannonball Adderley, if it must be known.

For a long while now, I’ve been thinking about expanding the parameters of this blog to cover more than just literary matters. After all, there are other things that interest me and influence me and it all works its way into the writing anyway, so I figure why not shake things up a little. I came to writing later in life. Before I began to write I was (and still am) primarily a musician. Music was always my first love, and still is. I didn’t grow up drowning in literary matters, although I was always a voracious reader. I came to writing as a way to express myself, much like I had all those years while playing music. The older I got, I realized that music alone wasn’t doing it, so I began to write. Simple as that. I always wrote, even when I was a little kid, but it wasn’t something on the front burner like it was for those writers who’ve been pursuing it since they were as young as I was when I first started listening to music.

But for me, it all goes into the same pot. Writing, for me at least, is just as much influenced by music, film, art, history, photography, philosophy and many other things than it is by other books and authors. I like to draw from the deep well of everything that interests me and for the most part, nothing is off the table. So what’s to come is basically a celebration of everything that interests me artistically, everything that had ever influenced me or currently influences me or things I find interesting that I’d like to share with those who do actually read this thing. It’s a new year and I think it’s time for a change, to liven things up a little and make things more interesting, or at least I hope. Something tells me I’m going to have a lot of fun doing this and hopefully it will be as interesting to you as it is to me.

New Short Story eBook: "Shutter"

2012-01-19T05:10:00.001-05:00

My new short story eBook, "Shutter", is now available as ePub and Kindle Editions. Just follow the links for more information.

Seeking Sicily in Brooklyn

2012-01-14T12:06:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday night I, along with my cousin, New York artist Steven Palermo, went to Scopello in Brooklyn to catch author John Keahey read from his most recent book “Seeking Sicily.” Steve and I, being family, both come from a Sicilian background, and while this topic may be more of interest to me than it is to him, he had shown some interest in the book while I was reading it and I thought it would be great for him to come down and check things out. I have written about Keahey’s book on this blog a couple of weeks ago and for those who are interested in Italian - and particularly Sicilian history - this is a book that should not be ignored. For my money, it was one of the best books about Sicily and Sicilian culture to come along in a very long time and it captivated me over the three days I devoured it. The reading was wonderful and it was a real treat to meet and hear the author read from such a wonderful book. I can’t praise this book enough and for those who are interested in the topic, just follow this link in order to secure yourself a copy.

But there was an additional treat on the agenda that night and that was musician/singer Michela Musolino who provided the audience with some wonderful traditional Sicilian songs and poetry. It was a pleasure to finally hear Michela sing live and to finally be able to meet her as well. She has a wonderful and powerful voice and her music is also something to seek out and enjoy. I first became familiar with Michela’s work through my attempts to seek out traditional Sicilian music, which isn’t easy to come by. I happened upon her CD “Songs of Trinacria” some years ago and I’ve been dying to see her perform live ever since and last Wednesday night, I finally got the chance. You can find more information about her and her music at her website and I highly recommend everyone stop by and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been getting more and more in touch with my roots and being able to experience a night such as this was truly amazing. It was a beautiful combination and I’m glad I was able to attend.

Impressions: "Italian Tales" by Various Authors, edited by Massimo Riva

2012-01-11T06:35:00.000-05:00

This is a highly literary anthology of contemporary Italian authors, published by the Yale University Press. It brings together an excellent sampling of Italian fiction that is very much little or unknown to the English speaking reader. The style of these stories and novel excerpts vary as much as their author’s do but what you have here is nothing short of amazing work, a perfect sampling for those who are interested in contemporary Italian literature. Featured are Luigi Malerba, Gesualdo Bufalino, Sebastiano Vassalli, Giorgio Manganelli, Gianni Celati, Lalla Romano, Anna Maria Ortese, Frabrizia Ramondino, Ginerva Bompiani, Antonio Tabucchi, Daniele Del Giudice, Erri de Luca, Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Vincenzo Consolo, Pier Maria Pasinetti, Paola Capriolo, Paolo Valesio and Franco Ferrucci.

For me, personally, the standouts are Gesualdo Bufalino, Erri De Luca, and Pier Vittorio Tondelli and I immediately sought out their novels once I finished reading this collection.

For those interested in the wide range of Italian literary fiction, this is a great place to start. Unfortunately, most of these authors are not available in English so if you can speak and read Italian, my suggestion would be to seek these works out.

Rating: * * * * 1/2

New Short Story eBook: "Café Noir"

2012-01-09T17:51:00.001-05:00

My new short story eBook, “Café Noir” is now available in ePub and Kindle Editions. Just follow the links for more information.

The Eureka Moment

2012-01-06T11:54:00.000-05:00

One year and three days ago, I began the first words of a new novel. I’m still nowhere near finishing it. This is the first draft that I am speaking of. Once that’s complete (and God knows when that will be) the real work begins on it: the rewrites, the editing, the reshaping, etc. I’m not one of those writers who has the whole story figured out in his mind before I sit down to write. I usually start with an idea, often vague, a couple of characters and a situation and begin from there. As the writing progresses, that’s when the story itself usually begins to take shape. It’s a slow, often grinding process, mainly because I often have no idea at all what’s going to happen. I may think I do, but then something happens over the course of the story that will take it in a direction that I hadn’t originally intended. I try to keep an open mind and allow it to unfold naturally. But sometimes that doesn’t work. Case in point: My most recent novel, “Be Still and Know That I Am” was originally conceived a little differently than what actually came to be. There was a scene where I allowed something to happen, then all the events followed logically from it. Eventually, it got to a place that I didn’t like at all and everything just came to a grinding halt. I knew something was wrong but couldn’t quite place my finger on what it was. When I realized that it was that particular scene where everything went awry, I went back and re-imagined it, allowed the story to flow from the change in circumstance and everything fell into place. Fiction writers are creating a unique world - and even creators of fictional worlds can make a huge blunder, which will effect the storytelling in some way.

So on a cold, blustery, snowy day in January 2011, I sat down and began the first pages of my next novel. Things went along swimmingly at first. Then suddenly new characters emerged - initially conceived as minor players - who suddenly developed more and more; and they had to have people they interacted with, a back story, and so on and so on. Now this “world” has suddenly become more complex - and so had the story. It got to where I reached a point where I knew it was the “turning point” in the story and what I decided to make happen would determine the rest of the story. In the past I would have just gone on, kept writing and let the chips fall where they may. If it worked, fantastic. If it didn’t, that meant going back to that point and trashing everything that came after it. I’ve done it a million times. With “November Rust”, there were numerous times where I literally trashed an easy 100-150 pages because it just didn’t work. One has to be willing to do that, even if they thought what they wrote was good. It has to serve the story, regardless of what was written. (If one felt it was good enough to really keep, set it aside and perhaps use it for something else). “Nadería” began as completely different story from what eventually emerged. I had written about 200 pages, saw it wasn’t working and trashed all but about 20 and began again. Sometimes you don’t know what’s wrong exactly - but you know something is - and you have to be willing to “kill your darlings” as the cliché goes. I think this is true for all artists: painters, musicians, etc.

Over the past two days, after thinking about the new novel for weeks on end (I would say it was more obsessing on it) that I finally had that “eureka” moment that will allow me to finish it. The trouble is, though, that it means that I may have to take the story to where I had not originally intended it to go, which is fine. I am open-minded enough to keep the alternatives open. But after much thinking, I came to the realization that sometimes the story must go the way it is dictating. As writers, we often come to relate to and often “like” the people we make up out of thin air and sometimes things have to happen to them that you don’t want to see happen but often must, for the good of the story. It doesn’t always have to be this way, of course. One could hammer away, chip away, buff and remodel it to make it go the way you want it to go but for me, personally, it opens new creative avenues, new possibilities and new doors to walk through - to try things that I normally wouldn’t have thought of doing.

So I am happy to say that everything is finally falling into place. One year of work doesn’t have to be abandoned after all, which I was very close in doing because the damn thing just wasn’t working. Sometimes you just have to let it go and let it breathe a little, recharge your batteries and come back to it with fresher eyes and a different perspective. And I am now happy that I did that. Creating anything is often hard work. It’s never as easy as it seems or as easy as you think it will be. Sometimes an artist will come up with something seemingly so simple (i.e. Cormac McCarthy’s last novel, “The Road”) and you will somehow sense that what seemed so simple often had a lot of blood, sweat and tears involved. But if an artist can make something seem simple, when in fact it isn’t, then that’s quite an accomplishment - but completing any work of art is an achievement in and of itself. Once it’s “out there” there’s no telling how people will respond to it, and Lord knows, the responses to it are usually all over the map anyway.

So you just have to remain true to yourself and your vision. Be open to differing possibilities, of course, open to change but remain true nevertheless. Often, even when you least expect it, that “eureka” moment will hit you like a speeding train and allow you to move forward.

Impressions: "Our GG in Havana" by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez

2012-01-05T05:57:00.000-05:00

This is the fourth novel of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez that has been translated into English (as far as I know) and it has all the hallmarks that Gutiérrez is known for: Havana, sex and a rollicking good time. Set in Havana in the mid 1950s during the Battista regime, when the Mafia controlled the casinos and when the city itself was known as - at least according to Fidel Castro - as ‘the whore of America’ - a man who may or may not be British novelist Graham Greene arrives in Havana looking for a good time. He heads to the Shanghai Theater and after becoming completely enthralled by the wild sex acts there, decides to visit the dressing room of Charity, a transvestite who performed at the show, also looking for a good time. Much to his horror, he and Charity discover a dead body in the dressing room and the next day, the newspapers finger Greene as the culprit.

But there is a twist here. The man everyone thinks is the novelist Graham Greene is not Greene but a man named George Greene. A case of mistaken identity - and a willing case at that. The real Graham Greene has just finished the manuscript of his novel “The Quiet American” and is living on the Mediterranean island of Capri. Word reaches him that he has been accused of murder in Havana and is told to remain quiet and disappear, since according to his agent, it “could be good for sales” of his books. Greene decides to head to Havana instead and what unfolds is nothing short of hilarious.

Essentially a reworking of Graham Greene’s novel “Our Man in Havana”, the story takes on the characteristics of a mid-1950s espionage novel, complete with KGB and FBI agents and a rogue organization dedicated to eradicating escaped Nazi war criminals throughout Latin America. It is a satire, obviously, written as a fictional account on what inspired Greene to write his novel “Our Man in Havana.” Over all, though, it is a portrait of a city before the Revolution, complete with its wild night life, sex acts, prostitutes, and Mafia control - a time when the city was essentially a playground for world travelers, especially Americans.

Those who have read Gutiérrez’s previous novels (“The Dirty Havana Trilogy”, “Tropical Animal” and “The Insatiable Spiderman”) are going to love this. His style is straightforward and candid (he is known as “the Bukowski of Havana”) and it is quite humorous at times. Highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * 1/2

Impressions: "Horns" by Joe Hill

2012-01-02T06:54:00.000-05:00

Horror fiction is usually not my cup of tea and this is one of those novels where after I finished reading it, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Did I like it or not? I suppose I can say that I lean towards liking it and the reason for it being that it’s premise is bizarre to say the least. A man wakes up one morning after spending a night “doing horrible things” to discover that he had grown horns - essentially becoming something of a devil. He is accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend and he is out to prove that he didn’t do it, despite the fact that everyone in town believes that he did. His horns bring out the worst in people, often confessing to him their most darkest thoughts and quite casually at that, which in a sense makes the “devil” in the story something of a hero, being that the people in the New England town in which the story is set, are often far more evil than one would ever expect. It seems to be a sort of commentary on contemporary society - particularly in America - where something quite sinister lurks under the surface of normality.

One part horror novel, one part murder mystery, what you have here is something a little broader than your usual horror fiction fare. Influenced by music, film, comic books, horror novels, horror films, pop culture (two of the characters are named “Merrin” and “Reagan”, which recalls two characters in Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist”), and just a hint of the transgressive weirdness of Chuck Palahniuk, and what you have here is a very interesting mix. The “devil” in this story is portrayed how a bluesman might envision him, rather than the ‘classical’ view of the Devil that you would find in literature across the ages. A “Pop Culture” devil - but he is human, not a spawn from Hell, so in this sense it gives the character all the flaws and conflicts a human being would have. There are also some narrative experimentations here, which keep things interesting and set it apart from what one would expect in a “horror novel.” All in all, an interesting and entertaining read and Hill is definitely bringing something new to the genre, and it will definitely keep you turning the pages.

Rating: * * * 1/2

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T07:19:00.000-05:00

Well, 2012 is upon us and those who strongly believe in the Mayan Prophecies will think we only have about a year left before the whole world goes to Hell in a hand cart. I don’t believe for a moment this is going to happen, of course, but world events certainly do point to some kind of dramatic change. Whether or not that change is positive or negative is up to all of us, of course. It’s in our hands, people. Let’s do things right.

The new year also tends to bring about the idea of change and/or the concept of “taking stock” which is what I tend to do more than make any New Year’s resolutions, though I suppose I do in my own mind but half the time, like most people, I never stick to them. There is also a tendency to forget the really good things that happened over the course of the past year. We get so wrapped up in the immediate moment that if we sit back for even just a moment and reflect, we often discover what seemed like a blip on the screen actually contained some really great moments. That happens to me all the time.

For me, I got to travel a bit: St. Lucia, Baltimore, El Paso, which totals nearly a month away from the can of bees called New York City. I was also very productive on the writing front and naturally since this blog serves as a promotional tool for me and my work (among other things, of course), please forgive the blatant self-promotion that you are about to receive.

Two novels came out in 2011 (although they were both written the year before), and a slew of short story eBooks, an idea that occurred to me one afternoon while browsing Amazon and seeing that with the advent of the eBook, there was a potential to breathe life into a slowly disappearing art form. What better way for an author to get his work out there by issuing single story eBooks for very cheap, allowing a curious reader to sample him or her at very low risk to the pocket book. This idea turned out to be better than I ever imagined it would be, having sold a bunch of these stories, and naturally, I am eternally grateful and thankful to those who did buy them. It means more than you know. So without any further ado - and of course for those who may have missed the posts over the past year - here is what I currently have available in the event that you decide you might be interested in checking them out for your own (hopefully) reading pleasure:

Nadería (Novel)

What happens when an American poet, a Uruguayan painter, a Peruvian chef, a Syrian belly dancer, an Algerian musician and an Italian religious fundamentalist are all searching for meaning and their lives intersect on the streets of Paris? "Nadería" is a story about failed hopes, unrealized dreams, the nature of identity; and when their respective journeys do intersect, the very notion of "meaning" suddenly gets called into question and can potentially have dire consequences.

Available in Paperback, PDF, and Kindle Edition.

A review/interview was written and conducted by writer Garry Crystal can be found here.

Be Still and Know That I Am (Novel)

Being yourself in a sea of mindless cretins is the hardest battle any kid could face. September 1982. In a working class neighborhood in Queens, New York, sixteen year old Nico Razza is a perpetual outcast, often victim to the taunts of his classmates, peers and neighborhood bullies. Steeped in Punk Rock culture, he is not only rebelling against society, authority and his peers, but also his recently widowed father, who struggles to keep his family together at the dawn of the Reagan era. Angst ridden Punk Rockers, Van Halen T-shirt wearing Camaro driving bullies and their brain dead foot soldiers, Lower East Side squatters, Alphabet City junkies, Hardcore bands and the infamous A7 club, Reagan’s promise of “Morning in America” and those left behind who still wanted to believe it, working class angst, High School confidential - when these worlds collide over the course of the next ten days, the lives of everyone involved will be changed forever.

Available in Paperback, PDF, and Kindle Edition.

A review/interview was conducted by writer Garry Crystal can be found here.

The Algerian in Room No. 4 (Short Story eBook)

He always told everyone he was a lowlife - including his wife Margot - but she married him anyway, hoping they would one day have a normal, stable marriage. But one evening, while on his way to meet a friend, a prostitute on the Rue St. Denis with a unique tattoo catches his eye; and what was at first a simple curiosity soon becomes an unhealthy obsession.

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition

Sahara (Short Story eBook)

He had gone to Morocco only six years earlier as a tourist. He had met a friendly and unassuming man named Bilial and they had become good friends. Six years later, he is returning to Morocco only this time he isn’t coming as a tourist. He has something else in mind - something that will put their friendship to the ultimate test.

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition.

Soon After the Fall (Short Story eBook)

Early 1990. A young American student is studying in Budapest to learn more about her family history, her roots and her culture. Living with an eccentric yoga loving roommate and dating a shy would-be poet, she will navigate the general post-Cold War malaise, getting more of an education than she ever imagined.

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition

Rage Against the Dying of the Light (Short Story eBook)

Mario, a Lower East Side coffee shop owner befriends a youth named Jared, a shy, introverted poet who spends his days sitting outside the shop begging for change. There is more to Jared than meets the eye and it takes the help of Mario’s assistant Kaitlin to help coax Jared out of his shell. Slowly Jared begins to ingratiate himself with the local literary community due to the weekly poetry readings Kaitlin had begun to stage at the coffee shop. But some strange customers begin appearing, those who don’t like the idea of this kid hanging around the shop and Mario begins to navigate the line between compassion and the changing character of the neighborhood.

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition

Sangre (Short Story eBook)

Two American G.I.s - Richard Harris and Paul Lamb - survive the bloody allied invasion of Sicily during World War II. Hunkered down in a small Sicilian town, the daughter of a bar owner catches Paul’s wandering eye. The horrors of war soon collides with a local vendetta that follows no rules of war nor does it care about who’s side one is on.

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition

Black Roses (Short Story eBook)

Jerome is an aspiring actor, loner and a dwarf who often spends his time attending small off-Broadway plays. After seeing a play in a small Greenwich Village theater, he becomes obsessed with the lead actress, Barbara Connor. He begins hanging around her Perry Street apartment, leaving one black rose in front of her door every Sunday morning. But someone is out to steal his thunder, a smooth talking, self-absorbed acting companion of Barbara who intends to take credit for Jerome’s handiwork in order to get closer to Barbara. Will Barbara ever learn the truth?

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition

Stars, Cigars and Boxcars (Short Story eBook)

1957: A middle aged New Jersey man watches his young son in the comfort of their middle class home and begins to reminisce about his days riding the rails during The Depression. It is the eve of a world changing event and while he contrasts his own upbringing with that of his son, he can’t help but wonder what this unexpected event will mean for his young boy.

Available in Kindle Edition and ePub Edition

There was also another interview written and conducted by Garry Crystal which grew out of the interview for my most recent novel, “Be Still and Know That I Am.” It concerns itself with the pros and cons of indie publishing and the slow rise of the independent author. It is called “Self-Publish or Perish” and it can be found here.

I just want to take the time to thank everyone for their support over the past year. You all made 2011 a great and inspiring year. There is more good news in the coming days. Stay tuned.

Thanks again everyone! You don’t know how much I appreciate your support!

Onward...

Impressions: "Zeina" by Nawal El Saadawi

2011-12-29T16:55:00.000-05:00

Nawal El Saadawi is known for her activism in Egypt and has many times been threatened by the Islamist forces there due to her championing of women’s rights. Her novels tend to reflect this struggle, as in the previous novel I had read of hers called “The Novel.” In “Zeina” she takes these themes forward and what you have is a very disturbing read.

A young Egyptian woman - Bodour - abandons an illegitimate child on the streets of Cairo, a child she had during an affair with a Marxist revolutionary who is eventually beaten and jailed. As the years move on, she marries an ambitious journalist and they have a daughter. Coincidently, their daughter, Mageeda, winds up befriending a “child of the streets” named Zeina, who, as you may have already guessed, is the abandoned child of Bodour.

Bodour is in a loveless marriage and is consumed with guilt for abandoning her first child and her mind is slowly coming apart. Frequent visits to the psychiatrist and the writing of a novel called “The Stolen Novel” (which is repeatedly stolen by her husband) seems to be the only way for her to confront herself and deal with her immense guilt. But little by little, she is spiraling into psychosis, represented by a repetitive narrative which returns to the same obsessions and the same themes throughout the novel. Zeina, meanwhile, becomes a famous pop star and eventually becomes a symbol of freedom for the people and a symbol of freedom for the life that Bodour wants to live.

The novel is rife with symbolism, mainly about Egyptian culture and women’s place within it. It is filled with religious hypocrisy, corrupt politicians and patriarchal oppression and this makes for a very dark read. The repetitive nature of the narrative may be something of a turn-off for some (and I too, frankly, found it a little annoying at times) but it doesn’t take away from the power of the story being told here and the insights into a society that many Westerners truly don’t understand - particularly in light of the recent revolution there. Written a couple of year before the recent uprisings, it definitely gives a little insight into the lives of the average Egyptian citizen and the social dynamic taking place there. Recommended.

Rating: * * * 1/2

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T07:46:00.000-05:00

Wishing one and all a very Merry Christmas! Thank you for your kind support over the past year. May you all have a joyous holiday season.

Afrikaans: Geseënde Kersfees
Afrikander: Een Plesierige Kerfees
African/ Eritrean/ Tigrinja: Rehus-Beal-Ledeats
Albanian:Gezur Krislinjden
Arabic: Milad Majid
Argentine: Feliz Navidad
Armenian: Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand
Azeri: Tezze Iliniz Yahsi Olsun
Bahasa Malaysia: Selamat Hari Natal
Basque: Zorionak eta Urte Berri On!
Bengali: Shuvo Naba Barsha
Bohemian: Vesele Vanoce
Bosnian: (BOSANSKI) Cestit Bozic i Sretna Nova godina
Brazilian: Feliz Natal
Breton: Nedeleg laouen na bloavezh mat
Bulgarian: Tchestita Koleda; Tchestito Rojdestvo Hristovo
Catalan: Bon Nadal i un Bon Any Nou!
Chile: Feliz Navidad
Chinese: (Cantonese) Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun
Chinese: (Mandarin) Sheng Dan Kuai Le
Choctaw: Yukpa, Nitak Hollo Chito
Columbia: Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo
Cornish: Nadelik looan na looan blethen noweth
Corsian: Pace e salute
Crazanian: Rot Yikji Dol La Roo
Cree: Mitho Makosi Kesikansi
Croatian: Sretan Bozic
Czech: Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok
Danish: Glædelig Jul
Duri: Christmas-e- Shoma Mobarak
Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeast
English: Merry Christmas
Eskimo: (inupik) Jutdlime pivdluarit ukiortame pivdluaritlo!
Esperanto: Gajan Kristnaskon
Estonian: Rõõmsaid Jõulupühi
Ethiopian: (Amharic) Melkin Yelidet Beaal
Faeroese: Gledhilig jol og eydnurikt nyggjar!
Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad
Finnish: Hyvaa joulua
Flemish: Zalig Kerstfeest en Gelukkig nieuw jaar
French: Joyeux Noel
Frisian: Noflike Krystdagen en in protte Lok en Seine yn it Nije Jier!
Galician: Bo Nada
Gaelic: Nollaig chridheil agus Bliadhna mhath ùr!
German: Fröhliche Weihnachten
Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
Haiti: (Creole) Jwaye Nowel or to Jesus Edo Bri'cho o Rish D'Shato Brichto
Hausa: Barka da Kirsimatikuma Barka da Sabuwar Shekara!
Hawaiian: Mele Kalikimaka
Hebrew: Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova
Hindi: Shub Naya Baras (good New Year not Merry Christmas)
Hungarian: Kellemes Karacsonyi unnepeket
Icelandic: Gledileg Jol
Indonesian: Selamat Hari Natal
Iraqi: Idah Saidan Wa Sanah Jadidah
Irish: Nollaig Shona Dhuit, or Nodlaig mhaith chugnat
Iroquois: Ojenyunyat Sungwiyadeson honungradon nagwutut. Ojenyunyat osrasay.
Italian: Buone Feste Natalizie
Japanese: Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto
Jiberish: Mithag Crithagsigathmithags
Korean: Sung Tan Chuk Ha
Lao: souksan van Christmas
Latin: Natale hilare et Annum Faustum!
Latvian: Prieci'gus Ziemsve'tkus un Laimi'gu Jauno Gadu!
Lausitzian:Wjesole hody a strowe nowe leto
Lettish: Priecigus Ziemassvetkus
Lithuanian: Linksmu Kaledu
Low Saxon: Heughliche Winachten un 'n moi Nijaar
Luxembourgish: Schèine Chreschtdaag an e gudde Rutsch
Macedonian: Sreken Bozhik
Maltese: IL-Milied It-tajjeb
Manx: Nollick ghennal as blein vie noa
Maori: Meri Kirihimete
Marathi: Shub Naya Varsh (good New Year not Merry Christmas)
Navajo: Merry Keshmish
Norwegian: God Jul, or Gledelig Jul
Occitan: Pulit nadal e bona annado
Papiamento: Bon Pasco
Papua New Guinea: Bikpela hamamas blong dispela Krismas na Nupela yia i go long yu
Pennsylvania German: En frehlicher Grischtdaag un en hallich Nei Yaahr!
Peru: Feliz Navidad y un Venturoso Año Nuevo
Philippines: Maligayang Pasko!
Polish: Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia or Boze Narodzenie
Portuguese:Feliz Natal
Pushto: Christmas Aao Ne-way Kaal Mo Mobarak Sha
Rapa-Nui (Easter Island): Mata-Ki-Te-Rangi. Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua
Rhetian: Bellas festas da nadal e bun onn
Romanche: (sursilvan dialect): Legreivlas fiastas da Nadal e bien niev onn!
Rumanian: Sarbatori vesele or Craciun fericit
Russian: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom
Sami: Buorrit Juovllat
Samoan: La Maunia Le Kilisimasi Ma Le Tausaga Fou
Sardinian: Bonu nadale e prosperu annu nou
Scots Gaelic: Nollaig chridheil huibh
Serbian: Hristos se rodi.
Singhalese: Subha nath thalak Vewa. Subha Aluth Awrudhak Vewa
Slovak: Vesele Vianoce. A stastlivy Novy Rok
Slovene: Vesele Bozicne Praznike Srecno Novo Leto or Vesel Bozic in srecno Novo leto
Spanish: Feliz Navidad
Swedish: God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt År
Tagalog: Maligayamg Pasko. Masaganang Bagong Taon
Tamil: (Tamizh) Nathar Puthu Varuda Valthukkal (good New Year not Merry Christmas)
Trukeese: (Micronesian) Neekiriisimas annim oo iyer seefe feyiyeech!
Thai: Sawadee Pee Mai or souksan wan Christmas
Turkish: Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Ukrainian: Srozhdestvom Kristovym or Z RIZDVOM HRYSTOVYM
Urdu: Naya Saal Mubarak Ho (good New Year not Merry Christmas)
Vietnamese: Chuc Mung Giang Sinh
Welsh: Nadolig Llawen
Yoruba: E ku odun, e ku iye'dun!

Impressions: "Never Any End to Paris" by Enrique Vila-Matas

2011-12-24T07:54:00.000-05:00

Written in the form of a lecture given over the course of three days, Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas’s “Never Any End to Paris” is a joy to read, especially if one is a lover of books and literature and particularly Paris as a city and a cultural icon. It is the story of a writer looking back on his younger years (in this case the mid-1970s), obsessed with Hemingway, who decides to leave the confines of his native Barcelona in order to follow in the footsteps of his hero. What follows is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time. The main theme here is irony, and this story is loaded with it. It follows the typical “expatriate” story - the writer going to Paris on order to write - and hunkers down in an upstairs room in the house of Marguerite Duras, who sort of becomes, in his mind at least, his “Gertrude Stein”.

The story follows his trials and travails, his struggles to write, meeting all kinds of colorful characters - both real and fictional - along the way. The book is definitely for the lover of literature, with heavy literary references peppered throughout the story, but mainly Hemingway (in which the title of the book is derived). It helps to have read at least some of the authors the character encounters along the way but it isn’t necessary and may even make the reader want to investigate them further. But it is most definitely a love letter to Paris and its literary and artistic culture but definitely not without a wink and a nod. There is a sense that some of this may have actually been based on his own experiences. It is a tale about the exploration of ideas, creativity and identity as well as the struggle with the fake and the pretentious. A great read. Highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * *

New Short Story eBook: "Stars, Cigars and Boxcars"

2011-12-17T09:20:00.000-05:00

My new short story eBook, "Stars, Cigars and Boxcars" is now available in Kindle Edition as well as ePub Edition. Just follow the links for more information.

Impressions: "The Wine Dark Sea" by Leonardo Sciascia

2011-12-16T18:41:00.000-05:00

An amazing collection of short stories by one of Sicily’s best known writers. I absolutely loved this book, and found it hard to put it down, which is probably why I read this in two days. Stories of Sicilian life, subjects ranging from village idiots, mafia dons, marital spats, to dreams of one day going to America.

My absolute favorite stories here are “The Long Crossing”, in which a group of Sicilian peasants give up everything they own in order to pay a boat captain to take them to America - and eventually discovering the shock of their lives; the title story, “The Wine Dark Sea”, in which a man travels by train to his new job in Sicily, sharing his train compartment with a Sicilian family and learning more than he expected; “The Demotion”, in which a venerated saint was recently deemed non-existent by the Church and a perplexed husband who cannot understand why his wife and other women in the town occupy the church in protest - that is until he learns something about a “saint” of his own; and “Giufà”, an almost folkloric tale about a village idiot (based on an old Arabic folktake during Sicily’s Muslim period) who decides to go out hunting for a particular red headed bird only to make a deadly mistake. What follows is nothing short of hilarious.

For those who never read anything from Sciascia, this is the perfect introduction to his work. Highly, highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * *

Impressions: "Letter to Lorenzo" by Amanda Prantera

2011-12-13T05:51:00.000-05:00

A sort of mystery/thriller novel but not in the traditional sense, first due to the subject matter and secondly, not written like formulaic genre fiction either. This novel lies somewhere in between. A story about a woman who is awoken one night to discover her husband has been killed in a bombing. Due to his left wing views, it is immediately assumed that he had been transporting explosives for the Red Brigades, the Italian terrorist organization most active in the 1970s.

She is pursued by a sinister magistrate, who is convinced not only over her husband’s involvement but feels she is involved as well. She is convinced that the bombing was done by a Neo-Fascist group in order to place the blame on the left-wing sympathizers. She fights for not only her husband’s innocence, but her own as well. There in lies the mystery/thriller element to this story.

I can’t say I enjoyed this all that much. Sometimes it reads as if one is watching Lifetime movie. Although the subject matter and this period of Italian history interests me very much, one is much better off reading a non-fiction book about the same era. The writing isn’t bad but it just didn’t grab me in the way I had hoped. A quick read, those who enjoy a fast paced thriller may find some enjoyment here. It just didn’t do it for me.

Impressions: "Americana" by Don DeLillo

2011-12-11T12:31:00.001-05:00

Don DeLillo has influenced just about every contemporary novelist that I know of but this is the first time that I am getting around to reading him for myself. “Americana”, published in 1971, was DeLillo’s debut and it’s clear from reading this how he influenced a lot of novelists who would come after. A “Post-Modern” novel - a little experimental, non-linear in structure. If anything, this was one of the novels that would inspire the MFA crowd and “serious” novelists that would come later.

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy it. I did. DeLillo is a damn good writer and I can only imagine his later work only improves on what is here. An impressive debut. The story is essentially about an advertising executive who leaves behind his corporate life in late 1960s New York City in order to travel the country to make a film. The story is divided into four parts: New York City advertising world, with all its gossiping, woman chasing, and jockeying for favor and position; the narrators youth and college years; the film he is making while traveling across the country; and a Texas road trip. The novel almost reads like a film, where the reader is allowed in to an ongoing conversation which then “jump cuts” on to something else. The overall effect, though, is interesting, and my only real criticism of it is that it tends to meander a little now and again.

The novel is a critique of American culture, with all its fears, issues and dilemmas, but it also seems to show how film has a tendency to distort reality - much like advertising does in our culture. It is definitely a book of its time, although anyone reading it today would find many things in it very relevant. Recommended.

Rating: * * * *

Impressions: "Between Parentheses" by Roberto Bolaño

2011-12-02T20:10:00.001-05:00

I really enjoyed this book of essays, articles and speeches by one of Latin America’s premiere authors, Roberto Bolaño. All of these writings were written over the course of six years (1998-2003) and most are very literary in nature. He writes of many Latin American authors - many of whom I am a huge admirer of - in sometimes glowing terms and other times not so much. The one thing you can say about Bolaño is that he doesn’t pull his punches. He says what he thinks and more often than not his opinions are brutally honest. While I did not agree with his assessment of some Latin American (and other) authors, it was nevertheless a very interesting and informative read. I’ve even got turned on to a few authors that I am now eager to explore for myself.

Other writings pertain to other topics other than literature - many of them about Chile, Blanes (the Spanish town in which the author lived), Vienna and other places but the over all topic here is literature, books, writing, the business of writing and commentary on writers of his generation who he most often praises and helps spread the word to those who may not have ever heard of them before. For the English speaking audience, it’s a good primer for introducing little known - and even famous - Latin American authors and literature. His prose is engaging and I found myself not wanting to put the book down.

If you have an interest in Latin American literature, or even want to know more about Latin American literature, this is a good place to start, despite it being seen through Bolaño’s eyes and his sometimes harsh and very critical assessment of some of the writers he speaks of. But those are few. What you have here, from what I saw, is basically a love letter to literature and this man has certainly bathed himself in it. Recommended.

Rating: * * * * *

"Be Still and Know That I Am" at Amazon

2011-12-01T18:03:00.001-05:00

My most recent novel “Be Still and Know That I Am” is now available via Amazon.com. It is also available in a Kindle edition for those who have and/or prefer the eBook version. For more information, just follow the links or you can read the review/interview that was written and conducted by Garry Crystal at his blog “Life and Payback’s a Bitch.”

From the Vault: "Legitimacy and the Arts" (Originally Published November 23rd 2008)

2011-11-27T07:30:00.000-05:00

[This one generated a boat load of comments when it originally appeared and a healthy debate ensued. To me, personally, it was astonishing to see how many people agreed with the comments from the "man on the street" that is quoted near the beginning of this piece. It was simply my commentary on what makes an artist an artist. Apparently many people disagreed with me on this at the time which only served to prove my point, as far as I saw it, anyway.]

Along Las Ramblas in Barcelona one could catch a myriad of different performers, artists and musicians doing what they love to do; most of them looking for a little extra money from both tourists and locals alike. You will see mimes, flamenco guitar players, painters, sketch artists, dancers and maybe an occasional poet who would be reciting his/her verse for anyone willing to listen. These artists compete with flower salesman and newspaper kiosks and just about anything else that’s for sale, really, especially during the festival known as San Jordi, which is something akin to our Valentine’s Day, where there are literally hundreds of book stalls and tables lined up from one end to the other; some selling books by other authors, some selling their own books. What was interesting to me about all of this was the fact that no matter who it was out on the street, each and every one of them were taken seriously. Almost everyone walking by saw them for what they were: artists. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that they weren’t “famous” nor did it matter that they were all virtually unknown to the world at large. They were all appreciated for what they were doing, famous or not.

In Paris, particularly in Montmartre, you have the same sort of thing going on. Near the Sacre Couer, there is a small square surrounded by cafés, restaurants and shops - some local, some geared towards the tourist crowd - all capitalizing on Montmartre’s history and cultural significance. In the middle of the square you see much of the same thing you see on Las Ramblas: musicians, painters, mimes and other performers, all talented individuals, each one doing what they love and hoping to also make some extra money doing what they love to do. You will see a small group of people surrounding a painter, watching him paint the local scenery and also see groups of people surrounding the musicians, listening intently to what they do and appreciating it for what it is. There is no care as to whether or not they are “famous” or if they are a “celebrity.” They are giving people something special to add to the atmosphere and people enjoy it and seem to be respectful towards what they are doing.

Here in New York City, you have very much the same thing going on, pretty much all the time. In Washington Square Park and especially on the streets of SoHo, artists set up shop to sell their wares to either locals or tourists, many of them very talented but none of them “famous” as we’ve all come to understand it. It is mainly geared towards tourists, sure, but also to other native New Yorkers who may be appreciative of their talents. But recently there has been a drive to remove these people from the streets. The newer residents of the area are becoming increasingly agitated by the amount of people clogging the sidewalks and many of them are beginning to view these artists and their work as nothing more than an “eyesore” as some have recently stated. In one local newspaper, one man was quoted as saying that these artists should “stop interfering with pedestrians and get a “real” job. If they were really “artists” they would be in a gallery or a museum, not blocking everyone’s way on the sidewalk.” An interesting point of view and by far not uncommon as of late. What struck me as interesting about this man’s comment was not so much his annoyance of him having to navigate down West Broadway or Prince Street but the fact that he viewed these artists as illegitimate because they weren’t showcased in a gallery or a museum; or at least that’s what his comment implies. I’ve heard this sort of thing from other people as well over the years. There seems to be a sentiment among many people that unless one is making all kinds of money or is somehow “famous” for what they do, then what they are doing is not “legitimate.” In other words, they are not “real artists”, as the man in the article had stated.

Although you will probably find people who think this way the world over, I find it particularly prevalent in American culture. It seems that American culture does not recognize an artist unless they are either making a living from their art or if they are famous for their art. If one is not then they are not artists, it seems. One is looked upon as either an “aspiring artist” or at worst, a “pretender”, that is, until there is a handsome paycheck or some notoriety involved. I always wondered why this this is. Why is it harder to be accepted as an artist in this culture if you are not making money from it? Is the paycheck and the notoriety the determining factor that defines what an artist is?

Over the years I have met plenty of talented artists who are far from making a living from what they do. Are they not “really artists” because of this? If not, then what are they exactly? And why is there this reluctance to recognize one as such? All across the board, whatever the medium is, there are thousands upon thousands of very talented people out there who you will most likely never hear about. Are all these thousands not “legitimate artists” in their own rite? Do those in the business end of the arts really determine who is legitimate and who isn’t? Is their word truly final?

If you want to look at it from that point of view, consider this: Franz Kafka is now respected as one of the giants of literature but he did not publish a single word until after he was dead. Walt Whitman’s now extremely famous and influential “Leaves of Grass” was self-published - the original and each revised edition - and he only became part of the literary canon long after he passed on. Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime (and that was, reportedly, to his brother Theo). Spanish poets Federico Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernández’s first books were released as “private editions” (i.e. self-published). Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” was published only by being paid for by Anaïs Nin. The initial publisher of that book - Obelisk Press in Paris - did not spend one thin dime on that publication because they didn’t think it would sell at the time. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was published only through the patronage of the owner of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, essentially a self-published work. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” was published by his friend’s start up publishing venture City Lights and would have most likely remained obscure had it not been for the outrage over its alleged “indecency.” In music, the Velvet Underground, who went on to influence a whole generation of rock bands hardly sold a single record when they were originally released and many bands that are now very well known, their records were self-released and had never been signed to any record company. These are just a few examples. If we go by today’s standards on what makes an artist “legitimate”, are these artists then not? None of these artists went through the standard channels of their day.

Of course over time these artists made their mark one way or another but in their time they were all virtually unknown to all but a handful of people who had an interest in what was going on culturally; and today there are plenty of others just like them and maybe one day those “unknowns” will be recognized for what they do. But are they less legitimate now because no one knows them or because they are not making any real money? I think not but obviously many out there will disagree.

Somewhere in this country - somewhere in this world, in fact - someone most likely has the next masterpiece sitting in their desk drawer or hidden in the back of their closet somewhere or had to put their work out on their own but it will most likely never be recognized because it wasn’t done through “legitimate” channels. Remember, Paris Hilton as a book deal and according to the logic of some, she’s a more “legitimate” writer because of that - more real than Franz Kafka would have been considered had he lived today. There is a world filled with talented people that you will most likely never hear about and this is truly a shame. It’s a shame because some self-appointed guardian of culture gets to select and anoint those who will be considered “legitimate.” But I guess it’s the nature of the beast but as far as I’m concerned there are many people out there worthy of attention, whether they are known or not. They are always legitimate in my eyes. An artist does what he does regardless of the accolades and the approval of others. As to whether or not any of these artists are any good at it is of course open to debate and personal preferences and taste.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: If a painter paints but never shows his work, is he not a painter? If a writer writes but never seeks publication, is he still not a writer? If a musician plays his instrument only for his own enjoyment, is he still not a musician? In the end, a painter paints, a writer writes, a musician plays, an actor acts, a dancer dances. Period. Why is this such a hard thing to understand in our culture?

Sanctuaries

2011-11-26T07:30:00.000-05:00

I was very young, perhaps twelve years old. At that time I had already been an avid reader, mostly biographies on sports figures, Hardy Boys books, tons of comic books, some historical things, among other things I’ve forgotten about I’m sure. Books were and have always been something I’ve lost myself in and I’ve always written stories since the time I was a little kid - although a lot of the time it took a backseat to music until I turned thirty. I can remember on days whenever my friends weren’t around, I’d make a trip over to the local bookstore we had in the neighborhood at the time. It was called the Paperbound Bookshop, and it was just over on the other side of the Long Island Expressway, right across the street from the exit of the ramp which took pedestrians over to the other side. It was one of those old school bookstores, jam packed with books, floor to ceiling and I’ve spent many hours in there just browsing, looking for something new to read. It was that bookstore that I discovered J.R.R. Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” saga, and other Sci-Fi and Mystery books I read a lot of when I was that age. I remember the owner was this professorial looking guy, sort of a cross between Carl Sagan and Jean-Paul Sartre, with his corduroy blazer (complete with elbow patches), horn rimmed glasses and ever present pipe. He was always nice to me, always looking to help and recommend new things to this inquisitive little kid who was always walking into his shop. Sadly, by the very early 1980s, the store closed down and turned into a health food store - one of the very first in the area, run by this group of hippies who often lived in the loft up above the store. I was sad to see it go. Little bookstores such as those weren’t all that common where I grew up.

With Paperbound gone, that left Discount Books - a small, used bookstore that sold not only books but comic books - and it was here that my friends and I began going, becoming friendly with the owner, a semi-hippie, who often tried to pawn off the more rare and expensive comics on us, as if we had that kind of money to spend. Mainly we ravaged the used bins, grabbing up comic books at 5, 10, or 25 cents a pop. But eventually, by 1980 or so, that store went under as well. So that pretty much left the chain stores like Barnes & Noble (which wasn’t yet the Superstore that most people are familiar with), B-Dalton or Waldenbooks. These stores were good, of course, but it was never the same as those little shops, where service was more personal and where you often engaged with the owners, getting recommendations (and every now and then a “break” on the price.)

When I reached my teenage years, I began heading down to Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side exploring all the wonderful bookstores they had there - St. Mark’s Books, being one of them, back when it was actually on St.Mark’s Place. I pretty much spent a hell of a lot of my time in bookstores and record stores, and these places became my sanctuary, a place to “feed the head” so to speak. I didn’t go to libraries much, mainly because they never had anything I wanted - or hardly ever, anyway. So these little out of the way booksellers - some of which were cramped, dusty, dilapidated basements in close to condemned buildings on the Lower East Side - became my refuge; a place where I can just explore, get inspired and discover new things. Another of these very old school bookstores was Ann Street Books, which I found during the mid-1980s, in a second floor walk-up on (naturally) Ann Street in lower Manhattan (just around the corner from J&R Music World.) This store was literally teetering on the edge of collapse, the building slanting way over to the right. It amazed me that all those books didn’t collapse the floor beneath them. You could tell that this store had one been an old tenement apartment and it wasn’t hard to imagine some old immigrant family living there. The owner was a nice guy - an emaciated man with a patchy beard and a cataract over one eye and he was often very helpful and he too would recommend a lot of interesting things to me. But this store is gone too - as well as the entire building, which was torn down to make way for a “luxury condo.”

Little by little these stores began to disappear and not because of people’s lack of interest in books or reading but because of real estate interests. By the 1990s, they were dropping like flies. Some of the old school stores are still around but you could pretty much count them on one hand; and to this day, whenever the mood strikes me, I make what I call “the rounds”, an all day excursion where I plan on coming home with a bag full of books to add to the ever increasing pile. These existing little stores still serve as sanctuaries but the atmosphere is quite different. With a few exceptions, many of these stores are usually staffed with pretentious, arrogant, smug, self-important assholes who can’t help but either just be rude, or refrain from commenting on your purchases - and not in a way that is engaging and conversational, but usually judgmental. There are some stores that I stopped frequenting because of this and if there is one other reason why some of these stores go under, this is it. No one likes to feel they’re getting a character judgment over whatever they decide to read; and in a time where small booksellers are trying hard to remain afloat (especially in the “luxury” obsessed New York City), it would be of great service to themselves to reign in the assholes that they employ or curb the attitude of the owners. More than once I’ve seen customers walk out due to the outright rudeness of the proprietors.

But for those that remain, they will remain those sanctuaries that they always were for me - places that exist because of the love of the book, the love of reading and not solely motivated by commerce and the bottom line that you see in the larger chain stores. Since the advent of Amazon and the eBook, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen to these places (and even the larger chains - look at what just happened to Borders) but so long as there are lovers of the book as an object, not only as something simply to read and pass the time, they should still be around. And so long as they are, they will continue to be my sanctuary from the can of bees that is New York City.

From the Vault: "Reds" (Originally Published August 1st 2011)

2011-11-25T06:47:00.000-05:00

In the spring of 1982, New York’s “Alphabet City” was not the place you’d want to be at night. Unlike today, with its plethora of restaurants, coffee shops, bars and bistros, it was the portrait of Urban Blight. Burnt out buildings, squats, drug addicts, homeless people - a place that trendies of today would probably have been horrified to see. I was fifteen during that spring - going on sixteen that coming summer - and here is where one of the better known Punk Rock clubs was. A7. Right off the south west corner of Tompkins Square Park - a park that you simply did not go into at night - it was one of the few places teenagers like myself could go and be around like-minded kids, catch some great Punk Rock bands and of course, indulge in beer or whatever else was floating around. They never checked IDs then. So long as you had the two to three dollars to get in, that’s all they cared about.

The Punk Rock - or “Hardcore” scene - was fairly new at that point. There was a whole network taking place at the time, not only in music, but in art and literature as well. It was a time when a lot of artists were emerging that no one wanted to pay attention to. People improvised - starting up their own record labels, small presses and makeshift galleries in abandoned store fronts or in their own apartments. It was a time when very well known artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat were still just graffiti artists and played in their own bands as well. It was a very exciting time. It was for me, at least. I had finally found a place where I could be myself without worrying about getting bottles thrown at me or getting jumped by the other “normal” teenagers from the Queens neighborhood in which I was born and raised. It also allowed me to be exposed to a great many things that were bubbling under the surface at the time, things that would eventually rise from the underground and go mainstream and big business a decade later.

It was also a highly politically charged scene. Very anti-Reagan, very left-wing. There were a lot of Communists and Anarchists around, each with their own newspapers and they would hang around as well, looking for recruits, fellow travelers, and of course a little money to keep their publications afloat. I wasn’t at all interested in any of that, of course. I hardly knew a damn thing about politics at the time. I just wasn’t interested. My “political awakening” would come a little later but there is no doubt that this scene had an effect on it. At the time, I only cared about the music, seeing the bands, and just being around like-minded individuals - those who felt marginalized, outcast - freaks. The most political I got were the lyrics of the Dead Kennedys and the novels of George Orwell. I was in a band then called Distorted Youth. One night we had a show at A7 and this particular night turned out to be a highly political one for some reason. The Communists were out in full force, handing out their newspapers and pamphlets and a skinhead band from Washington D.C happened to be playing that night, bringing with them their more “patriotic” fans. It was tense from the beginning.

We were hanging around outside between sets. The club was just too small to stay inside all the time. The space had enough room for about forty people never mind the one or two hundred that would come down to the shows on any given Friday night. We had a few six packs of Budweiser and we hung around outside Tompkins Square Park drinking, smoking and just hanging around with the other Punk Rock kids, talking shit, talking about music and the occasional anti-Reagan rant. Natural prey for the Communists that huddled around, doing their best to recruit as many people as they could for the upcoming May Day protest they have every year in Union Square. I was always one very interested in these things, even if I didn’t believe in any of it.

I happened to catch the eye of a young woman with large glasses and a beret, a Che Guevara and a Chairman Mao button affixed to her ratty army shirt. She held a bundle of newspapers under her arm. I suppose she saw me looking at her which of course served as an invitation for her to come over and talk to me. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-one, twenty-two, not unattractive and very personable.

“Here,” she said, handing me one of the newspapers from the bundle under her arm. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”

I took it and looked at it. It was the newspaper from the Revolutionary Communist Party.

“You’re a commie?” I asked, naïvely, and to be honest, a little shocked that she would be so open about it. What did I know? I was just this fifteen year old kid from Flushing.

“I’m a Marxist,” she said. “A Maoist, actually. The RCP is a Maoist organization.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“There’s a big difference,” she said.

I looked at the headline: something about Reagan’s desire to stop the revolution in Nicaragua and possibly bringing the world to the brink of war. I wasn’t a big fan of Reagan. He scared me at the time. I honestly thought he would bring on World War III with all his “tough talk” against the Russians. We all feared it.

“Reagan is a war criminal,” she said, “and he needs to be stopped. Do you realize what’s been going on in Nicaragua? It’s criminal!”

I merely shrugged. I had heard a little something about it on the news but I was more interested in music and reading, hanging out with my friends. I didn’t know squat about politics.

“I’m not a fan of Reagan,” I said, “but I’m not a commie, either.”

“That’s such an insulting term,” she said, a little miffed, looking at me through her oversized round glasses.

“Thanks but no thanks,” I said. “This just isn’t my cup of tea.”

“But you’re into Punk Rock!” she exclaimed.

“So? I’m only here for the music. Like I said, I don’t particularly care for Reagan but communism? How is that going to help anyone?”

She looked at me again, wide eyed behind her huge owl-like glasses. “Don’t you want to live in a classless society? Don’t you want to live in a society where the rich and the corporations aren’t controlling everything? A society where there’s an end to imperialism and exploitation?”

What the hell is she talking about? She may as well have been speaking Chinese, I thought.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just not my thing. But I’ll keep the paper though.”

“Good,” she said. “Read it and if you find anything interesting, you can come down to the bookstore. The address is on the back.”

Revolution Books. Hmmm... Yeah, maybe, I thought.

By this point the skinheads began milling around - dressed all in black, American flags and eagles on their leather jackets. They kept a close eye on the group of communists passing out their flyers and pamphlets.

“Don’t pay them any mind,” my friend said. “They’re fucking commies.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said with a laugh.

After a little while, they all gathered together and began their march up St. Marks Place, some waving red banners, others beginning some sort of chant. There were about eight of them. We stood by the fence of the park, drinking our beer, watching them. Soon after, a group of skinheads came walking past. They looked angry, ready to cause trouble.

“We’re going to kick some commie ass,” one of them said to us as he walked by, kicking away one of our empty beer bottles.

We stood there watching, waiting for our turn to take the stage.

A commotion broke out. There were bodies flying everywhere on St. Marks Place. Communists and skinheads beating the crap out of one another. It got out of hand quickly. We just stood there watching from our safe distance, drinking our beer.

“Better put that newspaper in your pocket,” my friend said. “You don’t want any of these skinhead nuts seeing you with it.”

“Good point,” I said, folding it and stuffing it in my back pocket.

The cops arrived - breaking up the fight. I don’t think they arrested anyone. They more or less separated the two groups, some of the skinheads making their way back towards the club, chanting “USA! USA!” So this is what politics is all about, I thought.

We went inside the club, did our set, then came back out to hang out and drink the rest of our beer in Tompkins Square Park. It was quiet now, all of the communists were gone and all the skinheads were inside waiting for their band to play. We were all amused by the commotion that had taken place earlier and we talked about it while drinking the rest of our beer, keeping an eye out for the cops. The drug addicts made their way through the park either looking for dope or selling it. We just tried to keep our distance.

When I got home that night, I tossed the newspaper in the bottom drawer of my dresser - which was the “junk drawer” and went to bed. As I lied there, I kept running the evening’s incident over and over in my mind, thinking of what that bespectacled young woman had said to me. It still didn’t mean anything to me. What the hell did I know about any of it? Yet somehow, in some way, I knew something was going to be different, I just couldn’t explain to myself how. It wasn’t long after that I began to explore these political doctrines and tried to gain a better understanding of what it was all about. But that night, I knew that somehow, despite my reservations of dealing with these types, I wasn’t going to be as naïve as I was before. I instinctively knew that once I woke up the next morning, the world was going to be just a little bit different.

Impressions: "La Vita Agra" by Luciano Bianciardi

2011-11-24T20:24:00.001-05:00

A wonderful Italian novel from the early 1960s. It is a brilliant satire on Italy’s “economic miracle” that occurred in the years following World War II. Some of the themes in this novel were also covered by Bianciardi’s contemporary, Pier Paolo Pasolini, only this book leans more towards the comedic side of these issues. The hint is already in the title, which in English would translate to “It’s a Hard Life”, a clear satire on the popular Fellini film, “La Dolce Vita” which was released around the same time as this book. Unlike the protagonist in Fellini’s film, the protagonist here has the opposite experiences, where life for him is a struggle against unsympathetic employers, unsympathetic conventions and poverty.

The protagonist is fired from his job at a mine after an explosion kills numerous miners, due to, for the most part, neglect on the part of management. He is intent on getting revenge and plots to blow up the headquarters of the mining company. He moves to Milan and gets involved with a woman named Anna, a leftist journalist, and takes on a job as a translator. Little by little, his plans fade away and the more and more he becomes ensconced in the “economic miracle” of the new Milan, his ideals fading away like vapor on glass.

The entire novel is a satyrical look of the modern age: advertising (particularly sex in advertising), capitalism, consumerism, etc, and it is brilliantly done, Bianciardi’s “tone” as a writer is not to dissimilar from his American counterparts at the time. (Thomas Pynchon comes to mind). I’m not sure how easy this novel is to find these days (I just happened to stumble on it at The Strand one afternoon) but if you can get your hands on it, I would recommend that you snap it up and read this. For those who are interested in post-War Italian history, this is one not to be missed.

Rating: * * * * 1/2

From the Vault: "Legend Americana" (Originally Published July 29th 2011)

2011-11-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

Spring 2010: San Antonio, Texas. We are there for work reasons. It’s the first time I’d ever been to Texas. It was the second time for my friend. We were staying in a fairly generic hotel about a half hour from downtown. There is nothing around but flatland, a highway an a couple of shopping centers. It was hot, well into the 80s. Our work related stuff didn’t take up much of our time, thank God, so that enabled us to get out and explore the city. We had a car - courtesy of the job - and apparently plenty of time on our hands so we wanted to utilize it as much as possible.

We spent a lot of time downtown, checking out San Antonio’s famed River Walk - a beautiful stretch of stores, restaurants, and cafés, all nestled against the San Antonio river, which snakes its way through the city and beyond from what I can tell. It’s a fairly new construction and in a way, it sort of brings to mind Amsterdam, although I’d never been there either. There are tours one could take up the river in a boat, where they can learn a lot about the history of the city. We didn’t take this tour, preferring just to walk it as far as it would allow us. And we walked it far, all the way down to where the stores disappear and you come upon rows of apartments and condos. We probably could have kept going but the heat was getting to be a little too much, and of course we had to walk all the way back to where we parked the car - a good eight blocks away from where we first descended the stairs from the streets above.

Above the River Walk is downtown San Antonio proper, with its many historical sites which naturally fascinated a history buff like me. The Spanish Governor’s mansion and an old church, reported to be one of the first Catholic churches in the new world, built by the Spanish when San Antonio was Mexico. We took it all in, then decided to head back to the hotel to get out of the heat and just have time for ourselves, individually, before heading out again for something to eat. While in my room, I caught up on some personal things, answered some messages, uploaded some photos I had taken while drinking a rancid cup of instant coffee courtesy of Starbucks. It was then I got the email about a place called “The Ghost Tracks.” I followed the link:

It’s an urban legend now. The story is that sometime back in the 1930s or 1940s, a school bus full of children stalled on some railroad tracks. A speeding train plowed into it, killing everyone aboard. According to the legend, any car that comes to a stop on these tracks feel the hands of the dead children “pushing” their car off the tracks. The idea is to put the car into neutral and wait and sooner or later, they will begin to push your car. After reading this, I knew we had to go check it out.

Not far from the San Juan Mission - which we took in before heading out to the railroad tracks - the area is pretty much deserted, far off the beaten track. There is really nothing around but open land, overgrown grass and weeds, and very few homes. It took some doing to actually find the location but once we did, we were thrilled and excited to test out this urban legend.

The first thing we did was to make sure that the railroad wasn’t an active one. There are no gates or signals at this intersection. Just an old, black and white, X shaped railroad crossing sign. We got out of the car and stepped onto the tracks and looked both ways for any indication of an oncoming train. Better to be safe than sorry. Then we got back into the car, drove the car up onto the tracks and killed the engine. Sure enough, the car began to move - right across the tracks to the other side. Could the legend actually be true?

Not so fast. As someone who is let’s say a little “skeptical” about the paranormal, I knew there had to be a good reason why this had happened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the reason.

On the other side of the tracks there is a slope, which heads downward to the road on the other side. The road rides along a wooded area. As we sat in the car, looking back through the window, we clearly saw the slope leading back up to the tracks. Mystery solved. There weren't any ghosts. It was gravity. We couldn’t stop laughing.

Others who have been to this site swear that its true, some of them taking the now obligatory “powder test.” It has been said that if you sprinkle baby powder on the trunk of your car, you are supposed to see the handprints of all the children that had “pushed” your car off the tracks. Many have done it and swear that it’s true. We didn’t have any baby powder so we didn’t do it. We thought about sprinkling dirt on the trunk instead but being that it wasn’t our car, we thought it was better that we didn’t. Besides, the downward slope on the other side of the tracks was enough for me to chalk it all up to urban legend.

However there was one odd thing that happened. The sudden appearance of mosquitos. They seemed to come out of nowhere, biting the hell out of us, badly enough that we decided to just forget this nonsense and get back to our original plan: find a place to eat.

“Well that was a complete wash,” I said to my friend.

“Just goes to show you that people will believe whatever they want to believe,” he said.

We drove on, trying to kill the mosquitos that had made their way into the car.

From the Vault: "Corrida" (Originally Published July 28th 2011)

2011-11-23T05:30:00.000-05:00

My father had Hemingway-esque interests. He was into and did some boxing, fishing, practiced martial arts for a time, lifted weights and was very much interested in bullfighting. I don’t think my father ever read a single word of Hemingway. In fact, I don’t ever recall seeing my father ever reading a book but since he grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, he may have read Hemingway’s books in school for all I know but being that I never heard him even mention his name, it’s safe to assume that he hadn’t. Whatever the case, the fact that he had these interests - and bore a striking resemblance to the man - often amused me. I clearly recall him sitting around the television watching the bullfights being broadcast from Mexico on Chanel 41, the Spanish station in New York. This was around 1974. They don’t broadcast them anymore but I remember him watching them with great interest, sometimes having me sit with him to watch it. He had a keen interest in it, so much so, that my cousin once did a painting for him, which hung on our living room wall for years, that is until my mother decided to change the house from a more Spanish decor to the more common “colonial” look it had before she eventually sold it a few years ago.

Flash forward thirty years. 2003 I am now 37 years old and am about to embark on my first visit to Spain. Destination: Barcelona. I am traveling with Linda and her sister’s boyfriend Gabe. We were to go for a little vacation but also meet up with Linda’s sister and her friend Patricia, who had been in Spain for the past six weeks, taking classes. I couldn’t wait to go, having had a keen interest in Spanish history, art and music. Being that I was going to Spain, I knew I had to see a bullfight, of course -- and yes, it was because of Hemingway, mostly. I freely admit that. I never really had an “interest” in it, per se, but the corrida was something attached to my childhood, remembering my father watching them with great pleasure over the years. By this time I had already devoured Hemingway’s books and it was two of his books, “Death in the Afternoon” and “A Dangerous Summer” that piqued my interest in actually seeing a corrida up close and personal as I’m sure it was for most Hemingway fans. I didn’t care what we did once we got to Spain. Just being there was enough - but I made it clear that no matter what we do, I would be going to a bullfight. They didn’t have to join me if they didn’t want to; and since we were only going to be there for one Sunday out of the week we were to be there, there was only one chance to see it.

When that Sunday arrived, the five of us set out for the Plaza de Toros Monumental on a humid, somewhat rainy afternoon. The arena is beautiful - constructed in a highly Moorish design. It looked more like an old mosque than it did an arena. The streets surrounding it were lined with palm trees. The arena was in the modern part of town, unlike the old, narrow, labyrinthine streets that were around the hotel we were staying in. If it weren’t for this huge, Moorish looking arena, the area could have been any other European city. Along the way, I kept telling Linda that this was the real deal, that I was surprised that she would be willing to see this. She’s not one for this kind of entertainment. I wasn’t even sure if I was but I just had to see it. I wanted to see, more than anything else, if it were anywhere close to how Hemingway had described it in his books: as an art form, the symbolic staging of man confronting death and the rest of it. At the same time, in the back of my mind, I thought of my father, and wondered what he would have thought if he had been alive to know that I was going to see one.

We bought our tickets - at 25 euro apiece - to sit in el Sol, that is, the seats that are out in the open and not shaded. The shaded seats were more expensive. I had expected the place to be crowded but there were no lines outside. In fact, it seemed it were only tourists who were coming up to the ticket booths. The only locals I saw were old men, who looked as if they’d been coming to the corrida most of their lives. Another thing gave me a clue as to what the modern view of the corrida was. The graffiti. It was everywhere: on the arena, on the sidewalks in front of the arena, all basically saying the same thing: “This is not culture!” “Down with the corrida!” “Ban bullfighting forever!” Times sure have changed, I thought, but I wasn’t at all interested in the politics of the thing. I just wanted to experience it - whether I wound up liking it or not didn’t matter to me.

With tickets in hand, we entered the arena and we are immediately hit with the smell of death - a highly pungent smell - blood, decay, entrails. Blood streaked across the concrete floors that lead to the stairways that lead to your seats. The stench was so overwhelming, I literally had to hold my breath for a moment. It was then we saw the huge room where the dead bulls were literally dragged into after each fight. There was a young man in there, peering out at us through the open door and he quickly closed the door once he saw me taking a peek inside. Inside, bulls were hanging from chains by their feet. I later learned that these bulls are butchered, the meat eventually given to the poor. Nevertheless, that overwhelming smell of death was not a good sign of what was to come and I knew immediately that Linda had made a mistake in coming to see this.

We located our seats, about half way up the arena. Inside, it looked like any other arena except the seats were not the kind of seats you’d see in an American ball park but rather long concrete slabs. Each “seat” was numbered with yellow spray paint and a stencil and the rows were so narrow that had the arena been full, there’s a good chance you’d feel someone’s knees directly on your back. But the arena was far from full. I was not even half-full and those who were there were like us - tourists and perhaps some other Hemingway fans - who also wanted to experience the corrida for themselves. I was ready for anything.

The fanfare began - obviously a very old traditional affair - with the picadors, banderilleros - the torero’s “entourage” coming out and walking around the ring. Eventually the torero made his entrance, removing his hat and bowing to the scattered applause of whatever there was of a crowd. After the initial pomp and circumstance, the bull is let into the ring, an absolutely huge animal, nearly three times the size of any of the men in the arena. This is the point where the bull is “tested,” to see its strength, bravery. When that is over, the Picador comes out, on horseback, carrying a lance. Immediately, the bull charges the horse and begins to slam it up against the wall, literally lifting the horse off its feet. The Picador lunges the lance into the bull’s neck. Blood begins pouring.

Linda looks at me, tears forming in her widened eyes. “I can’t watch this!” she says and immediately gets up, followed by her sister. I though that was going to be it. It had barely began.

“You guys stay here if you want,” Linda’s sister said. “We’ll be outside. Just meet us out there when it’s over.”

So the three of us stayed behind.

“I want to see the bull shove his horn right up the matador’s ass!” Gabe says, while snapping photos with his camera.

I continued to watch, trying to disconnect myself from the butchering of this poor animal and just try to observe it as neutrally and as impartial as I could, remembering all the things I read about it in Hemingway’s books. It wasn’t easy.

By the time the torero came out, the bull was barely able to stand, wobbling back and forth, blood streaming from it’s neck and back from where the banderilleros had stuck their banderillas. This is the phase where the torero begins to guide the bull with his cape, the idea being to being the bull as close to his body as possible. The whole idea is domination of the animal, to control it. Then comes the moment of truth, where the torero gets ready for the kill. He lines up his sword and must place it in precisely the right spot in order to kill the bull instantly - and he must do so by going over the horns. Not exactly a smart thing to do. The moment came and the bull knocked the matador on his ass and began going towards him. His “entourage” immediately comes running out, guiding the bull away from the fallen torero so he can get to his feet and try again. Again, the moment of truth. In goes the sword and it doesn’t go in, its merely stuck there, wobbling back and forth as the bull desperately tries to rid it from its neck. The audience begins to boo the torero. The third time around he finally gets it and you see a stream of blood pour from the bull’s nostrils. It looks around, confused, then collapses. The torero bows. The audience boos. The reason for the booing is because the kill is supposed to happen quickly, instantly. This guy merely butchered the animal to death.

After the torero walked off to a chorus of boos, the bull is hooked up to a carriage which then drags the dead bull around the ring before heading out to where I assume is that room we saw when we first came in.

We stayed for one other fight - this time, the torero doing a much quicker job of killing the animal.

“I hope they’re doing all right,” I said to Gabe, referring to Linda and her sister.

“Are you kidding? They probably found a churros place down the block and they’re drinking their hot chocolate,” Gabe said.

None of us said anything as we left the arena to the bemused looks of the ticket agents outside. We then saw Linda and her sister, walking towards us. They had indeed found a churros place and spent the past hour there.

“Did you like that?” Linda asked me.

“It’s not a question of whether I liked it or not. I just wanted to experience it,” I said.

As we headed back to our hotel, I kept thinking about how differently it all seemed up close and personal than it had when I used to watch it with my father on television all those years ago. When you’re seven years old, blood and guts are a “cool” thing to see, especially if you’re a boy. It’s quite a different matter as an adult. I can’t say that I was disturbed by it either. On one hand it was a brutal display - a literal torturing of this poor animal. On the other hand, I was trying to watch it for what it was supposed to be. I was trying to see the “tradition” of it. I can honestly say I walked away a little indifferent - somewhat bothered by seeing that animal being mutilated, somewhat fascinated by the experience of the thing.

“Would you ever go to another one?” Linda asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, if we are ever in Spain again, next time you’re going alone.”

Somehow, I didn’t doubt that.

New Short Story eBook: "Black Roses"

2011-11-22T17:58:00.001-05:00

My new short story eBook, “Black Roses”, is now available in both ePub and Kindle editions. Just follow the links for more information.

From the Vault: "Mediterranean Homesick Blues" (Originally Published July 26th 2011)

2011-11-22T05:15:00.000-05:00

A carafe of wine. The smell of salt in the air. The warm, sea breeze washing over you and perhaps some good sea food, let’s say some black squid linguini, with just enough of a spicy kick to wash it down with some lemon water and you’re good to go. You don’t ask for much in life but a quiet reprieve from the mania which is New York City often brings you here, although it is all in the mind. But you were here and this is more or less what you did. You sat on the jetty, looking out over the Mare Nostrum, formally known as the “Roman Lake”, and you can’t help but think how you are so drawn to it. It was a quiet moment, lost in thought, contemplating the history that took place around this calm body of water. There are no waves; just a tranquil sea, stretching out towards the horizon. You sat there, smoking a cigarette, thinking of your ancestors. This is where they came from. Behind you, there are many people lying about the beach, drinking in the sun, smelling the sea salt, taking it easy. It is so calm and peaceful that you can’t help but wonder if the whole thing is a dream.

No one is on top of one another, you notice. Each person has their own private space to get lost in. Some are with their families, others alone, sitting on low beach chairs, a bottle of water beside them, a paperback in their hands, occasionally looking up at the sun, perhaps even pouring a little water in their hands and sprinkling it over hot skin. That’s what that beautiful, raven haired woman in the sunglasses is doing, you notice, feeling a smile pulling at the corners of your lips as you watch her rub the water onto her arms and shoulders. There are a lot of beautiful women here, in fact. Your mind quickly compares this scene to what you are used to seeing back home - towels lying end to end, the pompous, self-important strutting from everyone just looking to be seen. You ask yourself how on earth can a bunch of people who are literally on top of one another all week long come to the beach only to be crammed on top of one another again. You don’t see this here. Here is a different world.

Someone has a radio and the music is just loud enough for you to catch snippets of it between the conversations of those who are passing by you. It’s a thoroughly Mediterranean music -- somewhat Greek, somewhat Turkish sounding, perhaps a little Spanish guitar thrown in for good measure. You can’t tell who’s listening to it but it is providing the perfect soundtrack as you continue to observe everything, continue to lose yourself in your thoughts as you contemplate how often people think what they see every day is often the only thing they know. The singing comes now and it allows you to determine, definitively, that it is indeed Greek and it is then you notice the little radio sitting in the sand next to the woman who had rubbed herself down with some water a few moments earlier. You can’t tell what book she’s reading although you do try to see it. She’s just too far away and the thought of going over to her to ask crosses your mind. But you don’t do it. Instead you catch another whiff of sea salt and seaweed as the breeze comes in off the water, causing you to turn your head to look out at the three young boys in a boat, casting a net into the water. An old tradition. Ancient. Perhaps you had ancestors who had done the same thing. You lean back, rest on your hands, close your eyes and take in the sun. You take a deep breath, breathe in that sea air and just let your mind go.

Then something startles you -- a voice, coming from somewhere to your right. You open your eyes and suddenly you aren’t where you thought you were. There are people everywhere and they are all looking towards the commotion. The smell of sea air has been replaced by the smell of the New York City summer and various kinds of ethnic foods. The tranquil music you heard coming from the beautiful woman’s radio is suddenly two people arguing over a subway seat, each of them getting more and more angry by the second. Cursing, screaming, threatening one another -- people laughing, others sucking their teeth, others griping that it’s too hot and too early in the morning to listen to this shit. The two that are arguing begin shoving one another, causing the mass of sweating, miserable bodies to surge towards one end of the car, towards where you are sitting. The voices get louder as the train comes to a stop, swallowing up yet another crowd of people, all scrambling around looking for a seat, some of them bitching and moaning that there aren’t any. A woman grumbles that she never gets a seat. Ever. Another begins to gripe that she keeps getting pushed by the surging crowd as they pushed their way into a space that has no room for them. The voices continue to bellow, shriek and moan and you close your eyes, try desperately to get back to that jetty and that woman reading her book. You can’t now. It’s all over. As the train pulls away towards the next station you no longer smell the sea air but rather someone’s armpit, someone’s Big Mac, someone’s coffee. No matter how hard you try to get back there it’s no use. For the moment, it’s gone, but you know it’s not forever. As you look around at the mass of bodies all pressed up against one another, look at the scowling faces, the depressed, miserable stares, the look of utter hopelessness in their eyes you can’t help but know that there’s a better way than this. You close your eyes again, but you still don’t go back. This time it’s merely to shut out, as best as you can, everything that’s going on around you.

From the Vault: "The Law of Attraction" (Originally Published July 25th 2011)

2011-11-21T05:08:00.000-05:00

There is a theory out there, another one of those generated by the self-help crowd in order to yet again to try to discover “the answer” to all the mysteries in life. It’s called “The Law of Attraction.” In a nutshell, the idea is that if you send out “positive thoughts” and/or “positive vibes”, the universe will react in kind and you will “attract” all the good things in life you desire. In other words, wish it so, it will be so. This theory has evolved somewhat into something called “The Vortex”, which to me is nothing more than some quantum mechanics, string theory, M-theory, etc all bundled together with some Eastern philosophical thought and made into a quasi-religious practice. Just like any other theory or idea, there’s always some validity to it, but people have a tendency to take things just a little too far, often times, in order to enrich themselves with it, preying on people who are sensitive to the harsher things in life, and especially those who are constantly on some sort of spiritual journey, seeking enlightenment of some kind and trying desperately to find their place in the infinite mystery that is our existence. Obviously, from the tone of this, you can easily tell that for the most part, I don’t believe in any of it. Yes, keeping a positive attitude rather than a negative one is certainly more beneficial for you in life but to me, being positive about things dictates that you are prone to be more proactive and therefore more likely to obtain what you want out of life. Negative and defeatist attitudes dictate that one will simply give up and never try, therefore, not obtaining what they want out of life. No mystery there. No hocus pocus. No abracadabra. Also, obviously, no guarantees. My argument about “The Law of Attraction” always goes back to the Holocaust. I’m certain that those six million Jews that were exterminated didn’t “call it” to themselves by having negative thoughts in life and I’m also certain that Hitler wasn’t simply “more positive” about his goals. The idea, to me, is absurd on its face. But this is not about whether or not the theory is true of false. This is merely a preamble to the real issue I want to discuss.

All my life, I have been something of a nut magnet. If there’s a nut wandering around the streets, the subway, a park, wherever, you can rest assured that out of all the people milling around, it will be me that this person gravitates towards. I never knew why. Perhaps they see a kindred spirit, who knows? A friend of mine, who is a New York City police officer, had said it’s because I make eye contact with them. Once you make eye contact, they will immediately come to you. Stop making eye contact, he said, and I guarantee you that they’ll leave you alone. It was the best advice I ever got. Incidents with random lunatics walking New York City’s streets have gradually decreased ever since I heeded that wonderful advice. Oh, there are incidents now and then, like the old man who came running across the street to me just so he could tell me that they are building new buildings right next to old ones, or the woman who once stopped me in the street to tell me about how her dog could sense all the evil in the city, but other than that, for the most part, I’ve been free of the nut brigade.

But there was this one time, sometime late last summer, where an incident occurred that still has me laughing to this day.

West 57th Street in Manhattan is one of the main arteries that will take you from the west side to the east side with relative ease. This street, off Broadway, off 7th Avenue, is best known for Carnegie Hall, the Carnegie Deli, it’s close proximity to Columbus Circle and Central Park. A nice area if you’re ever in New York. A little busy at times but nice. It was here that I waited outside a small, nondescript diner, right off the corner of 7th Avenue. It is a cheap place to eat, like most diners, the food nothing special, just right if you want to have a quick bite without having to spend and arm and a leg for dinner.

I was waiting for my friend, who had just gotten off of work. She’s a school teacher for a private school in the area. I had got there a little early so I bided my time, waiting out in front, smoking a cigarette, and pretending to be busy with my cell phone in order to keep the nuts at bay. Normally, whenever I stand around waiting for her, the nuts come out of the woodwork and begin to bother me. I was determined to be left alone because it was a hard enough day and I just didn’t want to deal with some random lunatic coming up to talk to me as if they were straight out of “Alice in Wonderland.”

An old woman passed by me, looks at me. She seemed like a nice old lady, somewhat resembling Betty White and about the same age. She stopped, looked around, looking as if she were either lost or looking for directions. She walked up to me, excused herself to get my attention.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Do you live around here?”

“No,” I said. “Just waiting for a friend.”

“Do you work around here?”

“No, I don’t.”

She nodded, looked around again. “Where do you work?”

Oh no, I thought. You’ve got to be kidding me.

“I work downtown,” I said, then immediately went back to playing with the cell phone, hoping she’d just walk away.

Then she mumbled something. I looked at her questioningly.

“Would you like to come home with me?”

I nearly burst out laughing but I was polite, seeing that she was obviously either disturbed or the fact that perhaps she was senile, not knowing what she was asking me.

“I can’t,” I said, “sorry. I’m waiting for a friend right now and...”

“How about any other time?”

I smiled. “No, thank you.”

“Okay, thank you,” she said with a smile, turned on her heels and walked away.

I had just been asked out by an 80-something year old woman.

Only in New York.

But a thought occurred to me right then. I had been so intent on keeping the nuts away from me, so determined, it begged the question, did I just attract a nut to me because I was filled with such negative thoughts about it? I had to laugh. And of course my friend had a good laugh about it when she finally turned up and I told her what happened. It kept her in stitches for about twenty minutes.

I don’t know the answer but I am inclined to believe it was just another random event that takes place in a city with eight million people. Perhaps the old lady was senile. Perhaps she just thought I was a young buck and was looking for a plaything for the night, who knows. If so, kudos to her for still being...uh...active. Thanks but no thanks, lady. Good luck to you. Hey! Think positively about it and perhaps the universe will send that lucky man your way! The Law of Attraction, right?

You got to love New York.

From the Vault: "It Must Have Been the Ambiance" (Originally Published July 11th 2011)

2011-11-20T07:08:00.000-05:00

Queen Street East in Toronto is one of those streets that I could easily fall in love with and I in fact did when I first set foot upon it about a year ago while my friends and I spent a week with our neighbors to the north. This long street, extending all the way to the west end of the city, was quiet yet not without anything to do. In “The Beaches” area of Toronto, where we were staying for the week, I found the exact sort of “getaway” I was looking for at the time. Quiet enough to make a clean break from the havoc of New York City but happening enough so that there was always something to do. The street is lined with apartment buildings, restaurants, bars, shops, bookstores and coffee shops. In fact, I never seen such a concentration of coffee shops in my life. Nearly one on every block. For those who love to find a little sanctuary in a quiet little coffee shop, you can’t go wrong here; and the great thing about it all was that the population is such that there’s no mad stampede, no rush, no feeling that you are trying to enter a subway car at rush hour.

There is a tram that rides up the middle of this street - taking you all the way into downtown Toronto and beyond, all the way to the end of the street which at that point becomes Queen Street West. Riding the tram you get a good idea of the city as it passes through each neighborhood - each with its own unique character. For a New York City boy like me, this was a nice, slow paced, relaxing way to see a city, and Toronto is a beautiful city. Green, clean, good people, lots to do. I knew immediately that Toronto was a city that I could see myself living in one day.

Along Queen Street East, one particular shop caught our attention. The Pie Shack - a very unassuming place from the outside. Nestled next to what I remember to be a medical center and a row of apartment houses, nothing prepared me for what lie inside behind the old, white screen door. My friends - Linda, Dawn and Mairead - were hankering for some pie and I, of course, was in dire need of some strong coffee. It was a no brainer. Let’s go check it out.

Once inside, we all knew that this was going to be a place where we were going to frequent a lot during our time in the city. Essentially “country” in its decor - rustic and homey - we took the seats on the couches near the floor to ceiling window which looked out to a very green and lush park and the passing of the trams every few moments. There was no traffic on the road, no honking of horns, no scramble of the Type-A personalities one sees in New York and being that it was a particularly cloudy and relatively cool morning, only added to the ambiance of the place. Not to mention that the proprietor was the most welcoming person I’d ever met, who engaged us in conversation and made us feel as if he had invited us into his own home. He had a dog, a labrador if I remember correctly, equally as friendly and welcoming as the owner and only added to the feeling that we were hanging out in someone’s living room. The coffee was amazing as was the pie, of which a “slice” was a quarter of the pie. Now, I’m not generally a “pie person” or even a “desert person” for that matter. Give me a good cup of coffee - a nice strong cup of coffee - and I’m a very happy guy. I don’t ask for much in this life.

There was one other thing that caught my eye and it amused me quite a bit: the plethora of Hardy Boys books on the tables, which were nothing more than old rustic doors, stripped of paint, and laid atop makeshift legs. Interesting idea. But those Hardy Boys books - that brought me back to when I was a little kid.

As I looked at them, amusing myself at seeing them again after all these years, I turned to my friend Linda and told her that when I was between the ages of 10 and 12, I literally devoured those books. Looking at them again at a forty plus year old man, they seemed incredibly silly and downright laughable but boy did those books bring me an incredible amount of joy and entertainment as a little kid. I loved the “adventure”, the “mystery”, trying to figure out the clues along the way. I was addicted to these books and had nearly half the collection at the time. I suppose if you were a young boy in the 1970s, these books may have been on your shelf as well. Or perhaps I was just a little nerd, who knows? But I had a lot of friends in school at the time who also devoured these mini-mysteries, comparing notes, all trying to figure out the big surprise that usually came at the end of these stories.

It’s funny to think now how the “adventures” of a rich, spoiled, brother private detective team would generate such enthusiasm but I suppose at the age of 10, when you are reading these books, your mind had not yet been poisoned by all the “theory” and other “literary” nonsense you’ll eventually learn, turning your sense of innocence, wonder and simply enjoying reading a story for the story’s sake into the mess of overly intellectualized nonsense that it would eventually become. For a few brief moments, looking at these old books with their standardized design and Norman Rockwell-esque cover paintings, made me remember what it was like to read for the simple joy of reading and not having to bother to see what lurked beneath the surface or even caring what lurked beneath the surface. (As an adult, you don’t even want to know where that thinking had taken me and what amusing things I actually discovered in these books by doing just that!) Okay, so The Hardy Boys series is not the paragon of literary virtue in our culture but man, it entertained the hell out of me when I was a kid. As silly as these books and stories are now in retrospect, it did secure my joy of reading and seeing them only reminded me that there I was, thirty-odd years later, still finding the same joy in picking up a work of fiction and just getting lost in it.

And all because we wanted some coffee and pie...

Since coming back to America, I haven’t been able to stop thinking of this place. I really can’t say why it made such an impression on me. After all, it’s only a coffee shop. But there was something about the atmosphere there, something about the welcoming feeling from the owner, something about the overcast sky, the tram and the lush, green park that made me realize more than ever that New York City is not the center of the universe; how one could simply relax with a cup of coffee and let their mind wander without having some cretin sitting next to you sticking their nose into your business and getting all judgmental with you about what you are reading, wearing or simply doing. It was truly a sanctuary, a place to just “let go” and enjoy the lesser moments in life, free from all the responsibilities one has on a day to day basis. It’s a big world out there and sometimes little places like this can do wonders for your well being, that is, if you’re receptive to it.

All in all, this may sound downright silly to some, and that’s okay, of course. But for a couple of hours I felt that peace, that detachment from the craziness of the world and also brought back some very happy childhood memories. Considering what’s going on in the world today, that’s not much to ask for, is it?

Impressions: "Seeking Sicily: A Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean" by John Keahey

2011-11-19T07:30:00.000-05:00

Over the past few years - more than a few, in fact - I have been actively engaged in tracing my ancestry and trying to discover my roots. It is a theme that has often made its way into my short stories and novels as well as some of the more later poems I had written. It’s a tough slog to try to track this stuff down, being that my family, having arrived in the United States a little over a century ago, became very much assimilated, much like most immigrants from those days. It was important for them to become “Americans”, leaving behind most - though not all - aspects from the “old country.” I lie somewhere between second and third generation Sicilian - Italian, my mother’s side hailing from Naples and Salerno, my father’s side hailing from Sicily. I’ve pretty much got my mother’s side traced back to 1797, from a pretty extensive genealogy that my mother’s cousin had done, which took years. So I’ve been very interested in tracing back my father’s Sicilian side - and I have made significant progress, tracing my paternal grandmother’s family way back to 1710. I still have a long way to go.

In my research, I’ve also read extensively on the history of Sicily in particular, and southern Italy in general. A fascinating history that many - if not most - pre-1960s Italian-American immigrants came from. The majority of what most people learn as “Italian” culture is mostly Rome and north. Much of the culture from the south - the majority of Italian/Sicilian American descendants - is largely untaught and unknown. Books on this are rare but there are a few good one’s out there to help point the way and to make clear the distinct cultural differences and the actual culture in which most Italian-Americans come out of. One writer that I can think of that is helping to bridge this gap is Tom Verso, who regularly writes a blog at I-Italy.org. But generally speaking, books about southern Italian life, culture, arts, etc are few and far between and those that do exist are nearly impossible to obtain or find in your Italian History section at your local bookstore.

This is why I was thrilled to hear about a new book, John Keahey’s “Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean.” It is a very accessible book, something of a cross between a travel narrative and a history book. A pleasure to read. Usually, when I find books like this, they are filled with information that much of the other books have dealt with. Well, you have this here too but Keahey really digs deep and explores the deep cultural roots of Sicily and Sicilians in general - and what he discovers and passes on to the reader is nothing short of astonishing and eye opening. Of particular interest to me is his exploration of Sicily’s Islamic past. The impact of Arab/Berber culture on Sicily cannot be ignored and it was a pleasure to finally read a book that not only acknowledges it but takes pride in it as well. The book also explores the heavy Greek impact on Sicilian culture but it is evident after reading what Keahey had learned himself on his journeys to the island, that it was the Arab/Islamic culture that had the strongest impact on its people - and even acknowledged by the islanders themselves (“We are more north of Africa than we are south of Italy.”)

For those who are interested in Sicilian culture and especially those who are actively seeking their own roots and want to know more about the culture in which their families had come from, this is a must read. It will definitely make you think and it will absolutely make you look at yourself with a different eye and realize that you are descended from a very unique and colorful culture. For history buffs, you also can’t go wrong here. This book is chock full of interesting perspectives on language, genealogy, the origins of particular foods and customs, poetry and literature. Highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * *

In Case You've Been Wondering...

2011-11-18T06:27:00.001-05:00

A little while ago I had posted a little something about why I decided to depart a certain website that I had been writing for over the past four years. Well, the story has now been told and you can find that article, written by the great Garry Crystal, here. It beautifully sums up the whole sordid incident and it just goes to show you that when a community is strong, no amount of threats and attempts at intimidation can pull that apart. Great work, Garry. Bravo!

Impressions: "The End of Manners" by Francesca Marciano

2011-11-16T05:30:00.000-05:00

A wonderful book. It is a novel but it is written in such a way that I often forgot I was reading a novel. Its realism sometimes made you think you were reading a true account. I don’t know whether or not this was based on a true account. Either way, it is an amazing read. It is the story of a woman photojournalist from Italy named Maria Galante who after years of staying away from news stories (due to a past incident which shook her up) earned her living taking photos for various food magazines. A call from her former editor convinces her to take an assignment in Afghanistan, along with a British journalist, to cover a story about the plight of Afghan women, specifically the high rate of suicide among them. She reluctantly agrees and heads off to the war zone, and learns a great deal about Afghan culture, the precise roll of women in that society, and the roll of the occupation forces which had pretty much taken over much of Kabul.

Her descriptions of war torn Kabul and the Afghan villages are vivid, bringing you right there along with her - and again, written with such a sense of realism that I would be amazed if the author had not actually been there herself. If not, it would be a testament to her abilities as a writer and to her imagination as a whole. This is a book that I would highly recommend and it is one that will make you think about a lot of things after reading it, especially about the role of women in society - both theirs and ours.

Rating: * * * * *

From the Vault: "What is Art?" (Originally Published September 30th 2008)

2011-11-15T05:30:00.000-05:00

[This is going to be the last of the old articles for a while but it felt good to get some of them up again after leaving that site. Just wanted to take the time to thank you for your comments and input on these since time often has a way of changing your perspective on things. This particular article had been written about an on-line encounter I had with a very talented painter who was part of Ayn Rand's Objectivist movement - and his absolute horror over the idea that I could praise his work and the work of some Modern painters. This provoked a question in my mind as to what is and what isn't art - not a question that can be easily answered nor one that many people can agree on. But this was my take at the time, specifically looking at the Objectivist view of art and contrasting it with my own feelings about it. No doubt people will still disagree with my assessment and that's okay, of course. It would just prove my point and the point of this piece which at the time did generate some interesting debate, which is precisely what I was going for with this.]

A number of years ago I was engaged in an on-line conversation with a painter who was part of the Objectivist movement. For those who don’t know, the Objectivist movement was/is a philosophical movement based on the ideas of novelist Ayn Rand. While I was in my early twenties, I literally devoured Rand’s writings - and I had pretty much discovered them on a lark. I had picked up “The Fountainhead” and was very impressed with some of the ideas in that book, mainly the idea of being an individual and being true to your principles without selling out to the mob. Of course it’s much more involved than that simplistic explanation but that was the main thing that stood out for me. Naturally, after reading that, I began to explore the rest of her work. For some time, I devoured her writing, mainly her non-fiction books, and I began to meet others - in person and on-line - who were also taken by Ayn Rand’s work. This is how I met the painter.

The painter, who was an incredibly talented artist, had his paintings posted on an Objectivist website, the name of which escapes me now. I contacted him and told him that I thought his work was amazing and he wrote me, thanking me for my praise. He wanted to know which painters I enjoyed and I told him: Picasso, DeKooning, Pollock, Krasner, Rothko, Dalí, to name a few. I basically went on to tell him that my taste in art ran the gamut, from the Renaissance to Impressionism to Modern; there were good things about it all since the immense variety in the history of art all had something to contribute to humanity. Put simply, the painter went ballistic. He responded to me with a rant about he he was insulted that I would praise his work as well as Picasso’s work. He went on to say that I had a “corrupt sense of life” and that I could not possibly find value in his work as well as finding value in the painters I said I admired. This, of course, lead to a back and forth about the nature of art in which I saw that we were never going to agree and I just stopped responding to him. I started to realize that this was indeed the typical response to those who embraced Ayn Rand’s philosophy. None of his ideas were his own. They were merely quotes from Ayn Rand on the nature and value of art. Her views on art is where I had my break with her and her followers. I suddenly realized that none of her followers had a mind of their own. They were all merely cells in the brain of Ayn Rand.

Recently, I came upon a new magazine brought out by the Ayn Rand camp called “The Objective Standard.” In a nutshell, the magazine is the examination of contemporary culture through an Objectivist lens. I was delighted to find on their website their views on art in a section called “The Nature and Value of Art.” Let’s examine it:

We hold that art is a requirement to human life and happiness.

Okay. I agree with this. Art, creativity, and the drive to express oneself is a key element which makes us human. There has always been that impulse in man, the evidence being the art of the earliest humans in the caves of Spain and southern France depicting what they saw around them on a daily basis. It was a way to express themselves, a natural impulse of all humanity.

Art is a selective recreation of reality according to an artist’s deepest, most fundamental convictions - such as his views of the nature of the universe, the nature of man, what is knowable, what matters most, what is possible. The purpose of art is to give physical form to such profound abstractions, to make them concrete and observable, and thereby to provide people with a perceptual representation of a particular idea or worldview.

I’ll give them that as well. In the deepest sense this is what all artists do, whether it be painting, sculpture, music, writing, etc. Whether or not an artist’s “sense of life” is nihilistic or romantic, this will be reflected in the work they do, one way or another. But not always. Sometimes things are art for art’s sake. Not every piece of art has a deep existential meaning. Sometimes a work, whether abstract or not, may be created strictly for esthetic reasons. The works of the Minimalist artists come to mind here.

This enables people to examine the idea as a physical reality and thus to better understand what it means in practice. In this way, art provides spiritual guidance and fuel for living and achieving one’s goals. Whether a sculpture of a ballerina depicting the skill and grace possible to man - or a novel about great industrialists showing the productive achievement possible to man - or a landscape of a countryside portraying the world as open to man’s investigation and enjoyment - or a painting of a dismal, psychedelic pool hall portraying the world as unstable and inhospitable to man - art brings highly abstract convictions to the perceptual level.

Like everything on the world, art is something specific; thus, it is both knowable and definable. And, like everything else man-made, it is properly judged as good or bad by the standard of the requirements of human life on earth.

Thus, we reject the idea that art is whatever any self-proclaimed or allegedly “accomplished” artist happens to slap together or place in a gallery. Neither paint randomly splattered on a canvas, or a bicycle wheel “cleverly” fastened to a stool, nor a word salad neatly printed on a page is art. Such things are not “bad” art; they are not art at all.

Here is where we part. Is art really “knowable” and “definable”? If so, exactly how? How is art “properly judged” when art is subjective by its very nature. Is there really an “objective standard” by which to judge? Is not this “objective standard” very subjective as well? Can you say with absolute certainty that this particular work of art is “good” while another is “bad”? What is an “accomplished” artist, exactly? Who says that “cleverly fastening a bicycle wheel to a stool” (Marcel Duchamp) is “not art”? Why can’t it be? For that matter, why isn’t “paint randomly splattered on a canvas” not art? Of course, one’s personal tastes may not feel that this is good art but that is precisely the point. It is subjective, purely determined by one’s personal tastes. Who is to really say that it “isn’t art” at all? Why not? Why can’t something just be appreciated for what it is in and of itself? Why can’t something just be viewed for it;s esthetic value alone? Does it necessarily have to have a deeper meaning than that? The artist Jackson Pollock once said, “When you look at a bed of flowers and enjoy it, do you ask why? You just enjoy it for what it is, you don’t ask what it’s supposed to mean.” It seems to me that the explanation above of what “art is” is what Ayn Rand thought. Her views. Her opinion, which of course she is entitled to. Is it really “absolute” just because she said so? How is one to objectively define what is art and what isn’t?

Art is not the emotional spewing of irrational impulses, but the selective recreation of reality. Since man grasps only by means of reason, the creation of art requires the intense use of this faculty; it requires thought, concentration, mental connections, and the transformation of highly abstract concepts and values into the material of perceptual reality. This is not the province of buffoonery; it is the province of genius - and should be recognized and guarded as such.

Some might think so but again, is this clearly defined? Is not the work of Jackson Pollock or Willem DeKooning “requiring thought, concentration, mental connections and the transformation of highly abstract concepts and values into the material perceptual reality”? One may not like it but that doesn’t mean the work is absent of any of these concepts. What exactly is “buffoonery”, objectively speaking? Because one thinks so personally, does it make it so and does it mean that anyone who disagrees with this assessment “wrong”?

We also reject the idea that, within the range of what art is, there are no objective criteria for judging certain works as better than others. Like every legitimate value, a work of art - whether painting, sculpture, novel, movie, symphony - is a value precisely to the extent that it serves some requirement of a rational being’s life. While there is plenty of room for different tastes within the range of genuine art, there are also within that range objectively better and worse works of art - better and worse by the standards of rationality and man’s spiritual needs.

Again, we see the phrase “genuine art.” What is “genuine”, absolutely, concretely, without room for argument or discussion or disagreement?

For instance, since the essence of man’s nature is that he possesses free will, the best art - romantic art - reflects that fact; it depicts man as in control of his life, as capable of reshaping his world according to his values, as a self-made soul that he actually is. For the sake of example here, let us isolate a particular aspect of a work of art: it’s subject matter. All else being equal (style, composition, technique, etc) a painting of a hideous woman screaming in terror on the deck of a sinking ship says one thing; a painting of a beautiful woman masterfully handling a catamaran on a windy day says another. Objectively speaking, two such paintings do not have “equal” value; they do not “equally” serve the purpose of art; and they are not “equally” enjoyed by rational people.

Is “Romantic Art” the “best” art? Do not the Abstract Expressionists painters exercise free will with their paintings? Does not any artist exercise free will with anything they choose to create? Is “Romantic Art” the only form of art that allows for free will? All art exercises free will, the free will of the artist to depict what he/she wants as they see fit. You may not like it, but that isn’t the point. And once can certainly see “equal value” between a Picasso and a Rembrandt. As far as I see it, they are apples and oranges, two completely different forms of expression and each one can be judged and appreciated (or not) on its own merit. Whether or not one prefers the Picasso to the Rembrandt (or vice versa) is again, down to personal taste. Subjectivity. Both artists can be appreciated and one is not “irrational” because they do so.

Good art - like everything else on which human life and happiness depend - is a product of rational thought and creative effort. This is yet another reason to embrace and advocate capitalism - and the entire philosophy of reason on which it is based. In a rational, capitalist society, artists are fully free to think and create as they see fit; nothing stands in their way; the right to freedom of expression is recognized as an absolute. Since the guiding social principle in such a society is that of trade - and since there is no “public” funding of the arts - artists who produce works that rational people value tend to thrive; those who produce works that rational people do not value tend to find other professions.

Really? What about the National Endowment for the Arts? That is public funding, much to the chagrin of some. Remember the controversy over the “Piss Christ” photo a number of years ago? How about Robert Maplethorpe’s work? Publicly funded by the NEA. Remember this is what set off Senator Jesse Helms back in the late 80s and early 90s, that public funds were used to promote art that he seemed to think wasn’t art. Or how about the “Sensations” show here in New York City in 1999 when then mayor Rudolph Giuliani threatened to pull city funds from the Brooklyn Museum over the painting of the “Virgin Mary” that drove him into a frenzy? And as far as those who “produce works that rational people do not tend to value tend to find other professions”, well, then I guess the work of a painter such as Picasso would have to be “rational” since his work seemed to have stood the test of time, hasn’t it? He also made a pretty good living off his art. Picasso didn’t need to “find another profession”, did he? Nor have any other “irrational” non-Romantic painters in this world. There are many contemporary artists who seem to be making a good living as well.

All of these ideas come from Ayn Rand’s book “The Romantic Manifesto” in which she lays out her theories of art through her Objectivist prism. According to Rand, her views on art were “objective” and therefore “correct.” She was certainly entitled to her opinion, because that’s all it is. An opinion. Her followers, of course, take it and run with it as if these ideas are actually their own ideas. They may agree with her - and that’s fine - but it seems to me that most of her followers don’t just agree with her but take her word as Gospel. Ayn Rand said it, therefore it is infallible. Rand was merely expressing her own point of view. Her subjective point of view. It is absolutely not Gospel nor is it infallible. Every word, every idea expressed in the Objectivist Standard’s view of the nature of art are the words of Ayn Rand. It makes me wonder what her followers really think - deep down - when none of their Objectivist brethren are looking.

The last thing I pointed out to the painter before cutting off my correspondence with him was that I found an incredible similarity between Ayn Rand’s views on art and the views of almost every totalitarian head of state had on art. Hitler’s view of art was very much along the same lines here, where any art that didn’t conform to the “romantic ideal” he held were deemed “degenerate” and subsequently all works of art deemed as such were banned and banished, the creators of these works also banished (if not killed.) He didn’t tolerate any works of art that did not project man as “the highest ideal.” Many Nazi approved works of art were very much along the lines of ancient Greek and Roman art, depicting man as heroic and man as “superman.” Joseph Stalin and others like him only approved what was known as “Socialist Realism” which is really more or less the same idealization of man, man as “worker”, man as “heroic” in the building of Socialism. Any other forms of art were banned as well and their artists deemed “counter-revolutionary”, some of them either ending up dead or in the gulags. Naturally, this painter, nor did any of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist followers want to hear that but that is the truth. And since Rand’s Objectivists are always looking for absolute truth, I wonder what they don’t want to hear about this one.

So I always had posed this question to them: If our society were ever to be based on the ideas of Ayn Rand, would there be room for this “irrational” art or the artists who create it? I never did get an answer but it does give some room for thought. What is to be done, then, with art and artists who do not advance the ideas that Ayn Rand and her followers have in mind?

From the Vault: "[R]Evolution" (Originally Published August 23rd 2008)

2011-11-14T05:30:00.000-05:00

There is something to be said of people who are willing to want to evolve. Oh, there’s that word again, very popular among liberal circles and often mocked by those on the right, often used as something of an insult. Imagine? This seems to be where we are today. Anyone interested in bettering themselves in some way beyond the monetary is often viewed with some sort of strange derision. Why? What is with out culture that anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of the world - or their sense of self - is often dismissed as “pretentious”?

Naturally, when one is willing to take this journey, a boat load of questions inevitably arise. We question everything we one believed in. We examine our own attitudes about the world, about people, about political matters, personal matters and just about anything else. Are we expected to remain as we are as young people for the rest of our lives? Some apparently believe so and some apparently do. They cling to their beliefs and are not willing to ever look beyond that or even examine the very things they propose to believe. There is no guarantee that one will look at things differently from before but the willingness to examine their belief systems seems to be off the table. It’s almost this stubborn unwillingness to do so, believing that any change of mind of heart about anything at all is considered “hypocritical.” We all have run into this over the course of our lives. “Consistency” is the word people like to use. If you once thought “this”, you must always think “this.” Age and experience be damned. If you make any proclamations about any issue, you are always expected to remain there, forever and ever, or else be mocked and criticized or deemed a “hypocrite.” This is no more apparent than in the political world where those who seek to run for office are always expected to hold on tight to their beliefs and attitudes until the day they die.

But there is a huge difference between evolution and being hypocritical. A hypocrite is, for example, an evangelical who rails against the immorality of homosexuality then is caught sleeping with another man. It is the man who rails against the rich, accusing them of being “out of touch” while living a lavish lifestyle of their own, never once mingling with those beneath his economic bracket. It is the man who rails against public corruption but is always on the take himself. Evolution is once holding a certain position on something, taking the time to really examine it and through experience and careful thought comes to a different conclusion based on the knowledge he/she obtains. Of course today, this is known as the “flip-flopper”, again, a term used to deride someone who may have had a change of perspective. (Of course, genuine change of perspective - not a politically expedient one in a cynical attempt to get votes.) There is a big difference between the two but in this culture today, the line between the two is gradually being erased. The definition between “hypocrite” and “evolution”, to some, are becoming one and the same. Ultimately it serves no other purpose other than to try to drag the one down for daring to look beyond his/her own self and to be willing to expand their perspective.

Personally speaking, I have come across this many times in my own life. During a recent conversation with someone I know, I had been slightly mocked for having a different perspective in my forties than I did when I was in my mid-twenties. What struck me as odd about the whole situation was the fact that I was expected to hold the same ideas as I did then. Life and experience meant nothing, apparently. I was being a “hypocrite.” According to this individual I was expected to hold on to the same perspective as a twenty three year old for the rest of my life. “You once said that...” Yes, I did say that - twenty years ago. “You once said that...” being a not so veiled attempt to label me a “hypocrite” and mock me for having a change of perspective and usually said by one who stubbornly clings to their ideas for fear of being labeled one themselves. It’s merely another way to try to shut one up, to stifle any sort of intellectual growth, mainly because they are either afraid or unwilling to grow themselves.

This political season you will hear much more of this sort of thing. A seventy-one year old man will be held to something he said and thought at thirty and a forty-seven year old man will be held to something he said or thought as a college student; and this sort of distraction will be used to paint the other as hypocritical or insincere. They will drag something out from each other’s remote past to use against them now and the whole circus will continue and the attitude about a willingness to look at a broader perspective will continued to be mocked in this culture. After all, remaining the same and thinking the same as you once did as a young man or woman will be the yardstick for all that one thinks now. Why not then judge one for what they said at five years old and call them a “hypocrite” for not thinking that way now? Absurd.

Evolving and broadening one’s perspective is essential. The key is to keep examining your attitudes about everything. Stagnation is never good for anyone and before there can be any real change in this culture and in this world as a whole, one has to examine themselves first. No one man is going to change anything. There is an old expression that I love but I never knew who said it: “The revolution begins in the bathroom mirror.” I strongly believe this. Until we are willing to re-examine our own attitudes and look at the world with a much broader perspective, nothing is going to change. And who knows? Maybe twenty years from now I will think differently.

But then that would make my a hypocrite, wouldn’t it?

From the Vault: "Windows to the World" (Originally Published July 16th 2008)

2011-11-13T07:25:00.000-05:00

“A house without books is like a room without windows.” - Chinese Proverb

It would only be natural that a writer would also be a voracious reader. From a writer’s standpoint, it’s a great way to “study” writing by examining the various techniques many different authors use. But as a human being, reading is also a way to open the windows to the world. Reading is a great way to blow the cobwebs off your mind and let the world in.

It has been said, according to various studies, that reading in America has been on a steady decline for many decades. I’m not sure this is true. On a day to day basis, here in New York City anyway, you see many people reading books, magazines and newspapers on the subways, in the parks, at restaurants and coffee shops. The rise of the superstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders are always packed to the rafters and each of these stores seem to be expanding into every corner of the country. If Americans “aren’t reading” as these studies suggest, I haven’t seen any signs of it. The “Harry Potter” phenomenon is also a clear indication that people are most definitely reading. Never in my life would I ever think people would line up for hours outside a bookstore to buy a book.

However there is clearly a segment of the population who never pick up a book and never read anything. You can usually tell from their attitudes towards life. There are those who love to revel in their ignorance as if it were something to be proud of. It’s an “anti-intellectual” stance that these people take (and a reactionary one, if you ask me.) These are the folks who think reading is for “nerds”, “brainiacs”, “eggheads” and “intellectuals.” Thank God this segment of the population is small but it is they who clearly have that same attitude towards the world in general.

Then there is another segment of the population who do read but only read things that merely validate their already formed world view. This happens on both ends of the political spectrum (and yet another sign how ridiculously polarized our nation is becoming.) Conservatives will devour the latest Ann Coulter and Liberals will read Michael Moore with delight. This segment of the population feel they are arming themselves with “knowledge” but what they are really doing is proving to themselves that their point of view is the “correct one.” After all, this person agrees with me, right? In my travels, I’ve never met a Liberal who’s read Rush Limbaugh nor have I met a Conservative who’s read Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky. What is everyone afraid of?

The third segment of the population are the ones who only read what I call “escapist books”, those who read for purely escapist/entertainment reasons. This is fine, of course. At least they are reading something. I think for a great many readers, a book is no different from watching television or listening to the radio or its just something to pass the time on long airline flights or long waits in the doctor’s office. Over all, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Americans don’t place as much importance on books as other cultures do.

How can you say that? I can almost hear it now. Allow me to explain:

During the 1970s, the works of Eastern European writers such as the Czech author Milan Kundera and Poland’s Tadeusz Konwicki served as a means of rebellion against the Communist regimes common to that part of the world. Many writers from these countries were considered more than just mere writers. They were spokesmen, important figures in the cultural landscape. In Latin America, many writers such as Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa and poets such as Ernesto Cardinal and Roque Dalton, are viewed very much in the same light. Their books were much more than just mere entertainment and a good story. In some cases, they offered people hope where there didn’t seem to be any at all. Many of these writers were highly regarded, especially the poets, who’s work were often viewed as a nation’s “voice” and they are also highly regarded as individuals as well, not only as artists. In the Middle East you have the same phenomenon, where writers are deemed so important to their culture that sometimes their lives are put on the line when they write a book. Salman Rushdie and Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz clearly demonstrate this. Most Americans find this strange since in America most writers are viewed as “entertainers” by the vast majority of the population and not truly important figures in the culture. Name one American novelist who is considered as important to the culture as their European, Latin American or Middle Eastern counterparts.

I also don’t think Americans - meaning the general public and not those who are voracious readers - are even interested in reading books by authors from different cultures - with some exceptions, of course. “Multiculturalism” tried to change this but I think this only changed the reading habits of college students, not the population at large. And this is a very sad thing. Reading these books (whether fiction or non-fiction) from these differing cultures opens a window into how the rest of the world is thinking, feeling, how they live, how they perceive the world. It offers a point of view that one may not normally get and they give a better understanding of the different cultures in which these books originate. Americans, as a culture, tends to be isolated from the rest of the world a lot of the time and sometimes there appears to be a complete lack of interest in how the rest of the world thinks and this has lead to many problems over the decades. There is sometimes this sense of hubris, that Americans are only interested in themselves and couldn’t care less about the rest of the world. Sometimes this criticism is well founded, other times not and sometimes, our foreign policy reflects this. If more Americans read books by authors from these differing cultures perhaps it may begin to foster a better understanding of these cultures and not the dismissal of them you see quite often. This cultural isolation has lead to much conflict and misunderstanding and something as simple as reading the books these cultures have to offer can begin to change that. I firmly believe this.

But when will this happen? After the September 11th attacks a lot of Americans began to explore Islam. They wanted to know what sort of religion would advocate such violence and hatred. Up until that time, I don’t think many Americans knew much about Islam and/or Islamic culture. I was one of them. I, too, began to read the Islamic texts and began to explore their culture to get a better understanding of the times we are now living in. What I discovered was - naturally - that things weren’t so black and white. I don’t advocate what these religious extremists are advocating but I did learn a lot about Islamic culture in general and how much Islam has contributed to humanity as a whole over the centuries. It isn’t just the face of a raving madman fundamentalist. Science, technology, philosophy, invention - all these things have nothing to do with the decrees of an Ayatollah or the rantings of a terrorist madman. In fact, the one thing I did learn from exploring these texts was how much Western civilization would have been destroyed in the bonfires of the Inquisition had it not been for many of these Muslim scientists, scholars and thinkers. We have a lot to thank them for - but when all you see is the face of Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, it’s hard to see that since for most Americans this is the face of Islam. In Western culture, those who view the Church as a repressive, ignorant, backward institution, are often quite mistaken how many Christians contributed to humanity as well. I imagine a lot of people never realized that Copernicus was a Catholic priest.

The point is a little knowledge can often go a long way in order to better understand the world, where we are, where we came from and where we are headed; how there is a bigger world beyond our borders with equally intelligent people who deserve the respect and admiration and not be dismissed as “the other.” Books can do that. They can be that window to the world that if we just took the time to open them, even slightly, a better understanding of all people may actually come to pass.

From the Vault: "Fragments of a Shattered Mirror" (Originally Published December 2nd 2008)

2011-11-12T05:40:00.000-05:00

Cleveland has always been the butt of many jokes by American comedians for some reason. I never knew why this is but it seemed to be the case for a very long time. It’s almost as if Cleveland was this place where no one would want to be caught dead in, a seemingly “Nowheresville” of America. I’ve never been to Cleveland but I have to say I would like to go there. Not for the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, which is probably the most famous destination at the moment, but because of the poet d.a. levy.

During the 1960s there was an explosion in poetry, mostly brought about by a whole generation of disaffected Americans who were weaned on the poetry of the previous generation such as the works of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and the rest of the Beat Generation. The times were changing in America, as the old Bob Dylan song inferred and along with those changing times, a creative explosion that has yet to be equaled, even down to this day. One of these poets was d.a. levy. He was pretty much a contemporary of Allen Ginsberg and the rest of the Beat poets of the 1960s but his work was never widely known outside his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, and to those who were very well versed in the underground literature at the time. Cleveland had their own underground movement at the time as well, the two most well known figures from that era being two underground comic book writers Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb. But the literary scene was really taking off there as well and d.a. levy was at the vanguard.

Levy’s poetry was of extremely high quality and definitely on par with his contemporaries but his popularity was never to be outside a small circle of underground artists and writers. It has only been in the past few years that his work is getting the recognition that it so richly deserves but still, his work is very hard to come by; and all of his original chapbooks are all out of print nor has any other publishing house bothered to release any of it save for a very few small presses around the country. At the moment there are probably only two books of his poetry commercially available and even those are hard to get unless you really hunt them down. In a literary world that reveres the Beat poets and other underground experimental writers of the era, levy’s work seems to have fallen through the cracks.

All of levy’s work was self-published through numerous small presses he began in Cleveland during the 1960s, the two best known being Renegade Press and Seven Flowers Press. Renegade Press also published small editions of other Cleveland poets and writers and levy’s aim was to put the Cleveland literary scene on the map. I don’t think he ever truly succeeded but his intentions were certainly noble, almost as if he were trying to wipe out the idea of his city being that “Nowheresville” of American culture. His work was on par if not superior to his contemporaries but he never seemed to break out of the underground literary world. His work is powerful, often alluding to the times in which he lived. His work did not reflect the Norman Rockwell vision of middle America but rather the tumultuous changes that were taking place: the Vietnam War, acceptance of other religious models other than the Judeo-Christian ethic so prevalent in middle America at the time. His poems, like the Beat poets before him, often referenced Buddhism an other eastern thought and ideas. His poetry reflected the world around him, specifically the streets of Cleveland.

Here is one example of his poetry, a work entitled “Great Man Sleeping in a Closet”:

The first time I met my

teacher...we talked about Zen

Neither of us said anything.

It was good.

One day I took a drawing to

my teacher & asked him if it

was any good. He said,

“I don’t know. Is it good?”

When I asked my teacher

how to become a great painter

or a great writer, he replied,

“Paint and write.”

When my teacher told me to

go to school and study...I

went to the same school he did.

When someone asks me to see

my diploma...I point to the sky.

And this, from “Cleveland Undercovers”:

SOMETIMES CITY I walk at dawn,

past the trucks parked on the cold morning’s edge,

of the old viaduct to look at the sore mouth of the Cuyahoga,

eating and being eaten by the dawn and the city and I KNOWING

in the east a new sun is rising.

Unfortunately, the times being what they were, levy began getting the attention of the authorities, who often tried to shut down his press for being “obscene” and was often the target of harassment and arrest. Tragically, it all became too much for him and at the age of 26, he committed suicide. A lot of controversy surrounded his suicide, some believing that it wasn’t a suicide at all but was in fact murdered by the powers that tried to silence him. I don’t know about all that and I highly doubt he was killed by some authoritarian conspiracy. His work revealed a very sensitive soul, one on which could not withstand the pressure that was being put upon him at the time. He was also known to be a drug addict and suffered from depression. That pretty much cancels out any “conspiracy” as far as I’m concerned.

Maybe one say levy’s work will sit along side his contemporaries with the same reverence and maybe one day his work will become more widely available to the American public. Bur for now, 40 years after his death, we just have to settle for the few books that do exist and the work that is scattered across the internet on various websites created by dedicated admirers of his work; and it’s really a shame since I believe levy (who always spelled his name in lowercase, ala e.e.cummings) was one of American literature’s better writers and had he lived, it would have been interesting to see what he would have eventually accomplished. Sometimes the best things that our culture has to offer lurks in the shadows, just waiting for a little light to shine upon it.

Guest Blog Post: "A Conflict of Visions" at Life Riddles

2011-11-11T19:40:00.000-05:00

My guest blog post, "A Conflict of Visions" has been posted at Life Riddles. I want to take the time to thank MZ for the invitation to submit to this amazing blog.