The Strange Recital

"Quitting cocaine was easier than quitting beer. It sounds like a faulty comparison, but it was true for me. Addiction affects individuals in different ways depending on their physiology. Even so, I was on the verge of turning my nostrils into Cream of Wheat, aka "nasal collapse." Incidentally, Cream of Wheat was my favorite wintertime comfort breakfast as a child, with a pat of butter and a splash of maple syrup." This excerpt from a longer story, both dark and funny, tracks a musician who may be hitting bottom. Can we kick our addictions without help from mysterious sources?

"One rarely mentions them separately. They are practically a unit, Eustace and Parmenides. The pair rose to fantastic renown, their souls steeped in the labors of their calling. But what may have begun as fickle adventures in nocturnal prowling and curiosity about a bracing mystique hatched into a fateful career." It seems that human nature has always included the urge for destruction. In a century long gone, a sinister partnership was formed by an obscure pair of kindred spirits. This is their story.

"Inside the Girlie Playhouse white afternoons are still discreetly extinguished in candlelit rooms, while outside the demonstrators have begun their second week. The street is lined with sleeping bags and coolers. Activists hoot and holler muddled slogans." A newly published literary novel...but it's about strippers. Challenging genre stereotypes via nuance and complexity is always good. And what about feminism? Hear the author read and discuss her work.

"How's your IPA?" "Not bad." "So...are your classes going okay?" "Well, yes and no. Are you finding that these students think differently than we did? It's like they take everything literally." "No sense of poetry or metaphor, you mean? I see the same thing with the math students. For instance, the idea of imaginary numbers." Two men talking...but this is no normal conversation. Too many heady ideas. It's more like role-playing or something. Who are they, and what's going on?

"Vera is losing her grip on time. She's been driving all night, for days even, she can't say. She pulls over onto the shoulder of road next to the creek, her wheels rumbling across a muddy lump of plowed snow as she comes to a stop." To be young forever...is it really what you want? In this excerpt from a new novel, a woman born in the Catskills over two hundred years ago returns to her home, seeking the source of her immortality. What could go wrong?

"I don't remember how I heard about the burned girl. Probably it was my new friend Scot, with his spiritual leanings and whom I was seeing a lot of at that time, who told me. A new friend is useful in the kind of crisis that ensues when you are cutting your old life loose, or have had it cut loose for you." A woman's intimately-told meditation on how empathy for another's suffering may be crucial in weathering personal trauma.

"Affecting lightheartedness, I trod the moist pavements of the narrow streets. As though in tears and veiled, the lamps glimmered through the chill gloom and sucked their reflections slowly from the wet ground. The forgotten years of my youth came back to me. How I used to love the dark, sad evenings of late autumn and winter...." In this excerpt from a literary classic, a man meditates on his own nature and his difficult relationship with society. Maybe you understand his isolation; maybe not. Is alienation universal, or just for the few?

"The month was October, the day brilliant. Bareheaded, bald too young but well-bearded, a man not long past his youth strode along Bleecker, his comfortable shoes belying the business-like focus of his venture. His water-flow way of dodging fellow walkers was well-practiced, a city-dweller's skill used even as he hunted." Three lives intersect for reasons unknown. One has a strange gift: a poet who may be a seer. Does he really know the history and future of the world? Or maybe this is some sort of love story, who knows?

"I saw that Constance had emailed me suggesting we meet. She was embroiled in a mystery and needed my help. She would tell me more in person. We met on a bench in a park. The mystery was complicated. It involved two or more people who appeared to be one..." A man accompanies his friend to Paris to solve a mystery. But is it really a mystery, or something else? This is a story that challenges the very nature of storytelling---with a smile. Enjoy!

"The last time I saw my father I barely saw him. Now that morning seems sharp as shears but I know it wasn't. I was half-asleep. I think I made my way to the kitchen. I think my father was already starting to leave. We may have hugged." An enigmatic young woman tries to make sense of her life alone in an unnamed city full of demolitions and abandoned buildings. This metaphor-driven new novel from an award-winning author follows its narrator's fragmented insights on a path toward understanding.