The Strange Recital

"When he was fifteen Fabian saw the film The 39 Steps, which had just come out. He liked to say that this film was a turning-point in his life. It was an epiphany for him. As he left the cinema he knew that he wanted to make films." An excerpt from a new novel in which characters invent other characters, and events are both magical and real. What is authorship? Who's in charge here, anyway?

"More than thirty years ago occurred the first of the series of remarkable events I am about to relate. The exact date I can not recall; but it was in November, and, to those familiar with November weather in the Ohio Valley, it is hardly necessary to state that the month is one of possibilities." The gloomy beginning of a strange Victorian novel...a man alone in a lamp lit room on a stormy night. But is he really alone? Where will this night lead?

"Last night I took the riverside walk for the first time in longer than I care to remember. Nothing much had changed. Homeless men and women were still spending the night on municipal benches. Some were asleep; they breathed noisily, or moaned." Who is this person who walks in the dark hours? Is his city the same as yours? In all temporal planes, humans carry on with lives both harsh and gentle.

"The first time I saw the animal, I'll admit I was tired. It was late at night and I had been drinking at a moderate pace for several hours. The animal could have been anything, the way it flashed across the room, and I was too slow to get a good look at it."

Something has invaded your home. Yes, it's real. Surely you can trust your own perceptions, right? But...is the thing changing?

"The voice asked at Eddie Tomlinson's elbow, 'Is this seat free?' Eddie nodded, and hardly looking around, picked up his hat which he had carelessly put on the seat at his side. Then he went back to his contemplation of the wooded hills through which the train was threading its way."

In the 1950's, two men meet on a train...are they strangers or friends? One day, each of their worlds had drastically changed. So much was lost. Are their memories wrong?

"Everyone just wants to be loved a bit more than everyone else. See me and not my brothers, my sisters, my bandmates. Love me and not my kid. Feel my sadness." A dead rock star faces his life on a journey home. A lonely fan from the mountains does the same. Paul Smart reads from his novel OVERLOOK, and talks about its origins.

"Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and the diner was instantly in utter blackness. There was a palpable sensation of absence in the air, a sort of death as all electrical vibration in the city ceased in one instant." A nighttime commuter encounters a hitchhiker in a New Jersey diner, but it's no ordinary meeting. Who is this odd traveler, and what changes will be wrought by his hypnotic powers?

"Valentine Basilevich Glass, native of Vyborg, accountant in the bureau of administration of the Leningrad Parks of Culture and Rest, led a number of unrelated lives. Whereas most people were trapped by the web of Soviet bureaucracy, he reveled in its complexity and quirkiness, finding in the course of his work numerous loopholes which he impressed in his memory, an unconscious act much like anticipating an annoying scratch on a phonograph record." Two very short stories about unusual men. Or are they stories about the culture? Or are they stories about you and me and the ways we make meaning? This episode may or may not have the answers. Also, have you ever broken the fourth wall?

"Their flight was routine, cruising at forty thousand feet, at a speed of five hundred and eighty miles an hour with the wind behind them. There was some turbulence as Malarkey began the descent and Abdul switched on the seatbelt signs. They pierced the clouds and lost visibility. Then they lost radio contact."

Two friends face an inexplicable situation. How did they arrive in this primitive place? Can they bluff their way to safety? Maybe they're actually facing themselves.

"Elzy woke to cold, the scent of cold, of snow, of tent fabric. The coldness felt good on her hot skin. Confusion. She wasn't in her room…? The child fell asleep again before she could figure it out. Nothing seemed worth thinking through. Her head hurt. Her chest hurt."

As a child, she survived a world-changing event. As an adult, is it time for her to leave isolation behind, to more fully join the new society? An excerpt from a new novel about a potential future.