Cloud Noir (short story)

"It's kind of like LinkedIn, but for wise guys."

I looked at him the way I usually do, eyes squinted, mouth puckered like I just ate a fucking lemon. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but this kid always gets me like that. All the kids. Fuck them. Think they know so fucking much just because they have a computer in every fucking pocket.

Like I said, I looked at him, "What the fuck you talkin' about?"

...Please continue reading the story at Medium....

Review: In One Person

In One Person by John Irving
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In One Person was a fully satisfying read that would have earned a 5-star review had it been by another author for whom I did not have such high expectations.

From the first paragraph - concluding with the line, "We are formed by what we desire. In less than a minute of excited, secretive longing, I desired to become a writer and to have sex with miss Frost--not necessarily in that order." - I was pulled into this novel and the life of William Abbott and his extended family.

But as much as the novel pulled me in, it built at a slower pace than I would have expected. The narrator continues to linger in Bill's teenage years at the Favorite River Academy long after I was ready to move on. These years are important to the story - and great reading - but much of what's to come is alluded to here, but is never as fully described as these early scenes.

I still wanted to read more about the summer in Europe with poor Tom, and how that relationship ended. There's virtually nothing about William's early college years, before returning to Europe to study in Vienna. Another gap appears following the return from Vienna.

Still, even with the long, perhaps uneven, build-up, by the time we get to 1981 and the start of the AIDS epidemic, Irving has us where he wants us. The reunions with poor Tom and "two cups" Delacorte are presented tenderly and to great effect.

As Richard Abbott tells our narrator (page 311), "If you live long enough, Bill--it's a world of epilogues." It's a John Irving novel, so the epilogues include the deaths of many of the characters: by AIDS, but also suicides, a car wreck with a drunk driver, and even natural causes.

There are reunions and survivors in these epilogues as well, including the elusive Franny Dean, and despite the dark topics of AIDS and fear inspired hatred, there's a chance for a hopeful ending; even in young Kitteridge's anger there's a desire to understand.

Understanding and tolerance is what John Irving always asks of us through all his novels - to have some sympathy for those who live society's taboos. "We already are who we are, aren't we?"

In the end, while this was a very good book, and I do recommend it to those who either love John Irving or are interested in the story, it falls somewhat short of such classics as The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, or even the more recent Last Night in Twisted River.

I Sing the Body Literate

Last night Earth lost one of our most brilliant and imaginative literary minds when Ray Bradbury passed away at the age of 91. Bradbury's books were the first to introduce me to the world of adult literature as well as science fiction, and probably the first to inspire in me the desire to write.

It was around 1970, I was about 10 or so, when I picked up a copy of The Martian Chronicles. From those first pages of Rocket Summer I was hooked. For a kid in Boston, who grew up following our conquest of space and landing on the Moon, the images came through clearly. The heat of the rockets, leaving for Mars, melting the Ohio snow were vivid in my imagination. By the end of the book, There Will Come Soft Rains, was etched equally into my thoughts and my life.

There were other "young adult" authors that I read in that period. Of course, S.E. Hinton's books were all on my shelf. The Hinton books were great for a kid who felt like an Outsider, and also helped teach me about literature. But the Bradbury books took me further, outside of myself, and into a universe of possibilities and morality.

I read more of Bradbury's short stories (The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl comes to mind) and novels, and later saw the movies that came from them. Truffaut's excellent adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 being the first, and later The Illustrated Man, starring Rod Steiger. That movie could not compare to the images that Bradbury illustrated through his prose, although to this day, when I see somebody with excessive tattooing, I hear Steiger's voice in the back of my head saying, "They are not tattoos; they are skiiiin eellustrationz."

And, of course, there was the Twilight Zone episode he wrote, I Sing the Body Electric. Many include this among the worst Zone episodes for its dripping sentimentality, but I always found comfort in Bradbury's melding of technology with heart.

Bradbury was not himself a "techie" or mechanical person. He never drove since witnessing a car accident when younger, and was afraid to fly. I learned that second bit of trivia from Bradbury's appearance as a contestant on "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx. It came out through Groucho's interview with him at the top of the show. I don't recall whether or not Bradbury said the magic word triggering the duck to come down with $100.

The soft rains have come. Ray Bradbury, R.I.P.

New eBook Availalbe

I've been playing around with the idea of publishing some ebooks of various material I've written over the years, and the first result of that experiment is now available for Nooks, iPads, Kindles, and most any other device you might have: A Bottomless Cup of Coffee (Short Stories).

I've self published before - several of the stories in A Bottomless Cup originally appeared in the print collection, Aaron’s Intifada and Other Short Stories (still available on Amazon.com), and my Introduction to Fund Development Planning continues to sell (available on Amazon.com as well) - but I've not done any eBook specific projects, which is odd considering how involved I've been with social media and online content creation.

Anyway, I'm now entering the eBook age, and hopefully this is just the first of many projects. If you want to check out the new eBook, it's yours for about two bucks at:

• Amazon.com (for Kindle)
• Apple iBookstore (iBooks on iPad/Pod/Phone)
• Barnes & Noble.com (for Nook)
• Lulu.com (ePub, various readers)