Monday, December 22, 2014

Wishes


Wishing you Comfort and Joy this holiday season.
Thank you for your continued support.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Flash Fiction by James A. Gollata

This is my friend James A.Gollata. After retiring from the University of Wisconsin-Richland he returned to his hometown.  James drives a boxcar and dislikes select Pillsbury products. If you meet James, be sure to ask for a calling card.  He lives in a castle where he  writes poetry, flash fiction and puns.  He drinks double espressos and shoots pool.

Here is a flash fiction piece by James A. Gollata. Hopefully we'll  hear from him again soon.


Schubert on the Dashboard


He had known her years and years before, but not well and not socially and he had moved away and now recently returned to near the place where she still was.  They started quickly this time  getting together now and then and in one languorous post-romp stretch-out she told him why she had never married in all that time, before and including up to now.  There had been a long long affair with a married man, that was it.  He assumed it was now over but didn't ask and didn't really care.

She invited him to the family lake cottage for a Sunday cook-out, and he went.  After all of the introductions and boating and drinking and eating and sun, he said farewell to her and headed out to the private road where he had parked his car.  Suddenly a Japanese fellow whom he hadn't noticed throughout the afternoon or ever before walked beside him and asked how he knew her and for how long and where did he live now.  The Japanese fellow said that he was finishing his PhD work on the nature of rights in the U.S. Constitution, mainly that they were all political and not meant to be ever about personal freedom.  This sounded like bullshit to him.

They arrived at his car, and the Japanese fellow asked about the little gray plastic statue of Franz Schubert that was on the dash.  He told him that it had been bought at a garage sale one time for a dime, and then set in the windshield and never removed, that the bust looked good there and constantly kept its eyes on the road.  Then the Japanese fellow began a conversation which went like this:

     "Schubert's not that good."
     "Really?  You don't think so?"
     "No."

Not on the drive home or later that night, but a long time later, embarrassing to say how long, he knew who the Japanese fellow was, had been.  And why he had said that about Schubert.
  


Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Hemingway


2015 will be the year of Hemingway for me.  I had a brief literary affair with this handsome man during college, and need to get reacquainted.  I want to read The Paris Wife again and fully appreciate the story. Thinking I ought to begin with short stories, I grabbed my old edition of the Nick Adams Stories, but instead decided to read something new.  The Snows of Kilimanjaro worked.  Short enough for a long afternoon of reading, and yet Hemingway was there, present on every single page.  

Harry and his wife are on safari.  Harry is dying.  The couple argue about the exact nature of the accident that caused the injury to his leg which ultimately turned gangrenous. They argue about everything.  He knows he's dying, she says he's not.  He knows that a plane rescue in not imminent, she says it is.  

Perhaps it is the fever that causes Harry to relive adventures form his past, all of which clearly parallel those things that were most important to Hemingway himself.  First, Harry is a writer - a journalist - whose job has taken him to places of great adventure.  The story arcs on two levels, the dying Harry thread, and the recounting of bullfights, big game hunting and romance.  Most of the romances grow out of loneliness or desperation with the lovers playing chilly games of jab and run - catch me if you can.  Harry had exhilarating highs, especially when intentionally creeping close to danger.  His lows were just as deep.  

I like Hemingway's style.  Nothing fancy.  He writes in a straightforward, bold way.  His words are sometimes rough and the dialogue can be raw.  His is a world unfamiliar to me, but it still is a real world with real people. Hopefully, I will discover enough in his novels to help me understand the intensity of the love he left behind which is the premise of The Paris Wife.

Well, I guess that's my New Year's resolution all tied up nicely well in advance of the bell ringing and singing of Auld Lang Syne.  We'll see how this goes.

Thanks for stopping by.