He introduced me to storytelling. In my infancy, it was the oral tradition. In the darkness of my room before bedtime, he spun whole worlds for me out of thin air. He was masterful. His characters won my sympathy right off the bat. He understood tension. Pacing. Climax. For the most part, these stories comprised an ongoing serial concerning three orphaned tiger cubs and their adventures in the jungle. I’m guessing my old man liked Kipling.
I was one of those high school students who thought reading was bullshit. And books like “Red Badge of Courage”, “Ethan Frome”, and “Pride and Prejudice” weren’t helping my opinion that literature was pretentious and stuck up. I didn’t want any part of the canon, if it was comprised of stilted and boring narratives. Or as Bukowski put it in his introduction to John Fante’s “Ask the Dust”: “…nothing I read related to me or to the streets or to the people about me.”
Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich
When We Fell In Love – Helen Sedwick
When We Fell In Love – Helen Sedwick
The Delivery Cut Download
Our Frail Blood by Peter Nathaniel Malae