Dad II

"One day my daughter came back from C.'s apartment and told me about a plastic cupcake she'd accidentally flushed down the toilet. She'd been very sad, she explained, but then Daddy had gotten a letter from the cupcake. It was having an adventure at the bottom of the ocean! It was happy down there. Turns out the cupcake was making friends with a seahorse, a starfish, and a shark. It was probably going to send another letter soon."

~~ from Splinters by Leslie Jamison

Dad

"On the days when I dropped our daughter at his apartment, C was usually waiting for us on his stoop. As soon as we reached his block, she would run to him grinning, her tiny feet pattering along the sidewalk. He leaned down to swoop her up, then held her aloft and spun her around. He was delighted to see her. She was delighted to see him."

~~ from Splinters by Leslie Jamison

The Art of Memoir

"Most memoirs fail because of voice. It's not distinct enough to sound alive and compelling. Or there are staunch limits to emotional tone, so it emits a single register. Being too cool or too shrill can ruin the read. The sentences are boring and predictable, or it's so inconsistent you don't know who's speaking or what place they come from. You don't believe or trust the voice. You're not curious about the inner or outer lives of the writer. The author's dead in the water."

~~ from The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Los Angeles

"In Los Angeles, it was easier to breathe. It always was. My hometown made me feel at ease in a way no other landscape ever would: the strip malls and cloverleaf freeway exits, the rush of salt wind of the Pacific Coast Highway, the dark silhouettes of palm trees against those startling, smog-brightened sunsets."

~~ from Splinters by Leslie Jamison

Short Cuts

"Short Cuts. A movie I found as engrossing as anything we watched during our New York years. It begat my reading What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, followed by everything else I could find by Raymond Carver, the author whose work impacted my early writing as much as anyone I was reading then, with nods to Andre Dubus, and as always, Jim Carroll.

"If Naked Lunch was the movie that solidified for me how much I needed to write, Short Cuts is the film which confirmed it."

~~ from After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar of Cinema by Ben Tanzer

Merry Christmas

I'm editing other material, but it's conceivable that this section of tree from an incomplete memoir will one day become part of a trade paperback book.

unfiltered cigarettes

Mary Karr's father drank like my father's father and smoked the same Camel cigarettes that killed my mother's father at 59 unless Lucky Strikes were the weapon of choice. Unfiltered were the times either way. 

marriage

"Marriage is a panic room, a safety lock, a stable for one, a conspiracy of two, a compromise and compulsion, a moonshot, a white flag, red tape, no accident, a desert island, a private language, 'a human Society' (John Milton), 'a stupid endless mistake' (Delmore Schwartz), 'like you say everything everything in stereo stereo' (Anne Waldman), a bird in the hand, a cut corner, a plea, a bargain, a violet hour, a path of least resistance, a tonic, a toxin, 'close to the target, very near' (J. H. Prynne)."

~~ from "When Does a Divorce Begin?" by Anahid Nersessian

Ahab's Last Stand

 

~~ from Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

Tyler Dempsey's Best of the Bests

Award-winning essayist Tyler Dempsey placed "A Day's Worth" (Eclectica Magazine) at the top of his Best of the Bests for 2025.

Interview with Dan Fante

Find at Substack a reprint of 2009's "Interview with Dan Fante."

discount shopping

Bring holiday cheer with sneaks, boots, or books.

Find us on Substack

and read new fiction now.

“A Separate Piece” Parts IX, X & XI

"That could have been that, as they say. Our lives had crossed again, but they would continue apart. But one day, I returned from work to find a brown package under the awning of the front porch. It looked like a book, although I had not ordered a book. None that I remembered, anyhow. Ripping open the paper exterior, I cut through bubble wrap and found his name on the cover of an azure and beige hardcover. A heavy tomb, an academic press.

"Against the title page, I saw it. Two pages in, an Evan Ferguson. An original doodle in pen and ink. It was a drawing of a phallus hovering near a mouth. A nose shared a likeness with mine. The kisser was open; the tongue was out."

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts VIX, X & XI, the fourth and final installment at Citywide Lunch.

"A Separate Piece," Parts VI, VII & VIII

“Fuck you, Evan. Fuck you. You scumbag. Calling thirty years later to get your rocks off on my misery. You’re tenured. You have a big house. A family. Suburban New England. Yeah, I have a wife and kid, but half the time, I’m on the road living in shitholes and extended stays. Contract labor. If it’s long-term substitute, it’s always special ed. Work no one wants, so they hire me. Empty towns where they need another adult in the building. Paycheck-to-paycheck. Gig-to-gig. Depressed. Lonely. Sometimes, I’m scared. And you want more of me now?”

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts VI, VII & VIII, the third of four installments at Citywide Lunch.

"A Separate Piece," Parts III, IV, & V

"From then on, Ferguson haunted my thoughts. No matter what daily tasks I attended to, Evan was in the back if not the front of my mind. A cluttered existence, it had always been, but this was worse. Sitting on the back porch after mowing our meager lawn—crabgrass, dandelions, irregular yellowish turf—I found myself remembering Evan’s hints of literary analysis. Although his focus was art and architecture with an emphasis on the ancient Romans and Greeks, he also knew contemporary novels. In fact, he’d introduced me to Gaddis, Barth, Pynchon, and DeLillo. He’d read Ulysses and The Recognitions. Even as an undergrad, Ferguson could evaluate Gaddis and what he said about art, forgery, American life, and so on. I wouldn’t have stumbled down a literary path had he not encouraged me to read good books."

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts III, IV, & V, the second of four installments at Citywide Lunch.

"A Separate Piece," I & II

"But Ferguson had the goods. In a racist, if post-racist, America, the toughest gene lines from Dehli, Seoul, Taipei, and Nanjing arrived to match wits with establishment Jews, Southern hemisphere scions, upper-crust Europeans, and others tough enough to survive freedom’s brutality. Evan could compete. I thought of his additional exploits: fucking girls in the library stacks and thesis carousels; offering sex to a reading room full of coeds past midnight during finals week; smoking weed with a circle of clever homosexuals who formed an airtight chamber with both palms while he alone applied his lips directly to the joint. Ferguson had no fear. Unlike yours truly—a mélange of depressed Slovak, Russian serf, Rusyn-Carpathian, and northern Ashkenazim from destitute shtetls—Evan Ferguson was built to last."

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts I and II, the first of four installments at Citywide Lunch.

rare pynchon

Maasists and Slothropians may find these of interest:

(1)

Small Archive : Complete run of Unauthorized Editions of Thomas Pynchon as noted in the Mead bibliography plus two variants not noted in Mead. Mortality and Mercy in Vienna; Lowlands; The Secret Integration; Entropy; The

(2)

Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas PYNCHON

Halmoni

"We were silent as we wheeled Halmoni back to her room. I scooped her up by the shoulders as Mom lifted her legs. My grandmother's bony back pressed against me, this delicate body that had survived her dog of a husband, my grandfather. We lay her down on the bed. I wanted to say goodbye, but her face was drained and soft, her eyes already closed."

~~ from Which Side Are You On by Ryan Lee Wong

Philip Roth wasn't about to lose a minute

 

~~ from I Will Do Better by Charles Bock

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