After Noon by Don Riggs

After Noon

I eat lunch with a group of older men.
Some of them are older than me; others,
my own age, are older than most people
around us--"kids," we call them, teenagers
and twentysomethings, many of them born
this side of Y2K, whereas we have
lived most of our lives in the previous
century. Students don't know what I mean

when I refer to recent books written
back in the 1980s, and those from
the 'sixties and 'seventies, when the Now
Generation was in the ascendant,
have receded to the Middle Ages,
which I consider myself still part of.

Free Car

Thanks to Heavy Feather Review, "Free Car" is available anywhere short stories are read online!

Ann Arbor rescue operation

Prolific talent Cady Vishniac came upon a used copy of Fight for Your Long Day and was kind enough to post the evidence on social media.

V.S. Naipaul, Rest In Peace

Nobel-prize-winning novelist V.S. Naipaul passed through this life not without a "controversial" remark or two. A Bend in the River is the only novel of his I finished, but I did fancy teaching it when I first transitioned from teaching introduction to literature over ten weeks to contemporary literature (after 1945) for traditional fifteen-week semesters. Alas, it never did make it onto the syllabus.

Terracotta Warriors

At this point, the Terracotta Warriors get a fair amount of publicity, but it's not so common that you see them at a literary website.

Antwerp

"Tell that stupid Arnold Bennet[t] that all his rules about plot only apply to novels that are copies of other novels."

~~ from Antwerp by Roberto Bolano