Excerpt… We stopped mid-afternoon for tea and cakes. Vera was very vacant and morose. She was working something through. I decided it wasn’t the moment to disturb her meditations. The cream tea was magic. Perhaps now she can be cheered up? ‘I feel sorry for blokes with beards and mustaches,’ I started. ‘I’ve nothing against…
by Richard Hoffman… “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” The fat man is yelling at a large red Mercury backing toward the boy who’s standing frozen with the shopping cart. The windows on the Mercury are down, and the music is loud. The car is shining; even the tailpipes are polished. It stops, rocking; the driver has slammed…
You can be a virgin in horror the same as in sex. How, when I left the Place Clichy, could I have imagined such horror? Who could have suspected, before getting really into the war, all the ingredients that go to make up the rotten, heroic, good. And there I was, caught up in a…
Now It Can Be Told by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – a Kilgore Trout story… The premise of the book was this: Life was an experiment by the Creator of the Universe, Who wanted to test a new sort of creature He was thinking of introducing into the Universe. It was a creature with the ability…
by Pachydermy Philly… “Billingham Bokstock was born with an elephant’s head. A real, live elephant’s head. Not only was he the first ever trunk-swinging, tusk-bearing, floppy-eared candidate to run for president of the United States, he was twelve feet tall. The first time he walked into a press conference, his head went crashing into the…
The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka about a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a giant, monstrous insect. The story explores themes of alienation, absurdity, and the burden of family, as Gregor’s family recoils from his new form, and he becomes a source of…
Erik McManus of Breakeven Books asks, “What is the most overrated book?” Find out what his followers had to say at Breakeven Books – Click Here
The following is an interview with bestselling author John Irving (The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, The Hotel New Hampshire), titled John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93, from the Paris Review. John Irving was interviewed in the cramped back room of his otherwise large and luxurious apartment in Manhattan. A…
by Fed-up Philly… I used to be a jackal. That is to say, I once was a reporter. A journalist. A scavenger of the lowest kind. You know, like in the movie Nightcrawler. I’m all better now, thank God. Lucky for me, I woke up just in the nick of time. Read the whole feeding-frenzy…
by Connectedly Philly… I was in the Park when I heard the news about Wags Wagglestein, my attorney. Next thing I knew I was headed downtown. It had been a long time since I had been down to Mulberry Street, and suddenly I was feeling nostalgic. Read the whole spaghetti-eating story… My Time Spent…
