Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a magnificent story of unrequited love leading to a love triangle that lasts the lifetimes of the three main characters. A young poet, Florentino Daza, falls in love with Fermina Daza, but family circumstances prove difficult and ultimately Fermina rejects her young suitor in favor of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. The narrator describes the resulting lifetimes of romantic tension from the perspective of each of the three in turn (though remaining third-person, omniscient), often diverting to consider the many complexities these lives encounter. The result is a fascinating, insightful narrative seasoned with frequent bits of intrigue, irony, and humor.
The setting is a swamp-enclosed coastal city on the Caribbean, from something like the last quarter of the 19th Century to the middle of the 20th. The culture is slowly shedding remnants of its colonial period and all of the main characters have personal links into this past. In this vaguely fantastical world, occasional suspensions of reality come along, though no one notices anything unusual.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is indisputably one of the premier authors of the 20th century, and this book is an excellent example of his best work. I found it very difficult to put down.

Double Exposures

I’m delighted to update this post with a quote from Ryan Wynn, who read a pre-release copy of Double Exposures: “Using faith and religion as a backdrop, Double Exposures reveals the consequences of its characters’ exploration of their free will.  The stories varied settings include a ritzy restaurant, a contested community garden, a repurposed massacre site, and the ashes of a taberna, but the constant throughout is the existence of both humorous plot points and ominous foreshadowing.  Like all of Vickers books, this collection will keep its readers engaged and stay with them long after they turn the final page.” — Ryan Winn, Tribal College Journal Columnist and Media Reviewer. Double Exposures, 12 short stories, illustrated, coming next week.

I’m within sight of the finish line for publishing a selection of short stories, lovingly called ‘Double Exposures’ (some of the stories were published in ezines). I painted three watercolors for each story, a total of 36, and I’m eager to see how they look in the printed book. This, of course, means color printing, which increases the cost, but most of my books sell as Kindle or Nook, and it won’t matter much there (except file sizes). Six of the stories are set in Mexico and were written over the past twelve months (following a style that’s settled in my head, which I’m calling ‘Mexican Gothix’, since my last visit there. The other siz are older and have been polished a bit for this publishing.

Why paint watercolor illustrations? I’m fascinated with how similar are the processes of painting and writing stories. Both attempt to look into the world behind the scenes, the reality where meaning is rooted. Both attempt to reflect something there with what is ultimately an imitation of an imitation. Storytelling uses words and sentences for this purpose; painting uses colors and two-dimensional shapes. Plato would judge the result a reflection of a reflection, the shadow of an imitation projected onto the cave wall. Yet, if the story or illustration succeeds in touching the world behind, if it taps the meaning there and draws that sap onto the page, it circumvents the everyday world and kisses the eternal.
I expect to finish preparations for publishing, including proof reviews and edits, developing a video trailer and figuring out a marketing plan, around the end of March.

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore is a collection of nine short stories originally published in 1985. This review considers the kindle version of Vintage Contemporaries from 2007.
Striking in five of these stories (How to be an Other Woman, The Kid’s Guide to Divorce, How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes), Amdahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love, How to Become a Writer) is the author’s use of imperative mood in narration. “Meet in expensive raincoats, on a pea-soupy night.” “First, try to be something, anything, else.” The effect is to turn the reader into ‘you’ and the narrator into an unnamed instructor, like the voice in a cookbook. “In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in warm water, and then stir in the yeast.” This little-used (outside of cookbooks) corner of English grammar makes a surprisingly sturdy and versatile framework for these narratives, and lends an aura of lovingly crafted guidance to the entire collection (hence the collection title, Self-Help, I presume). This narrative style suggests life is shaped by influences over which characters (and, by extrapolation, we) have little control, reminiscent of the Naturalism literary movement from the late 1800’s (but extending its fingers, as literary movements do, into everything that follows). I’m reminded in particular of de Maupassant and Zola. Like de Maupassant, Moore’s stories often have clever plot lines with poignant twists and turns. This narrative-via-imperative style also suggests the narrator is charting a path she traveled before and so laces these stories with a profound sincerity. Add to that Lorrie Moore’s virtuosity with language (especially dialog) and you have a recipe for delightful reading. This is a book I’ll read again.
I won’t attempt to out-hurrah other reviewers of this work. “The most astute and lasting writer of her generation (New York Times Book Review), “America’s most wry and radiant comic writer…” (Harper’s Bazaar), “Lorrie Moore’s stories are dazzling exercises in an ingenious wisdom,” (New Statesman). Suffice it to say this is writing at its best, destined to join other literary accomplishments of the first order.

Passing Through Paradise

Between the Shadow and the Soul

 Expelled writing student, Devin Post, is flabbergasted to see his life fracture into two tracks. In one, unprincipled employer, Leach Pharmaceuticals, sends him into Mexico on an impossible quest. In the other, he is office sex toy for a lineup of lusty women. Which life is real and which fantasy? Between the Shadow and the Soul follows Devin through these escapades with humor and literary panache, exploring inter-dependencies between reality and imagination and discovering surprising connections between the two.

Paperback: here  Kindle: here  Nook: here  Video Trailer: here

On Relationships:

Suddenly the sun of passion broke through the clouds of arousal and bathed us both in that warm light that comes only this way, the zenith, crescendo, frenzy, peak, spasm, convulsions of ecstasy, lasting seconds that seem minutes before slipping away like a gasp, followed by that slow unwinding where every muscle, every nerve, every cell relaxes, expended completely in the purpose that allows no regret, at least not right away.

“Into this fog of mutual misunderstanding we discovered a mutual attraction. In my case, I took something that was carnal only and fantasized it into something else. In your case, you saw only one side and took it to be all of me. I thought you were more complex than you are — It’s something women do — and you thought I was simpler than I am — It’s something men do.”

On Fiction/Nonfiction:

 “Fiction must exhibit direction and purpose; the real world has neither.”

 “You thought I’d say non-fiction is about what’s outside your head and fiction about what’s inside? Dimwit! It’s all inside your head!”

 “The idea there is an outside your head and an inside your head, the idea you have a head – it’s all inside your head!”

 “Reality or Fantasy. Fiction or non-fiction. It’s a farce either way.” Here he held his arm out, finger pointed up, the way no one does since Clarence Darrow.

 “The distinction is of interest mainly to persons employed re-shelving library books.”

On Corporate Life:

 Ten VP’s on the two long sides of the table slid their chairs forward until silk ties kissed walnut. No one wanted to appear ready to leave.

“Corporations are supposed make money. It’s their entire purpose. With no regard for morality? Like a cat torturing a mouse; it’s not immoral, it’s what cat’s do.”

 “God knows I’m not above using a little libido tickle to get ahead. I’ve ridden the coitus elevator to career advancement myself. The thing is you’re swimming in shark-infested waters.”

Putting the smile in simile:

“Stop that!” Ghost Hemingway ordered. “It’s like teaching goddamned cats to walk on their back legs.” He sighed. “Standing eggs on end in a dining car.” He signed again. “Talking to Scotty Fitzgerald sober.” 

“Now I felt exposed, on display like a puppy in a pet store window, strip steak in a butcher case, burglar caught in a flashlight beam, in a word, naked.” 

“Suddenly, she emitted a loud, long fart, like air escaping a beach ball, exhaust pipe of a Model T, tire-inflating hose at the service station, and this without any forewarning borborygmus.”

“Her eyes beamed over the top of the cup like Peterbilt high beams coming over a hillcrest, full moon rising over a mountain lake with its reflected partner, 747 landing lights coming down onto a runway.”

“Your eyes flash like Fourth-of-July sparklers, headlights on a mountain road, sparks in a short-circuited toaster.”

Passing Through Paradise

“Collage: an assemblage of diverse elements in unexpected juxtaposition.” Passing through Paradise is a collage of narrative elements, some forming linear narratives, others embellishing these narratives with odd images and facts. Characters appear and vanish. Plots take shape and develop. Settings adjust sporadically. Themes emerge. Mysterious satyr-like character pops up in Colorado and walks to Chicago, gathering an entourage along the way, to put on Sophocles’ satyr play, Ichneutae. Naive author of newspaper articles falls into ill-starred infatuation. Derelict Jazz-age theater, subject of intense political wrangling, is razed to make space for characterless condominiums. Elements from these and other narrative fountains splash onto the pages to create a playful literary kaleidoscope.

Passing Through Paradise is a narrative collage put together from snatches snipped from several story lines. A satyr-like character appears in Colorado, walks to Chicago gathering followers alone the way. There he stages Sophocles only extant satyr play in an aging theater. The theater is the center of a political squabble pitting history against greed. Greed wins. The major spokesperson for both sides is the same person, an unlucky-in-love young man whose heart is broken as the political frenzy dances around him.

Paperback: here  Kindle: here  Nook: here  Video Trailer: here

Adam’s Apple

Narrated by his press secretary Mooney Trompeur, Congressman Adam Ibsen’s story carries him from conception to election into the House of Representatives, original to mortal sin. He savors incest, patricide, lust, avarice – all the top ten – gorging immorality like a gastronome on all-you-can-eat Sunday at Les Gourmet Cafétéria. Fickle, impulsive, and uninhibited, Adam taste-tests the h’orderves on both sides of the culture war, juggles reality and illusion, engages meaningful and absurd, savors the left, relishes the right,  sips liberality, nibbles conservatism, gobbles the gamut of political penchant. In the end, his life reveals no moral; however, it does come to a surprising point.

Adam’s Apple includes 24 yummy recipes for forbidden fruit.

Mooney Trompeur: publicist, policy director, speechwriter,  biographer, running dog  lackey for the Ibsen for Congress Campaign – former monkish English student, corrupted by liquor in clear bottles and women in low-rider jeans, now a machiavel.

Commissioned to ghostwrite the Ibsen autobiography, but unwilling to twist the narrative as the campaign insisted beyond what even the most gullible might swallow, Trompeur here brings the story out mostly uncensored.

Bon appétit!

Paperback: here  Kindle: here  Nook: here  Video Trailer: here

The Second Virtue

The characters in The Second Virtue explore the crannies of courage and find various aspects reflected in their lives. “Courage isn’t about overcoming your self. It’s about being yourself,” Telli Trujillo, an eccentric phone-store clerk observes. Telli should know — he survived a horrifying bank robbery only to have the memoriestorment him so he switches from job to job to remain in it what was the bank lobby but becomes a beauty parlor, insurance office, tanning parlor, phone store. He is rife with idiosyncrasies (buys his shoes too large and rotates them like tires) but can’t find himself for his own memories. “Confidence in yourself no matter what you’re up against, that’s true courage,” Telli advises, but he can’t find any self confidence so long as his tormenter lives.

“Being spontaneous. That’s what courage is all about,” says Joy Juneau, receptionist at the Perlmutter Institute, a school that teaches courage, or claims to. Joy’s natural impetuosity is a casualty of her overbearing and abusive boss, the shifty Drew Perlmutter. Freeing herself from his domination proves impossible until she breaks out in a flurry, kicking his ass until both her legs are broken. “Somebody had to do it. So now, I did it, and it’s done. Except I didn’t connect, not really. If I had, hard as I was kicking, it would have taken the Jaws of Life to pry my foot out of his ass,” she frets, but the blow connects well enough. Exhilarated in her liberation, she plunges into a

romantic encounter on the grass of Lincoln Park. The security guard there thinks to intervene but can’t comprehend two stark white casts waving over the shrubbery. A giant white rabbit, he concludes, and decides his wages aren’t enough to warrant becoming involved.

Drew Perlmutter spews quotations defining courage like a runaway dictionary (“Grace under fire, isn’t it?”) but confuses courage with fearlessness and heroics with bullying. He learns his lesson the hard way when three students turn on him and bury his desk under a steaming mound of chicken shit.

The list goes on: Donald Duffy, high school boy kept in lingering adolescence by his overbearing mother; Lisa Chisholm, orphan raised motherless to stride into life with no female role model. The characters in The Second Virtue confront their fears and consider what they need to conquer their demons, both internal and external. Their narrative moves at a brisk pace, often funny, sometimes poignant, and consistently thought-provoking. You’ll love this book!

Paperback: here    Kindle: here   Nook: here  Video trailer: here

Bluehart

  Bluehart is the story of a fictional blues musician who plays accordion. He’s born in the first chapter. He dies in the last chapter. Under that surface there’s more going on. A deep current shapes the characters and sweeps the story forward. The subject of the story isn’t the accordion player or the peculiar events of his life. The subject is freedom.Bluehart projects this elemental concept into day-to-day circumstances and records the results. In so doing, it explores the dimensions, tests the boundaries, and clarifies the ambiguities.

Freedom is experienced as exhilaration and apprehension blended. It is life, full-of-life, but holding its breath. It is a sixteen-year-old boy rolling all of his belongings up into a blanket, throwing the blanket out of the window onto a snowdrift, and following with himself.

Our choices are always limited, sometimes by factors inherent to living (birth circumstances, dependencies of childhood, our natural talents and limitations), sometimes by other individuals (overbearing love, the compromises of relationships), sometimes by groups and organizations (political restrictions, racial or class prejudice), sometimes by chance events. The factors that limit freedom are never-ending and unavoidable. The protagonist of the story finds space for himself outside of all that is imposed on him, and becomes free the way Jean-Paul Sartre defined freedom, “What you do with what’s been done to you.” For A.J., to be free is to salvage a measure of self-determination in a world determined to have its way with him. Seven, the blues musician’s daughter, confronts the same restrictive world, but finds a different answer, a different freedom. Seven learns that the last and most difficult freedom, the ultimate freedom, is freedom from one’s own disappointment and disapproval. To be free is to be self-determined and like the result.

Bluehart is 226 pages, 17 chapters. The story begins with the main characters birth in 1920 and ends with his burial in 1991. In those 71 years he is born half-orphaned, grows up in a Chicago whorehouse, learns to play an accordion that falls into his lap, avoids the draft for World War II, inherits and runs a grocery store, marries, divorces, lives, dies. The last year of his life he undertakes recording his memories and asks his daughter to help with the project. She is reluctant, but longs to know the secret of his happiness and hopes to find it in the recordings. Her handling of this recorded life story is the frame for the novel and the vehicle for her discovery of the key to her own happiness.

Print Edition: here  Kindle Edition: here  Nook Edition: here Video Trailer: here

Witless

Affairs of the heart, murder, suicide, riot, gossip, politics, heroism, cowardice—Witless bubbles over with the passions of life. Two peoples settle in a small town in Southern Wisconsin, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first are fun loving and free-spirited. They build the town’s dance hall and saloon. They love, they dance, they play cards, they pull off pranks, and they build their dreams. The second are the congregation of the Church of the Bridge, who pursue austerity in this world and anticipate paradise in the next. Hubert Dartmouth, their founder, is struck by lightning, survives, and commits his life to censuring worldly pleasure. His son and grandson each take the leadership of the Church and pursue the same end with the same ardent fervor. The conflict between these peoples begins as inconsequential friction but grows over a half a century to erupt into an explosive conclusion.

Set against this background is the love story of Arthur Woodaepfel and Anna Baird-Langdon. He is a teacher, determined to provide his students life-enriching experiences. She is a dancer, the wife of a farmer, and his co-conspirator. They share a passion for progressive education and find a devotion to each other in the isolation this imposes. Their bond is inevitable, and leads inevitably to catastrophe.

Witless is an engaging story that sweeps forward from situation to situation with humor and energy. Underneath that story is a thoughtful exploration of the consequences that must follow when divergent cultures fail to find compromise. Changing the setting of a problem can bring perspective and insight. Cultural conflict, where compromise is illusive, is a vexing issue for our time. Witless transposes cultural conflict to another time, place, and people, and builds a story on it—a story you’ll find convincing and satisfying.

Print Edition: here  Kindle Edition: here  Nook Edition: here Video Trailer: here