Hirschworth magazine accepts "Tonsorial Parlor"

Monday’s frittata was the highlight of Creation for Big Sal’s wife.  She’d been working for years at perfecting the near Renaissance consanguinity of peppers, ham, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and onions nestled in the golden-baked whipped eggs and milk.  Big Sal--barber and half owner of Sal & Sal Hair Salon & Tonsorial Parlor--a redundant name because, when translated, it simply meant Sal and Sal Barbershop and Barbershop--had the sly confidence of knowing that The Other Sal would finally be impressed.  Like Caravaggio with his paintings, Big Sal’s egg pie was his lead upon the scale, by which he measured the world of his sins and desires.

 So begins "Tonsorial Parlor", my latest short story to be accepted by a literary magazine.  Hirschworth has slated it for publication on October 20th.  I hope you will read it when it appears.  Go to http://www.hirschworth.com.

A few days ago I finished my second John Fante book, Ask the Dust.  Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the next one in the Arturo Bandini series, The Road to Los Angeles. 

John Fante at work

To many Americans, to many literary Americans, Fante remains obscure.  It's too bad.  Hollywood found him in 2006, giving us a fine film with Colin Farrell, Selma Hayek, and Donald Sutherland.

 

 But Fante deserves more attention, much like some of the other writers who rode across the sky during the Great Depression and then were swept under the rug during the radical Sixties.  Some made their way during the post-World War II years, some during the Eisenhower administration, like Hamilton Basso, John O'Hara, John P. Marquand, Philip Wylie, and John Williams, just to name a few.  And I'm their undying devotee. 

Below are a few snippets of prime Fante from Ask the Dust.  There are more to come, I'm sure.

"Innocent little Evelyn went across the room and dragged poor little sister Vivian away from those lousy sailors and brought her to our table.  Hello Vivian, ...but what happened to your mouth, Vivian, who dug it out with a knife?  And what happened to your bloodshot eyes, and your sweet breath smelling like a sewer, poor kids, all the way from glorious Minnesota." 

"Poor little Vivian had worked down here for almost six months and not once had any of these bastards ever ordered her a bottle of champagne, and I, Bandini, I looked like such a swell guy, and wasn't Vivian cute, and wasn't it a shame, she so innocent, and would I buy her a bottle of champagne?"

"Dear Little Vivian, all the way from the clean fields of Minnesota, and not a Swede either, and almost a virgin, too, just a few men short of being a virgin.  Who could resist this tribute?  So bring on the champagne...Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn.  You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring.  So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you, too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets."

A residence hotel in Los Angeles, much like the one in Ask the Dust.

Angel's Flight, mentioned frequently in Ask the Dust

"This is bad Arturo.  You have read Nietzsche, you have read Voltaire, you should know better.  But reasoning wouldn't help.  I could reason myself out of it, but that was not my blood.  It was my blood that kept me alive, it was my blood pouring through me, telling me it was wrong.  I sat there and gave myself over to my blood, let it carry me swimming back to the deep sea of my beginnings." 

John Fante

"There will be confusions, and there will be hunger; there will be loneliness with only my tears like wet consoling little birds, tumbling to sweeten my dry lips.  ...Then it will be night, and the sweet oils from the shores of my sea, poured upon my senses by the captains I deserted in the dreamy impetuousness of my youth.  But I shall be forgiven for that, and for other things, for Vera Rivken, and for the ceaseless flapping of the wings of Voltaire, for pausing to listen and watch that fascinating bird, for all things there shall be forgiveness when I return to my homeland by the sea."

Dogs aren't enough; what we need is elephants.

I probably don't have to say this, that the cause for saving the endangered wildlife in Africa is not new, you know that already.  So I won't.  But it's true. And history repeats itself.  I don't have to tell you that either, and so probably does Nature (repeat itself).  I want to tell you about this novel I'm reading.

The consciousness of the plight of trophy animals, those killed by indigenous poachers for the Asian medicine market, or those killed by Western egoists who have nothing better to do with their time, their money, and their breath--those monsters with whom we share the planet--are addressed in a 1958 novel that I am now getting to.

An author I always wanted to read but kept putting other books in the way is  Romain Gary.

In his novel, The Roots of Heaven, Gary reports that in French Equatorial Africa, post-World War II, post-raising of the Berlin Wall, 30,000 elephants are being slaughtered each year.  And to what purpose?  And that is 55 years ago!  Yes?  One character in the book says:

     "Our hunting regulations are what they are, I'm not the one to defend them, but there was no permit that could justify the ravages the sportsman was wreaking.  I questioned the driver a bit, and he explained to me proudly that "the master, he hunt for pleasure."  ...I don't think this bothered him much: there are people who are always ready to pay the necessary price for satisfying the intimate urges of their soul, as you must know." 

More from the book:

"You see, dogs aren't enough any more.  People feel so damned lonely, they need company, they need something bigger, stronger, to lean on, something that can really stand up to it all.   Dogs aren't enough; what we need is elephants."

 Recently though, as reported by James P. Farwell, Defense consultant, in The Blog, Huffington Post World, 5/24/2013,

"Arriving on military helicopters, aided by night vision camera, the attacks opened up on their victims with AK-47 weapons. It was a massacre.  ...Elephant carcasses, some of 86 elephants slaughtered in Chad a few weeks ago. The victims included more than 30 pregnant females. Many aborted their calves when shot. The hunters butchered some, and left the others to die. The elephants had huddled together helplessly for protection."



More from Romain Gary's book:

"I too have often felt the need to understand it all; but I know my limits.  In my life, I've done more suffering than thinking--though I believe one understands better that way."

And still more recently, from Jason Straziuso, as published in The Huffington Post, 6/5/2013:


Dame Daphne Sheldrick, who runs the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi National Park, said Kenya must pass stricter laws to punish those who poach elephants for their ivory tusks. Sheldrick said it would be economic sabotage if Kenya doesn't prevent poaching deaths, because of the tourism it will lose.  'Unfortunately the demand for ivory in the Far East, particularly China, has pushed the price of ivory up too far,' Sheldrick said, as a dozen orphaned elephants bathed in dry mud nearby. For village residents who have little earning potential, the lure of a poaching payday can be tough to resist, she said."

Assassinating these creatures is not the better song to sing.  

Visit www.savetheelephants.org

and

The Enough Project

 Photographs are courtesy of The National Geographic Magazine, Michael Nichols, Photographer.

"Odysseus in Woodside" Honorable Mention from Writing Tomorrow magazine.

As I have already posted on Facebook, I thought it would be fitting to include this happy bit of news on my blog.  Writing Tomorrow magazine has announced the results of its First Annual Short Story Award.  The winners will appear in the October 2013 issue. And I am pleased to say that a short story I wrote, "Odysseus in Woodside," has won Honorable Mention, and will be among the next issue's contents.

I invite you to check out the current issue as well as the upcoming one.

The judge was Robert Voedisch. His work has appeared in The Greensboro Review, NorthAmerican Review, Five Chapters, and Paper Darts, to name a few.

This is the April 2013 issue (click here).

This is the February 2013 issue (click here).

"Miss Wimbish" now appearing in Uncharted Frontier EZine #10.

Uncharted Frontier EZine Issue #10 May 2013 is out, and in it is a short story by yours truly: "Miss Wimbish."  The magazine has some very interesting poetry and prose, and captivating photography.  I invite you check it out and enjoy.

The Arctic is a long, unbroken bow of time.

[When I began to read Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, I really had no idea what to expect; I thought it was going to be in the same vein as John McPhee or Pico Iyer, authors whom I admire greatly, both for their brilliant mastery of earth science and anthropology.  I thought perhaps there would be a reminiscence of Gaston Bachelard, or perhaps Henri Michaux,  by virtue of the subtitle "Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape."  But what I have discovered about this book is more than beautifully written paragraphs of scientific insight, more than its pages of geologic mystery and fascinating biological and evolutionary narrative.  This book captures my spirit as much as it does my intellect.  I am glad to have had it recommended to me, and am equally glad to recommend it to you.  This is my second post on the subject; there will be more.  Below are excerpts from Chapter 5, Migration: The Corridors of Breath.  --M.]

Time pools in the stillness here and then dissipates.  The country is emptied of movement.  The coming and going of the animals during the short summer gives the Arctic a unique rhythmic shape.... 

Time here like light is a passing animal..., hovers above the tundra like the rough-legged hawk, or collapses althgother like a bird keeled over with a heart attack, leaving the stillness we call death.

No wild frenzy of feeding distinguishes the short summer.  But for the sudden movements of charging wolves and bolting caribou, ...the Arctic is a long, unbroken bow of time.  

To lie on your back somewhere on the light-drowned tundra of an Ellesmere Island valley is to feel that the ice ages might have ended but a few days ago.  

  

How very far from Mesopotamia we have come.

We list the butterflies...we delineate the life history of the ground squirrel...we name everything...then we fold the charts and the catalogs, as if we were done with a competent description.

But the land is not a painting....

Lying flat on your back on Ellesmere Island on rolling tundra without animals, without human trace, you can feel the silence stretching all the way to Asia. 

 

You can sit for a long time with the history of man like a stone in your hand.  The stillness, the pure light, encourage it.

--Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Advice from Muriel Spark, circa 1988

Muriel Spark, 1960

"...So I passed him some very good advice, that if you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat.  Alone with a cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp.  The light from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction.  The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding.  And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost.  You need not watch the cat all the time."

and...

Muriel Spark, shortly before her death in 2010

"'You are writing a letter to a friend,' was the sort of thing I used to say.  'And this is a dear and close friend, real--or better--invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly; without fear or timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published, so that your true friend will read it over and over, and then want more enchanting letters from you.  Now, you are not writing about the relationship between your friend and yourself; you take that for granted.  You are only confiding an experience that you think only he would enjoy reading. What you have to say will come out more spontaneously and honestly than if you are thinking of numerous readers.'"

[Excerpted from A Far Cry From Kensington, by Muriel Spark. New Directions, 2000.]