FFB THE PRINCE OF TIDES, Pat Conroy

 

I think I read just about all of Pat Conroy's books back in the day. I guess he is most famous for THE GREAT SANTINI but almost all of them were best sellers, even MY READING LIFE, a non-fiction book about what he read. This is my favorite because it's such a romantic and heartbreaking family saga. It's about the affect of a dysfunctional childhood on two adults. The sister is suicidal and her therapist gets involved with her brother, a married man with three children. They really don't make them exactly like this anymore. A perfect beach read although there's so rough going. A very good movie too with Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand. 

Short Story Wednesday: "The Best of Everything" Richard Yates

 

From the archives

Richard Yates wrote two of my favorite novels, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and THE EASTER PARADE, but he also wrote this fabulous collection of ten short stories (among others). Written in the fifties "The Best of Everything" almost seems like a story written earlier. Were people in their twenties this naive? This innocent? I have to assume some were.

It is the story of a couple on the day before their marriage is to take place in Atlantic City. The point of view switches between the two of them and you can't help but notice how drastically different they are from each other once you are in their heads. You also realize they don't know each other at all and that their marriage will probably fail quickly. 

The woman is a typical middle class young woman working as a secretary. She speaks well and is respected in her office. The man is a step or two down the socioeconomic ladder and has a poor grasp of English, which the woman's roommate makes her constantly aware of, calling he and his friends, "Ratty little clerks." 

But for whatever reason, Grace goes forward with the marriage plans although we sense her worry. Her roommate, feeling badly about the things she has said about Eddie, leaves her alone the night before the wedding and Grace plans an early consummation, feeling this will set things right.

But Eddie has been the man of the hour with his friends at a bachelor party and he is stunned by their good will. You get the feeling he has never been the center of attention before this night. He hurries to Grace's apartment to tell her he is going back to the party and her attempt to seduce him goes to naught.

We understand now that Eddie will always choose his friends over his wife and that will destroy their marriage quickly. She goes so far to put his hand on her naked breast. Nothing.

There is a lot of discussion online about this story. One teacher said it was the cause of a female student in his class dumping her boyfriend. Yates' real gift here is capturing the mind and language of both characters so clearly and with sympathy. Eddie is not a bad man and Grace is not a snob, but they certainly don't belong together. They seem to have reached an age when they believe it is time to marry no matter to whom.

Here is a nice piece by Stewart O'Nan pondering the fate of the writing of Richard Yates. He had an unhappy life and an undeserved disappearance from the shelves. His resurgence in the early nineties quickly died out. A real shame. 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Happy Memorial Day 2026

 

FFB: NOTHING IN HER WAY, Charles Williams

 

Book Review: Charles Williams, Nothing in Her Way (1953)(From Noirboiled Notes 2009)

Charles Williams' Nothing in Her Way is a novel of the con game--one con involving mining sand for glass, the other involving horse racing--in which Cathy Dunbar and Mike Belen seek belated financial revenge on the men who ruined their fathers' business more than two decades before. A nice read with the obligatory twists and turns

Short Story WednesdayA Tangle by the Rapid River, Anthony Doerr

 I have always admired writers who can describe nature well: the sounds, the smells, the look of it, even the feeling. This is so well done. This is about a man going fishing. Sometimes his fishing is an excuse for meeting up with his lover. His lover is giving him an ultimatum. This day he is just fishing. First he gets tangled in his fishing lines and nearly drowns. Then he gets in a battle with a fish. Beautifully written.

 Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

George Kelley 

Monday, Monday

 Three good movies this week. An Icelandic film, THE LOVE THAT REMAINS

An old French film called SOFT SKIN by Truffaut that really shows Hitchcock's influence on him and the old Tracy and Hepburn film DESK SET, which was startlingly modern with the issue of people being replaced by machines. Finishing up HACKS, which was pretty mediocre, love WIDOW's BAY. 

Reading SMALL TOWN GIRL by Jayne Anne Phillips.Looks like spring has arrived. What's new with you?  

Short Story Wednesday: "Standings," Chang Rae Lee

 

Chang Rae Lee has always been one of my favorite writers, especially A GESTURE LIFE and NATIVE SPEAKER. This is a piece from his forthcoming novel. It takes place almost exclusively in a school yard atmosphere. Rather like LORD OF THE FLIES.  Our hero is Korean and he gets into a ongoing fight with a Jewish boy and some sorry names get thrown around. I don't know why it works so well because it is a familiar theme. But Lee is a terrific writer who makes it come alive. I remember fights like this so well from my schoolyard days. 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Monday, Monday

 

                        A bit under the weather here, but tell me what you're up to. 

Short Story Wednesday: CAVES OF THE RUST BELT, Joe Kapitan

 (from Matt Paust) 

CAVES OF THE RUST BELT – Joe Kapitan

I've just finished reading Joe Kapitan's second fiction collection, Caves of the Rust Belt: Ohio Stories, and am virtually paralyzed with admiration. My reactions whirl at an unfathomable depth. Occasionally I have to remember to breathe. But my fingers still work, being less emotional, and are doing my thinking on the keyboard.

Kapitan is sneaky. A startlingly inventive wordsmith with a plain voice, innocent of the conventionally snarky tone so many young writers affect to advertise their cleverness presumably distinct from the herd. He seduces you to lay aside conditioned “smarter than thou” defenses, drawing you into a seemingly familiar narrative until of a sudden you’ve no idea just where in hell you are, where he’s taking you. This happened time and again when a story already was moving too fast for me to jump off with an oh, this is just too damned weird shrug, and find some Kafka or Lovecraft to calm the nerves.

His seduction starts at the get-go, with words like Ohio and Rust in the title. I heard earnestness there, the clang of labor, hard times, solid heartland humdrum. And then Caves gave me a peek at something unexpected beyond the abandoned factory’s dusty window. A hint of promise, teasing. Beckoning. Eyes wide, curiosity tugging my sleeve, I entered.

Well...Willie Wonka’s chocolate house Caves of the Rust Belt is not. Closer to a step through the looking glass with Wondering Alice. Moments of mystery appear in the commonplace and segue slyly from clever to profound. Involuntary chortles continue to burble from my throat with recalled abrupt comic ironies and turns of phrase, a particular the bawdy chanty gently redacted by dead mariners in deference to the boardinghouse landlady who summoned them from the depths hoping to find her lost son:

Hers is the reason we set out to sea,

And hers is the reason it burns when we pee,

And these are the three things we know to be sure:

A sailor needs tailwinds and whiskey and hers!”

Flashes of brilliance dance among steadier, darker reflections, challenging readers to accept life’s marriage of opposites with its attending happenstance and heartfelt yearnings. Though surprise is a constant in Caves, an occasional story’s title alone reveals enough for either laughter or gravity to cue up at the start. Most often each are in play by the end. Brothers of the Salvageable Crust is one of these. I had no idea what the title means (and still don’t), but somehow it suggested that I pee before reading and avoid sipping a hot beverage during the narrative. Trusting my intuition thus saved me from scalding pain and incontinent shame.

I’m not going to mention every one of the twenty-eight tales in this collection, despite how truly amazing each of them is. In the words of one of our most ludicrously quotable modern Presidents, it wouldn’t be prudent. I won’t be able to sleep tonite, however, if I don’t mention one of the most jaw-droppingly startling, sweetest little pieces I have ever come across. It is titled Mr. Foreclosure. And that is all I shall reveal. If you read nothing else in Caves of the Rust Belt, please please please...Mr. Foreclosure!

Oh, my, yes, and this one (do not be misled by the seemingly silly title—this piece is a definite contendah!): What We Were When We Drew What We Drew. Read it, or I’ll unfriend you forever!

You can skip How Cold Wars End. NO! WAIT! JUST KIDDING! (read it, but use the same precautions you do with Brothers of the Salvageable Crust).

Have tissues nearby when you get to Letter from a Welder’s Son, Unsent. Just in case...um, salt gets in your eyes.

My favorite of them all? That is a really rotten question, but right up there among the top twenty-eight is The Basic Problem with Interior Decoration. I think it’s the longest, too, although the astoundingly brilliant Brothers of the Salvageable Crust stretches out a tad, as well.

I suppose it might aid my credibility were I to use some of the standard critical literary language in discussing this collection, but I’m so uncomfortable with linguistic sophistication I’d likely get some of the requisite terms and phrases ass backwards, doing more harm than good. Maybe Michiko Kakutani can be lured out of retirement to do the honors. I’d kiss her feet if I thought it would work. Caves of the Rust Belt deserves no less.

Joe Kapitan

Clicking over to Joe Kapitan’s Amazon.com page you’re apt to see references to Rust as his “debut” collection. That is a lie. His brief bio there tells us he published an award-winning short-fiction chapbook in 2013. “He began writing short fiction and creative non-fiction in 2009, and has had more than 60 pieces appear online and in print in such venues as The Cincinnati Review, PANK, Wigleaf, Midwestern Gothic, Smokelong Quarterly, Booth and Notre Dame Magazine.”

“Ohio,” he tells us, “is like that weird uncle with the cheesy mustache and outdated clothes; the one who always has the best stories.”

And now we know where “weird uncle” gets those stories. 

 

Barry Ergang 

Monday, Monday

 

WIDOW'S BAY looks like a good one (APPLE)  Hoping it's not too scary for me. HACKS has been a disappointment so far. It had three good years and maybe that's all most shows with strong arcs have. It is hard to feel too sorry for a 75 year old who has reached the end of a lucrative career. 

Reading GHOST TOWN, but it's too soon to tell. I have liked most of Perotta's books thus far. 

Megan has an interview with David Chase (THE SOPRANOS) for any one who has Criterion Channel.  She also discusses a bunch of movies with him-none of which I have seen but are all on Criterion. 

It is still going down to freezing here at night. But at least it seems to have stopped raining.  

How about you?  

FFB; A PLACE OF EXCECUTION: Val McDermid

 

As I am suffering from a stomach flu, I will just say this is the best mystery I have ever read. What is your favorite? (You only get to pick one) 

Wednesday Short Stories: The Whimper of Whipped Dogs, Harlan Ellison

 From Randy Johnnson

 Forgotten Short Stories: The Whimper of Whipped Dogs – Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison is hardly a forgotten writer, but I’m working under the assumption there are people today that haven’t read him. They should go right out and find anything by the man. He’s a writer worth reading. I’ve written about him before HERE.

My selection for the first edition of Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Short Stories is THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS, the story of a woman brutally murdered in a courtyard while residents watched, not one responding to her cries for help, not even calling the police. The story concerns the aftermath and the decision the young woman protagonist, one of the watchers, makes at the end of the story.

It was inspired by the true life murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. A news story two weeks later reported on the non-response of neighbors to the brutalization that went on only a hundred feet from her apartment door. Stabbed twice, the attacker left, only to return ten minutes later to continue the assault.

The report may have been in error, no one knows for sure anymore. Nevertheless, it inspired a powerful story from Mr. Ellison on the general malaise enveloping people living in the city, the constant violence on TV, the mind your own business attitude of to many of us. It won the Edgar for best short story in 1974, one of the many awards(to numerous to list here) his writing has won in a long career.

It’s easily available in numerous editions.

1. Bad Moon Rising, eidted by Tom Disch: first appearance and reasonably priced with a little search
2. Deathbird Stories: good prices
3: Dreams With Sharp Teeth: omnibus containing Deathbird Stories, Shatterday, and I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream. A nice introduction to the man’s stories for anyone new to Mr. Ellison’s work
4. The Essential Ellison: A 35 Year Retrospective and the expanded 50 Year Retrospective 

 Kevin Tipple

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Monday, Monday

 I have become quite fond of LOVE ON THE SPECTRUM, a reality show about people with autism trying to find love. All of them seem to have been raised to be very polite. Maybe things like manners are easier to teach than how to have a conversation. Anyway, you can't help but root for them. And their parents. 

Also watching ROOSTER, HACKS, MARGO'S GOT MONEY TROUBLES, and a show on PBS with people in the UK trying to find their parents (or children). Most of them were adopted during the time when those records were hidden. 

Reading SHE READ TO US IN THE AFTERNOON, Kathleen Hill and some short stories by James Lee Burke. 

The weather is still unpredictable.

How are things there?  

Went to an art show at Cranbrook. Cranbrook is a school, art museum and lovely grounds. We all find it hard to identify with installation art, which students mostly seem attracted to.  I know photography brought representational art to a crossroads but looking at a table full of broken pottery does not do much for me. Or the recreation of a sixties living room. 

FFB-NO RETURN ADDRESS, Anca Vlasopolos

 

Anca is a good friend of mine, but I didn't know her well when I read this wonderful, sad, intelligent book. It recounts her flight from post-war communist Romania, to France, to Belgium, and finally the U.S. It tells about the persecution and death of her father in that communist period too. It is an honest account of the good and bad she and her mother found in the Detroit area. This is an excellent text on how to write memoir. And how to tell the story beautifully even when the events are not. 

Short Story Wednesday: "No Pain Whatsoever" Richard Yates from HIGH INFIDELITY

A friend had this anthology in duplicate and gave me a copy. I don't remember seeing it before but it's from the nineties. Richard Yates was a favorite writer of mine, but I don't remember this story. Lots of the nineties most popular writers are included: Russo, Atwood, Updike, Banks, et. 
It takes place at a TB hospital. Do they exist anymore? A woman is visiting her husband who seems to have been there for a long time and through many surgeries. A friend has driven her there and she is having an affair with another passenger. This must happen often when your spouse is at a place like this for years. She has brought her husband some magazines, which he is anxious to read. She breaks down after her visit but then her lover cheers her up. What an odd story. 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

Todd Mason 

Monday, Monday

I went to see THE CHRISTOPHERS and could barely make out a word. I thought it was my hearing but at the end of the screening, a man rose and asked if anyone else had trouble hearing the dialog. So I guess it was not just me. Is it likely the film itself or the theater's equipment. This is not the first time this has happened. 

We still have had barely a day without rain. 

Watching HACKS, MARGO's GOT MONEY TROUBLES, THE STORE (Wiseman doc about Neiman Marcus.

About to start a new book, but what? 

What about you?  

El Dorado Drive Wins the LA Book Prize in Mystery-Thriller

 

                                                                Congrats, Megan

FFB: THE FOG, James Herbert

 

reviewed by Ed Gorman, the author of TICKET TO RIDE, THE MIDNIGHT ROOM and many other fine books. 

 

The Fog, James Herbert

Just after Stephen King created the horror industry back in the Seventies U.S. publishers began importing British writers who walked the same streets as the master. One of those was Brit superstar James Herbert. While he never quite found the audience he deserved over here, a number of his novels have stayed with me long after the more successful imports have faded completely from my memory.

My favorite Herbert is titled The Fog and it continues the long and heralded tradition of the British disaster novel. Sometimes the disaster is an alien invasion as with H.G. Wells and sometimes the disaster is unworldly seeming yet of our world as with the great John Wyndham.

In Herbert's novel a yellow fog begins moving across England causing much of the population to go insane and begin committing atrocities on family, friends and anyone else they can get their hands on. Even animals go insane; pets become killers. A group of scientists in a bunker race to learn why one of them is immune to the effects fog.

What raises this story to the level of a classic is not just the shock effects--Herbert can jolt the most jaded of readers--but the portraits he draws of his people. He cuts across all ages and all classes. Unlike most Big Bestsellers he makes us care about them and in so doing he gives the reader the race-against-the-clock story with the scientists and the anxiety of seeing real people face their fates.

Centipede Press has just issued a collector's edition of the novel complete with a beautiful cover homage to the U.S. paperback edition and a long, fine introduction by horror legend Ramsey Campbell.

Thought it's a lengthy novel, I read this new edition in two sittings. It's a thriller that truly belongs on the same shelf as H.G. Wells, the early catastrophe novels of J.G. Ballard and the classic work of the late John Wyndham.

A Private View, Douglas Stuart (The New Yorker)

 Although I did not read SHUGGIE BAIN, Stuart's breakout novel of a few years ago, it was widely reviewed and celebrated. This is a story of gay man going through an art exhibit with his mother.  He and his mother are from Glasgow but the museum is in New York where he now lives with his lover, a curator of the museum. Although his life has been difficult because of his mother's alcoholism, he is extremely forgiving and fond of her and trying hard to give her the good time she would want to have. This was a sad if lovely story. 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 MIROIRS NO 3 left a lot for the viewer to fill in but I liked it a lot. Enough to go back and rewatch his earlier film BARBARA. My poor neighborhood theater keeps trying to show foreign films but since there are no good ways to advertise, there were only four of us.

Went to a lecture on Immigration at my senior center, which was terrifying. As an immigrant you have many right but ICE doesn't give a damn.

Saw a fabulous production of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF with my son and family for his birthday. We had dinner at a new Greek restaurant, THE BLUE GOAT.

Watching the Harry Hole series, THE PITT, HACKS. I will certainly miss THE PITT. 

Reading a kindly book, THE ROAD TO TENDER HEARTS, Anne Hartnett.

Broke my garbage disposal but things like that get fixed in a rental. But then the guy broke the connection to the dishwasher 

RAIN, RAIN, RAIN

Going to see & JULlIET today.  

What about you?