And here, gentle web surfer, you have stumbled upon the section which embodies the real purpose of 101Bananas.com. The decline of American society in the 20th century seems to have closely paralleled the decline in real literacy. No one reads anymore (and thus no one thinks anymore) once they’re out of school, and many don’t even learn to read very well in school. Reading requires much more effort than watching TV, and it has been shown that brain activity is much higher while reading than in most other every-day activities. You don’t have to read McLuhan’s Understanding Media to understand the profound difference between what you might call “literate thinking” and “visual thinking” (though that’s an excellent start), you just have to have common sense, keep your eyes open, study history, and observe your fellow humans on this planet. (That’s exactly what McLuhan did, better than anyone in his time.) Thus, this small contribution to literate thinking, a mere finger in the dike, a quixotic attempt to help stem the tide of the eventual collapse of Western civilization.
The Scholar’s Library contains two sections, non-fiction and fiction, both of which are occasionally updated with additions. Both sections are listed alphabetically by author’s last name.
The non-fiction section (at the top) contains various articles, columns, speeches and essays collected over the years from many different sources. These text files cover a variety of serious and not-so-serious intellectually-oriented, thought-provoking topics; some are quite short, some are rather long, and most deal with politics or serious sociological or philosophical topics. If your attention span coincides with television news bites and you haven’t read a non-fiction book since high school, you should probably stay away from this section of 101Bananas.com. Go look at the pretty pictures in the Art Gallery. Reading the items posted here requires a small investment in time and effort, and the ability to think critically. As someone once said though, there is almost nothing a man won’t do in order to avoid having to think. Or as H. L. Mencken said, if you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; if you really make them think, they’ll hate you. If you’re the type who can never finish a long newspaper editorial that runs for a whole page, but get bored after the first couple paragraphs because you can’t follow the argument or reasoning, don’t waste your time in the non-fiction section of the Library; you won’t find any typical web-site cotton candy for the brain here. (That’s over in The Garden of Enigmatic Delights.)
The fiction section (at the bottom) contains a collection of great short stories that are well worth reading. If you appreciate the short story as a literature form, you’ve probably read some of these stories, but you’re sure to find a gem or two you haven’t read yet.
L. Brent Bozell
No Time For Moral Equivalence [Read It]
The inexplicably insane Reuters wire service decision to not refer to the 9/11 terrorists as “terrorists.”
Davy Crockett
Not Yours To Give: Davy Crockett and Welfare [Read It]
An incident during Crockett’s term in Congress helped him understand the limits intentionally placed on government by the U.S. Constitution. Ignoring those limits has given us the disastrous Great Welfare State.
Midge Decter
The Assault on the Boy Scouts of America [Read It]
In a speech given at a Hillsdale College seminar, Decter reviews the history of the continuing shameful attacks on the Boy Scouts by the politically correct liberal crowd.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance [Read It]
One of the greatest essays ever written, Emerson’s Self-Reliance should be required reading for high school students once a month.
John Erskine
The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent [Read It]
Doing the right thing requires that we first have the ability to make intelligent, reasoned decisions as to what the right thing is. In this famous, provocative and influential 1915 essay, Erskine argued that we actually have a moral obligation to acquire this ability and to use it.
Jason D. Fodeman
How to Destroy a Village [Read It]
A 17-yr-old, from whom many of his elders could learn something, talks about the real legacy of the national embarrassment known as Bill Clinton.
Russell Gough
Clinton’s Personal & Public Character [Read It]
The absurd argument that Bill Clinton’s personal character has nothing to do with his public job performance is picked apart and shown to be false.
Russell Gough
An 18th-Century Perspective on Clinton’s Character [Read It]
The defenders of Bill Clinton that try to spin his behavior into acceptability aren’t very familiar with American history and the moral foundation of our country. Unfortunately, George Washington isn’t around anymore to set them straight.
Susan Greenfield
The REAL Brain Drain [Read It]
An excerpt adapted from her book ID: The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century, discussing how modern technology literally changes the way our brains work, and the far-reaching implications of this fact.
Sean Hannity
The Real Condit Scandal [Read It]
The Congressman Gary Condit/Chandra Levy scandal, and why private behaviour does affect public policy.
Václav Havel
Thriller [Read It]
The Czech playwright who became his country’s president is nothing if not a thoughtful observer of the human condition. In this short essay he gets to the heart of the dilemma posed by modern man’s “progress” to a scientific, rational view of the world.
Jesse Helms
Address to the United Nations Security Council [Read It]
The U.S. Senator speaks to the U.N. and explains why many Americans have a major problem with what the institution has become since it’s founding.
Charlton Heston
Winning the Cultural War [Read It]
The actor and N.R.A. president’s speech to the Harvard Law School Forum on the all-out culture war going on in America.
Jacob Hornberger
Loving Your Country but Hating Your Government [Read It]
How it is quite possible, and sometimes the only moral choice, to love your country but to hate your government.
Alan Keyes
Eliminate the Slave Tax [Read It]
Thoughts on eliminating the “slave tax” that is the Federal income tax, and replacing it with excise taxes.
Ted Koppel
Commencement Address at Stanford University [Read It]
The ABC News correspondent’s remarks to the graduating class of 1998 at Stanford University.
Jane Lampman
Moral Darwinism: The Fittest Conscience—A New Take on Evolution [Read It]
A review of a book by David Loye, Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love, that brings to light some little-known and surprising ideas of Charles Darwin.
Wayne LaPierre
Constitutionalism and Responsible Citizenship [Read It]
The N.R.A. Executive Vice President speaks to the Claremont Institute about the Clinton administration’s refusal to enforce gun laws as a dishonest way to attack the 2nd Ammendment.
Rush Limbaugh
The Americans Who Risked Everything [Read It]
His father’s story of the risks taken and the prices paid by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Joseph Loconte
The Wall Jefferson Almost Built [Read It]
The commonly mistaken notion that a so-called “wall of separation” between church and state outlaws any government-sponsored or -approved activity relating to religion in any way is examined more closely.
Tibor Machan
A Brief Defense of Free Will [Read It]
Clear and easily understandable arguments in favor of the concept of free will. Though most people’s eyes glaze over at the mention of serious philosophical concepts, whether you know it or not your ideas on the Free Will vs. Determinism debate have a great influence on your opinions of many other things in life, including whether you tend towards the conservative or the liberal end of the the political spectrum.
Michael Medved
Why Anti-Americans Must Focus on the Past [Read It]
Continually emphasizing our past faults and ignorning the vast progress made is a convenient way for America’s enemies to focus attention away from their own abysmal record and lack of progress over the past thousand years.
Michael Medved
Video Game Explains an American Traitor [Read It]
An incident in a video game software store helps Medved partly explain how John Walker, the “American Taliban,” could grow up with all the privileges and advantages in the world yet still turn out to be a traitor. That his father thinks he did nothing wrong tells us all we need to know about how he must have been raised.
Michael Medved
Facing the Diversity Crisis in Pro Sports [Read It]
Too many people are terrified of openly discussing politically incorrect facts of life, but not Michael Medved. Here he brings to light the “shocking” lack of diversity in professional sports.
Steve Sailer
America’s Hidden Minority: The Easily Confused [Read It]
A researcher on the subject of IQs has said that “Life is an IQ test.” Everyone knows people who seem to fail the test repeatedly. In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, some voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, even advertised their failure on national television.
Steve Sailer
Why Do Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? [Read It]
Some interesting biological factors help reveal why “blondes have more fun.” The widespread patterns of biological differences between types of humans is often a taboo subject, but hiding from the truth doesn’t make it go away.
Steve Sailer
The Unexpected Uselessness of Philosophy [Read It]
Where do many philosophers go wrong? Looking at physicist Steven Weinberg, Plato, Charles Darwin, Elvis Presley, and Australian philosopher David Stove’s book Against the Idols of the Age, can help with the answer. As Sailer says, “Philosophers of the world, get real! You have nothing to lose but your irrelevance.”
Steve Sailer
The Genetic Revolution [Read It]
America’s role in the twenty-first century may depend on acknowledging and understanding human genetic diversity. In this speech to the Hudson Institute, Sailer confronts issues of race, eugenics, genetic selection and modification, that are inevitably becoming more important as scientific advances give us more power to determine our biological future.
Laura Schlessinger
The Crisis of the American Family [Read It]
The replacement of moral codes with amoral anything-goes personal codes of conduct; the attempt to silence and marginalize anyone espousing ethics and personal responsibility; and the intentional destruction of the traditional nuclear family where children are actually raised by their parents are the subjects of “Dr. Laura’s” speech to the Claremont Institute.
Zimmerman Skyrat
Required Reading List for the Human Race [Read It]
Looking for something good to read? Here’s my list of favorite great books, short stories, and poetry that are required reading for the human race. You’re bound to find some thought-provoking material here, but there’s no “lite reading” for the mentally-challenged.
Zimmerman Skyrat
Scanning, Digital Photos, DPI, Screen Resolution, Aspect Ratios, Wallpaper, and the Kitchen Sink [Read It]
Catch-all miscellaneous help file for figuring out what resolution you should scan things at, what size file you need for good photographic prints, creating Windows Wallpaper, why you don’t get the full frame of a negative in an 8 x 10 print . . . but no tips for installing a new kitchen sink.
Joseph Sobran
Labels and Libels [Read It]
Mass confusion seems to reign over the use of labels such as “liberal,” “conservative,” “racist,” and the like. It’s not really that complicated though—except to liberals.
Thomas Sowell
Abstract People [Read It]
A blind focus on an abstract concept like “civil rights,” while ignoring the reality the concept is supposed to protect, is the cause of many problems. Do terrorists have civil rights, when they live completely outside of, and attempt to destroy, the system that grants those rights?
Thomas Sowell
Government-Sanctioned Pyramid Schemes [Read It]
The biggest and most well-protected pyramid scheme in history is the government-sponsored scam known mistakenly as “Social Security.”
Thomas Sowell
Real Political Reform [Read It]
Looking closely at what the so-called “Campaign Finance Reform” legislation actually does shows why real reform in Congress is needed, not another “Incumbent Protection Law.”
David C. Stolinsky
Siding With the Enemy [Read It]
A certain segment of our population chooses to side with enemies whose only goal is to destroy us. Apparently it doesn’t occur to them that they wouldn’t have any of their precious freedom to disagree if those they side with are successful.
Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience [Read It]
Certainly one of the most famous essays in modern history, Thoreau’s 1848 exposition of his ideas helped change the world; it had a big influence on Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, among many others.
Walter Williams
America’s Biggest Crook [Read It]
The Enron scandal caused an uproar over corporate accounting practices, but there are much bigger crooks loose in the land. Hint: they meet in Washington D.C., in a huge domed building that millions of tourists take pictures of.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [Read It]
A few very short miscellaneous excerpts from his important book. Heavy-duty philosophy was never so much fun!
Tom Wolfe
Commencement Address at Boston University [Read It]
The well-known American author’s remarks to the graduating class of 2000 at Boston University.
THE 101 BANANAS INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED FILM STUDIES [Enter]
Various Authors
This is the temporary home of all film and movie related text files, while construction
and expansion continue on a permanent wing for the Institute at 101Bananas.com
A Collection of Great Short Stories That Are Actually Worth Reading
James Aitken — LEDERER’S LEGACY
Some great writing, both fiction and non-fiction, came out of the Vietnam war, written by veterans who served there. Though the majority of it naturally deals with combat, this particular story concerns the support troops whose workplace was an office instead of the jungle, but who didn’t like it any more than the soldiers in the field.
Sherwood Anderson — THE UNTOLD LIE
Thoreau once wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The quiet desperation, the lies people tell themselves, and the untold lies they live by, are plainly and unforgetably recounted by Anderson in this deceptively simple story from his well-known series of “Winesburg, Ohio” stories.
Arcadii Averchenko — THE YOUNG MAN WHO FLEW PAST
There are nine million stories in the naked city, and here a young man catches a glimpse of five of them as he falls past five windows. Disillusionment, love, contentment, hope, resignation, and finally, a kind of understanding—however cynical—flood his mind before his fatal encounter with the sidewalk below.
Donald Barthelme — A SHOWER OF GOLD
Some of Barthelme’s strange post-modernist writing is a little hard to decipher. This story though proves him a prescient observer of American society. Written in 1963, it concerns the artist’s relationship with society, and presages the Jerry Springer Show hilariously. Or Montel. Or Maury. Or Sally Jessie. . . .
Heinrich Böll — THE LAUGHER
It’s been said that comedians are often the saddest people in their own personal lives. Böll, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1972, tells us about a man with an unusual profession—a professional laugher, whose job it is to start a crowd laughing, but whose private life doesn’t match his public persona.
Jorge Luis Borges — THE LIBRARY OF BABEL
One of Borges’ more well-known little gems of mystical fantasy concerns an infinite library that contains every possible book that could ever be written.
Joan Brady — A VARIETY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
A royal flush at a poker game with friends leads young Alexander Simpson into a metaphysical investigation that changes his life. A delightful story about the uniqueness of every human being.
Edward.Bryant — TO.SEE
Bryant’s story is hard to describe, though it is certain a stoned hippie from the ’60s would love it. Completely unique in its style and technique, it may be related to what the Starchild experienced at the end of the movie “2001.” Or maybe not. It concerns a certain power of vision and understanding that reaches to the ends of the universe. Or something.
Anton Chekhov — THE BET
Russian author Anton Chekhov was well known for both his plays and the great short stories he wrote. In this one, a discussion about capital punishment at a dinner party leads two men to make an unusual bet that takes fifteen years to resolve.
Colette — THE OTHER WIFE
Long before “Women’s Lib,” Colette wrote from a unique woman’s perspective on relationships between men and women. This story shows her insight and understanding of the unspoken motivations and unconscious feelings that control even the best of marriages.
Marco Denevi — A DOG IN DÜRER’S ETCHING “THE KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL”
A tour de force of creative imaginative writing; a meditation on what the writer imagines to be the story behind the story of a famous Albrecht Dürer engraving. It may require a little patience—it consists of one single long, long sentence—but great writing is always worth the time and effort it takes to read it.
Jack.Finney — OF MISSING.PERSONS
Every year thousands of people just disappear and are never found or heard from again. Finney, author of the classics Invasion of the Body.Snatchers and Time and.Again, tells us what really happens to many of these people who simply disappear without a trace.
F. Scott Fitzgerald — THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ
One of Fitzgerald’s earliest stories, this one is obviously a pure fantasy, and has a theme that would recur in his later work. A middle-class young man enters the insular and amoral world of the super-rich and falls in love with the daughter of the richest man in the world—a man who lives on a mountain that is one huge solid diamond.
E. M. Forster — THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE
What’s it all about, Alfie? Why the incessant struggle to accomplish more, to acquire more, to just keep going without knowing where you’re headed? Forster’s memorable little parable reminds us that life doesn’t consist merely of a mad dash for “success” or “progress,” however one defines those terms.
Yael.Goldstein — WHEN.SKEPTICS.DIE
A chance meeting of old acquaintances on a New York street in the rain leads two women into a long conversation that gets to the heart of the nature and power of belief and faith.
Davis.Grubb — WHERE THE. WOODBINE.TWINETH
Alfred Hitchcock used this spooky little story for an episode on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965. It would have also been perfect for The Twilight Zone. This one might make you pause a second the next time a young child tells you that the imaginary characters they talk to, and the dolls and toys they play with, are really real.
William Fryer Harvey — AUGUST HEAT
This would have to be called a horror story, for lack of a better classification, with a tinge of the supernatural. Oppressive heat has been known to drive men mad. . . . and if you ever see your own name on a tombstone . . . run!
Nathaniel Hawthorne — THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL
The author of The Scarlet Letter is known for his dark, psychologically probing fiction. This arresting tale, one of his early efforts, may be a little too obvious with its symbolism, but like all great authors Hawthorne had the ability to make whatever he wrote compelling and memorable.
Hermann Hesse — THE POET
Hesse’s popularity was greatly revived by the ’60s counter-culture, who took his novels Siddhartha and Steppenwolf to heart. This story of a Chinese poet’s life-long devotion to his art is sort of a zen parable on the relationship between art and life.
W..Hilton.Young — THE CHOICE
This very short story asks a simple question: if you could travel into the future and then return, would you want to remember what you saw there? Are you sure?
Shirley Jackson — THE LOTTERY
Jackson’s modern gothic horror masterpiece is a very well-known and widely reprinted story. If you’ve never read this one, read it now. The ending sneaks up on you like that huge boulder chasing Indiana Jones downhill.
James Joyce — A PAINFUL CASE
Joyce’s grim portrait of a cynical man who was an “outcast from life’s feast” takes its title from a newspaper article about the death of a woman who once had a close relationship with the man. But the irony of the title is apparent by the end of the story, when one is forced to ask: who was really more of a “painful case,” the man or the woman?
Franz Kafka — A COUNTRY DOCTOR
Kafka was a strange person, and wrote some strange novels and short stories. The dream-like telling of the country doctor’s tale, which appears to be a dream itself, can also be seen, like much of Kafka’s work, as a parable of the artist in an uncaring society.
Franz Kafka — FIRST SORROW
This very short story is typically strange and Kafkaesque, and concerns a trapeze artist who lives up on his trapeze twenty-four hours a day.
Franz Kafka — A HUNGER ARTIST
This is one of Kafka’s best known stories. It appeared long before “performance art” was ever around, but sounds as if it could be describing a current art “happening.” What is an artist’s responsibility to society, and what is society’s responsibility to an artist?
Harry Kemelman — THE NINE MILE WALK
Sherlock Holmes would have loved Professor Nicky Welt, who in this story solves a murder he didn’t even know happened. Beginning with a supposedly random spoken sentence—“A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain.”—he demonstrates how a string of logical inferences can be made from the remark, which leads to a startling conclusion.
Rudyard Kipling — THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF
A fable, a bedtime story, a tall tale; Kipling’s story explains why cats are such independent creatures, but such experts at ingratiating themselves with humans that they get themselves fed, housed, and pampered for free.
Bernard Malamud — THE JEWBIRD
Who ever heard of a talking crow who says his name is Schwartz and claims to be Jewish? Malamud, a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, applies humor to his typically Jewish characters, and turns them into representatives of the whole human condition.
Alan E. Mayer — BAD LUCK
One of the shortest short stories you’ll ever read in your life, this one contains only fifty-five words—and a surprise ending to boot. Some people have all the bad luck.
Herman Melville — BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
Bartleby is certainly one of the more memorable characters in American literature, a source of endless fascination and discussion regarding his motives—or lack thereof. You’ll never get Bartleby’s famous credo, “I prefer not to,” out of your head. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”
Herman Melville — THE LIGHTNING-ROD MAN
Melville had a knack for creating strange characters. The lightning-rod man, though apparently based on a preacher Melville was familiar with, will also remind you of a modern fast-talking salesman, desperate to pressure you into buying his wares.
Yukio Mishima — THE PRIEST OF SHIGA TEMPLE AND HIS LOVE
The author of many stories and novels, including The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, Mishima committed ritual Japanese suicide with a sword at the age of forty-five in 1970. In this story a great and noble priest, who seemed to have successfully renounced the world and its pleasures, is undone by a chance meeting’s momentary glance at a woman of overpowering beauty.
Yukio Mishima — SWADDLING CLOTHES
A baby born in the most dismal of circumstances causes a sensitive woman to contemplate what his poor life could turn out to be in twenty years. And those twenty years pass so fast!
Vladimir Nabokov — A MATTER OF CHANCE
Nabokov is best known for his novel Lolita, but he also wrote many wonderful short stories. His son Dmitri has said that one of the themes in his father’s stories is his “contempt for cruelty—the cruelty of humans, the cruelty of fate.” There is no better example of the “cruelty of fate” than this short story.
Tim.O’Brien — HOW TO.TELL A TRUE.WAR STORY
O’Brien is the author of some of the best non-fiction (If. I Die In a.Combat Zone) and also some of the best fiction (Going After.Cacciato and The Things.They Carried) to come out of the Vietnam war. This piece is one brilliant chapter from The Things.They Carried that stands quite well on its own as a work of short fiction.
Flannery O’Connor — A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
A Southern writer who died young at the age of thirty-nine, O’Connor was a devout Catholic whose style and subject-matter gave many the false impression that she had a rather dark vision of humanity. The title of this story could also be its theme, as an escaped killer known simply as “The Misfit” encounters a family in a car accident on their way to a vacation in Florida.
Octavio Paz — THE BLUE BOUQUET
This little grotesquery of a story, by the 1990 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, reminds one of a mini-nightmare. A man has a close brush with disaster when accosted by a machete-wielding man trying to please his girlfriend, who wants a bouquet. A bouquet of blue eyes!
Sylvia Plath — JOHNNY PANIC AND THE BIBLE OF DREAMS
If prizes were given for titles of stories, this would be a contender for first place. Plath’s life and suicide at age 31 are well known, as is her first novel, The Bell Jar. This story belongs on the same shelf of honor with Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with which it shares a quite similar theme.
Edgar Allan Poe — THE TELL-TALE HEART
If “Casablanca” is the quintessential American movie, this famous tale of Poe’s is the quintessential American horror story. A sense of guilt does strange things to the human mind.
Alain Robbe-Grillet — THE SECRET ROOM
One would be hard-pressed to argue the point that this is not really a “short story.” An unusual piece of creative writing, is it the beginnings of a screenplay for a movie, a description of a painting, an imaginary scene, or . . . what?
Tom Robbins — THE PURPOSE OF THE MOON
The author of the classic pop novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues muses in his inimitable way on an imaginary doomed romance between Vincent van Gogh and Marilyn Monroe, ponders the purpose of the moon, and wonders who knows how to make love stay.
Irwin Shaw — THE GIRLS IN THEIR SUMMER DRESSES
Ah, the simple sensuous joy of watching all those girls flutter by in their summer dresses! Men tend to be inveterate voyeurs, and Shaw captures perfectly the irresistible impulse to look at every pretty woman in sight—even if you’re with your wife.
Isaac Bashevis Singer — GIMPEL THE FOOL
Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. Like Bernard Malamud, much of his fiction deals with Jewish characters and themes. Gimpel may have been a “fool,” but the wisdom of fools and their simple belief and conviction sometimes exhibit a deeper understanding of life than that of a jaded skeptic.
James Thurber — THE BAT WHO GOT THE HELL OUT
One of Thurber’s little parables. This is a very short one about a young bat who decides to get the hell out of the bat cave and join the human race. Some humans aren’t the best representatives of the species though, and the bat quickly learns his lesson.
James Thurber — THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
Not too many stories are so well-known that they’ve become part of the American cultural landscape. Thurber’s beloved classic about an affable daydreamer with a very active imagination is one of them. “Walter Mitty” is even listed in some dictionaries, and a Hollywood movie was made from Thurber’s story several years after it was published.
Leo Tolstoy — THE THREE HERMITS
Tolstoy, the famed Russian author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, converted to a radical, pacifist Christianity late in life. This story perfectly summarizes the profound difference between a showy public appearance of piety versus a private, genuine godliness.
John Updike — A & P
No one has ever described so succinctly and comically the attitude and demeanor of teen-age adolescents like Updike does here. If a young James Dean had worked in a supermarket, this could be his story, but his grand heroic gesture doesn’t turn out quite like the script of “Rebel Without A Cause.”
E. B. White — THE DOOR
How often have you heard modern life described as “a rat-race”? White’s nightmarish little tale, very unlike anything else he ever wrote, is a dark, hopeless, dream-like subjective view of the world—from the rat’s point of view.
Thomas Wolfe — ONLY THE DEAD KNOW BROOKLYN
Wolfe isn’t known as a comic writer; his more well-known serious novels are Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again. But this little slice of Americana would make a hilarious piece if read aloud as a performance by someone with a strong Brooklyn accent. Just imagine the scene actually happening on a Brooklyn street as you read it. “Oh yeah?” “Yeah!”
Émile Zola — COMPLEMENTS
Somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek story in the tradition of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” though not quite as outrageous, this story could (almost) be true. It has an insight into the female psyche that women may not like, but cannot deny.
Pamela Zoline — THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE
When Glen Campbell sang something about “the dreams of the everyday housewife,” he wasn’t thinking about a woman like Sarah Boyle, the protagonist of Zoline’s unusual, widely-praised story. Have some theoretical physics along with your morning bowl of Cheerios.