The Strange Recital

"When the bombing started, J.T. Carter was deep in the bowels of a bank in Baltimore with a video camera on his shoulder, capturing, cinema verité, the mundane fate of everyone's rent check."   Desert Storm, 1991. And more foreign wars to follow. At home, we live our safe American lives full of domestic tedium and drama. Here is one man's story.

"The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Château de Lourps, had originally been a family of stalwart troopers and stern cavalry men. Closely arrayed, side by side, in the old frames which their broad shoulders filled, they startled one with the fixed gaze of their eyes, their fierce moustaches and the chests whose deep curves filled the enormous shells of their cuirasses."   This 1884 French novel exemplifies the Decadence literary movement and influenced Oscar Wilde. Join us to explore a style of writing from a time and place so unlike our own.

"Ibn Zakarya was born in the western mountains of Persia, when silk merchants from the east still plied their trade. Even as a half-naked child playing in a dust, he proved himself a prodigy, scratching the shape of the moon in the yellow earth."   A tale of ancient deserts where the boundary between science and magic is blurred. A young man's genius is not always valued. What exactly is "wisdom"?

"When he was fifteen Fabian saw the film The 39 Steps, which had just come out. He liked to say that this film was a turning-point in his life. It was an epiphany for him. As he left the cinema he knew that he wanted to make films."   An excerpt from a new novel in which characters invent other characters, and events are both magical and real. What is authorship? Who's in charge here, anyway?  

"More than thirty years ago occurred the first of the series of remarkable events I am about to relate. The exact date I can not recall; but it was in November, and, to those familiar with November weather in the Ohio Valley, it is hardly necessary to state that the month is one of possibilities."   The gloomy beginning of a strange Victorian novel...a man alone in a lamp lit room on a stormy night. But is he really alone? Where will this night lead?

"Last night I took the riverside walk for the first time in longer than I care to remember. Nothing much had changed. Homeless men and women were still spending the night on municipal benches. Some were asleep; they breathed noisily, or moaned."   Who is this person who walks in the dark hours? Is his city the same as yours? In all temporal planes, humans carry on with lives both harsh and gentle.

"The first time I saw the animal, I'll admit I was tired. It was late at night and I had been drinking at a moderate pace for several hours. The animal could have been anything, the way it flashed across the room, and I was too slow to get a good look at it." Something has invaded your home. Yes, it's real. Surely you can trust your own perceptions, right? But...is the thing changing?

"The voice asked at Eddie Tomlinson's elbow, 'Is this seat free?' Eddie nodded, and hardly looking around, picked up his hat which he had carelessly put on the seat at his side. Then he went back to his contemplation of the wooded hills through which the train was threading its way." In the 1950's, two men meet on a train...are they strangers or friends? One day, each of their worlds had drastically changed. So much was lost. Are their memories wrong?

"Everyone just wants to be loved a bit more than everyone else. See me and not my brothers, my sisters, my bandmates. Love me and not my kid. Feel my sadness."   A dead rock star faces his life on a journey home. A lonely fan from the mountains does the same. Paul Smart reads from his novel OVERLOOK, and talks about its origins.

"Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and the diner was instantly in utter blackness. There was a palpable sensation of absence in the air, a sort of death as all electrical vibration in the city ceased in one instant."   A nighttime commuter encounters a hitchhiker in a New Jersey diner, but it's no ordinary meeting. Who is this odd traveler, and what changes will be wrought by his hypnotic powers?

"Valentine Basilevich Glass, native of Vyborg, accountant in the bureau of administration of the Leningrad Parks of Culture and Rest, led a number of unrelated lives. Whereas most people were trapped by the web of Soviet bureaucracy, he reveled in its complexity and quirkiness, finding in the course of his work numerous loopholes which he impressed in his memory, an unconscious act much like anticipating an annoying scratch on a phonograph record."   Two very short stories about unusual men. Or are they stories about the culture? Or are they stories about you and me and the ways we make meaning? This episode may or may not have the answers. Also, have you ever broken the fourth wall?

"Their flight was routine, cruising at forty thousand feet, at a speed of five hundred and eighty miles an hour with the wind behind them. There was some turbulence as Malarkey began the descent and Abdul switched on the seatbelt signs. They pierced the clouds and lost visibility. Then they lost radio contact." Two friends face an inexplicable situation. How did they arrive in this primitive place? Can they bluff their way to safety? Maybe they're actually facing themselves.

"Elzy woke to cold, the scent of cold, of snow, of tent fabric. The coldness felt good on her hot skin. Confusion. She wasn't in her room…? The child fell asleep again before she could figure it out. Nothing seemed worth thinking through. Her head hurt. Her chest hurt."   As a child, she survived a world-changing event. As an adult, is it time for her to leave isolation behind, to more fully join the new society? An excerpt from a new novel about a potential future.

"Cheek to the cold floor, thick sole on my back, I began to sense my place in this moment in history. I had thought I was playing the hero, arriving just in time to save my mom, when I was put in a chokehold, thrown to the ground and tasered in the groin."   A young Winston Smith faces a dramatic cultural shift: lockdowns, masks, surveillance, riots. "How did we get here?" he wonders, in a new satirical novel that looks back at the last four years. Can this story end more happily than Orwell's?

"'Like life, a watch provides complications to keep it interesting.' Watanabe sat cross-legged on a low stage while we sat packed around him, students at the feet of a high-art Socrates, all leaning forward to hear his surprisingly delicate voice."   A luxury accessory that might, or might not, kill its owner. Does high risk mean high status? How does an ad man sell such a thing? Or is it all a hoax? A new novel explores the dark side of wealth culture.

"The heat had been painfully oppressive all day, and it was now a close and sultry night.... It was nearly midnight when the servant locked the garden-gate behind me. I walked forward a few paces on the shortest way back to London, then stopped and hesitated."   Who is the mysterious woman encountered on the road so late at night? Here's an atmospheric introduction to a classic Victorian novel, followed by a discussion of its author.

"A.J. Campbell lowered the folded newsprint to his lap. His heart fishtailed and he struggled to breathe. This thing he had just read was an impossibility."   A man discovers that private episodes from his life have been published as fiction by a stranger. Who is this story-thief? And what can be done to make it stop? Listen to this sample of a new novel called A Book with No Author.

"I have endeavoured to present the public with accounts of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, and of his singular intelligence, his vigour and his courage. He often joked with me that his great fame was due solely to my embellishments..." Dr. Watson at last reveals a never-before-told adventure in which Holmes faces a challenge he couldn't have imagined. What are the limits of the world's most logical mind?

"Ed Marks woke from another dream about his wife. She'd been standing in front of him, wearing a white gown that rippled in a breeze he couldn't feel. In her arms she held a baby, too small and raw-looking to be alive."    A man can't sleep. He's alone in the night. What is that sound, forever repeating from the dark woods? It has to be silenced at all costs.

"Wheels of a Delta 88 spin fast on winter-ravaged Upstate roadways. Fallow fields, half-encrusted in snow, the rest furrowed in frozen field-rot and iced-over mud, unfurl themselves on either side of a moonlit ridge."   March 1986. Richard Manuel of The Band doesn't know he's dead. His double drives the lonely Catskills backroads. What are they seeking? Will they come together in Woodstock?

"The beautiful girl, my own girlfriend, lay on her back, needle in her hand. Her arm tied up with her underwear, pulled tightly with her teeth. She was unconscious."    What if art in a gallery could show us a dying person's inner experience? Would we learn anything? A photographer who chases death tells his story.

"The first time Ava saw Angelo naked was on their wedding night (11 May 1860) when he strode into their bedroom, accidentally revealing to her startled eyes that from the waist down he had the hindquarters of a stallion." How should a young woman feel about her new husband's true nature? Horses are good! This excerpt from an award-winning novel uses warmth, humor, and magic to launch a multi-generational saga about a free-thinking artist.

"Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered. So was old age. Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers." How to make our future a paradise! In 1962, Vonnegut applied his double-edged imagination to the challenge. Does this story still apply today?

"She ran through the neighborhood; she had to find Ivan. She entered the synagogue, quickly covering her head. Instead of going directly up to the balcony she disobeyed the mechitza law that men and women should be separated, and went straight to the main floor of the sanctuary and stood beside him."   A young woman faces life in a new land. What does it mean when she experiences strange visions in an odd, forbidden structure?

"Nathan Byrne walked up the steps of the police station and stopped before the polished steel and glass doors. An icy wind swept past him, sending debris flying down the street."   A detective is facing a major life change, but he doesn't know it yet. Sometimes a mystery goes much deeper than just catching a killer.

“'I don't know, Goddamnit!' It's the only thing Willy's sure of, and he keeps shouting it at the cop. In the dark room, a spotlight is burning his eyes down to the sockets. It's a basement of sorts, the ceiling a crisscross of piping and duct work, industrial grey and dark green."   Where memory should be: a black hole. Is there any hope? A man's struggle with addiction can't be kept secret when it threatens to destroy his family.

Something different for this episode! What kind of strange correspondence comes in to The Strange Recital mailbox? Here's a sampling. But wait... is there a story here somewhere?

"Propelled silently by his frog feet, the diver floated toward his destination. There was no light, except for the murky beam from his waterproof torch. He couldn't be sure he was going the right way."   A late-career secret agent... is this his last mission? Is he expendable? And who are these mysterious enemies anyway? What would you do if you had a chance to make a new start?

"The pack had quickly come to feel like part of her body. She could forget its weight, take its contents for granted, and if she wanted to bushwhack up an interesting-looking ridge, or hop into somebody's horse cart at a road crossing, everything she needed simply came with her automatically. She and her teacher were free as turtles, needing nothing for shelter but their persons."   The future. A young woman travels with her mentor through a time when ninety percent of humans are gone, yet nature thrives. What will she learn? Can a new world be a better world?

"Snorri cackled and sucked at his teeth. The wind blasted across the lake, cutting the snow into sharp ridges. He hurled instructions at me as if he were whipping a husky, and I spun the wheel according to Snorri's command. Our tires rolled off the beach onto the thick ice cap that froze over the lake in winter, clods of snow drumming the floorboard from underneath like the rapping of the dead."   A Scandinavian murder mystery... but much more. A rollicking ride with vividly-drawn misfits through wintry desolation, quirky cop-work, and postmodern Viking derring-do!

"It was on my last shift cleaning bathrooms at the Pizza Port, just before I told the manager I was quitting, when I found the wallet in one of the stalls... The picture on the license was exotic. He wore a turban, had thick tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and sported a flat gold chain with an amulet. Some kind of Arab sheik with Mafia ties?"   A hapless ex-real estate agent stumbles into an adventure that might be life-changing... if it's not life-ending. An excerpt from a new collection of novellas and stories.

"'Are you serious?—do you really believe that a machine thinks?' I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals in the grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker till they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow."   A prescient nineteenth-century classic explores topics that are timely today, and even ventures into timeless questions about life and consciousness, all with a dark Gothic atmosphere. The story is followed by a discussion that veers into murky depths!

"Ahhh, the soothing sounds of the Chainsaw Americans. You can hear them, less than a quarter of a mile away, marching up the avenue. Thousands of them, buzzing in unison. Louder than a flock of Harleys."   Doesn't it feel great to be part of a movement? To wield a noisy power tool with wicked steel teeth? You can join the march as soon as you walk the dog! 

"Someone had once said that it was the hour when God walked in the garden. It was at any rate the time when everything begins to breathe again after the long hot hours in which life is suspended...."   An eccentric elderly woman hires a younger man to tend her wild Greek garden. Here's the opening chapter of a compelling, intelligent novel about relationships, aging, and nature -- plus a great discussion afterward.

"Reverend Halvar Ingegaard rose to begin his sermon. In a shot, he was off in his maniacal style, telling of the giant skeletons and the Truth of Salvation apparent all around us. He spoke quickly then slowly, but always loud, loud, loud, thumping the pulpit, his blows deadened by the weight of the Bible beneath his fists."   A boy's life is changed when something strange is found on the family farm. Is "truth" just another belief system? Maybe we need to examine our own.

"A mutilated beggar appeared at my taxi window. He seemed no more than a teenager, but it was hard to see past the heavy scarring on his face. Half his lower jaw was missing, teeth exposed. Both arms ended like sausages just below the elbows. His voice was slurred, but youthful and polite. 'Excuse me, sir. I am crippled. Please help.'"   A young man encounters worlds he's never known. How does a venture into a foreign culture send your life on a different track? Do you have a choice? Maybe there's no going back.

"Morning came like any other. Alphonse was awake, uncertain if he had slept. He could hear the lonely song of a bird as the sky filled with gloomy light and the few remaining splintered trees were revealed, beautiful as the skeletons of ghosts."   Two men whose fates are entangled in someone's story, but whose? What events lead us to where we are now, and to the self we have become?  

"As the applause that had accompanied the hero to the podium began to fade, he lifted a hand to stop it. 'When you're making up your narrative as you go,' he began humbly, 'you may develop whole sections of action and dialog for one purpose, only to change your mind later on...'"   Two very short stories... do they share a common theme? Where do stories come from, anyway? Can creativity be accidental?

"Henry mashed his cigarette into a tinfoil ashtray. It was full of tar-stinking butts. He crumpled the ashtray closed and, squirming against the passenger door, stuffed the smoldering lump into his jeans like a carcinogenic pocket warmer." Three guys drive into the mountains. Then they dig a hole. Why would a young man flirt with death? Where will it lead?

"The trouble started when he went for a walk. Or perhaps it had started earlier with the cup of coffee he drank just before going out. It wasn't so much the coffee as the milk, but that had not seemed important at the time."   A chilly walk in the woods... an unusual stranger... has something gone wrong with time, or is it always like this?

"Howling and half-naked in his torn and bloody clothing Fargo is a desperate man and dangerous to himself and others. He ricochets around his kitchen, heaving furniture into the street."   What does a man do when he reaches the very limit of himself? Can there ever be a way back? New York City or the world, livin' ain't easy.

"Isobel Harper wakes to the dream. The images come back in her waking hours like still frames of cinema noir, the camera shots collapsing and superimposing upon each other: A girl's silent scream caught in the glare of a street light. A man's fist poised at a door."   A child's mind captures snapshots of trauma. What are the long-term effects? Does memory turn our lives into movies?

"I'm dreaming, was my first thought. My body had risen weightless into the air, helped by the movements I'd made, like swimming; the cold night air blew chill on my cheeks and ruffled my hair." Is it a story about poverty and brutality, or about magic and wonder? Wartime Athens gets a unique treatment in this excellent translation from Greek.

"When Arnie Beers woke one morning to find a sign planted on his front lawn, he was amused.  He chuckled as he pulled the sign's flimsy posts out of the ground and held it up for his wife to see from the picture window."   Sometimes, unknown beings do inexplicable things. Who? Why? What happens inside yourself when you have no answers?

"Chopped into triangles by the superstructure of the bridge, the sun strobed as he accelerated across the span. On and off the sun flashed; the sunlight splintered and exploded."   If you're driving with eyes closed, steered by a psychic, what's your story? Will love last? We may never know.

"Whenever I arrive, it's the wrong time. No one has to tell me. The right time is a few minutes earlier or later. Invariably I arrive at the wrong time in the wrong place. Wherever I am, it is the wrong place."   Whose voice is speaking? Is it yours? Mine? In the real world, can anything ever be just right? 

"From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind."   What is wrong with the people of Pikeville? Ed might be the only one who's alarmed. Should he speak up or stay quiet?

"Sophia parted the curtains of maroon velour and ducked into the room... She was greeted on the other side by Françoise, whose stout hand proffered a glass of hot tea... It was brewed from a blend of black leaves and mushrooms, picked under the light of the full moon by Françoise's gnarled fingers, somewhere outside Paris, or so it was said."   A young woman takes a life-changing journey. Where is this place? Is it really a place, or is it something else?

"In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. Somebody is living in the Louvre, certain of the messages would say. Or in the National Gallery. Naturally they could only say that when I was in Paris or in London."   A woman's lone voice speaks to us from a house on a remote beach. Is she mad, or is she really the only person left on earth?

"The world's greatest magician did not like Cherbourg, and he did not like waiting. Huddled beneath his woolen overcoat, Perjos stared at the gray English Channel awaiting the blast that would announce the first boarding call for the S.S. Rotterdam." It's 1922, the era of Houdini and Conan Doyle. Where are the boundaries between mind, body, and spirit? Sample a novel that asks "What is magic?"

"Luck has bad breath. That's what the Schwartzbear said, before they carried him out feet first. Billy was still on his feet the day he got out. He'd done hard time and more solitary than most and had no luck."   Prison life is cruel. Then you're out on the hard streets of the city. What's next? Can you let friendship change your world?