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Teddy: An Introduction

May 15

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Essays, Stories | No Comments

The Pool

Back in my college days, I was often bored by my classwork, so I spent a lot of time hiding out in the stacks of the library, reading my ass off. I first met Teddy (formally Theodore McArdle) there, hiding from my responsibilities, my student loan debt, myself. Precocious child Teddy was, for sure. But still, he had that other-worldly wisdom practically dripping from him, so there was no way I could ignore the boy.

I didn’t really know what to make of him. Some of the things he said—about getting out of the finite dimensions, about some crazy thing called Vedantism, about vomiting up the “apple”–seemed ridiculous, seemed like the make-believe world of a 10-year-old boy with an active, vivid, intellectual imagination. At first, in short, I wrote the damn kid off.

But.

Being in the library anyway, I decided to delve into all those things they had stacked on all those shelves. Books, magazines, newspapers. Found everything I could on Vedantism and other Eastern philosophies. I read all the Salinger stories I could find, even the uncollected ones.

After all this extensive research, I came back to Teddy with a mind that had been grenade-blown wide open. With this new perspective, I could see that what he was saying was absolutely TRUE. It was NOT some fanciful fabrication of a hyper-intelligent kid. It was pure and beautiful truth.

You know that whole thing Teddy says about… oh, wait. You’ve met Teddy, haven’t you? Oh, no? Well, you probably should…….


[MP3 audio file below. I know the quality of the audio in the YouTube vid isn't great--it's because of the multiple conversions of the low-fi MP3 file.]

“A few years ago, I published an exceptionally Haunting, Memorable, unpleasantly controversial, and thoroughly unsuccessful short story about a “gifted” little boy aboard a transatlantic liner….” – Buddy Glass, J.D. Salinger’s (most obvious) alter-ego.

There are a bunch of great essays on the web about Salinger’s “exceptionally Haunting, Memorable, unpleasantly controversial, and thoroughly unsuccessful short story about a “gifted” little boy aboard a transatlantic liner,” “Teddy.”

Such as:

Orange Peels and Apple-Eaters: Buddhism in J.D. Salinger’s Teddy by Tony Magagna

Along This Road Goes No One: Salinger’s “Teddy” and the Failure of Love by Anthony Kaufman

Salinger’s Teddy by Charles Deemer

The Grass Before It Was Green by Leslie English

What’s Up With the Ending? on something called Shmoop.com

Teddy McArdle – Character Analysis on Shmoop

Professor Phillip Schultz in the Writers Studio’s CraftClass on “Teddy” and Salinger (Audio)

This being the case, I don’t really want to re-hash anything that these other fine essays have already gotten into. I’ll just reiterate for the uninitiated (and if you’re one, shame on ya) that Teddy McArdle, the “gifted” little boy mentioned above, advocates a Vedantic view of the world which espouses an unemotional approach to life. He (and it) champions the abandonment of desire–sexual, financial, and material– as a path to spiritual enlightenment. This is emphasized in the story by other characters’ obsessions with name-brand things: Leicas, and Gladstones, and Eastern-seaboard regimental outfits, and Ivy League educations. Teddy believes that a focus on these things prevents a person from making spiritual progress (by meditation) which eventually allows the person to become one with God, whereby that person would then stop the cycle of reincarnation and spend eternity in perfect bliss.

The main issue of contention about the story is its rather abrupt, controversial ending: What, exactly, happened? Did Teddy commit suicide? Did his kid sister push him into an empty pool? Did he push his sister into a full pool?

Here’s the exact concluding text:

“At D Deck the forwardship stairway ended, and Nicholson stood for a moment, apparently at some loss for direction. However, he spotted someone who looked able to guide him. Halfway down the passageway, a stewardess was sitting on a chair outside a galleyway, reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. Nicholson went down to her, consulted her briefly, thanked her, then took a few additional steps forwardship and opened a heavy metal door that read: TO THE POOL. It opened onto a narrow, uncarpeted staircase.

He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream–clearly coming from a small, female child. It was highly acoustical, as though it were reverberating within four tiled walls.”

What I’d like to discuss is something that I haven’t seen written about elsewhere (if anyone else has please point me to it): Saint George and the Dragon. It’s mentioned in the story in a rather inconspicuous way. Specifically:

“Teddy passively looked up from his newspaper, but the woman had passed, and he didn’t look back. He went on reading. At the end of the passageway, before an enormous mural of Saint George and the Dragon over the staircase landing…”

It’s just mentioned in passing like that, with no apparent significance whatsoever to the plot. However, I don’t think it would be there if it had absolutely no meaning. The fact that Salinger mentions this detail at all seems to me like the man put it there for a reason. Perhaps even a big reason.

So, who is this Saint George fella and what’s the deal with the dragon? Turns out, it’s a legend. And, like all good legends, there’s a kick-ass lesson behind it. From Wikipedia:

“The town (Silene) had a pond, as large as a lake, where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it a sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery.

It happened (one time) that the lot fell on the king’s daughter. The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.

Saint George by chance rode (his horse) past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain.

The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross, charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle, and he put it around the dragon’s neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash. She and Saint George led the dragon back to the city of Silene, where it terrified the people at its approach. But Saint George called out to them, saying that if they consented to become Christians and be baptized, he would slay the dragon before them.

The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George slew the dragon, and the body was carted out of the city on four ox-carts. “Fifteen thousand men baptized, without women and children.” On the site where the dragon died, the king built a church to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George, and from its altar a spring arose whose waters cured all disease.”

It is my belief that Salinger’s purpose for the story (which he admits was a failure, per the quote above) was to convert a large percentage of Americans into a Vedantic (or at least anti-materialistic) view of life. American Consumerism is the dragon, Teddy is Saint George, and the pool is the spring whose waters cure all disease coming from the worship of money and materialism — by being the cause of Teddy’s death. (Water is generally regarded as a symbol of life in stories or poems.)

It is also my belief that Teddy did actually die because, like all good prophets, his death was required for his cause to live eternally.

“Teddy” first appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1953. The context of the culture at that time was that television was beginning its ascent to media domination in post-War America, as more and more households turned away from radio programming to get their entertainment needs met. This is also–as a way to subsidize that entertainment–the time when Madison Avenue advertising companies began to commodify the American Dream as something you can purchase at your local retailer. (This is currently being dramatized on Mad Men.) If you just purchase the right brand of laundry detergent, the right brand of car, the right brand of cigarettes, the American Dream can be yours. No spiritual advancement required!

Living in the aftermath of those early, lying-for-profit efforts, in a hyper-materialistic, puddle-deep, attention-deficit, drug-addicted America, I’d have to agree with Mr. Salinger that this story, sadly, was an abject failure.

Maybe that’s why the guy wouldn’t come out from his dark hole prior to his passing. He couldn’t bear the light of truth that what post-War America has become is one non-stop corporate gang bang.

*********

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:57 — 47.6MB)

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What Were YOU Doing in the Middle Nineties?

Apr 10

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 1 Comment

Jumping

Feet and knees together when you hit the ground.

“A Car Crash of Sorts”: The Story Behind the Story

The setting of “Car Crash” came pretty easily to me, as I was, indeed, a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division on Fort Bragg, North Carolina in the middle nineties. Despite my insane amount of beer-guzzling and mini-thins-ingesting, I still managed to stay thin, meet girls, and have laughter-soaked adventures.

I wanted to write a story that captured the essence of polar opposites interacting with each other in subtle ways. That’s how I often felt living the barracks life back then. It felt like the weird aftermath of a collision of two worlds, like some swirling, adrenalized half-memory that needed to be sorted out but that never really could be. There was madness within the external order of life at Bragg for a paratrooper in the middle nineties, a kind of intense raging necessary for someone who was trained daily on how to exterminate human life. That much was clear.

It was a time that still allowed for some ignorance, as the Internet was a baby and Google and WikiPedia hadn’t been born yet. It allowed the space for midnight musings while falling asleep on the slim wooden bench inside a deuce-and-a-half, the time to ponder beneath the mounted 60, and the dimension to begin becoming what only you could become.

Essentially, it was a time and place and dimension that begged to be written about.

“We hear you’re some kinda writer, Specialist. That true?” one of my First Sergeants had asked me, once.

Half hungover, leaning on the Pepsi machine, can in my hand, I shrugged.

“You gonna write about us?”

“Prolly, Top.”

“Get in the Harley, Specialist. I’ll be back in 2 hours.”

*

So, anyway, here’s my first salvo of an attempt to capture some of the wildness and poignancy within the inevitable stories that will come from that time and that place, “A Car Crash of Sorts.”

This story is also available as an e-book at the following e-tailers:

Smashwords (Set Your Own Price–Even $0!)
Amazon (99 pennies)
Barnes and Noble (99 pennies)

Or you can watch/listen below…

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People Like Drupelets: What Kurt Vonnegut Knew About Overpopulation

Apr 3

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Essays, Stories, Vital Insights | 5 Comments

Drupelets

Written Under Duress by Frank Marcopolos, a Notorious Nothinghead

At invite-only professor parties, in the secret hallways of elk lodges, and in hushed tones in barbershops and hair salons, it’s all the rage these days for people who think they have “inside baseball” knowledge to say that we’re living in the matrix. The statement is usually followed by a haughty chuckle and a nervous smile, indicating that the speaker, while a to-be-respected possessor of arcane knowledge, is also scared shitless. And the statement is true, and scary, enough.

But before the Wachowski Brothers movie that made the concept of the matrix famous, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. had created an entire matrix-like world composed entirely of the nightmare of government-run everything. And there was only one, albeit painful, way out: The Monkey House.

Listen…

Oh, you don’t think we’re living in a world of government-run everything right now? In case you missed it, here’s the real news:

– Government Passing Forced Fluoridation Laws:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/governments-passing-forced-fluoridation-laws.html

– OBAMACARE, Nationalized Healthcare (Death Panels = Ethical Suicide Parlors):
http://www.prisonplanet.com/if-obamacare-is-ruled-constitutional-here-are-7-more-things-the-obama-administration-may-soon-require-everyone-to-purchase.html

– National Defense Authorization Act (Indefinite Detention of American Citizens for Any Reason, as Decided by the President):
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ndaa-is-washingtons-totalitarian-response-to-political-dissent-and-economic-collapse.html

– NDRP (Nationalization of ALL Aspects of the Economy Under Any Circumstance, as Decided by the President):
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-executive-order-paves-the-way-for-nationalization-of-economy.html

- The Biological Assault Against Humanity (Sterilization Through Food and Water):
http://www.prisonplanet.com/alex-jones-on-the-full-spectrum-biologicaleugenics-assault-against-humanity.html

– The Overpopulation Propaganda Revealed as Total Myth (Thought Control):
http://www.prisonplanet.com/overpopulation-myth-occupy-mao-more.html

– Consumers Ingesting Mystery Meat (Pink Slime) with Poisonous Gas:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/consumers-ingesting-mystery-meat-treated-with-poisonous-gas.html

NOTE: These links are all from one source, PrisonPlanet.com. I did that for convenience, but stories from any number of press outlets will give you the same information.

“….Practically everything was the Government….”

Here’s the thing. In movies and novels, the hero who saves the oppressive day and frees the oppressed people is always a singular person, usually with remarkable, superhuman powers. You know them: Superman, Spiderman, V from V for Vendetta, Neo in The Matrix, Billy the Poet, on and on. And the reason for this, of course, is for storytelling simplicity—it’s much easier to craft a story about 1 person defeating the forces of evil, which are usually represented 1 or 2 villainous types who are the dark counterbalance to the light of goodness the hero brings to the table.

But in order for us ALL to overcome the current, ACTUAL evil tyranny we’re oppressed by today (usually done by stealth), there’s going to have to be MILLIONS of heroes doing heroic things in their own ways every single day. The system is so wide-spread, so all-encompassing, that it’s going to take constitutionalists running for sheriff (Hunter S. Thompson did), people going to their local city council and speaking out on the issues, people protesting in the streets, people making noise online, and people doing thousands of other small things which will all, eventually, add up to resounding victory. It’s not going to be one guy in tights who will rise up to save everyone, it seems to me.

It’ll be a lot harder to write a story about, but the simple fact is, we all have to save ourselves. And the knowledge of that fact can result in one of two emotions.

- Depression: Because there is no white knight coming to save you, you might feel that the situation is completely hopeless. You buy bon bons, drink fluoride water, watch TV, and wait for the darkness.

OR

- Empowerment: Knowing you must rely on yourself and that the individual is inherently sovereign, you find a strength and power within yourself that you didn’t even know you had. You take every opportunity you can to fight the evil tyranny descending upon you with an unsurpassed energy. To your surprise and delight, you find that the resistance—fighting for what’s right according to our God-given rights—is its own glory. No matter what happens, you know you can look back on a life valiantly led, a life of courage and conviction. A life worth writing about.

And I’ll even make you a deal. If you make the Empowerment choice, send me the details of what you’re doing, and I’ll put them together into an anthology. I’ll put out a book—A Liberty Libro!—exposing the glory and high honor of these grassroots political activities.

But either way, ultimately, the choice is up to you. It’s really no big deal. It’s only something that the fate of all of humanity depends on.

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This Week in Literary Links #5

Mar 23

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | No Comments

litlinks

Literary Cuff Links

Kindle Fire May Finally Face Threat from NOOK Tablet

Review–SALUKI MAROONED

WHIRLIGIG Alum Jeff Somers Pens an Essay NoNoEdMo

WHIRLIGIG Fan Karl Wenclas Mentions The Standard

Authors Turn to Snail Mail to Reach Fans

Publishers Should Experiment with E-Book Lending Libraries

The Secret of Writing a Novel with 11 Different Endings

Authors Among Us! The Problem Writ Larger

FROM ACHILLES TO TYLER DURDEN: WHY FICTION MATTERS FOR MEN Downloaded Over 135 Times

Social Media’s Potential to Drive Book Sales

Backlash? Consumers Notice Lending Library Problems

ALMOST HOME by Frank Marcopolos Now Enrolled in KDP Select, Free for Amazon Prime Members for a Limited Time ($2.99 for Everyone Else)

Was Jack London Secretly a Gaian?

Mar 20

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories, Vital Insights | 1 Comment

Bubbles

Thin line between Heaven and here?


The knowledge of how to build a nest in a bare tree, how to fly to the wintering place, how to perform the mating dance—all of this information is stored in the reservoirs of the bird’s instinctual brain. But human beings, sensing how much flexibility they might need in meeting new situations, decided to store this sort of knowledge outside the instinctual system; they stored it in stories. Stories then…amount to a reservoir where we keep new ways of responding that we can adopt when the conventional and current ways wear out. – Robert Bly

On the tiny isle of Manhattan, there are 80 bazillion human beings prowling around trying to deal with each other, or so it seems. In response to this ant-hill madness, I had no other choice but to invent a game so clever, so sinister, and so flat-out-fun that not one of those 80 bazillion people would see it coming. Nor could they stop its eventual triumph over the minds of people everywhere. (Except people who hate fun, I guess.)

Thus began the era of “The Urban Fun Run.” The glorious rules of “TUFR” are as follows. You walk along somewhere in the crowded city, and you suddenly and without warning break out into a run as fast and hard and far as you want, dodging street-walkers and mailboxes alike. To improve things, you can up the Danger Quotient by running across light-changing streets, dodging traffic, and trying to squeeze through precarious bio-traffic, such as slack-jawed tourists and fanged pit bulls.

Pretty sweet, right? And yet, somehow, incredibly, it gets even better!

TUFR was working (and does work) pretty well to increase the Fun Factor of a boring day in Gotham. But I knew I needed to come up with something better, something bigger. Something that could be sold to ESPN as the Next Big Thing in Sporting Hijinks.

The idea factory that is my brain then came up with this golden nugget: The Urban Fun Run Olympiad!

The Olympiad is essentially the same as The Urban Fun Run, but with the following differences. First, it’s a competition, with many participants. Second, each participant would wear a GPS-enabled bracelet, with a beeping alarm thingamajig on it. There would be three or four “runs” scheduled of various lengths in one day. The participants know in advance the order of the runs and the lengths, but they don’t know when they will start. So, as the day begins, you just start walking along anywhere in Manhattan, or any urban area. At some point, your bracelet beeps and this signals the beginning of the first race. You run as straight as possible until your bracelet beeps again, signaling the end of the race. You have no idea what place you finish in. Then you continue walking around, and doing whatever you want, except that you can not rest. The only “resting” allowed is buying food from street-cart vendors, if you want to. At some random moment, could be 5 minutes or 5 hours later, the bracelet goes off again, and the next race has begun. You run until the bracelet beeps, etc., etc. until all 4 races for the day are over. Finally, you go to some central location to find out how well you did.

(Now that I’ve revealed this publicly, I’m sure ESPN will be calling me any minute now. Still waiting…. waiting…)

Now, all of this running, all of this need for an escape of some kind comes from New York City’s disgusting overflow of people, buildings, pit bulls, garbage, rats, banksters, and everything else. The running events are just my completely natural reaction to it (ahem.) And it’s not just Manhattan. Want a snapshot of modern life in this beautiful country of ours? 82% of Americans live in urban areas according to 2008 estimates, as opposed to rural. (The worldwide urban rate is 50.5%.) More than 8 out of 10 of us are squashed into a metropolis, living one on top of another, commuting like canned anchovies on mass transit for hours every day. We’re all up in each other’s spaces, trapped in these tiny cages of asphalt, and smog, and blacktop, and sweltering on summer sidewalks and buried in winter snowbanks.

Yeah? So?

Yeah, so, what that means is we’ve buried Nature beneath the blacktop. As Joni Mitchell sang, we’ve paved paradise for the massive benefit of having a parking lot. We’ve lost—been severed from—our connection to Nature.

You might be thinking, “So what? Good! Nature’s really dangerous! I could die from Nature! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Save me Super-City, save me!”

Which is where “To Build a Fire” by Jack London comes in. The story is generally understood to be a Man vs. Nature story, where nature wins out due to man’s over-confidence and stupidity. (Other stories in this genre include Moby Dick by Herman Melville and “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane.) But what modern-day, evolutionary lessons about urban living can we pull from this classic story?

Take a listen…. ((I know what you’re thinking… “Frank, I don’t have 38 minutes to listen to a story! What’re you, crazy?” I hear you, I hear you. But here’s the thing. The video below is just a piece of narrative voice-over work I did with a picture of Jack London on it to make it a YouTube video. I am a voice-over professional who has a side-pocket deal with William Morris Endeavor Talent Agency. I promise you’ll enjoy it, and I even urge you not only to listen to it, but to put on over-the-ears headphones, close everything else down, sit, listen, and enjoy. Because if you don’t take 38 little minutes out of your hectic day to listen, the conversation we have in the comments section will be much more shallow. And I don’t know about you, but I prefer to go deep. Way deep. ;) Extra Special Bonus: If you listen all the way through, I will also buy you a Guinness!))

Is the story simply a warning not to travel in minus-thirty-degree weather? Or is there more to it than that? Another way to think about it is that all of the dangers lurking about in Nature are Mother Nature’s gift to us. The dangers, and the threat of those dangers, force us to sharpen our survival and surthrival skills. They make us smarter, more innovative, and just generally better. If we rubber-room our lives completely by trapping ourselves in concrete cities, we become, instead, brain-dead zombies staring at a blue light that hypnotizes us to be passive in our living rooms. We lose our essential surthrival skills. When you lose those, when you lose that edge, you die little by little, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. It’s a slow, funereal death-march corroding—rigor-mortis style—the human soul. Not good. It reminds me of one of Machiavelli’s rules: If you don’t have any enemies, make some right away. Our enemies keep us sharp, keep us passionate, keep us energized and full of vibrant life.

When we’re packed tight into overcrowded cities, cut off from both the dangers and wonders of Nature, we are robbed of one of the most basic elements of humanity—a nurturing, improving, empowering connection with the Nature that surrounds us, or is supposed to surround us. I mean, the fact that most modern cities are so flooded by artificial street lights that you can’t see most of the stars in the sky at night, for example, is quite obviously ridiculous.

But. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

There is some good news. Some people have come to the same conclusion, and they are changing their lifestyles accordingly, in ways that would make Jack London proud. For example, there is a growing number of “Gaians” in America.

I heard about this phenomenon when Michael “Collapse” Ruppert discussed it recently on Joe Rogan’s great podcast. According to Mr. Wikipedia, Gaians believe in a philosophy and ethical worldview which implies a transrational devotion to Planet Earth as a superorganism (“Gaia.”) They don’t see Nature as the enemy, as modern city planners do. Rather, it is a power to be respected, to live in harmony with. Sure, sounds hippy-dippyish, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a healthier way to live. I’m not talking about tree-hugging. I’m talking about living off the land; raising chickens; cultivating food gardens; using well water; being self-sufficient. Basically, everything you can’t do in Urbania. (Ever notice how your body deep-breath relaxes when the power goes out? How it’s almost like coming down from some weird, awful high, back to normal human life? Consider the ramifications of that.)

Others have looked more toward traditional Native American rituals and practices that have an intense respect for animal life to the point of the imitation which provides so many jokes about this ancient culture. (Maybe that’s why they had to be so savagely killed and their land stolen?)

And others still are simply moving out to the country, or to places that have more Nature than, say, New York City.

As someone who lives in Brooklyn and commutes into Manhattan this whole situation weighs on me daily. Every packed subway ride, every siren-blasted evening, every second spent idling in traffic makes me yearn for something different, something better, something more natural. Something more real. Because no matter how much Urban Fun Running I do, I am still stuck on the barren island. (For now, anyway.)

But what do you think?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:27 — 1.4MB)

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What Did Edgar Allan Poe Know About al-Qaeda?

Mar 6

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 5 Comments


The knowledge of how to build a nest in a bare tree, how to fly to the wintering place, how to perform the mating dance—all of this information is stored in the reservoirs of the bird’s instinctual brain. But human beings, sensing how much flexibility they might need in meeting new situations, decided to store this sort of knowledge outside the instinctual system; they stored it in stories. Stories then…amount to a reservoir where we keep new ways of responding that we can adopt when the conventional and current ways wear out. – Robert Bly

What does the endgame of tyranny feel like?

Liberty or Debt-Slavery?

Liberty or Debt-Slavery?

Well, we don’t have to worry about that because in America, we’re free. Heck, just look at any American coin. It says “Liberty” right there in big, friendly letters. So of course we’re free.

But it’s a big world and some other countries aren’t as stamped-on-money free as we are in America. So we might do well to truly contemplate Mr. Bly’s contention (from Iron John: A Book About Men, quoted above) that stories contain useful evolutionary adaptations that we can apply to our modern circumstances.

One example of this is Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Pit and the Pendulum.” It takes place during an era of history called “The Reign of Terror.” No, it has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. In fact, al-Qaeda didn’t even exist back then, believe it or not. The Reign of Terror, generally considered to comprise the era in France of September 1793-July 1794, came right after the onset of the French Revolution. The main conflict at the time was between rival political factions, called the Girondins and the Jacobins. The death toll of the period is estimated to be 41,594.

So, it may come as a surprise to you that terrorism is not new. And historically, the groups terrorizing people are not Arabs living in caves but control-freak, power-obsessed governments terrorizing their citizens into giving up their God-given, self-evident human liberties and rights in the name of “security.”

Huh.

That sounds a lot like the USA PATRIOT Act, now that I think about it. And those color-coded terror alerts. And non-stop media hyping of small non-events into big, scary plots luckily thwarted or barely avoided. And the TSA Brown Shirts groping your wife and children when you want to fly. And the militarization of local police. And this NDAA thingamabob that Obama signed on New Year’s Eve when everyone in America was drunk and staring at fireworks.

But.

Here’s a quarter. It says on it that I’m free, right there stamped into the metal. So I must be free. Right? Right?

So, what the end result of all of this? Can we look to Poe’s story for some clues as to how we should respond to the modern situation? Could it be that Poe was warning us about what awaits us if we continue to allow tyranny to reign the day?

Take a listen to the story, and let me know…

P.S. Edgar Allan Poe died shortly after being “cooped.” Quite free indeed.

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And you might enjoy these other stories, which also link to analysis videos:

The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway:

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Have You Changed?

Mar 1

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 9 Comments

Change Sign

Have you changed?

Most people don’t. Most people, if you knew them a decade ago and then left and came back, those people would be exactly the same. It’s weird. I’ve done that, actually, a few times over the past few years–re-connected with people I knew in college, and they are, all of them, EXACTLY the same as they were 10, 20 years ago, whatever it was.

I guess that’s natural. I guess that’s normal. I guess that’s just what people do–stay the same forever and ever, Amen.

For some reason, though, I can’t really seem to do that. I’m a living whirligig. Not the kind you put on your lawn, the OTHER meaning of a “whirligig.” Namely, something that’s always changing. That’s why I named the literary magazine I started “The Whirligig.”

But what’s even more interesting is that other people expect YOU to stay exactly the same from age 16 until your heart stops beating. First impressions and all that. And I’ve found that people tend to get pretty angry when they come to find that you’re NOT the same person you were 20 years ago. They’re mad at you for changing, for evolving, for growing.

Whenever this happens, I just shrug, think of about how weird humanity is, and move the hell on.

Have you changed significantly over the course of your life? Or do you prefer to stay the same person you were when you were 18 or 20?

Back in the Day

The whirligig before The Whirligig

This Week in Literary Links #1

Feb 24

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | No Comments

Author Raises $1 Million to Self-Publish

Pottermore: What’s Going On?

Barnes & Noble 3rd Quarter Results Not Looking Too Hot

KDP Select Free Experiment

CreateSpace File Uploading Now More Streamlined

Kindle for Android, Reading Apps, & Good E-Reader

Official Kindle App Coming to Blackberry Playbook 2.0?

Do Legacy Publishers Treat Authors Badly?

Marcia Carring Interviews Me About “The Strange Case of a Mind Shift” and “From Achilles to Tyler Durden: Why Fiction Matters for Men”

Enjoy the clickage!

A Bottleneck in Time

Feb 3

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 8 Comments

NOTE: I guess I don’t really have the ability to write blog-post-length blog posts, because whenever I try to do that, the thing gets way, way, way out of hand. So, because this is so long, I’ve recorded it on audio (above) and made a little video (below.) You can also grab the PDF version here if you want to read it that way, or print the thing out. (It’s 7 pages.) – Frank


A Bottleneck in Time

BANGBANGBANG!

“What was that?” I thought.

BANGBANGBANG!

“Oh, it’s the front door. Why is someone banging on my front door?”

BANGBANGBANG!

“Guess I better go down and see what the hell is going on.”

I opened the door. The world seemed out of joint somehow—a swirling, mad vortex awash in full-on Crazy. The sidewalk quivered, like it was made of grey and black Jell-O. A short, goatee’d, angry-looking man stood there. An even shorter woman stood behind him. “You the tenant?” the man said.

I said, “One of ‘em, yeah. Why?” The faded sky was all slush and cigarette ash blended into a gooey mix. A crisp, frigid breeze whirled bits of paper garbage around on the twisty sidewalk.

“Bob’s dead,” the man said. “Died on New Year’s Eve. We’re the new owners of this place. And it’s gonna be sold. You ask me, you got, like, maybe thirty, sixty days, tops, to collect your stuff, and be out. But it’ll be upta the new owners, o’course. What they wanna do witcha.”

“Um,” I said. “Okay? Well, my name’s Frank, by the way.” I held out my handshake hand. We shook. “In the meantime, you might want to consider, maybe, renting out the store, keeping the two tenants, and having that monthly cash flow, which will accumulate pretty nicely over time.”

“Nah,” the woman behind the man said. “We just want the casheesh. We gonna have a blow-out in Vegas, baby!” She laughed, turned, and clacked her heels against the Jell-O cement toward the curb where a late-model Camry was parked. The car swayed and swerved as if whoever was observing it was doing so through the kaleidoscope lens of a sixties-style acid trip. She opened the wavy door and disappeared inside the car.

“Yeah, we’re set on sellin’,” the goatee’d man said. He handed me a slip of paper. “Here’s my info. Mail me a check the first of the month til the place sells.”

I stood there, dumbfounded, until they drove away, back to whatever bastion they called home. The world slipped even more out of joint, and I quickly closed the door, before the entire thing collapsed into dank, smoky ruins.

I remember what I was doing before all the door-banging that Saturday quite well because I was excited by the fact that I had just finished architecting the narrative of my new novel. I was happy that with that structure in place, I could move on to the business of seriously constructing the actual scenes—y’know, the fun part of writing a novel, the actual writing of it. And then the banging came, and my mood suddenly swung 180 degrees, from joy to world-collapsing, black depression.

First of all, I actually liked my previous landlord. Now, all of a sudden, I had to digest the fact that he was no longer walking around on the planet. He was, instead, a pile of ashes in an urn somewhere. That’s more than a little depressing.

Second, I was told that I had to vacate an apartment that’s been my home for over 10 years now. As crappy as this apartment may be, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve had 10 years’ worth of personal memories here. When I started thinking about the prospect of leaving this crappy apartment that trippy Saturday afternoon, the emotions struck me, hard. Even though it had been around 300 days since I had had a drink on that Saturday, I seriously considered breaking my long streak of sobriety. It was a lightning-strike, life-changing situation after all, and normally I drowned those kinds of events in alcohol—as an attempt to kill them. I mean, one minute, you’re finishing up the architecture of your new novel, the next minute doors are being banged on, and you’re told you’ve got to find a new home, in the least home-like place on Earth, Noir York City, where people would rather stab you than smile at you. It’s jarring, to say the least. But I ultimately decided NOT to have that drink. I decided to deal with all of this stone-cold sober.

The fact of the matter is, I’ve been living in this crappy apartment since February 19, 2001. I was here during 9/11, on vacation of all things. A vacation spent having my emotions ripped apart with chaos exploding everywhere. I woke up on that day intending to get some serious writing done, heard Howard Stern (still on terrestrial radio back then) talking about something weird going on, flipped on the news, and that was it for the writing plans and everything else as I watched with horror as that tragic day raged on and on and on.

The Apartment - Jack Lemon

The Apartment - Jack Lemon

I’ve gone through a number of different jobs while in this crappy apartment. Several girlfriends have come and gone through here. I’ve had countless gallons of alcohol here, hung out with cool and not-so-cool people here. I’ve read some of the world’s great books here. Right here, in this crappy apartment. I’ve suffered through robberies, graffiti vandalism, roof-leak rainstorms, insurance-fraud fires, next-door cold-blooded murders, and countless other heart-stopping events in this crappy apartment.

Besides all the bad stuff, some good things have happened here, too. I’ve celebrated exciting sporting events and personal achievements here, cooked thousands of untasty meals here, felt the entire range of human emotions in this crappy little apartment. This crappy little apartment is not just wood floors and broken-hinged doors, knobs coming off cabinets and dead pet fish and video games and broken windowpanes. It is, but it’s not.

I have written a zillion less-than-glorious words here. I have narrated some of the greatest stories ever written here, by writers named Poe and Twain and Dostoyevsky and Bierce and Henry and Wilde and Salinger and Hemingway and Faulkner. I have discovered Robert Greene and Paul Dobransky and Eva Cassidy and Robert Bly and Eminem and THE WIRE and Alex Jones and Joe Rogan and Luke Rudkowski and Dwight Swain here.

Some day, I know this crappy little apartment will be the source of a lot of funny stories. For example, I’m going to tell stories about when the roof leaked directly above the toilet, so every time I had to relieve myself, I’d be subjected to a very strange version of Chinese Water Torture during severe rainstorms. I’ll be telling stories about how many things I fixed with duct tape. I’ll be telling stories about how the methamphetamine head from 3 doors over used to sneak into my apartment through the windows and steal from me while I was at work until I barred the windows to the point where it’s now a fire hazard. I’ll be telling stories about how I went around the apartment sniffing for 20 minutes one night, trying to find the source of the smell of fire I was getting—and then suddenly realized the building (from 2 apartments over) was on fire, and I needed to get out immediately. I’ll tell stories about the mice and the bugs and the spiders and the broken pipes and the standing water in the shower and the noisy neighbors and so much more.

Most importantly, though, I wrote the final, published version of ALMOST HOME here. I architected the narrative of that novel here, surprising myself with what I’d come up with as the plot slowly unfolded over time. I found it fascinating to write myself into a corner at night and think, with frustration pouring out of me, “There’s no way I can solve this plot problem. It’s over. This novel is dead. I’m a total and complete fraud. It’s over. I can never write this fucking novel. What was I thinking? It’s all over.” But then I’d wake up in the morning, get back to work, an idea would come, and the unsolvable problem from the night before was suddenly solved. It felt… miraculous, really, to go from “I can’t possibly solve this problem” to “Problem solved. Let’s move on.” So to ME, miracles have happened here, in this crappy little apartment. Sounds grandiose, maybe, but if you’re a writer, I think you’ll be able to relate to those “early morning miracles.”

And I think what I’ll remember most about this crappy little apartment is THAT rollercoaster experience—the excruciating pain and the inexplicable joy—of finishing a novel that I’m proud of. A novel I want to share with YOU, even though we’ve never met, and probably never will meet.

ALMOST HOME is the first novel that I tacked up, scene by scene, with colored index cards onto my corkboarded walls. And I did that here. I had it rejected by dozens of literary agents and small presses here. I tacked those rejections up on the corkboarded walls here. I pitched it to hundreds of book-review bloggers here, did giveaways and discounts for it here, promoted it ad nauseum on Twitter here. I came up with the way-too-popular title, ALMOST HOME, here. Right here, in this crappy little apartment.

But, despite all of that, or maybe because of it, I know that new memories await me, and they’ll be made in a healthier, less dangerous place. New literary adventures are awaiting my arrival as well. I don’t know what they’ll be, exactly, but I suspect they’ll be just as poignant, just as miraculous, just as enlightening as the ones I’ve had here, in this crappy little apartment.

I can hardly wait.
________________________________________________________________________

Find more of my “stuff” by clicking through the following links:

Smashwords.com

BarnesandNoble.com

Amazon.com

Follow me on Twitter, where my tweets are both hi-larious and thought-provoking:
http://www.twitter.com/FrankMarcopolos

***

And to end on a musical note, here are The Stereophonics with “Maybe Tomorrow…I’ll find my way home…”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:50 — 10.8MB)

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Iron John by the Brothers Grimm

Jun 14

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 9 Comments

As translated by Robert Bly.

Additional, recommended resources for enhanced understanding of this fantastic tale:

Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly

From Wild Man to King by Jim Moyers

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:23 — 19.6MB)

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The Hortlak by Kelly Link (Part 2 of 2)

Jul 7

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 3 Comments

“She looked at him and for a moment he was standing in that city where no one ever figured out how to put out that fire…”
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PS…”Hortlak” is a Turkish noun meaning ghost, ghoul, or spook.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:41 — 20.4MB)

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The Hortlak by Kelly Link (Part 1 of 2)

Jun 23

Posted by Frank Marcopolos in Stories | 9 Comments

“Eric was night, and Batu was day. The girl, Charley, was the moon. Every night, she drove past the All-Night in her long, noisy, green Chevy, a dog hanging out the passenger window. It wasn’t ever the same dog, although they all had the same blissful expression. They were doomed, but they didn’t know it.”
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:09 — 20.7MB)

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