Born in a little town east of Cleveland, Ohio, I attended Kent State, taking a degree in Political Science and History; served in the U.S. Army (Anti-Aircraft Artillery) at Lakenheath Airbase in Suffolk, East Anglia, England.
Revolutionary Road, Easter Parade, Disturbing the Peace, and Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates; Pan by Knut Hamsun; The Dubliners by James Joyce; Dog Soldiers (or any early work) by Robert Stone; Tabloid by James Elroy; Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers; The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, or almost anything by Graham Greene; A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Conner; yes, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; "The Killers" and other short stories by Hemingway; "The Heart of Darkness," The Secret Sharer, The Shadow Line, or anything by Joseph Conrad.
Favorite Authors
Robert Stone, Flannery O'Connor, Richard Yates, James Baldwin, Joseph Conrad, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, James Elroy. Carson McCullers, Knut Hamsun.
"The average age of the world's civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again ...
Whenever it is Mid Winter (or at least not Summer) in my soul, I long to leave the now crowded, expensive, deteriorating Bay Area to head south into Mexico. I have been to a number of haunts there, including Guadalajara, Puerta Vallarte, Durango, Chihuahua, and Los Mochis. Each has its charms, but the place I most often dream about is Mazatlan, on Mexico's Pacific Coast. One of the reasons I like ...
President-Elect Obama still has seventeen days, by my West Coast time, before he has to assume responsibility for the shambles the Bush Gang, triumphantly greedy Wall Street "supply-siders," profoundly ignorant (mostly Southern, I'm afraid) Republican Congressmen, and timid go-along Democrats have left us in. It is they who have sent many troops, brave men and women (from America and a ...
