TRICK BAG: Story Collection (64,798 words, 252 pages)
Taken from the name of a song written by one of the characters in “Simple” (see “Contents,” below), the title alludes to the doubling, coincidences and parallels rampant in my stories. These seem to be among my ways of connecting cultures, races and classes that are often separated and in conflict.
The thirteen stories (all previously published) that I propose for Trick Bag feature political and cultural ideas. But they are narratives of imaginary experience, not polemic about politics and culture; that, I leave for my journalism.
Still, the stories will strike readers as grounded in real experience. One of them, “Blue” was originally published as an essay, and I had to persuade the editor that I had submitted it as fiction, that it was fiction. In fact, besides the opening descriptions of a Greenwich Village block and the subsequent description of a Barnes and Noble store, the story grew in my mind from having seen, one day, a middle-class looking woman seated on the sidewalk scribbling in a notebook. Is the story about class and race? Yes, just as it is about art and experience, and just as it turns out to be an analogue of the biblical book of Ruth, involving the theme of gleaning. But the nub of “Blue” is the story of the imagined character Rona Wallace.
CONTENTS:
A Dream of Trains: After a nervous breakdown, an architect jump-starts his career in the hospital (3719 words)" Word Riot, February 2008. link to text
Blue: a poet of the sidewalks. (4749 words) SNReview, Summer 2006. link to text
The Changing Woman Health Conference: A Navajo woman at a community college on the Reservation attends a conference that blends diabetes counseling with traditional religion. (7,496 words) Puckerbrush Review, Summer/Fall 2004. link to publication
The Key: Ordinary people in the U.S. and Turkey are enmeshed in a security investigation.(10,120 words) Sage of Consciouness Online Magazine, Issue #6: Traveling: Multicultural Meanings, Summer 2006. link to text
Norman's Cousin: the lethal civil-servant impersonator strikes. (6677 words) nthposition, October 2007. link to text
Simple: jury duty run amok. (7950 words) Sage of Consciousness Online Magazine, Issue #3.1: Awareness: Injustices and Fallacies, forthcoming. link to publication
Voir Dire*: A father and daughter play a telephonic word game that focuses on jury duty. 4,144 words
*Also exists as the one-act play, Voir, Dear (supra).
The Silent Treatment: A garrulous New Yorker sojourns on the Navajo reservation as a cure for motor mouthing. (3,872 words) Pilgrimage, 2008 link to publisher
A Nose for a Jacket: only rob an unorthodox detective if you want to pay a visit to his office. (4721 words) Willow Review, Spring 2005. link to publication
The Parents We Deserve*: A rich young couple whose parents die adopt new ones. (2,293 words) Ellipsis, August 2006. link to publication *This is the first part of a chapbook by the same name (infra).
Garbage: A rich New Yorker on vacation in Maine tries to unload his actual and psychological garbage. (4,997 words) SN (Starry Night) Review, Autumn 2007. link to text
Spots: a scholar's day at the library is subverted by pornography and curtailed library hours. (3081 words) big bridge, Issue #12, January 2007.
The Technicolor Meal: A tyrannical food fetishist is destroyed by his wife and friends. (1,193 words) big bridge, Issue #12, January 2007.