roma★
shark vs the universe
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★
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@samgridley
How Rumpy Surprised Me
Liberal types like Yours Truly thought we knew how bad the Big Rump would be when he reclaimed his throne and won control of Congress as well. We knew about Project 2025, and we saw in the latter stages of his first residency that he’d figured out the value of filling key offices with little rumpies (lackeys) who’d do anything he told them. We knew he’d cripple the economy with tariffs, undermine…
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To Stab or Not to Stab
Dresden after the firebombing in February 1945 “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” said an unnamed U.S. major, as reported by journalist Peter Arnett in 1968, describing the obliteration of more than 5,000 homes in one town, Bến Tre, during the Vietnam War. Widely publicized, though often misquoted, this justification for savagery was soon condemned. But does the same idea,…
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Three Truths for the Fourth
Democracy exploding, revealing the black hole at the center My typical practice for holidays is to ignore them. As a dedicated melancholic, I’m not big on celebrations of any sort. Nevertheless, this Independence Day seems worth marking. It’s the day Trump signs his Big Beautiful Bill to benefit the obscenely wealthy while sentencing millions of low-income Americans to death from lack of…
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Secrets upon Secrets upon Lies
Reflections on an excellent new memoir.
“How can one family have so many problems, especially a Jewish family?” says my wife, who considers her own childhood in a secular Jewish household the model for all such. On my recommendation, she’s been reading Ona Gritz’s memoir Everywhere I Look, in which the author’s family suffers—and creates—multiple disasters. An accomplished writer in middle age, Gritz sets out to investigate the life…
The Spirit of Barbie
Is that image kind of … creepy? Well, yes, in my story “Ghost on the Wall,” just published in The Summerset Review, a Malibu Barbie doll has a malignant influence. The overall story, though, isn’t creepy, I don’t think. There are hints of redemption, spiritualism, even romance. And a ghost named Jellin. It’s a longish tale, one of my nutty attempts to write a mini-novel in story form, but…
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An Out-of-Season Thanksgiving
A new story of mine, “Immigrants,” has just appeared in The Del Sol Review. It’s about a family Thanksgiving dinner in which politics comes up. Much goes wrong, as you might expect, and the idea of being thankful is kind of lost. Just your typical American family, right? Many thanks to editor Kara De Folo and others at the magazine.
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Civil Rights vs. Religion
Civil Rights vs. Religion
The controversy caused by Lorie Smith, an anti-gay Colorado website designer, has prompted me to think through my position on the issues she raises—issues that pit her religious beliefs against the rights of her (hypothetical) customers. Some of my liberal friends, predictably, have lined up against her. Though I’m way-left on the political spectrum, I don’t find the matter so simple. To review…
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Too Distressing?
Photo by Umesh R. Desai on Unsplash A new story of mine, “A Topic Too Distressing to Mention,” is now posted on the Bangalore Review website. This marks my first attempt to deal with transgender issues, and it’s also an experiment in communal voice, the narrator being unidentified except as a member of a certain club of women. Anyone who has a chance to read the story is welcome to post a…
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Susie's e-book
Susie’s e-book
Susie Alioto, the namesake protagonist of The Bourgeois Anarchist, may be 66 years old and struggling a bit with her health, but she’s always been up-to-the-moment, so it’s no surprise that her story is now available in a Kindle-type ebook. The co-protagonist, her math-geek son Eric, ridicules her for surrendering to such a gross and uncool form of capitalism. But to understand the odd balance of…
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If you liked DON'T LOOK UP...
If you liked DON’T LOOK UP…
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Confession
It had to happen sometime. One of my most shameful adolescent acts has come to light, prompted by a seemingly innocent opportunity to share a “favorite library memory.” I don’t know why I suddenly spilled the beans. Perhaps I was confident that the librarian in the story must have since retired. But now I’m worried. Is it true that librarians, when they remove their glasses and let down their…
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Book Launch
We’ll be officially launching The Bourgeois Anarchist on November 30, 2021, via Zoom, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Being a taciturn curmudgeon, I’m extremely lucky to be joined by Elizabeth (Libby) Mosier, an extraordinary writer who’s a much better conversationalist than I am. Most likely, Libby will ask intelligent questions to which I will give confused, nonsensical answers. It should be fun! To…
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Blurred Choices
Ellen Prentiss Campbell, an award-winning fiction writer and member of the National Book Critics Circle, has kindly reviewed The Bourgeois Anarchist in Tiferet Journal. Throughout the novella, she notes, “the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, blur”–proving she firmly grasped the book’s main theme. Though the magazine is available by subscription only, I can offer a quote from the end…
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Out of My Shell
Out of My Shell
Over the past couple of months, in an attempt to promote my novella The Bourgeois Anarchist (Finishing Line Press), I’ve done three interviews with obliging bloggers. They were fun, especially when I could give a subversive answer to the questions. Here are the links, with a few selected quotes: Hasty Book List, by Ashley Hasty: Q: Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: A:…
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Susie Hits the Streets
Susie Hits the Streets
No, Susie Alioto, protagonist of The Bourgeois Anarchist, hasn’t taken to prostitution. As a lifelong, principled anarchist, she would support anyone’s freedom to choose that profession but, for herself, would eschew any hint of trading sex for capitalist compensation. In the novella, oddly, she may find herself in such a situation unwittingly. You’ll have to read the book to find out. What I…
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Advance Praise for Susie's Story
Advance Praise for Susie’s Story
After some production struggles, my novella The Bourgeois Anarchist, featuring 66-year-old militant Susie Alioto, is on track to be released this fall by Finishing Line Press. You can order the book at the publisher’s site, and it will soon be available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, and elsewhere. Oddly, I haven’t yet boasted about what my distinguished writerly acquaintances have said about the…
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Wonderland Stories
My pandemic productivity hasn’t been great, but by chance I have three works of fiction being published this spring. My short story “Crabs,” originally in Wilderness House Literary Review, has been selected for The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia 2020, edited by Matthew M. Perez. A new piece, “Wonderland Stories,” a four-part exploration of the way we’re always telling ourselves stories—and…
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