“So you’ll think about?” Marty Erndel pleaded. Lenny Wizenberg grinned, delighted less at the terms of the deal than with the abstract idea that a man as putatively important as the Kike would want to do a deal with someone like him. “I said I would, Marty.” “It’s good for all of us.” Lenny inhaled...
How old they were really didn’t matter. It was how old their paperwork said they were that mattered. So long as the boys who showed up at Larry Cohen’s office could produce a government-issued document, a driver’s license or a passport, something official that proved they were 18, Larry could offer them work. It didn’t...
Doug sorted through the proposals. They were good, he thought. Creative. Surprising. He liked them. He felt bad, a little bad, that everybody but one would have to lose. He also felt a little bad that even the winner wasn’t going to really win much, besides seeing his words in print and getting lots of...
Casinos depressed Douglas Bishop. Disinclined to mathematics, he didn’t understand any of the games, and the haze of cigarette smoke triggered his tendency toward hypochondria. If it were up to him, they never would have stopped in Tunica. He and Lenny would have driven straight through from Memphis to New Orleans, where Doug was keen...
According to all the better guidebooks, the ones that got updated annually and accepted a limited number of what were called “sponsored chapters,” the Painted Cave of Slippery Rock was one of three attractions no self-respecting tourist traveling through the American Southwest could afford to miss. The other two were the Hoover Dam and The...
In the days preceding the publication of Michael Konik’s eighth book, a darkly satirical novel called “Becoming Bobby,” writer and Vegas Lit Managing Editor Arnold Snyder interviewed the author. Much was revealed about the creative process and Konik’s motivations for writing a book so drastically different than his previously published work. The interview originally appeared at Write-aholic....
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
