Category Archives: fiction

From out of the blue, new realities

Posted on March 23, 2020 by oddmanout215

I was reading to Swamp Rabbit from Albert Camus‘s The Plague: Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from … Continue reading →

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Books? There is no time!

Posted on May 15, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit told me he was going home, he was tired of my grumbling about Donald Trump, I should finish writing my new “fiction book” instead of following politics. “Or read books by other peeps,” he said. I told him … Continue reading →

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Enough about Naipaul the man — read his books

Posted on August 15, 2018 by oddmanout215

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. — V.S. Naipaul, A Bend In the River (1979) Pardon me for breathing! And make no mistake — the … Continue reading →

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OK, you’re in love, but can you sell my novel?

Posted on June 20, 2018 by oddmanout215

An editor friend just called to apologize, he hasn’t had time to read my new manuscript because he’s having his roof replaced and can’t hear himself think. I said hey, no hurry, it will still be there when you find … Continue reading →

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‘Disinvited’ Eagles weren’t going anyway

Posted on June 8, 2018 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was getting on my case for not being a football fan. I’m a fan of the players,” I said. “It’s the NFL I hate — the overpaid commissioner and the spoiled rotten billionaires who own the teams. I … Continue reading →

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Philip Roth’s many phases

Posted on May 25, 2018 by oddmanout215

Time flies faster as you grow older. One day you wake up and read Tom Wolfe is dead. Blink a few times and there goes Philip Roth, too. I was drawn to Roth’s fiction indirectly, around the time he was … Continue reading →

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Tom Wolfe’s works will live on! Really!!!

Posted on May 16, 2018 by oddmanout215

After hearing Tom Wolfe had died, I thought of that scene in The Bonfire of the Vanities where master of the universe Sherman McCoy, under arrest, is paraded past reporters with Styrofoam peanuts clinging to his expensive suit. …They were … Continue reading →

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A fictionalized Trump? Too cliche

Posted on May 14, 2018 by oddmanout215

The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in … Continue reading →

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I do not recall, y’all

Posted on November 22, 2017 by oddmanout215

My hard drive died last week, just like that, as if my laptop had had a heart attack. It’s the ideal way to go if you’re old — boom, lights out, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Except that the … Continue reading →

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Cynical coda of ‘Mad Men’ finale: Coke is the real thing

Posted on May 21, 2015 by oddmanout215

An acquaintance of mine posted this question on Facebook last week: “Does anybody else find Mad Men‘s writing to be vapid, direction glacial, acting somnambulatory, and the cultural references boring?” I asked my friend Swamp Rabbit if he’d like to respond, … Continue reading →

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