Fiction, Writing, Articles, Essays, Reviews.
Savvy guy that I am, I use Google Alerts to catch any mentions of my novels STASH and CLEAN BREAK out there in the Internet cosmos. Just in case someone, somewhere, read one of these two cool books and wanted to tell the world. I’d want to know about it. I might even get in contact with such a dear reader. So I was pleased to get this alert today for David Klein Stash. Sadly, the alert had...
When I hear the word artifact I picture a shard of pottery or a primitive tool that gets unearthed during an archeological dig. Collection of objects was found by divers in the Tollense River in Germany and is probably the contents of a personal pouch of a warrior who died 3,300 years ago on the battlefield. Credit: Volker Minkus But I knew this wasn’t the definition of artifact that began to...
She’s 22, he’s 21. Both are completing their last semester of college, set to graduate in December. In their level of intellect, emotional maturity, and self-awareness, they’re light years ahead of where I was at that age, exposed to so much more, in some ways forced to grow up a lot faster, yet better protected in others. He reads more than 50 books a year and approaches life with curiosity...
Devastating and essential are the two words I would use to describe this novel from Richard Powers, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of “The Overstory,” another novel I loved. In “Bewilderment,” Astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life in the cosmos while single-parenting his nine-year-old son, Robin, who is on the spectrum and about to get kicked out of third grade for bashing a fellow...
They came for me during the night, ringing the doorbell as if they were polite visitors. I’d been expecting them. I kept my clothes by the side of my bed so I could dress quickly. I raised the bedroom window, straddled the sill, and stepped out onto the steep gabled roof, steadying my balance. From there I could just reach a limb of the sugar maple and swing myself into the thickness of its...
Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden resigned yesterday. After a few middling years with Gruden at the helm, his team was pretty good this season, with a 3-2 record, but he was the victim of an obvious yet well-executed hit job. Brief background: The NFL has been investigating the Washington Football Team (nee Washington Redskins) for sexual harassment and verbal abuse of female employees, a...
Who knows where I run across these things (searching, scrolling, clicking–the usual way), but this test of your creative powers is quick and interesting. It’s called the Divergent Association Task and it doesn’t measure all types of creativity, but “one specific type of creativity: divergent thinking, which is the capacity to generate an array of diverse solutions to an...
I revisited this novel I first read in college because a new movie will soon be released. I’ve never been an avid sci fi or fantasy reader, but I remember Dune having a big impact on me. It’s the story of the teenage Paul Atreides whose family is sent by the Emperor to rule the fearsome desert planet Arrakis, the universe’s single source of mélange, a highly addictive spice-drug that prolongs...
If my sister hadn’t texted me last night I wouldn’t have remembered it was the date my father, Bob Klein, died in 2014. The day has slipped my mind the last few years. That’s never the case regarding my mother, who died on July 9, 1983, when she was only 58. Almost 40 years ago, yet I see that day approaching every year like a dark cloud on the horizon. I think it’s because I was young—and so was...
Are you one of those people who was raised to be an achiever? To be productive and useful above all else? If you are, you might experience angst when it comes to leisure time. Dr. Laurie Santos, the Yale professor who taught a class I took last year called “The Science of Happiness,” admits to filling most of her time with work-related and product activities and that she worries that “fun is just...
Someone close to me is feeling in a bad way. They’re suffering from a dark brew of disappointment, sadness, and anxiety. I know because they told me. We sat at a table over a cup of coffee and the coffee went down my throat like battery acid when I looked into their eyes and saw the pain radiating out. It was hard to sit there and hear what they were going through. Of course I was uncomfortable...
On a Sunday morning, early, solitude, coffee, others still asleep above you, thinking about the day ahead and you’ve got things to do but nothing absolutely demanding your attention, you turn and look out the window and get this, pay attention to this. I look back down the arc and get snared in how I chose to spend my time, where I put my energy, to what did I devote my minutes, hours, days...
When he emerged from the den, Robert found her stretched on a lounge chair by the pool. She wore a black bikini and was listening to music through her earphones. Her toenails were freshly manicured and painted a glossy maroon. He dragged over a chair. Erin sat up and took off the earphones. “So you like Skidmore so far?” “I’m in a band.” “Playing keyboards?” “I’m the singer. We’re trying to get a...
Do you know what the Texas state motto is? Friendship. One simple word that says so much. It says empathy and nurturing. It says welcome and goodwill. Many of us non-Texans are confused. We would understand if your state motto was “We Control Women’s Bodies” or “We Love Voter Suppression” or even “Guns for Everyone!” Those mottos would make sense given the recent passage of extreme abortion...
Sweat patterns darkened his white shirt along the neckline. Dust stuck to his summer wool suit. A rainmaker who wears a business suit. He stood at the flinty edge of the diminished reservoir. The barren, naked rock walls were bleached and parched, the remaining water glinting in the sun like moving mirrors. “Are we actually taking this guy seriously?” someone in the crowd said. The rainmaker held...
I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about change and I’ve reached an obvious conclusion: change is inevitable. It is the defining factor that proves we are alive. There is an endless number of illuminating quotes from experts, writers, and gurus about change, but one I came across I’ve known forever; it appears on the ceiling in dentists’ offices. I’m now looking at it from a new angle—the...
I hated that people thought my father was crazy, because the guys were right: That kind of stuff could be hereditary. It can get mixed up in your genes. I could be next. To make matters worse, about a month after the McGuire thing my father showed up at school one morning at nine o’clock. I’d only been there an hour. He had the vice-principal come and get me out of class, making like there...
I settled in yesterday afternoon to watch the men’s tennis final of the U.S. Open, 34-year-old Novak Djokovic from Serbia vs. 25-year-old Daniil Medvedev of Russia. It was going to be a historic day in tennis. Djokovic was on the cusp of completing the first grand slam in more than 50 years—winning all four of the major tennis tournaments in a calendar year. He’d already won the Australian Open...
Six years ago I launched my first Little Free Library. I was one of the first free libraries in town. Since then, these libraries have been sprouting up all over the place. There must be at least a dozen, maybe fifteen, just in Delmar. It’s hard to keep track of all the competition. So I’ve upped my game and built a new version. My original library had been showing signs of fatigue. One of the...
Philip Roth, toward the end of his writing career (and life; he battled many health problems), wrote a number of short novels. Everyman, which focuses on aging, sickness, regret, and death, is one of the grimmest. The novel opens at the protagonist’s funeral, then cycles back and tells the story of his life: he gave up the dream of being an artist to work as an advertising man. He was married...
