RichEisbrouch

I woke suddenly, possibly when the train hit an especially bad piece of track. I’d been dreaming that some giant goon was playing handball with my brain then realized it was only because my head was tapping against the window. My watch, once I focused on it, showed just past ten, and we were slowly moving through what looked like suburbs. I reached for my glasses and discovered a guy sitting next to me, someone who hadn’t been there before. Around us, kids were singing, talking, and shouting

Then the next chapter should make you smile.

The street in front of me was jammed with cars. It might have taken a half-hour to drive to the train, and who knew where we could park or how long that might take. But it was only a minute’s walk. The station, like the houses we’d passed, needed repairs. If I’d been trying to start, I wouldn’t know where. Paint. Windows. Doors. Signs. Benches. Everything looked like it was twenty years old. Inside, was better. Someone who helped paint the place when he was my age was probably only neari

I was visiting Grandma. CM opened the door with her almost newborn baby Giovanna in her arms, wrapped in a blanket. CM stood for Contessa Marlene, a name she said no one ever called her, even back in the Dominican Republic. “Your grandma’s visiting with Sam-the-man right now, and he just arrived, so perhaps we’d better leave them alone.” She spoke a strange variety of English, fluent and lilting and a mix of formal and not. Sam-the-man was an old Jewish tailor, right out of a stereotyped

Thanks. That was my reason for coming back to revise the book: I liked the characters and wanted to let them tell their story.

In the original Tall Man Down, Don was a minor character and considerably younger, almost new on the small police force. He was there only to give some credibility to the central character -- the narrator -- who, in that book, had no police background. Years after I discarded the original book, I went back to Waldron as a setting for a different book, The Pendleton Omens, and needed a name for a police detective. But Don had to be older in that book, so when I got back to rewriting Tall Man Down, his character had to track in age. As with Camp Lore, the physical college I write about in Tall Man Down is based on a place that no longer exists in that form and was never near the town I use as a physical model for Waldron -- which also no longer exists in that form. The pleasures of imagination and memory. GWM is also set in Waldron.

Again, thanks. I'd be interested to hear what you think about it at the end. As with almost everything I write, I often go back and improve. As mention in the introduction, this book and my other book, Quabbin, are very different revisions of an earlier novel, my first attempt at writing a traditional mystery. I gave up after that. It turns out I don't like killing people.

Absolutely right on faculty politics. Richard Russo writes particularly well about them in a novel I think called The Straight Man -- which has nothing to do with sex. There's a moment towards the end of the book where the faculty finishes a meeting, and everyone rushes to get out of the conference room. But they crowd the door, which opens in, and can't jointly agree to take a step back, so they can open the door and all leave.

The physical camp -- and indirectly the train station -- are purposely based on places that haven't existed in years. But the story is set in the present, and the people are fiction. Rob's writing this as a college student, but the summer he's writing about is between his high school graduation and the start of his freshman college year -- a kind of limbo when his parents aren't quite ready to let him be as independent as he'd like. And, yeah, he has fun. They all do. Thanks for reading.

Yep. More will be explained. Thanks for picking up again so quickly. I've also been -- and will be -- dribbling several short pieces, fiction and non-fiction, on the next few Sundays into my Circumstances and Collections books. Depends on how much of my writing you can take

Nine guys at a summer camp. Eight waiters: Rob, Nate, Brian, Greg, Steve, Dan, Paul, Jim. And a counselor: Andy. The waiters have a lot of fun in their generous spare time -- the usual camp activities, plus shooting some hoops, playing some cards, and generally messing around. And at least one of them's a joker. The counselor has other plans, aiming for a different kind of fun. But fun. Short chapters. Easy reading. As usual, comments are welcome. Enjoy.

Our dog, a mostly-Border Collie, is now five-years-old. For the last year, her main toy has been an oversized stuffed jack, and her main trick has been teaching me to say, over and over, “Get the jack! Get the jack! Get the jack!” Recently, the jack finally wore out and was replaced with a stuffed plush mallard. Now, of course, I’ve been trained to say, “Get the duck! Get the duck! Get the duck!” Still, last week, the dog came in from the backyard with a real dead bird in her mouth. Prov

As long as you came out of it OK -- as it looks like you have. And thanks for reading along.

Thanks. Cute. I'll check the site.

I like the one about Noah's wife. Thanks. The choir practice note reminds me of a line in a probably 1930's Marx Brothers movie. Groucho says something like, "Our next selection will be 'Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping' with the Men's Chorus."

It blew the new wind in the field of art. On the precipes of true adulthood 10,000 years into the future today's humans and several generations of their descendants will have passed They fell him down to a normal person. It is hard to evaluate people who do not die. Bare in mind. Overcome societal constraints with an open heart. This will drawl in more customers and drawl the same success it has had thus far. As worldwide statistics has shone, these issues need ve

Dad drove me to the train. The station was somewhere in New Jersey. It was too early, and I was half asleep, and all during the drive I kept wanting to say, “Look. This is a mistake. Let’s go back.” But going back meant spending another summer in Vermont. Each year, as soon as school lets out, we move to our house there. The place is really too small for us – Mom, Dad, my sister Laurie, our dog Princie, our cat Fitz, and me. And our visiting grandparents – in shifts. And friends and neighbor

He’d been skiing through powder on an empty slope. He was in the Alps, but the slope was as wide as an LA freeway. Heinz was ahead of him, but Hyden couldn’t see where. He’d been just ahead, then Hyden lost him and seemed to have lost everyone else. And he couldn’t catch up. The light was still good, but he had the mountain to himself. Had there been a warning he’d somehow missed? He didn’t think so. Finally, he gave up and went back to the hotel. Heinz wasn’t there. As on the slopes, almost

I could deal with " leechery." It was combining it with "other immobal acts" that got me.

Businesses that hone their employees recieve dividents. Sir Isaac Newton, the world renowned apple falling analyzer. When India got its independence from the brutish. The Japaness, the mokey, and other iindieginous animals. Ingenious cultures. A profession which enthrills them. A dearth amount of money. A man not to be reckoned with. Alacrity on the external circumstances. Coloning human beings for medical purposes. This argument is weekend. Greed, lee

Thanks. And, yeah, some of these obviously are inspired by dreams, and I don't really know where they come from. But they're fun to try to get down and make sense of. Quickly looking back over the list of the 15 stories -- one's coming next Tuesday -- 5 came from dreams, 4 from experiences, 2 from stories friends told me, and the rest from my imagination. But some of the last group are triggered by a single image -- like the guy lying on his blanket in the corner of a parking lot.

I work in television, but not in news. And I work in LA. This story started in New York magazine. It was part of a series kicked off on Father’s Day and continued online. My dad figured in the first section. It was military stuff. Aviation. World War II. I happened to be in New York the day the magazine came out and was having lunch with an old friend who worked at the Times. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Al asked. “I didn’t know I was gonna be mentioned.” “Danny?”

If a person is mentally collapsed, he/she can loose her attention and it can cause disaster. Language teachers are often forced to think outside the box and create new ways of communication and presentation of knowledge, so that the student who may only know "Hi, how are you?" can learn to say "I can't stand my little brother." The adolescents could have been involved in other dangerous behaviors such as unprotected sex, reckless driving, stealing, and bugger gliding. From a religiou

Leo was Aaron’s accompanist in high school. Leo played the piano, and Aaron sang. He was OK, but Leo was very good. Aaron was good-looking in a light-haired, simple, Midwestern way. In a city like Cedar Rapids. Leo was good-looking in a church-going way. Either a Boy Scout or a child molester, with heavy, dark-framed, glasses that matched his bangs. Aaron missed the leads in musicals but always sang in the chorus. Leo played in the orchestra. He played at

Throughout the summer, while Mary, Spence, and I were getting used to having Ann in our lives, and Claire was watching and helping out as much as she could, and the guys and their new and old girlfriends were occasionally tagging along when Larry, Al, and Mike weren’t dancing or sandy and wet, my dad was negotiating for a brownstone. It was in our area – 81st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus, closer to the Columbus end – and was owned by a woman in her late eighties who’d lived there fo