(1382 words) Sandy and Brandt, both futurist novelists, attended the annual conference in Amsterdam. “Things seem to be in flux,” Brandt said, “and we’ve got to go see what the future holds.” “What do you mean?” she asked “I can’t say exactly.” “You’re a writer. You’d better figure that […]
Author: Paul Guillory
A Swift Kick in the Ribs
(671 words) Jody had colored beautifully between the lines. Then he wrote “I hate school” across the top of the assignment. It seemed obvious to him that school was just as hateful to everyone else. But he’d miscalculated badly. The classroom was ‘time-between-recess’ but recess only came twice a day […]
Inter-generational Self-care
(635 words) Ernest Hemingway, who I write of often, fought in WWI where in four years four million soldiers died along a 500 mile trench-line in northern France. Unless you are a wounded American soldier, or from a gold-star family, we as a society don’t even come close to experiencing […]
Time Is On Your Side
(688 words) Recently, a friend recommended two books, A Brief History of Time and The Science of Interstellar. Time is ironic, not what it seems. When you’re in the zone, clock-time flies by but the time inside your head, your being, slows to a pleasurable crawl where every detail of […]
Hunting Alone
(559 words) He walked across the shallow pond. He was a little drunk and struggled against the suction of the mud. He pinched the neck of the bird feeling the gravelly rice inside. A group dropped down and he raised the barrel straight in front of him. One slumped and […]
Teddy Roosevelt Was A Writer
(779 words) Teddy Roosevelt was a writer first, a soldier second and a politician third. He was, also, a husband and a father. He wrote books throughout law school and, eventually, dropped out to run for political office in New York. That set the formula for the rest of his […]
The Job of the Novelist
(417 words) The kid reached into the darkness and pulled the book from the closet. It was by an unknown French existentialist. It must be a translation, he thought. His confidence in it, thus, shaken he began, nevertheless, to read: “The job of a novelist,” it said, “is to show […]
Our American Dilemma
(992 words) American people, like people everywhere, have a nature. And human nature is such that, sometimes, we place too much value in what we don’t understand and, by not understanding it, invest it with some mysterious and unmerited quality which defies expression. And here, that is politics. Americans are […]
No Smoking
(636 words) They should have known people weren’t really reasonable when they saw they’d buy at a joint what they could get for 1/10 the price at the grocer. Maybe they go for the motion of the bottle lifted from the shelf and poured into piled saucers and brandy glasses. […]
Lucy Dreams
(553 words) “Dad, the news is on.” “Isn’t it always? I can’t watch that.” “Why don’t you like the news?” “I don’t hate the news I just know what it is.” “I didn’t say you hated it.” “Ok I hate it.” “Why do you hate it.” “Because someone I trust […]