“After the fire, the fire still burns, the heart grows older but never ever learns. The memories smolder and the soul always yearns. After the fire, the fire still burns.”

- Pete Townshend

Excerpt…

If he remembers me after these many years, it surely isn’t as an individual, but as of a type. What a sight I must have been. The mussed wavy blond hair, the scruffy beard. The black polo shirt and jeans. The brown corduroy jacket, a worn and tattered copy of “Leaves of Grass” bulging out of one side pocket, Nick Carraway’s meditation on life, passion and the American dream peering out of the other. The future rock star of American letters, radiating passion, joy, and heartbreaking charm to any lovely young thing who might be seduced. Few were.

He himself was a man of letters, a published author of three novels of good critical reputation, but little financial reward. His voice had been silent for many years and he had settled into teaching American literature and creative writing to the small group of budding young Fitzgeralds, O’Connors, Whartons, and Salingers who sailed in and out of the Humanities building of the university every year.

The first time I met him was during the spring semester of my junior year. I was applying for a seat in his fall section “Writing Prose Fiction.” I had already taken several writing courses, but this one was different. This was the senior level creative writing class offered by the English Department, taught by a published novelist. Registration for the class required his approval and a writing sample was required. A few days earlier, I had agonized over my meager portfolio of writing: personal narratives, stories and fragments of stories produced over the previous two years. For a person whose goal in life was to become a writer, I had produced very little that I could be proud of. Friends complimented my work, but it had always seemed to me that they were complimenting what I wanted my writing to be, not what it actually was. “Don’t submit anything too long,” an acquaintance who had taken this class advised me. “He gets a lot of people handing him things to read so keep it short.” Short was good because short was all I had. Finally, after agonizing over the selection, I chose a three-page interior monologue I had written earlier that year: a young man waiting for his girlfriend in a coffee shop, his mind racing from thought to thought, fear to fear, as to why she might be late.

Acceptance into this professor’s writing class would be, for me, a validation of my talent. It would tell me that yes, I did have talent and that the writing life was a worthwhile pursuit. What I didn’t understand at the time, was that competition for admission to the class wasn’t all that tough and that the writing sample was merely to assure the professor that the applicant had a rudimentary ability to put both nouns and verbs in most of their sentences.

When I had stopped by his office a few days earlier to give him my sample, he was not there. A file folder was taped to the office door, labeled “Fall Writing Prose Fiction – samples.” I pulled my story out of the folder in my hand, glanced over the first page, and slid it into the folder on the door.

The next day, I went back to his office and found the door was again locked. It was late afternoon and the hallway on the third floor was deserted. There was a pale gray light coming in through the skylight above the waiting area outside his office. I took a quick look around to make sure that no one was coming and pulled open the folder on the door. My manuscript was still there, along with some others that had been pushed in after it. That sleepless night I had spent worrying about what the professor thought about my writing, and more importantly, me, had been all for nothing. He hadn’t even read it yet.

On the day after that, The Professor was still not in his office but the folder on his door had been emptied. My future was being decided.

On the fourth day, as I was walking up the hallway toward his office, I could see that the door was still closed. This time, however, there was a young lady sitting in the reception area.

As I approached his office, she looked up at me and said, “Hi, are you here to see him?” gesturing at the office door.

“Yes”.

“He told me he would be here at three o’clock.”

I looked at my watch; it was 3:05.

“He should be here soon,” she said, smiling.

I slid my backpack down off my shoulder and set it on the floor.

“You must be applying for the writing class,” she said.

“How can you tell?”

“You have that look,” she replied. “And a folder with manuscripts in your hand”.

I smiled and her and said, “Oh I guess I look a bit typical. Actually, I left my writing sample a few days ago and I’m waiting to find out if I’ve been accepted.”

I sat down next to her and asked, “Are you applying for the class?”

“Oh no, I’m here for something else,” she said mysteriously.

“Oh”.

There was an awkward silence and I started looking this way and that, trying to avoid looking at her. My mind was on my story, what The Professor, who had most likely read it by now, thought of it, and my future as a writer.

“May I read some of your writing?”

The question unnerved me. No one had ever actually askedto read my writing. Usually, I would thrust it into their hands and they would be forced to politely indulge me.

I opened my folder and started fumbling through the manuscripts, not sure which one to give her.

“Do you have a copy of the one you submitted?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“How about that one then, since you picked it out to be your best.”

I pulled the extra copy I had of my interior monologue out of my folder and handed it to her.

Sitting next to someone who’s reading your work is even more stressful than thinking about someone you can’t see reading your work. To settle my mind down, I stopped thinking about the class, how embarrassingly bad my writing actually was, and just focused on the young woman sitting next to me. Up until now, all I had been able to think about was what The Professor had thought of my story. I hadn’t really paid much attention to this young woman who was now reading my story.

She was quite attractive. She had long brown hair, parted in the middle, and brushed back and feathered in that popular style of the late seventies. She wore oval shaped silver rimmed eyeglasses that were only partially obscured her large blue eyes. She was not dressed like a student, but in a well tailored, or at least well-tailored to my twenty-one year old eyes, business suit, the hem of her skirt modestly reaching below her knees. She looked like she had a grownup job. I thought she might be one of the professor’s graduate students who held a job out in the real world. “Are you one of his graduate students?” I asked.

She emitted a barely audible chuckle and she moved her head slightly from side to side as she quietly said “No.” Her eyes never lost focus on what she was reading and she appeared to be concentrating very intently, almost as if she were looking through the pages in her hand.

When she got to the end, a smile crept across her face. “That’s very good,” she said. Looking at the top of the first page for my name, she added “Frederick.”

“Oh, it’s Fred. Just Fred.”

“Well it’s very good. Thank you for letting me read it, Fred.”

Just then, I heard the squeak of rubber soled shoes walking up the hallway. I recognized the man walking toward us. Over the previous two and a half years, I had passed by him in the hallway and entered classrooms that he had been leaving. He was a slight figured man. He wore a tan sport jacket and dark gray slacks. He was bald but still with some dark hair on the side of his head, showing only a few flecks of gray. He had that bald appearance that allows a man to appear to be of indeterminate age from the time he’s thirty-five to the time he’s sixty-five. He smiled and nodded at the Mystery-Woman next to me and then looked at me.

“And you are?” he asked.

“Fred Bubbers.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Bubbers”, he said, grinning.

He pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket and approached his office door.

“If you just give me a moment, I can give you back your story and the registration card for the class. You don’t mind if I take care of this first?” he asked looking over his shoulder at Mystery-Woman.

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” she answered.

He opened the door of his office and said, “Step inside, Mr. Bubbers.”

It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever called me “Mr.” Well, my parents and other teachers had called me that, but when they said it, it meant that I was in trouble. This, however, sounded polite and respectful. It made me nervous.

I stepped into his office and he followed me in closing the door behind him. Whatever he had to say to me, it was going to be in private.

He walked around to the other side of his desk and switched on the green porcelain library lamp on his desk. He set his brief case on the top of his desk and opened it. “I have your story here,” he said, pulling out a stack of papers from the briefcase. “Yes, here it is.” He reached down to his desk drawer and pulled it open. “The registration cards are in here.” He pulled one of the white cards out of his drawer, placed it on top of my manuscript and held them out to me across the desk.

“Thank you,” I said taking my manuscript and the registration card from him.

“Welcome to writing prose fiction, Mr. Bubbers, I’m looking forward to next fall’s section. We have some fine writers.”

He didn’t seem to indicate in manner, gesture, or tone of voice whether he considered me one of those “fine writers.”

I placed the manuscript into my folder and looked up expectantly at him. He had a kind, friendly face, but also a kind of reserved and distant quality about his look. His eyes seemed tired, world-weary.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Bubbers?”

“Well,” I stammered. “About my story.”

“Oh your story!” he interrupted. “That was just fine, Mr. Bubbers, just fine.”

“Fine?” I asked myself. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Maybe it was my look. Or maybe it was his experience with my type, semester after semester, year after year, coming to him for some kind of validation. He would never give us what we were seeking; he would only give us what we needed. And he would be damned cryptic about it.

“Mr. Bubbers, you shouldn’t get yourself worked up over a simple short story. Write them, finish them, and get on to the next thing.”

He stepped around his desk, reaching for the door. As he pulled it open he said, “Have a fine summer, enjoy yourself, and I’ll see you next fall.” He smiled a mischievous, conspiratorial smile and his tired eyes locked on mine.

I was ushered out of his office. As I walked past Mystery-Woman, still seated outside, she smiled up at me and said, “Congratulations, Fred.”

I’m not sure whether I answered her or not. I don’t remember if she told me her name that day. The only thing I remember from the rest of that day was bursting out the door of the Humanities building into the bright warm sun and devouring the clear, crisp air of the early spring afternoon.

Read the rest of this essay:

After the Fire: A Personal Essay, Smashwords Edition.

Amazon Kindle Edition:

See larger image After The Fire: A Personal Essay (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $0.99 USD Release date February 3, 2011.

Also available from:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sony
• Diesel Books
• Apple’s iBookstore (accessible from your iPad or iPhone).

© 2011 – 2012, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

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Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Three stories about two neighbors who meet as young children and grow up together on Long Island during the late 60′s and early 70′s. The comforting and loving world they live in changes around them as their families fracture, society descends into chaos, and a war rages on. In the aftermath, they left on a wrecked, smoking landscape, searching for a new way to live when all of the sign have been burned down.

Reviews:

“These three separate stories about neighbors Johnny and Miriam growing up in the 1960s and 70s make for a moving and elegant novella. I very much enjoyed the directness and strength of the prose which has its own bleak beauty, and the push and pull of relationships and family was very well portrayed indeed. The ending is perfect too. Highly recommended.” *****

-Anne Brooke(Amazon)

“This collection has two lovely tales of growing up in Port Jefferson, New York, plus a remarkable story of complicated love — sexual and familial — amid scenes of poverty and emotional desolation. Bubbers has a fine, almost photographic sense of place and time, and a great talent at capturing the texture of life. The final story which gives its name to this collection, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” ranks with some of the best short fiction written today.” *****

Eugene Mirabelli(Amazon)

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Smashwords Edition.

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Natural Selection

A corporate manager is on the verge losing it all. Office politics, a growing drinking problem, estrangement from his family, and a looming layoff are pushing him to the edge of a personal abyss.

I wrote about how this story came to be in “Into The Abyss.”

Natural Selection, Smashwords Edition.

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A Couple

Rob and Debbie are spending their last spring break in Florida. Graduation is looming and they face an uncertain future. Family expectations, peer pressure, and their own hearts are driving them apart. I wrote about this genre of story in my post Doomed Couples.

A Couple, Smashwords Edition.

Bonnifer

A short story about a married office worker struggling with temptation and desire while flirting with an older woman on a sultry summer evening in Greenwich Village.

Bonnifer, Smashwords Edition.

After the Fire: A Personal Essay

My memoir about a writing workshop and the teacher whose lessons on the art of fiction and the art of living continue to teach and inspire me, thirty years later. There’s some back-story about how this essay came to be written in my post eBook Week, Meta-Memoir.

After the Fire: A Personal Essay, Smashwords Edition.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Fiction

• “A Couple” – Cantaraville Two (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Absolutely Fourth Street” – The Square Table
• “Bonnifer” – Lily (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Calvin’s Monster”- Word Riot
• “Indian Summer” -  Cantaraville Four
• “Natural Selection” – Cantaraville Eight (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Truths” – Loch Raven Review
• Short Story Cycle – in progress
  • “Brothers” – The Square Table (available in the eBook Store)
  • “Come Together” – Cantaraville Six (available in the eBook Store)
  • “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” – The Big Stupid Review (available in the eBook Store)
  • “Fortunate Son” – in progress
• Poetry in Summer – novella in progress
• Winslow: A Novel – in progress

Memoir

• “After the Fire” – Oregon Literary Review (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Gifts”- Seeker Magazine
• “The Persistence of Gravy” – Static Movement

Poetry

• “On The Beach”- The Green Silk Journal
• “Compartments” – Mississippi Crow, Issue 7, available in print and download here.
• “The Clouds, A Highway…and Joni” – The Shine Journal
• “A Victorian in 1990″ – Loch Raven Review. Also anthologized in the annual edition:
  

  See larger image Loch Raven Review - Four (Paperback) By (author) Jim Doss, Christopher T. George List Price: $14.95 USD New From: $14.95 In Stock

© 2011 – 2012, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

And then the words, “Dead on arrival.”

See larger image Anthology (Audio CD) List Price: $74.98 USD New From: $63.21 In Stock Used from: $29.98 In Stock Release date November 3, 1998.

See larger image Lennon - Signature Box (Audio CD) List Price: $189.99 USD New From: $79.99 In Stock Used from: $79.99 In Stock Release date October 5, 2010.

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

At the very end of his life, Ernest Hemingway was convinced that the electroconvulsive therapy that had be used to treat his depression had destroyed his memory and, therefore, his ability to write.  Whether or not shock therapy can actually do that and whether or not it was true in Hemingway’s case has been argued ever since then, but Hemingway believed it and it was perhaps the final blow that pushed him into the despair from which he could find no escape.  About a year earlier, he had completed the manuscript for A Moveable Feast, his memoir of his early days in Paris when he was on the threshold of literary stardom.  While one might imagine that memories of true events are crucial ingredients for a memoir, they are not the only ingredients.  In the years since A Moveable Feast was first published it has been extensively fact-checked several times. Major parts of it cannot be verified, including an infamous anecdote involving F. Scott Fitzgerald, a ruler, and a men’s room, that I will forever refuse to believe ever happened. So really, what purpose did memory serve him in creating his memoir, especially since even though much of it may be fiction, it is still vivid and poignant, and a prime example of a literary genre?  For Hemingway, memory was everything and he couldn’t live without it.

So what is it about this fragile and mysterious thing called memory that sustains us, that inspires us, that tricks us, and sometimes horrifyingly eludes us, that makes it so essential to the creation of fiction?  And what is it about memory that is essential to the reading of fiction?

William Saleton’s recent profile of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus at Slate.com provides insight into the fragile nature of memory.  Loftus is a researcher who has studied, through experimentation on human subjects, the mechanisms of human memory.  In the course of her career, she has been a controversial figure.  She has shown how so-called eyewitness testimony in criminal cases can be unknowingly be shaped by police and prosecutors, helping defense lawyers obtain acquittals for their clients, and helping to overturn convictions based on eyewitness testimony.  Along the way she has stirred controversy in her own profession by  taking on proponents of recovered memory therapy in the early 1990’s, by arguing that the therapy itself created false memories of childhood abuse.  It’s still controversial today, but her efforts have resulted in tighter legal and professional guidelines.  Her shift in focus from proving eyewitness testimony to be flawed to proving recovered memories to be equally questionable had to have been motivated, at least in part, by her own experience.  Saleton writes:

Not even Loftus was immune to suggestion. In 1988, after 13 years of testifying about memory’s fallibility, she was told by her uncle that she was the one who had found her dead mother in the swimming pool. The sights and sounds of that awful morning came back to her—the corpse face down, the nightgown, the screaming, the stretcher, the police cars. But within three days, her uncle recanted the story, and other relatives confirmed that her aunt, not Loftus, had found the body. The memories of the memory expert were false.

Her false memory must have been so real and so vivid to her that when confronted with the truth she realized that memory was more fragile, and truth more elusive, then she had already established.

In 1990, Loftus testified in a murder trial for a murder that had happened twenty-one years earlier.  The defendant had been charged by his own daughter, who had suddenly recovered a repressed memory.  Loftus’ previous research had proved that eyewitness testimony could be altered, but she had not proved that entire memories could be made up.  The defendant was convicted.  And yet, from her own personal experience, she knew it was possible and set out to prove it.  Saleton writes:

Loftus began to read popular books that told women and therapists how to recover memories of sexual abuse. The books urged therapists to ask their clients about childhood incest. They listed symptoms that supposedly indicated abuse even if it wasn’t remembered. They invited women to search for memories by imagining the abuse. They encouraged group therapy in which women could hear one another’s stories of being victimized.

These ideas sounded fishy. Suggestion, indoctrination, authority, inference, imagination, and immersion were known to alter memories in police interrogations and experiments. But could they create a whole memory? Could the recent surge of incest recollections be the product of recovered-memory therapy?

Loftus conducted a number of experiments to see if it were possible, through careful manipulation, subjects could be induced into recalling vivid memories of things that never happened.  What she discovered is that it is possible to create a false memory in at least some of her subjects if certain conditions are met.  Interestingly, the conditions were met in her own very personal experience with false memories:

• The memory is suggested or verified by someone whom the subject trusts.  In her test subjects’ case, like her own experience, the facilitator is a relative.  In the books she read, the trusted facilitator was the therapist.
• The false memory contains true elements that trigger real sense or affective memories that become conflated with the false elements.

The rest is done by the subject’s own mind, unconsciously weaving true and the false together to form a convincing narrative that although false, might as well have happened because it is now part of the subjects self-identity. Loftus was able to create a recipe for a false memory.  It wasn’t always successful, but that it was successful at all shows how fragile our perceptions of reality can be.  Her most common recipe was the “lost in the mall experiment”:

Each subject was given summaries of four incidents from his childhood. Three stories were true; one was false. The false story followed a formula: You got lost in a mall or department store, you cried, you were found by an old person. The summaries were written with the help of older relatives who knew the true incidents and the family.

…

The subjects were told that their relatives had recalled all four incidents. They were asked to fill in the details of each incident or, if they couldn’t remember it, to write, “I do not remember this.” In follow-up interviews, they were asked to think more about each incident and to retrieve any additional details they could recall. Of the 24 people subjected to this procedure, six came to remember the fake story as true.

Because the stories were individualized by relatives who knew the subject, they contained enough specific details that evoke sense memories that were true and would validate the false part of the story:

You, your mom, Tien, and Tuan all went to the Bremerton K-Mart. You must have been 5 years old at the time. Your mom gave each of you some money to get a blueberry Icee. You ran ahead to get into the line first, and somehow lost your way in the store. Tien found you crying to an elderly Chinese woman. You three then went together to get an Icee.

There’s not a lot of vivid detail in this version of the story, but there’s just enough to bring the subject back to her child sensations and perceptions: going to a department store with her mother and her siblings as a very small child, a blueberry Icee, an elderly Chinese woman.  The subject who was told this story remembers going the Bremerton K-Mart with her family as a sensual experience: the immensity of the space, the aisles, the shelves of merchandize (brightly colored toys, gleaming appliances), the crowds of people all much taller than a five-year old, the sounds of people talking, the PA announcements (possibly for lost children), and finally, the taste of a blueberry Icee.

Loftus’ critics, and there are many of them, point out that a benign story with a happy ending is a far cry from a traumatic and scarring one of sexual abuse.  Additionally, as the Slate article describes, Loftus has used her research as a basis for therapists to implant false memories on purpose in order to alter their patients’ behavior in some desirable way.  To many of her peers, and to me, she has crossed over an ethical line in a very frightening way.  Her little recipe has become a cookbook for brainwashing.

Ethical concerns about what trusted professionals do with this knowledge aside, Loftus’s research into the delicate nature of memory has a lot to say about how we read and experience fiction and how we write it.  The conflation of sense memory and affective memory, which we bring as readers and writers, with fictional characters and experiences creates vivid false memories.

What ties us all together is the fundamental fact that all of us feel sensations and experience emotions in the same way.  One of the finest examples of a writer connecting with his reader through the five basic senses can be found in the opening paragraphs of Charles D’Ambrosio’s “The Point.”  This story is about a fourteen year-old boy desperately trying to escort a drunken middle aged women home from a party.  It’s not necessarily an experience that many of us have had, but D’Ambrosio makes it real for us from the very beginning by communicating with us through our senses:

I had been lying awake after my nightmare, a nightmare in which Father and I bought helium balloons at circus.  I tied mine around my finger and Father tied his around a stringbean and lost it.  After that, I lay in the dark, tossing and turning, sleepless from all the sand in my sheets and all the uproar in the living room.  Then the door opened, and for a moment the blade of bright light blinded me.  The party was still going full blast, and now with the door ajar and my eyes adjusting I glimpsed the silver smoke swirling in the light and all the people suspended in it, hovering around as if they were angels in Heaven—some kind of Heaven where the host serves highballs and the men smoke cigars and the women all smell like rotting fruit.  Everything was hysterical out there—the men laughing, the ice clinking, the women shrieking.  A woman crossed over and sat on the edge of my bed, bending over me.  It was Mother.  She was backlit, a vague looming silhouette, but I could smell lily of the valley and something else—lemon rind from the bitter twist she always chewed when she reached the watery bottom of her vodka-and-tonic.  When Father was alive, she rarely drank, but after he shot himself you could say she really let herself go.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then any one of the other senses – smell, touch, sound, taste — is worth a thousand pictures, and they transcend age, gender, and sometimes even culture.  From the sensation of the sand in the sheets, to sounds of the party in the next room, to the bitter twist and the watery vodka-and-tonic (combining both smell and taste), we are experiencing what young Kurt is experiencing and he is reaching us on a very visceral, non-verbal level.  He has no need to explain to us how he feels.  The sensations unconsciously evoke  our own sense memories and we simply feel what Kurt feels.  Having so firmly established this sensual connection with us, D’Ambrosio can now take us wherever he wants to go, just like Loftus’s test subject fondly remembering the taste of her  blueberry Icee.

This conflation of vivid sense memory and imagined narrative is how writers approach their craft and how, as readers, we experience books and stories rather than just merely read them.  We may have nothing at all in common with the author except for the simple fact that we inhabit human bodies and experience sensations and emotions in the same way.  In their simplest and most basic form, they pierce through everything that might separate us from one another: culture, time, place, language, and gender.

Sense memories, Rockaway Playland, 1969: the sting of sunburned cheeks, the roar of the rollercoaster overhead, the taste of hot dogs and cotton candy, the smell of the Atlantic Ocean and English Leather.

Books referenced:

See larger image Atonement: A Novel (Paperback) By (author) Ian McEwan List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $2.99 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date February 25, 2003.

See larger image A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition (Paperback) By (author) Ernest Hemingway List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $6.20 In Stock Used from: $7.45 In Stock Release date July 20, 2010.

See larger image The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (Paperback) By (author) Elizabeth Loftus, Katherine Ketcham List Price: $16.99 USD New From: $9.00 In Stock Used from: $0.75 In Stock

See larger image The Point: And Other Stories (Paperback) By (author) Charles D'Ambrosio List Price: $15.99 USD New From: $35.00 In Stock Used from: $3.18 In Stock

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

A few days after I posted The Art of the Novella: Seize the Day by Saul Bellow, my brief précis and commentary on Saul Bellow’s 1957 novella, I received an email from an old friend complimenting the piece, but also with an admonishment about my somewhat narrow view of what literature is all about.  Tommy Wilhem’s fight against the abyss, a common theme throughout the history of western literary tradition, from Odysseus to Bloom (Leopold), is certainly one of the major themes of the book, but, as my friend Maria pointed out to me, it is a theme largely owned by middle and upper class white men.  It is one of the dominant themes of western literature largely because western literary canon has always been, and to a large extent still is, defined by Dead White European Males.  Battling the abyss is a luxury of the privileged and empowered.  Literature created by women and minorities, she pointed out, tends to be about more immediate and worldly challenges  –  poverty, discrimination, subjugation — human experiences not common to privileged white men, dead or otherwise.  Essentially, she was telling me as politely as possible, “Fred, your Updikean life in suburbia has made your brain go soft,  you need to get out more.”

This discussion has been going on, or raging, between us for nearly thirty years.  When we met in the English department of SUNY Albany there was a heated battle going on there, and in colleges and universities everywhere for that matter, over literary canon.  There were the traditionalists, the old guard, who defended the traditional curriculum defined by Dead White European Males, plus a few tokens: Austin, Bronte, Wharton.  On the other side were those who thought that literary canon itself was oppressive, excluding not only women, but anyone of color.  There were extremes on both sides of the argument.  On the establishment side there were those who didn’t think anything written after 1850 was literature at all,  On the other side, feminist professors who interpreted every piece of accepted literature as misogynist, no matter what it was about.(“It’s about a 19th century whaling ship with an all male crew, for Pete’s sake!” “See! That proves my point!“).  While my own proclivities were with the traditionalists, middle class white male and Bloom (Harold) acolyte that I was, I believed that the canon should be more inclusive of lesser heard voices.  I didn’t want to trash it, I thought it should be expanded.

Initially, I wasn’t aware of this academic battle.  My high school honors English curriculum had been classic canon: a year of Greek, a year of British, a year of American, plus a smattering of other western European white guys.  The curriculum was the curriculum and I didn’t question it.  The political lines gradually revealed themselves over time.  In discussions with certain professors, you could earn a disdainful gaze by mentioning a modern woman or a black writer.  With other professors you would get the look by making a reference to a dead white guy.  Bringing up Vonnegut was like throwing a knuckleball at either side.  You never knew what it would do.  He was obviously a white guy, but at the time some considered him vulgar and he had once written science fiction, so both sides had reasons to hate him.   Vonnegut considered himself a descendant of Twain, who has also been accused of vulgarity.  Time has been shifting critical opinion favorably for both of them.

There was one person who was capable of bridging this gap.  Professor Tom Smith, who combined sheer brilliance,  the soul of a poet, and an exuberant generosity of spirit, endeared himself everyone.  It was through him that I was introduced to Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  These were entirely new voices to me, revealing human experiences that until then, in my white American maleness, had simply been invisible, to borrow a theme from Ellison.  I didn’t forsake Updike for these new, exotic voices — our common religious, cultural,  and socio-economic background is impossible to escape — but I did learn that the breadth of human experience is much larger than any of us can individually ever know.  My Telemachus-Stephan Dedalus complex had always made reading a search for my self.  Now it was a search for other other selves, very different and very far away from middle-class Queens.

History is written by the victors, and so it is true of the western literary tradition that we have inherited.  The winners, the powerful, the privileged, the male,  get to tell their tales. The vanquished, the enslaved, the women, not so much.   When I was sixteen years old, and reading The Iliad for the first time, I was enthralled by how such an ancient story could captivate me.  Across the centuries, from an ancient culture, the characters came alive for me.  In spite of the distance of time and culture, their desires and emotions were immediately recognizable.  Stories driven by character and desire are the trademark of western literature, no matter how intricate plots may or may not be.  All of the events in The Iliad are triggered by the “ruinous rage” of Achilles, who has had his consort, Briseis, taken from him by a more powerful social superior, Agamemnon.  Achilles takes his revenge by refusing to fight, essentially taking his ball and going home.  Although we are assured that Achilles loves Briseis, his anger is as much about the humiliation of being stripped of a prized possession as it is about his heartbreak.  Of course, since I was sixteen at the time, fueled by romantic notions and lust I had conjured up visions of Briseis as some sort of 1100 BC incarnation of Linda Ronstadt (it was the seventies and few were objectified by sixteen year-old boys more than Linda Ronstadt).

It’s not necessarily  fair to apply modern sensibilities to ancient texts, but sometimes it’s impossible to avoid.  Briseis, no matter how much Achilles loved her, was nothing more than property, an enslaved tribute awarded to him for a well-fought battle.  In spite of the fact that the poet seeks inspiration from female muses, this story is told from a decidedly male point of view.  How Briseis feels about the situation is entirely irrelevant.  Her role in the larger story is that of a prop.  In modern parlance, she is a sex-slave.

One shouldn’t judge this too harshly because the status of women in Homer’s epic accurately portrays their status as property during time of the Trojan War (1100BC), the time Homer wrote in down (700 BC) and most of the two thousand plus years since then.  Judgment, however, is beside the point.  It is what is missing from western literary canon that is the issue.  There may have been female poets in ancient times, and in medieval times, but either through suppression or simply by academic selection, they are lost to us.  Most of the handful of woman writers who have been enshrined in western literary canon had to publish under male pseudonyms.

As it has been for women, it has been much the same for all of those who have been disenfranchised.  Native Americans and African Americans have been subsumed by a culture, whose literary tradition is driven by character and desire, that historically has deemed their own character and desire irrelevant and invisible.

If reading and literature is really all about sharing and understanding the full range of human experience, then it needs to be about sharing and understanding all of it. It needs to be not just about lives spent the abyss,  but also about lives lived under physical and metaphorical shackles and chains.

See larger image Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetrology: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest (Hardcover) By (author) John Updike List Price: $35.00 USD New From: $18.37 In Stock Used from: $11.95 In Stock Release date October 17, 1995.

See larger image The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (Paperback) By (author) Harold Bloom List Price: $20.00 USD New From: $4.54 In Stock Used from: $1.16 In Stock Release date September 1, 1995.

See larger image Song of Solomon (Oprah's Book Club) (Mass Market Paperback) By (author) Toni Morrison List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $0.01 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date February 1, 1998.

See larger image Invisible Man (Paperback) By (author) Ralph Ellison List Price: $15.95 USD New From: $7.00 In Stock Used from: $0.30 In Stock Release date March 14, 1995.

See larger image Go Tell It on the Mountain (Paperback) By (author) James Baldwin List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $5.00 In Stock Used from: $2.95 In Stock Release date June 13, 2000.

See larger image One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.) (Paperback) By (author) Gabriel Garcia Marquez List Price: $14.99 USD New From: $5.91 In Stock Used from: $1.89 In Stock Release date February 21, 2006.

See larger image The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation (Paperback) By (author) Homer List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $4.00 In Stock Used from: $0.10 In Stock

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Last week, I traveled up to Massachusetts to attend the memorial service for my uncle, John Juergen  Bubbers, who died in May after a long illness.  I was reunited with my cousins most of whom I’ve not seen in many years.  Sadly, it has been funerals, first of our grandparents and now parents that have given us the occasion to gather together again.  It’s probably typical that at these events that bring together extended families, we all observe our cousins and the grandchildren and look for our genetic connections.  This person looks like Oma, that person has Opa’s mouth, and so on.  In fairness, we also acknowledge who resembles a spouse who married into our family.

I took particular notice of one of my cousins.  When we were younger we were very similar looking, both of us blond haired and blue eyed and bearing some resemblance to our grandfather.  Now, not so much.  He was always taller and skinnier than me, and now it seems even more so, especially on the skinnier part.  That’s right, Fred. He got skinnier. What struck me was how much he reminded me of his father.  In his physical manner, speech patterns, even the way he carried himself was eerily evocative of my Uncle John.  It’s been decades since he lived in his father’s household, so how strong could his father’s influence be by this time?  When I remarked on this to my sister, she said, “Well, Freddie, I hate to break this to you, but everybody’s been telling me how much you remind them of Daddy.”

“I try not to,” I said.

“There, the way you said ‘I try not to.’  You sound just like him.”

There’s no escape from Gregor Mendel and his wretched wrinkled peas.

One of the things that we all felt deeply with the passing of my Uncle John is that, for our family, another generation is now gone, and with it the links to our unique heritage are now broken.  In our nation of immigrants, heritage always seems to be both a curse and a blessing.  When we are young and desperately trying to forge our own identities, heritage can seem like heavy baggage, weighing us down.  The old stories don’t mean much to us.  In moments of doubt, however, when life’s challenges make us question just who we think we are, heritage is a home that provides solace and comfort.  In our case, our story is of a German-American family that, through circumstances driven by abject poverty and the sheer bad luck of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, became Nazi refugees, arriving penniless back in New York in 1939.  It can’t be understated how much that experience shaped the lives of my father and his brother and in turn the lives of all of their children and grandchildren.  As my daughter, the youngest and last grandchild of my father’s generation, begins her first year at Florida State University, I have to take notice that there are no exceptions to this precedent in our extended family.  At our reunion last week, there was no doubt among us that the values that were forged into those two brothers by poverty and war were responsible for this.  An education, an intellect, a profession, a trade, a skill are priceless possessions and are things that can never be taken away.  My sisters, my cousins, myself, and all of our children are the beneficiaries of those two brothers’ extraordinary achievements.  To be the recipient of an unearned gift is the very definition of living in grace.

After the service, I had a long solitary drive across western Massachusetts to consider all that had been said and offered during the previous two days.  One thing that was on my mind was the life-long sibling rivalry that existed between my father and my uncle.  It was always hard to know the true nature of this conflict.  In the end, my father and uncle were more alike than they were different, and neither of them was disposed to revealing much of their inner lives.  My uncle was a man with enormous intellectual gifts, and had accomplished much in his life.  He was one of the pioneers in the audio engineering industry (he helped put both the “hi” and the “fi” in Hi-Fi).  My father,  the younger brother, never felt he could live up to that.  I’m sure many people told him that he didn’t have to and he had done a lot to be proud of as well, but stubbornness also seems to be a family trait.  Forgive us, we’re Germans.

This rivalry was kept out of sight and I’m not even sure how we are even aware of it aside from a very rare unguarded remark and the fact that as my sisters and I grew up, our accomplishments always seemed to be measured against those of our cousins, who were a few years older than us.  I believe there were some periods where the brothers didn’t talk, but they weren’t long and they always ended.  What I do remember was that our two families visited as often as time and distance allowed, and my father and uncle always remained in touch and visited with each other up until my father’s death in 1999.  The mysteries of their relationship will now never be solved but they are also now moot.  In all the ways that truly matter, they were brothers and loved one another.  It may have been impossible for either of them to say it, but they showed it in everything they did.

Nothing made me more aware of this than something that happened at the luncheon-reception that was held after the memorial service.  On of the people who spoke at the service was a man who met and became one of my uncle’s closest friends in the last four years of his life.  He was a charming bow-tied gentleman with a British accent.  As a fellow engineer, they had formed a friendship, cautiously at first, but it became fast and deep.  He was with my uncle on the day that he decided to finally end the dialysis that was now just prolonging his suffering.

After the service, the gentleman and his wife sat down with my sister and me at the reception.  When we introduced ourselves as John’s niece and nephew, the gentleman said, “Oh you are Fred’s children!” He turned to his wife and said, “John used to tell the most wonderful stories about his brother Fred. There was one that I loved and I can only hope it was true.”

I asked him if he could tell it and he began.  After only a few sentences of setting the scene, I immediately knew the story. “Is this the one about the priest and the Kodak girl?”

The gentleman’s face lit up.  “Yes it is,” he said.  “Is it true?”

“It’s true,” I assured him.

“You’ve validated it for me and it’s so wonderful to know,  ” he said.  “Please…you tell the story.”

I proceeded to tell the story as best as I could and was rewarded at the end when the table erupted in laughter. It was a story about something funny that had happened many years ago in my father’s drugstore that revealed a sharp wit and sense of irreverence that I think was something that both my father and my uncle shared.  To learn that my uncle was telling this story years after my father had died was for me one of the most moving moments of that day.  I can’t think of a more simple example of the love, respect, and affection that my uncle had for my father.  Enduring love, hidden in plain sight.

I guess now I’m obligated to tell the story that led that profound epiphany as I drove through the Berkshires listening to Jerry Garcia sing “Ripple.”  The title of this article may be misleading, so let me reset some expectations.  “Oral Tradition” conjures up images of epic and lyric poets captivating audiences with tales of heroic derring-do and beautiful maidens chastely worshipped from afar.  That’s not what this is about.  Don’t think of the Divine Muses, think of New York Wisenheimers.  As for poets, don’t think Homer, think Joe Pesci.  Here goes:

My father’s drugstore was his pride and joy.  The main focus of his business was the prescription counter, on a raised platform at the back of the store.  He kept his store tasteful and didn’t have racks of cheap house-wares and motor oil in the middle of the floor.  From the street, you could seen through the plate-glass windows and doors straight through the store to the prescription counter.  He still sold the things you normally find in a drugstore, but he kept them to either side of the store on shelves and in display cases.  The biggest part of his non-prescription business, from the early sixties to the later part of the seventies, was Kodak film.  In those days, there were no one-hour photo kiosks and digital photography was science fiction.  Instead, you brought your film to a drugstore and it was sent out to a lab for processing.  A week later you came back to get your pictures.  My father sold and processed a lot of film and even had a display case of Kodak instamatic cameras, which he sold.

Among the promotional items that Kodak used to distribute to retailers in those years were life-size cardboard cutouts of pretty young models posing with Kodak instamatic cameras.  They were tame by today’s standards and the models were always wholesome looking types (think Mary Ann, not Ginger), but they did show some flesh.  Every year or two, Kodak would send a new model, to keep them looking fresh since over time fashions changed and colors faded.  It wouldn’t do for Kodak advertisements to have faded colors, now would it?  My father placed his model in the back of the store in front of the left side of the prescription counter.  It was out of the way, but due to the wide open nature of the store, it was still eye catching.  My father gave them names.  One that I remember in particular, and I believe figures in this story, was a pretty brunette with cut-off jeans and a polka-dot halter, the kind that wraps around the back of the neck, crisscrosses in front, and ties up in a bow in back.  Yes, I know cardboard cutouts don’t have backs, but I have a pretty good imagination when it comes to things like this. Her name was Marie and she had replaced a blonde named Heidi.

One day, one of my father’s regular customers, a priest from the rectory at nearby St. Bart’s came into the store and asked to speak to him.  My father came down from behind the prescription counter and said, “Yes, father, what can I do for you.”

The priest gestured at Marie, who remained smiling with her perfect white teeth.  “This display is in very poor taste,” he said.

“What do you mean, father?”

“The way her breasts are protruding.  I can see the valley between them and I think I can even see the shape of her nipples.  When I look at her I am filled with lust and I become aroused.”

Most people would be rendered speechless at the revelation of a priest’s lust and arousal, even if that revelation is only verbal. My father wasn’t most people.   Without missing a beat he said, “Why father, thank you for pointing that out.  I’ve never noticed her breasts.  I’m a leg man myself.”

God bless the memories of John Juergen Bubbers and Frederick Herman Bubbers.

And continue to bless the lives of all their children and grandchildren.

Related memoirs:

“Gifts“

“Gifts Epilogue: Christmas 1979“

“My Old Man, BS Ph“

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

The night before, when my family opened our presents, I had been given by Santa Claus, a small drum set, a GI Joe, and a little plastic guitar with the faces of John, Paul, George, and Ringo on the fret board.  A good haul for a five year-old, but I wasn’t going to get to play with my new toys until New Year’s Day.  I didn’t mind, though, for although it was Christmas Day, my sisters and I were dressed like it was Easter Sunday because we were headed to Kennedy Airport to fly to Miami Beach.  I can still remember how wondrous it all was to be living in the capital of the world.  We had a World’s Fair, Bernstein was with the Philharmonic (a hero in my family, likely because both the maestro and my father were born in Lawrence, Massachusetts), the United Nations was in Manhattan and our country’s membership was still something to be valued.

We lived in Queens, a borough of what was then “Fun City.”  My father was the sole owner of a drug store and worked long hours, but he made the most of the little time he had to spend with us.  On Sunday afternoons, when we weren’t at the World’s Fair, we might be bicycle riding in Central Park.  On a rare evening when he was able to close early or he was able to get someone to fill in for him in his store, he’d come upstairs and say, “Hey kids, let’s go for a ride,”  and we’d pile into his ‘63 Skylark and head off somewhere.  Where we were going would always be a surprise.  Sometimes my mother would come along, but more often she wouldn’t.  Being a parent, I now understand that these impromptu outings that took the three kids out of the house for a few hours were as much about parental bonding as they were about my father giving our mother a break.

Sometimes we went into Manhattan in the early evening and just walk around Lincoln Center, dazzled by the lights and the architecture, the chicly attired concertgoers at the Metropolitan Opera House and Philharmonic Hall.  In my memory, all the women are wearing Oleg Cassini and look like Jackie Kennedy.  There were television sets in the lobbies, so you see and hear a bit of what was going on in the concert halls and the theaters, but the main attraction was the Zero-Mostel-Gene Wilder-The-Producers fountain.  Not to fear, sometimes we did actually get tickets and see an actual performance of a ballet or a symphony.

Another spur of the moment destination was Kennedy Airport.  International travel had kicked into high gear by the mid-sixties and the International Arrivals Building at JFK was no less glamorous a place than Lincoln Center.  In my memory, many of the women are dressed like Jackie Kennedy, but were they were Europeans, Asians, Indians, and Africans, so I also have some images of colorful flowing garments.  The announcements were in multiple languages.  We were at the crossroads of the world.  Maybe it’s because I was so young at the time that I remember it this way, but I have to believe that it was all so new and so exciting, that everyone else felt that sense of wonder and a believed that we were lucky to be living in the best moment of history.

So, on that Christmas day, I didn’t mind that I was being taken away from my drums and my toy guitar.  The GI Joe stowed away in a suitcase and got to go swimming in the hotel pool.  I was going to fly in one of those 707’s that I had seen taxiing around from the observation deck on our sightseeing trips.  It was everything I could have imagined and more.

If only flying first class these days were as good as flying coach was then.  The flight down on National Airlines, which at the time was an icon for Florida vacations.  It was a morning flight, so breakfast was served, and you were given a choice: eggs, pancakes, or french toast.  As the flight attendants (okay, stewardesses), who were all dressed like Jackie Kennedy, moved through the cabin, they didn’t run out of any of the choices.  And the food itself was, well, just like normal food that appeared to have been cooked in some traditional manner, not manufactured.  On the flight back home, there was steak.  Normal steak.  There was real silverware with the airline’s logo engraved in the handles.   Pillows were free and the stewardesses didn’t have to make change because you didn’t need to buy anything.  Life at 30,000 feet was pleasant and civilized.  For a middle-class family from Queens it was royal treatment.

Needless to say, those days are long gone.  There have been periods in my adult life that my job has required constant travel.  I’m thankful that I’m now in a job that only requires occasional travel and I have enormous sympathy for the people I work with who spend most of their time on the road.

For most of last year during my last stint as a road-warrior consultant, I few every week flying from Dulles to Seattle-Takoma.  On travel days, Monday mornings and Thursday nights I had to mentally prepare myself for what lay ahead with some quiet meditation.  The whole experience, from check-in to baggage claim, was like being sucked into a torture machine.  I would be mentally stressed out and physically abused for the next eight hours and there was nothing I could do about it.  The only thing to focus on was the fact that no matter what I went through, my battered body and fractured nervous system would eventually be ejected by the torture machine.

The list of annoyances and abuses, major and minor, are well-known and there’s probably thousands of other blogs and columns just like this one in this post-Slater era, but here’s a short, non-inclusive list: TSA personnel barking out commands at security checkpoints, in-experienced non-roadwarriors clogging up security check-points who don’t listen to the barking TSA personnel, check-in counters that have endless lines, no airline personnel and broken kiosks, airline cabins that are now like cattle-cars,  sweaty, portly rowmates (not that I have any right to complain), grumpy flight attendants (not to single them out, everybody seems grumpy), two hour ground stops, the battle for overhead compartment space, getting nickeled and dimed for everything, and on and on and on…

My coping mechanism has always been to let everything go.  It’s a rather strange accomplishment for me because friends and enemies alike would agree that I can never let anything go, but in this context it’s different.  There is absolutely nothing I can control and my fate is  in the hands of others and the randomness of a chaotic universe.  While that may also be true of all the other things that I can’t let go, in this case, it’s a clear immutable truth that I can’t deny.  I have no control over whether my flight is delayed or cancelled or my bags get lost, or I get stuck in flat-against-the-back-wall seat 39C between two fat guys,  or I die a fiery death which might be caused by religious fanatic or a defective rivet.  I’ve also always believed is that the cabin crew are just as much victimized by the experience as the passengers, so when when they seem a little cranky, I cut them some slack.  Their lot is worse than ours.  They have go through what we go through and it’s their job to be nice.  For low pay.

No doubt all the security hassles since 9/11 has made things beyond unbearable, but the quality of the experience of air-travel was becoming unbearable long before then.  The decline in quality probably began with deregulation when airlines were made to compete with one another.  The intent was right, and it did indeed make air travel available to nearly everybody and not just the slightly upper middle-class and above.  Something went haywire after that.  In competing with one another, airlines engaged in price wars that not only drove their competition out of business, they drove themselves out of business.  This recklessness in business management is mind-boggling.  How do 49 dollar tickets to Florida make sense in any business model?

The flying public, and our society in general, have some responsibility for creating the current situation that we’re now all whining about.  The most important rule in business is to pay attention to your customers and provide products and services that they value.  The message that we have been sending over and over again is loud and clear.  The only thing that matters is price.  We’re a consumer driven society and we want what we want, when we want it, and we want it as cheap as possible.  Never mind that anyone else, our fellow citizens no less, needs to make a living.  This is why in the future, every job will be a McJob and we’ll all be working for WalMart.

An airline that attempts to address any of the issues that we complain about would find itself at a severe competitive disadvantage.  If for, example, an airline decided to improve in-flight comfort by putting fewer seats in their plains, giving us more leg room and more room to recline, thereby reducing the level of physical torture, it might be very appealing, but it doesn’t change the amount of fuel required to reach a destination in any significant way or the cost of that fuel.  That means the airline would have to charge us more.  An airline that did that would find itself in severe financial straits very quickly.  We’ve told them over and over again that we’d rather save as little as ten dollars on a ticket by flying in cramped cabins and arriving at our destinations needing a chiropractor.

They’ve lower the price of a ticket to exclude baggage handling, and so now everybody tries to carry their baggage into the cabin, causing fights over compartment space, creating unsafe conditions in the cabin, causing boarding and un-boarding delays, and forcing flight attendants to be involuntary (and unpaid) baggage handlers.  But the ticket is cheaper.  The airline travel experience would be vastly improved for passengers and crew alike if baggage handling were included in the ticket and nothing larger than a small handbag or a briefcase were allowed in the cabin.  Make it an FAA regulation so that all airlines would be impacted equally.

The airlines have been racing to the bottom and we’re getting what we pay for. It’s time to bring back some regulation, not in pricing or other anti-competitive ways, but in levels of services required by airlines.

For additional perspectives on the Slater incident and air travel general:

• Ann Hood’s essay at Salon about her days as a flight attendant back in the days of glamour.
• Airline Pilot Patrick Smith’s column, also at Salon. Smith’s column, even when he’s commenting on the current condition of air travel, still has a joyful feel that celebrates the wonders of aviation even though he has enough experience to give him the right to be more cynical than he is.  He’s also a damn good writer.

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

My titles are available for free using coupon code SW100. (Valid now through July 31, 2010).

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

A selection of my previously published stories and essays are now available as eBooks through several different sales channels.  The the books can be purchased and downloaded directly in multiple formats from Smashwords.com as well as from the following online retailers:

• Diesel eBooks
• Sony
• Barnes & Noble
• Apple iBooks
• Amazon

It’s a simple exchange of values. You give them money, they give you an eBook. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Three stories about two neighbors who meet as young children and grow up together on Long Island during the late 60′s and early 70′s. The comforting and loving world they live in changes around them as their families fracture, society descends into chaos, and a war rages on. In the aftermath, they left on a wrecked, smoking landscape, searching for a new way to live when all of the sign have been burned down.

Reviews:

“These three separate stories about neighbors Johnny and Miriam growing up in the 1960s and 70s make for a moving and elegant novella. I very much enjoyed the directness and strength of the prose which has its own bleak beauty, and the push and pull of relationships and family was very well portrayed indeed. The ending is perfect too. Highly recommended.” *****

-Anne Brooke (Amazon)

“This collection has two lovely tales of growing up in Port Jefferson, New York, plus a remarkable story of complicated love — sexual and familial — amid scenes of poverty and emotional desolation. Bubbers has a fine, almost photographic sense of place and time, and a great talent at capturing the texture of life. The final story which gives its name to this collection, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” ranks with some of the best short fiction written today.” *****

Eugene Mirabelli (Smashwords)

Read an excerpt.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Smashwords Edition.

Also available from:

• Sony
• Diesel eBooks,
• Barnes & Noble
• Apple’s iBookstore (accessible from your iPad or iPhone).

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Amazon Kindle Edition:

See larger image Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $1.99 USD Release date February 6, 2011.

Natural Selection

A corporate manager is on the verge losing it all. Office politics, a growing drinking problem, estrangement from his family, and a looming layoff are pushing him to the edge of a personal abyss.

I wrote about how this story came to be in “Into The Abyss.”

Read an excerpt.

Natural Selection, Smashwords Edition.

Also available from:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sony
• Diesel Books
• Apple’s iBookstore (accessible from your iPad or iPhone).

Amazon Kindle Edition:

See larger image Natural Selection (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $0.99 USD Release date January 25, 2011.

A Couple

Rob and Debbie are spending their last spring break in Florida. Graduation is looming and they face an uncertain future. Family expectations, peer pressure, and their own hearts are driving them apart.  I wrote about this genre of story in my post Doomed Couples.

Read an excerpt.

A Couple, Smashwords Edition.

Also available from:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sony
• Diesel Books
• Apple’s iBookstore (accessible from your iPad or iPhone).

Amazon Kindle Edition:

See larger image A Couple (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $0.99 USD Release date January 29, 2011.

Bonnifer

A short story about a married office worker struggling with temptation and desire while flirting with an older woman on a sultry summer evening in Greenwich Village.

Bonnifer, Smashwords Edition.

Also available from:

• Barnes & Noble,
• Sony
• Diesel Books
• Apple’s iBookstore (accessible from your iPad or iPhone).

Amazon Kindle Edition:

See larger image Bonnifer (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $0.99 USD Release date January 30, 2011.

After the Fire: A Personal Essay

My memoir about a writing workshop and the teacher whose lessons on the art of fiction and the art of living continue to teach and inspire me, thirty years later.  There’s some back-story about how this essay came to be written in my post eBook Week, Meta-Memoir.

Read an excerpt.

After the Fire: A Personal Essay, Smashwords Edition.

Also available from:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sony
• Diesel Books
• Apple’s iBookstore (accessible from your iPad or iPhone).

Amazon Kindle Edition:

See larger image After The Fire: A Personal Essay (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $0.99 USD Release date February 3, 2011.

© 2010 – 2012, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.