Book Review: The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace

 I have been cultivating this finish-the-book vibe after years of starting books and never finishing them. I have been very successful. But I had to pull the plug on this 547 page book at about page 275. Reading this book was like reading the “begats”

Why do we do Anything?

Have you ever thought about why you do anything? By that, I mean why you do something instead of nothing. For myself, if ever given the option, I will always do nothing instead of something. The answer is, you do things solely to shut people up.


Sounds harsh. But think about it. With very few exceptions, your actions day-to-day, minute-by-minute, are dedicated to getting other people off your back. 


You go to work. But who gets the money? The mortgage company or landlord, the insurance companies, the oil companies, the utility

A few of my paintings

Black and White Dog

Women with Too Much Time on Their Hands

Woman Reading a Book

Short Story: The Interview

This story in a slightly different form is (presently) a chapter in a novel I'm working on. It works well as a stand-alone story.

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Brigham Stone stopped at the top of the Accademia Bridge in Venice and looked toward the dome of the Salute church. The white marble and lead-gray dome of the church glowed orange in the light of the rising sun, 

Book Review: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Buy Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition) here

From the time I was in high school I heard how brilliant this book was. I remember seeing one of my friends reading this really fat paperback, which turned out to be Atlas Shrugged. I wondered what was so great about it, but it took me forty years to get around to read it. It seemed like another forty years to get through it. I saw an interview of William F. Buckley on Charlie Rose where he said he read it for pretty much the same reason I did, and that it was horrible. He had to flog

New Snippet of "Self Portrait of a Dying Man"

Margold goes to sea on a sailboat to clear his head and maybe escape Death. They come across some rough weather and Margold breaks his arm. Read the sample here

Book Review: The Devil all the Time, by Donald Ray Pollock

This book is about the sorry state of man in the world, his struggle against evil, religion, and death, as well as the rigors of everyday life. It’s about the futility of prayer and the uselessness of religion and the non-existence of God. Man is turned loose to kill and be killed, to suffer and die, all the while pleading