ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Hardboiled Coffee Tabloid

    In the joint at the corner I had coffee and eggs and looked at the papers. One of them was the tabloid I had telephoned the day before. When I picked it up, I felt a sudden, lunging fear. But there was no banner headline. I got brave and turned to the inside. (cf. Dewey,… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing a Short Story

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on February 17, 2011. My long-time friend (for almost 40 years now) Mitchell Stocks forwarded this list: “Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing Short Stories.” I had never seen the list before. Since I know that… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Waiting

    Joe drank two cups of coffee. It was hot and strong, the way it always tasted best to him. He sat back in his chair, his fingers toying first with his spoon, then drumming noiselessly on the table. But he couldn’t sit still very long, and he arose, rinsed his cup and left it standing… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Auden on Detectives

    Completely satisfactory detectives are extremely rare. Indeed, I only know of three: Sherlock Holmes(Conan Doyle), Inspector French (Freeman Wills Crofts), and Father Brown (Chesterton). The job of the detective is to restore the state of grace in which the aesthetic and the ethical are as one. Since the murderer who caused their disjunction is the aesthetically defiant individual, his opponent,… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “The Wayward Bus” by John Steinbeck

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on June 23, 2020. Last week after finishing In Dubious Battle, I continued my Steinbeck-binge by getting The Wayward Bus.  Like Cannery Row and In Dubious Battle, this was another book I had first read 45 years… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Scenery

    I found Big John and Doc on a small flagstone patio that opened off the kitchen. They were seated at a large glass topped, wrought iron table and there was a huge pot of coffee on a hot plate at Big John’s elbow. The view from the patio was of the tumbled mountain range north… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: DANA GIOIA ON STORIES

    “There are some truths that we can only express to one another in stories. These insights need to be embodied in action, character, and circumstance. Otherwise the truths seem vague and unconvincing. To say “You can’t avoid your destiny despite your best efforts” is a dull platitude, but the tale of Oedipus, who mistakenly kills… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “In Dubious Battle” by John Steinbeck

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on April 30, 2020. On the edge of Butte, Montana, in the Mountain View Cemetery, there is a gravestone for labor organizer/martyr Frank Little. On August 1, 1917, he was pulled from a boarding house… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Manners

    I was about to apologize for having disturbed him in the middle of the night, then decided it would be better to play it tough. Big John had said I had “manners.” A certain amount of manners would be okay. But guys just didn’t come real polite in the heavy rackets and courtesy could be… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: P.D. James on The Art of Short Stories

    The scope of the short story is inevitably restricted and this means it is most effective when it deals with a single incident or one dominant idea. It is the originality and strength of this idea which largely determines the success of the story. Although it is far less complex in structure than a novel,… Read more