The Tiger and Other Tales - Softcover

Foley, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1944697136 ISBN 13: 9781944697136

Verlag: Sagging Meniscus Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Fiction. Jack Foley's autobiography begins, "What is a life but stories?" The stories collected here are not his life but a fantastic consciousness in which he is as lost as anyone. Foley writes what he does not know; he writes what he can imagine. The dead sprout up here as easily as leaves of grass.

Stylistically the stories range widely—some are comic, some bring tears. All manifest "the strangeness and the power of poetry," plunging us into the enigma of the human heart.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jack Foley (born 1940) has published thirteen books of poetry, five books of criticism, and VISIONS AND AFFILIATIONS, a chronoencyclopedia of California poetry from 1940 to 2005. His radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard on Berkeley station KPFA every Wednesday at 3; his column, Foley's Books, appears in the online magazine, The Alsop Review. With his late wife, Adelle, Foley performed his work (often multi-voiced pieces) frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is continuing to work with others. With poet Clara Hsu, Foley is co-publisher of Poetry Hotel Press. In 2010 Foley was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed Jack Foley Day in Berkeley.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Tiger and Other Tales

By Jack Foley

Sagging Meniscus Press

Copyright © 2016 Jack Foley
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-944697-13-6

Contents

Author's Note, 
Bus Ride, 
Sous le Pont Mirbeau, 
The Old Man, 
Lights, 
The Djinn, 
Irish, 
The End, 
The Adventures of Sally Phillips, Girl Detective, 
"The Monst", 
The Ern Malley Story, 
Families, 
Harry Fox (Dead) To George M. Cohan (Dead), 
Broughton Fountain, 
My Death, 
An E-mail to George, 
Malèna, 
Man Wolf, 
The Tiger, 
Epilogue: Two Plays, 

CHAPTER 1

Bus Ride

His father was of a cheerful disposition, his mother of a quite melancholy temper; both contributed to the character of the child. Do you have the time, she said. He was standing almost rooted to the spot waiting for a bus. Some are quick to notice, others require convalescence. She was not speaking to him. The bus had not arrived. I have hoped for some time, he thought, to have entered into an agreement with certain people, but the substance has rarely shown itself in ingenuity and depth. Her unmistakable body entered the bus. The light was changing slowly all around him. He stood. I have hoped for some time, he thought, to have achieved a modus operandi. Now he felt the slight chill which was the mark of the beginning of the evening. But I have failed in this. It was as if he were attempting to turn to stone. Do you know what time the next bus is, she said. He stood. She did not repeat her question. The bus, his bus, had not yet arrived. He could feel her eyes on him. He stood there, rooted, like a tree. There was a tree behind him. He had no idea what sort of tree. Sometimes, at the beginning of a story, you can sense what it was that made the writer begin that story. The beginning is always interesting. The light had changed, perceptibly. He wondered if she would repeat her question. Diphtheria. Someone was standing behind him. Each night he had stayed home hoping to have achieved some understanding. He watched carefully now, carefully. He entered the bus. No one was getting out.

After a long convalescence of three years or more he had returned to the grammar school. His word box had increased perceptibly.

SHAKESPEARE CAMBRIDGE SELECTION BELVEDERE

Inside there was a picture of a man and a book. Sometimes in a story one can follow the twists and turnings of an author's mind. The bus was moving in an unfamiliar landscape. He would have to go downtown. But the landscape, here, was unfamiliar. He watched as it passed by, slowly. The bus turned. It stopped. What do you think of a person in a particular way that is time, he thought. She was smiling at him but not directly. What do you think of a person who is almost forty years old and still unable to tie his shoelaces. That's what he is. Almost forty years old and still unable to tie his shoelaces. His mother has to do it for him.

She was sitting directly across from him but she had not spoken. The two women who had been speaking stopped. He wondered if there had been something he should have said. She arose and rang the bell. As the landscape changed it became more like something he remembered. As a result of a great mischance he had grown up with a melancholy and irritable temperament such as belongs to men of ingenuity and depth; thanks to the one, they are quick as lightning in perception, thanks to the other, they take no pleasure in verbal cleverness or falsehood. As the landscape changed it became like something he remembered. His mother stood over him wondering what to say. He said, I don't want you to do that again. It was time. The bus stopped. Longing for the release the story promises, the writer begins. I have never done that to you, she said. Not ever. I have never yet broken your skin when I hit you with my fists.

CHAPTER 2

Sous Le Pont Mirbeau

Various writers were sent a story about a community which has a strange custom: its young men gather on Mirbeau Bridge and leap — often beautifully — into the water below. No one ever survives the leap. The story has various elements. We were asked to take at least two of them and make a story of our own. This is mine. I considered calling the story "Poor Thing."

Yes, no one survived the leap. Except one. They don't speak about it, except a few of the old ones. They're the ones that know him. Not the current crop. What do they know? Watching the telly, going to stupid films. What do they know about anything?

The old ways, ah, the old ways. You couldn't talk about it. It wasn't talk that made it. It was something else. A feeling, perhaps, but that's not it either. That's too vague. No, no, it wasn't a feeling. It was a, well, it was a presence, an aura perhaps. It's not there now. The telly and the films drive out the aura — poof. But it was there then. Not that it was any mysterious thing. It was as common as water then. We all felt it. We were all so to speak nourished by it, held in its arms — but it wasn't so what do they say "anthropocentric" as that, no it wasn't "anthropocentric" at all. It's like the water you know. You're either in it or you're not. And you know whether you're in it or not. Now people are not. But then they were in it. It held us.

Richard Thatcher was not a bad lot. Just like all of us who grew up hereabouts. One of many, no different than the others, no. I knew him when he was a lad, but he was a little older than I was, and wild. I was fond of books, always was since I learned to read, but he, he was never one to spend any time at the library. "A lot of dead words," he said. "We ought to toss them over the bridge with the leapers. They're a bad job."

What he liked was action of any kind. Sports. That was his love. Oh, he'd compete with anyone over anything. How he loved to wrestle and to run! "Where are you running, Richard?" we'd ask him. "Oh, nowhere," he said, "I'm running to run. I'm running to catch the wind and then run faster run faster." And swimming. Oh, how he could swim. "Part fish he must be," we said. "Swim, Richard! Outrace us all!" And he would. He'd ask his body to do impossible things and his body would shrug and smile and say, "Yes, Richard, I'll do it."

"God, it must be hell to be old," he said, "sitting around with your aches and pains and remembering the 'good old days' when you wasn't. The good old days! What was so good about them? You got to be old because of your fear of the leap. The brave ones, the ones with no fear — they cared for nothing. It was glory that drove them. It was glory that brought them to the bridge's edge and glory that pushed them over. Look at the beauty of their bodies, look at the marvelous shine to that young flesh as it flies out, careless, into the waiting arms of the Infinite. What is your old age to that?" Richard Thatcher was one to go off by himself for periods. He'd scale the cliff or disappear for weeks into the wood. Just when people began to think he'd done for, just when they'd think, "He'll not come back this time," just then was when he'd show up, smiling with his big teeth and carrying a bag of berries or some fish or something to give to his mother, who had long ago given up trying to control him or even understand him. His father was one of those who had gone to glory, who had made the leap, but his mother raised him as well as she could, never complaining. Folks wondered how she was able to do it, him being so wild and all.

"Richard," she'd say to him, "why are you doing this to me, why do you make me suffer so?"...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Sagging Meniscus Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1944697136
• ISBN 13: 9781944697136
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland