Blog - www.richardjespers.com

MLPR Podcast 7 "Basketball Is Not a Drug"

4/30/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
Sir John Lubbock
Born April 30, 1834

Today's podcast features excerpts from "Basketball Is Not a Drug," a narrative from my collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Instead of attending a reading—dressing up, driving to a venue—you can listen to this short reading I'm about to bring to you! And if you'd like to have a signed bookplate, send me a message using the contact box on my home page (see above), and I'll mail you one. ¶ Today's podcast features a man in his late fifties, a great fan of collegiate basketball, whose chronic pain and other ailments have led him to come to terms with his long-term relationship with prescription drugs. Click the play button below.

MUSIC TRACKS:
Chet Baker, instrumental performance of "Pent Up House," by Sonny Rollins, recorded 1959, on Chet Baker in Milan, Jazzland.

Court Jesters, instrumental performance of "Fight Raiders Fight," by Vic Williams, on Home Court Advantage, recorded 2001, Texas Tech University.

Court Jesters, instrumental performance of "Soul Bossa Nova," by Quincy Jones, with J. T. Paz, drums, on Home Court Advantage, recorded 2001, Texas Tech University.

Court Jesters, instrumental performance of "Raider Swing," by Vic Williams/Arranged by Tim Rhea, on Home Court Advantage, recorded 2001, Texas Tech University.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2015

BEHIND THE BOOK: My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"

Launch of Stella and the Timekeepers

4/28/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
In Monroeville, well, they're Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn't dream of interrupting you on the golf course.
Harper Lee
Born April 28, 1926

A few years ago I met author Mick Petersen at a novel workshop sponsored by Writers League of Texas, and I enjoyed getting to know him. Today he is launching his young adult novel, Stella and the Timekeepers, and I’m happy to share it with you. He says it’s all about right thinking, the laws of the universe, loyalty, and friendship. Plus it's a real thrilling ride! Think Harry Potter with the magic coming from the mind, not from a wand! Kids of all ages will love this book! Buy your copy of Stella and the Timekeepers TODAY and get FREE bonus gifts! http://mickpetersen.com/buythebook. Mick appreciates any support you can give him!

NEXT TIME: MLPR Podcast 7 "Basketball Is Not a Drug"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

4/24/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other . . . but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, or obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.
Barbra Streisand
Born April 24, 1942

Leather Pants: Metaphor and Meme

Oliver Munday

April 27, 2015, Luke Mogelson, “Peacetime”: Papadopoulos, a divorced paramedic in the New York National Guard, resides in the armory, where he pays no rent and takes whatever he can for his own use. ¶ Mogelson is covering a different kind of war in this story. Papadopoulos has seen it all—attempted suicides, drug overdoses, lonely widows who call 9-1-1 weekly—and from each scene he steals something. His female partner finally catches on, and he feels his “career” coming to an end. One of the last thefts he makes is a suicide note that belongs to a very unhappy man he has resuscitated. It is Papadopoulos’s last mistake as well. ¶ I hate people who write as well as Mogelson—especially if he’s thirtyish and also a successful journalist. Actually, that’s the way I express my extreme admiration for his story. I love a writer who says much with few words. I love a writer who can peel a metaphor from the leather pants of his own character, in a manner in which the image becomes a meme for Papadopoulos and his co-workers. I hope to see many more of Mogelson's stories. The author is a freelance journalist living in Mexico.
Oliver Munday, Illustrator

NEXT TIME: Another Writer's Book Launch!

MLPR Podcast 6 "My Long-Playing Records"

4/23/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd.
William Shakespeare
Born April 23, 1564 (trad.)

Today's podcast features excerpts from the title story from my collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Instead of attending a reading—dressing up, driving to a venue—you can listen to this short reading I'm about to bring to you! And if you'd like to have a signed bookplate, send me a message using the contact box on my home page (see above), and I'll mail you one. ¶ This narrative is set in the early 1970s as a young seminarian struggles with his identity. Is he devout or heathen? Is he straight or gay? Married or once again single? The story employs the use of the narrator's favorite long-playing records, a motif that I develop throughout all the stories in this collection. Click the "Play" button to get started.

MUSIC TRACKS:
Chet Baker, vocal performance of "The Touch of Your Lips," by Ray Noble, recorded January 14, 1965, on Baby Breeze, Verve By Request 314 538 328-2.

Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Opus, 60, I, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturuo Toscanini, recorded July 19, 1942, RCA LM-6711.

Florence Henderson, vocal performance of "I've Been Invited to a Party," by Noël Coward, recorded December 1963, on The Girl Who Came to Supper, Columbia, KOL 6020.

George Olsen, saxophone performance of "Sax-O-Phun—A Study in Laugh and Slap Tongue," recorded May 1924-Jun3 1925, on George Olsen and His Music, Rivermont.

Led Zeppelin, vocal performance of "Heartbroken," by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham, recorded 1969, on Led Zeppelin II, Atlantic SD 8236.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 1, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Krystian Zimerman (piano) and conducted by Sejii Ozawa, recorded 2003, Deutsche Grammophon.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction

A Dog Story Indeed

4/21/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
. . . as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.
Charlotte Brontë
Born April 21, 1816

My Book World

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York: Random, 2003.

A friend and former pupil recommended this book to me, and I put it on my Want-to-Read list right away. I’m glad I did.

Few writers, even those of Young Adult books, are able to capture both the voice and heart of a child character in such a way that all the chords ring true. Yet Haddon has managed to do so quite effectively.

Christopher is a bright child, who may also be autistic. Haddon never actually says. The boy knows all the prime numbers up to 7,057. At the same time he has a terrible time understanding abstractions such as metaphors.

“The second main reason [that Christopher finds people confusing] is that people often talk using metaphors. These are examples of metaphors

I laughed my socks off.

He was the apple of her eye.

They had a skeleton in the cupboard.

We had a real pig of a day.

The dog was stone dead.

The word metaphor means carrying something form one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words . . . .

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in the cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me” (15).

This lack of guile is what often gets Christopher into trouble with the world at large. The inciting event of this novel, in fact, illustrates this principle. Christopher discovers that his neighbor’s dog has been stabbed with a pitchfork. Instead of leaving the murder scene alone and calling authorities immediately, he removes the weapon from the animal, cradles the dead dog in his arms, and that is how the owner finds them. And when she accuses him of the dastardly deed, he has not the skills to defend himself. Thus begins Christopher’s long journey to discover who killed his neighbor’s dog.

In the bargain, he discovers much more than he had hoped to. In fact, the trail leads right up to the door where he and his father live. The narrative is complicated by the fact that Christopher makes a startling discovery about his parents’ relationship. He must grow up and overcome whatever disability he might have—all at the same time.

An excellent read, as they say, but also a fine work of literature, well worth the time.

NEXT TIME: MLPR Podcast 6 "My Long-Playing Records"

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/07/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/14/15 — "Men at Sea"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

4/17/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Everybody's always talking about people breaking into houses . . . but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.
Thornton Wilder
Born April 17, 1897

A Dog Named Maybe

Riccardo Vecchio

April 20, 2015, Ann Beattie, “Major Maybe”: In this brief narrative a woman looks back on the days in the 1980s, in which she shares an apartment in Chelsea with a young man named Eagle Soars. ¶ The two are so much alike that they almost act old-age married—until they have sex. Then they both eventually marry other people. The story strikes me as being sort of a prose poem, in which certain names or phrases are echoed throughout, where everything relates to everything else in the piece. There seems to be no "plot," only facts about the characters that float around the reader until you grab them and make them into the proper narrative yourself. The narrator’s recollection of a crazy red-haired woman back then is the inciting event for this nonlinear prose poem-story-ode to an earlier time when people are just becoming afraid of AIDS and widespread use of PCs is just around the corner. Beattie’s collection, The State We’re In: Maine Stories comes out this summer.
Riccardo Vecchio, Illustrator.

NEXT TIME: My Book World

MLPR Podcast 5 "Men at Sea"

4/16/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Though we generally may be said to progress as a society in our understandings of our- selves, our place in the world, and the various workings of that world, in matters of sex and sexuality, for a whole host of reasons, but mostly because of religion, we have not.
Bert Archer, The End of Gay
Born April 16, 1968

Today's podcast, "Men at Sea," features another narrative from my collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Instead of attending a reading—dressing up, driving to a venue—you can listen to this short reading I'm bringing to you! And if you'd like to have a signed bookplate, send me a message using the contact box on my home page (see above), and I'll mail you one. ¶ In this narrative set in 1958, a boy of ten crosses the Atlantic Ocean with his eccentric uncle—with both comic and dramatic results. Bert Archer's epigraph listed above seems particularly apt! Click on the Play button below to begin.

MUSIC TRACKS:
Emile Pandolfi, piano performance of "An Affair to Remember," by
Harry Warren, Harold Adamson, and Leo McCarey, recorded 2006, on An Affair to Remember, Magic Music.

George Benson, vocal performance of "Beyond the Sea," by Jack Lawrence and Charles Trenet, recorded 1985, on 20/20, WM Japan.

Heart of Lubbock Gay Men's Chorus of One, choral performance of "Love at Home," by John McNaughton and Lowrie Hofford, recorded April 2015.

Jim Gibson, piano performance of "Beyond the Sea," by Jack Lawrence and Charles Trenet, recorded 1999, on Songs of the Sea, CD Baby.

Rafal Blechacz, piano performance of Frederic Chopin's Prelude, Opus 28, No. 20, on Chopin: the Complete Preludes, 2008, Deutsche Grammophon.

Richard Alden, piano performance of "An Affair to Remember," by
Harry Warren, Harold Adamson, and Leo McCarey, on Piano Cocktail Music, Vol. 3, recorded 2007, Reader's Digest Music.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"

Ghost Horse Wins

4/14/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
James Branch Cabell
Born April 14, 1879

My Book World

McNeely, Thomas N. Ghost Horse. Arlington: Gival, 2014.

Do you recall how the world seemed to you, at times, when you were twelve? Not quite all of its pieces fit together? Mom and Dad speak in a foreign tongue? That’s how the entire novel, Ghost Horse, passes, as twelve-year-old Buddy Turner attempts to unearth this new world complicated by his parents’ divorce. McNeely recreates this vexing scenario so realistically that you feel as if you are Buddy.

McNeely’s novel is frustratingly inscrutable. What is the meaning of this little bit of conversation Buddy overhears between his parents? Why doesn’t his real father, the one Buddy knows before the man goes off to Louisiana to finish med school, return to their home, the one where his Mom lives? The author wishes for the reader to sense the utter confusion that is aroused in a child when his parents inexplicably decide to separate. Who wants “this?” is repeated over and over again, his mother or his father? He says she does; she says he does. Each parent tries to build an alliance with Buddy, one that is exclusive of the other adult.

To save himself, not really aware of his motivation, Buddy sets out to make an animated film about a horse with his friend Alex Torres, a boy he’s befriended in his old neighborhood, where he has attended a school called Queen of Peace. Even though his father now pays for him to attend an all-white school, St. Edwards, he continues to see Alex and work on the film. But all sorts of forces pull against him. There’s the horse that is constantly circling in the skies overhead, ready to pounce on Buddy’s enemies, yet is startlingly impotent when it comes to delivering real aid. Both of his grandmothers pull at him, tempting him to do one thing or another that will help him grow up into a fine man. His mother pulls at him. His father pulls at him. His father’s female friend, Mary, urges him to leave his mother and live with them. The boys at his new school attempt to initiate him into their comfortable world of long, gold cars and spacious brick homes. But Buddy is no longer comfortable anywhere, not at his mother’s place, nor at his grandmother’s, where his estranged father stays in the very room in which he spent his boyhood, while his own father lies dying but a few feet away. Buddy Turner is so uncomfortable that he begins to act out in violent, erratic ways that are not like the old Buddy.

McNeely creates one long cloudy, gray day in the Houston, Texas, of 1975—a period of painful transition from old southern city to the vibrant metropolis of today. He must repeat the word “ghost” or its derivatives scores of times. Though the experience is uncomfortable for readers, McNeely wishes for them to undergo a boy's hell of living through his parents’ divorce. And in great measure he succeeds.

NEXT TIME: MLPR Podcast 5 "Men at Sea"

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/07/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

4/10/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
Anne Lamott
Born April 10, 1954

Seeing Through Apollo

Edel Rodriguez

April 13, 2015, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Apollo”: Okenwa tells the story of Raphael, once the family’s houseboy, who is now an armed robber in their Nigerian region. ¶ Okenwa reveals the friendship he had struck up, as a child, with Raphael: their mutual interest in Bruce Lee movies, how Raphael had fashioned a nunchaku out of wood and metal for Okenwa, how the child secretly treats Raphael's eyes when he contracts conjunctivitis because the houseboy is squeamish about putting drops in his own eyes. Okenwa confesses to his betrayal of Raphael when he later sees the young man flirting with a female servant of a neighbor. The adult Okenwa never says so, in so many words, but he must wonder if making up a story about Raphael, on the fly, to to get him fired, is what eventually contributes to Raphael’s current downfall as a common thief. Americanah is Adichie’s most recent novel.
Edel Rodriguez, Illustration.

NEXT TIME: My Book World

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/07/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"

MLPR Podcast 4 "Tales of the Millerettes"

4/9/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
It is by universal mis- understanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Charles Baudelaire
Born April 9, 1821

Today's podcast, "Tales of the Millerettes," features another narrative from my collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Instead of attending a reading—dressing up, driving to a venue—you can listen to this short reading I'm bringing to you! And if you'd like to have a signed bookplate, send me a message using the contact box on my home page (see above), and I'll mail you one. ¶ In this long narrative three generations of Bernard women of Wichita, Kansas, retell the history of the old Miller Theater. Click on the Play button below to begin.

MUSIC TRACKS:
South Shore Concert Band, instrumental performance of "Ain't We Got Fun," by Renee Olstead, recorded 2005, on Sounds of the Circus—Circus Marches, Vol. 28, dir. Richard Whitmarsh, mp3 track from iTunes.

Errol Garner, piano performance of "Moonglow," by Will Hudson and Irving Mills and words by Eddie DeLange, recorded June 20, 1949, 'Round Midnight, Savoy SVY17290, CD.

The Best of Leonard Bernstein, "Symphonic Dances from 'West Side Story,' Prologue and Finale," 2004, with Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, UMC B0003064-02, CD.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2015

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/07/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

4/4/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The duty of dramatists is to express their times and guide the public through the perplexities of those times.
Robert Emmet Sherwood
Born April 4, 1896

A Stranger Reinvented

Glenn Luff / EyeEm / Getty

April 6, 2015, Kamel Daoud, “Musa”: A French-Algerian man reconstructs the life and death of a revered older brother, Musa, along with the life of their mother. ¶ A wandering tale, much like the nomadic people from which it must be derived, this narrative is one that expresses more than the bitter mourning over one man, Musa. It seems to mourn the loss of a culture, one that is swallowed up or defined by another, expressing “a strength that comes from anger” (67). The author articulates what seem like a number of truths or axioms: “The last day of a man’s life doesn’t exist. Outside of storybooks, there’s no hope, nothing but soap bubbles bursting. That’s the best proof of our absurd existence, my dear friend: no one is granted a final day, only an accidental interruption of life” (69). What an odd look at life . . . and death, we must muse as Westerners, but is it? ¶ The story seems to be as much about the narrator and brother’s mother as it does about Musa. “After Musa died, my mother turned fierce, in a way. Try to imagine the woman: snatched away from her tribe, given in marriage to a husband who didn’t know her and who hastened to get away from her, the mother of two sons, one dead and one a child too silent to give her the proper cues, a woman who lost two men and was forced to work for roumis in order to survive” (73). It is a bitter tale—this one that is part of Daoud’s novel, what the magazine refers to as a "reimagining" of Camus’s L’Étranger--whose taste will not soon leave the teller’s tongue, nor ours. Daoud is the author of The Meursault Investigation, the novel containing this story, due out in English in June.

Photograph by Glen Luff, EyeEm, and Getty

NEXT TIME: My Book World

My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"

MLPR Podcast 3 "Handy to Some"

4/2/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Just living is not enough . . . one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Hans Christian Andersen
Born April 2, 1805

Today's podcast, "Handy to Some," features another narrative from my collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Instead of attending a reading—dressing up, driving to a venue—you can listen to this short reading I'm bringing to you! And if you'd like to have a signed bookplate, send me a message using the contact box on my home page (see above), and I'll mail you one. ¶ In this narrative an old woman recalls a couple of dark moments in her life, but she also remembers the child who brings her a bit of joy.

MUSIC TRACK:
Phillip Aaberg, pianist, Winter Solstice, "High Plains," Windham Hill, CD, 1985.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION

MLPR Podcast 7 "Basketball Is Not a Drug"

Launch of Stella and the Timekeepers

New Yorker Fiction 2015

Leather Pants: Metaphor and Meme

MLPR Podcast 6 "My Long-Playing Records"

A Dog Story Indeed

My Book World

New Yorker Fiction 2015

A Dog Named Maybe

MLPR Podcast 5 "Men at Sea"

Ghost Horse Wins

My Book World

New Yorker Fiction 2015

Seeing Through Apollo

MLPR Podcast 4 "Tales of the Millerettes"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

A Stranger Reinvented

MLPR Podcast 3 "Handy to Some"

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