Another War
The Strange Recital
"When the bombing started, J.T. Carter was deep in the bowels of a bank in Baltimore with a video camera on his shoulder, capturing, cinema verité, the mundane fate of everyone’s rent check." Desert Storm, 1991. And more foreign wars to follow. At home, we live our safe American lives full of domestic tedium and drama. Here is one man's story.
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Against the Grain
The Strange Recital
"The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Château de Lourps, had originally been a family of stalwart troopers and stern cavalry men. Closely arrayed, side by side, in the old frames which their broad shoulders filled, they startled one with the fixed gaze of their eyes, their fierce moustaches and the chests whose deep curves filled the enormous shells of their cuirasses." This 1884 French novel exemplifies the Decadence literary movement and influenced Oscar Wilde. Join us to explore a style of writing from a time and place so unlike our own.
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The House of Wisdom
The Strange Recital
"Ibn Zakarya was born in the western mountains of Persia, when silk merchants from the east still plied their trade. Even as a half-naked child playing in a dust, he proved himself a prodigy, scratching the shape of the moon in the yellow earth." A tale of ancient deserts where the boundary between science and magic is blurred. A young man's genius is not always valued. What exactly is "wisdom"?
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Fabian
The Strange Recital
"When he was fifteen Fabian saw the film The 39 Steps, which had just come out. He liked to say that this film was a turning-point in his life. It was an epiphany for him. As he left the cinema he knew that he wanted to make films." An excerpt from a new novel in which characters invent other characters, and events are both magical and real. What is authorship? Who's in charge here, anyway?
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Etidorhpa
The Strange Recital
"More than thirty years ago occurred the first of the series of remarkable events I am about to relate. The exact date I can not recall; but it was in November, and, to those familiar with November weather in the Ohio Valley, it is hardly necessary to state that the month is one of possibilities." The gloomy beginning of a strange Victorian novel...a man alone in a lamp lit room on a stormy night. But is he really alone? Where will this night lead?
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Shadow
The Strange Recital
"Last night I took the riverside walk for the first time in longer than I care to remember. Nothing much had changed. Homeless men and women were still spending the night on municipal benches. Some were asleep; they breathed noisily, or moaned." Who is this person who walks in the dark hours? Is his city the same as yours? In all temporal planes, humans carry on with lives both harsh and gentle.
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When I Saw the Animal
The Strange Recital
"The first time I saw the animal, I’ll admit I was tired. It was late at night and I had been drinking at a moderate pace for several hours. The animal could have been anything, the way it flashed across the room, and I was too slow to get a good look at it." Something has invaded your home. Yes, it's real. Surely you can trust your own perceptions, right? But...is the thing changing?
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My Past is Mine
The Strange Recital
"The voice asked at Eddie Tomlinson's elbow, 'Is this seat free?' Eddie nodded, and hardly looking around, picked up his hat which he had carelessly put on the seat at his side. Then he went back to his contemplation of the wooded hills through which the train was threading its way." In the 1950's, two men meet on a train...are they strangers or friends? One day, each of their worlds had drastically changed. So much was lost. Are their memories wrong?
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Richard and Klokko
The Strange Recital
"Everyone just wants to be loved a bit more than everyone else. See me and not my brothers, my sisters, my bandmates. Love me and not my kid. Feel my sadness." A dead rock star faces his life on a journey home. A lonely fan from the mountains does the same. Paul Smart reads from his novel OVERLOOK, and talks about its origins.
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The Tunnel Diner
The Strange Recital
"Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and the diner was instantly in utter blackness. There was a palpable sensation of absence in the air, a sort of death as all electrical vibration in the city ceased in one instant." A nighttime commuter encounters a hitchhiker in a New Jersey diner, but it's no ordinary meeting. Who is this odd traveler, and what changes will be wrought by his hypnotic powers?
info_outline"Ed Marks woke from another dream about his wife. She’d been standing in front of him, wearing a white gown that rippled in a breeze he couldn’t feel. In her arms she held a baby, too small and raw-looking to be alive."