Thomas Friedman was right when he said, “Much of this biodiversity in Indonesia is now under threat.” It had been this way since gasoline became currency; I remember bartering with The Governance for the newest edition of The Guinness Book of

My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just boy

This is a story about Jim and Robin. They are strangers. Or at least they were. They are at the same party, but standing on opposite sides of the room. Robin is standing near the door thinking, “I wish there was someone here to talk to,” when she sees Jim. …

The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words. He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w

I stood there skinny-as-a-half in “big hair,” ankle boots, and black eyeliner. P. was in radio, not books. He had a sense of humor. I was researching a different man for a novel.

The night she left she claimed she fucked Bukowski.

Don Galt’s butterflies swallowed Peter Robinson’s holdings on a cool and cloudy December afternoon.

I'm somewhere on I-10 in Mississippi, barreling westbound at 80 miles an hour through a rainstorm on a late Wednesday afternoon. The last road sign I remember was for Beauvoir, some Confederate general's…

The commandant pried her lids open with steely thumbs.

Mrs. Bigelow loaned Tessa a black tulle maid’s uniform and helped her pin it in at the sides. She tied on Tessa the stiff white apron. Slippery, pale, opaque stockings of real silk oozed through the girl’s fingers, secured by a heavy satin garter belt

Opposite the foothills, on the field's southern edge, was a stand of old eucalyptus trees, each one a gnarled sentry with bark like burnt skin peeling from its trunk.

“White,” he says. -- “Black,” I answer.

Things have happened. It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.

Maybe you could buy a Volunteer,” Carol suggested. Ma huffed. “You know we don't have the money for that. And besides I never liked the idea of Volunteers — taking advantage of the poor like that.”

If I play my accordion too loudly while you're painting, you complain. You stamp about in your room under mine. You fetch the broom from the closet and use it to thump vehemently on the ceiling. I feel the vibrations through my feet.