Edgar J. Goldenthal 173 Concordia Circle, Monroe Twp. NJ, 08831
Dear Relative or Friend, Date
It is time to have another book published. It is called, “VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES” You Have To Read. After all, I am 92 years old and if I am going to have things published why not now?
This is a book of short stories that is fascinating and provocative. You will never know when the truth changes to fiction; when Historical facts leave town and become a fascinating “tale” that wags one way or another. It is called, what “VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES” You Have To Read These are very strange, else can I say? As a matter of fact, history is none too valid in my hands (if it ever was!). When I reveal myself as a prophet, of sorts, history had better take a back seat!
, This is the ultra-modern way of selling a book so pay attention! The idea is to buy my book ON LINE or ON YOUR PHONE.
Title of the book “VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES” You Have To Read”.....by Edgar J. Goldenthal.
Published by iUniverse company, a division of Barnes & Noble
Price of the book: $14.95 (soft-cover) plus postage & handling (about 2.50)
Price of the book: $24.95 (hard-cover) plus postage & handling (about 3.50)
***Where to buy (ONLINE) “VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES” by Edgar J. Goldenthal
www.amazon.com
www.bn.com
www.booksamillion,com
www.iuniverse.com Visiting bookstore
***Where to buy (IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A COMPUTER) ”VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES” By Edgar J. Goldenthal
amazon.com...........................................phone number 1-800-201-7575
iuniverse (New Book orders dep’t.......phone number : 1-800-288-4677 ext. 5035
Surprise! you can also get the book at TARGET
A photo of the soft-cover book is enclosed. That picture of me was taken the other day!
A BLOG is data. My blog tells you all about “VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES”.
How do you get to my BLOG ?
A--- get on line to Internet Explorer
B--- type: http://edgargoldenthal.blogspot.com Click on ENTER
You may want to reply to me. My Email address is Valedor90@AOL.com
This is not all the books tI have for your enjoyment .There is “Outrageous Essays and letters” and these Essays are really OUTRAGEOUS. There is a book of Poetry “Lots of Qustions ,Too Few Answers” , poetry with a vigor that is not the way poems are supposed to be. The last book is “Painfully Short Stories” and they are really a pain. These books are supposed to be posthumous but we’ll leave that for my children and grandchildren. It’s so exciting: they could sue me and it would be painless.... for me! Love ya, Ed
start hno .....
“VERY STRANGE SHORT STORIES You Have to Read” That is my new book. Whereas in my previous book, OUTA MY MIND, I just lived an ordinary life and look what happened? You couldn’t get along without reading it! What was there about biographical writing that turned you on? It must have been exciting.
But this is a MUST. What makes this so particular? Several items are there that titillate the palate: Don’t ever forget what I can do with history! “Manfredonia” and “Cristoforo” are examples. How about ‘Cristoforo’? Did you ever read a Log that was so revealing? And don’t ever neglect what I can do with religion. I spent the best part of eight years reading and researching “The Live Sea Scrolls” until I came up with a murder mystery that has all the philosophy of a textbook and it’s all painless but not for the victims.
And if I must say it.....(I have to say it!)....there is something about the media that inspires me to create: I cannot guarantee what the creation is, but take the three tales I was inspired to write about from articles in the Sun-Sentinel in Boca Raton: can you beat those stories? They include “The Pipe”, “Demolition” and “Romeo and Juliet.” Can you ever get such an inspiration from a simple newspaper article? Newspaper articles have been reproduced that give a sense of reality to the whole shebang. I have a letter from the editor of the Sun-Sentinel telling me how proud he is of me that I got those inspirations. (I have to send him a copy of the book! At he end of the book there is a copy of his letter.)
And the stories that were inspired by the History Channel: can you beat that for science fiction? “The Great Flood” and “Re -Creation” and “Termination” are examples of imagination gone wild, (They might be the truth after all! You have to live long enough for them to come true.....that’s all!)
There are stories like “The Fortune Cookie Collector” that are sheer fiction. There is something about murder in Chinatown that turns me on. And the way “The Killer’ was treated by the media that turned me off! This was a story that took all the spare time that I had and I was not pleased with the decision that the courts decided. There is something about California that is unbelievable; like the O.J. Simpson case. So I came to an alternative decision that made more sense. One of my sons found this story so unbelievable that he resented the whole idea of it!
There are stories that seem like fiction but they are as real to me as they can be because they are true. Of course, I changed the names for obvious reasons in those “true” stories like “The Barber” and “This Is A Normal Life” .
There is out-and-out fiction in this book because I have a great imagination, like “An Interesting Neighbor” (it says after this story “There is not a true word in this story!” but there must have been an exciting cause for this story to have been written in the first place.
There is the soul of fiction in ”The Caretaker” sounds like fiction and “The Deathwish” and “A Cold Case” and “Reading My Hard Drive” and “Oh You Sleep” and “Vick”. There is a form of story which is the god’s honest truth but I left the names in there because the names are fiction, in the first place. That story is “At The Crossroads”. The “Crossroads” is fictitious as an eatery but the rest is true. So “The Barber” and “Hans” are real but I was at a “crossroads” there. The barber made his names up, but why get sued for nothing? Hans is a true story but it is only as true as my relative’s memory.
This is a different book than the previous book of short stories. In the tales in OUTA MY MIND the stories all had a “punch-line” which lent an element of surprise to the book. If there is a punch-line in this book it is telegraphed long in advance.
I think, as the author, that this is a successful book in terms of reading: There is more out-and-out fiction in here than in “OUTA MY MIND”. But you have to watch it here: I mix facts and fiction to lend authenticity in them. Some of the historical tales are really like authentic History!
Dr.Edgar J. Goldenthal, 173 Concordia Circle, Monroe Township, NJ, 08831
Email address: Valedor90@AOL.com
Blog #: http://edgargoldenthal.blogspot.com Click on Enter.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Outa My Mind
In the short story “True Witness” in the book of short stories you just bought, there is a character, Asninka, who writes poetry and poison-pen letters: just as I do! She wrote a poem, “What does God Know” which I subsequently translated into Yiddish. AND, I also translated into Yiddish the poem, “ Born Again and Again” from my book of poetry, “Lots of Questions.”
In the presence of so many requests for the translation of these two poems into Yiddish (which I wrote) I have enclosed these poems with “an explanation.”
I wrote a book, published in 1998, entitled, “Poet of the Ghetto.” It was a biography of my maternal grandfather, Morris Rosenfeld, who was a noted poet. Writing that book involved learning enough Yiddish to translate a substantial number of his poems from Yiddish to English. I used the services of Rifke Levine, which I was proud to accept. Also, I used the dictionary of Alexander Harkavy who admired Rosenfeld as the first of the classical poets who wrote in Yiddish just as Morris admired Harkavy for his genius in writing the first of the Yiddish-English dictionaries.
I sought out Yadja Zeltman to aid me in writing the kind of Yiddish that was spoken in Russian-Poland in the WW II days and when I showed her the poem “Born Again” which, for some reason I had translated into Yiddish, she corrected my Yiddish, saying, “You must have been using an old, old dictionary!” I told her that I had been using Morris’ old dictionary....dated 1891!
The American poet, Walt Whitman, whom Rosenfeld had always admired as the “poet of the future” was the subject of a poem that Morris wrote and to show you how much he admired Walt I include the last two lines:
Prohfet unshtarblikhen, ikh gib dir loyb!
Ikh fall in shtoyb itzt fun dayn shtoyb, un sing!
Aaron Kramer translated that poem from the original Yiddish.
Immortal bard, I honor thee: I kneel
upon the dust, before thy dust, and sing.
Apparently Morris appreciated free verse, which was not in the classical vogue of writing poetry in the time that he wrote.
Written by Asninka in the short story, “True Witness.”
WHAT DOES GOD KNOW
What does God know?
What family does He have, to create and nourish?
to love and to cherish,
What code of honor does He follow
to reward the good
to punish the evil
to encourage the weak?
His rules are those of science,
impersonal
cold
rigid
final.
If He is but a figment of our minds
we have created a monster,
If He is indeed a being
He is without heart,
If He is in league with his twin-brother, Satan,
we have been betrayed,
If our sages have dreamed a concept that exceeds
our rationality
then we have been misled.
What does God know?
Is He our alter-ego?
Is he indeed part of us and does he share our strengths
and weaknesses?
Are we perhaps God ourselves?
Are we so weak, so impoverished, so blind,
so primitive.
Are WE then what God is all about
Is He, too, weak, impoverished, blind like Samson
and primitive?
Is He struggling to save Himself from extinction?
Nebach!
Who would be left to say Kaddish over God
as they will soon say over us?
What could Man, that weakling,
that creature of small consequence,
What could Man have done to justify the punishment
Inflicted on him,
the plagues, the wars,
rapine,
the cruelty of an uncaring universe that showers us
with fire and brimstone
with earth-jarring convulsions
with bitter cold and scorching heat?
What Father is this who treats his offspring thus?
Have we created unattainable codes for life
then punished ourselves with guilt and brutality
for having failed?
If we must converse with HIM
as we Jews have always done,
Then let us first ask:
What does GOD know about Man?
And can He care?
VOS VEYST GOT ?
(What Does God Know?)
Vos veyst Got?
Vos far a familye hot Er, tsu libn un tsu derneren?
Vos far a kohdir fon koved geyt Er nokh,
di gute tsu baloynen,
di shlekhte tsu bashtrofn,
di shvakhe khoyshik makhn?
Zayne klolim zaynen di fon visnshaft,
Umpersenlekh
kalt,
shver,
der sof.
Oyb iz Er gor an oyskler fon unzer meynungen,
hobn mir a monkalb geshafn,
Oyb Er iz a briye, iz Er gor un a harts,
Oyb Er iz bekhavruse mit zayn tsviling-brider,
dem Sotn, hot Er undz farratn,
Oyb unsere khakhomim hobn a museg oysgetrakht
vos iz gresser vi unzer seykhl,
zaynen mir dan farfirt.
Vos veyst Got?
Efsher iz Er undzer mehane-ego?
Iz Er take a khelek fon unds, un
efsher teylt Er undzer shtarkeyt un shvakhkeyt?
Efshe zaynen mir Got alleyn?
Zaynen mir azoy shvakh, azoy faroremt, azoy blind,
azoy primitif ?
Zaynen mir, dan, vos iz Got, vos Er batayt?
Iz Er oykhet shvakh, oykhet faroremt, oykhet blind un
primitif vi shimshon?
Kempft Er zikh tsu farhitn zikh fun farnikhtung?
Nebakh.
Ver vet shoyn doh blaybn kadish tsu zogn iber Got,
vi zey vern bald zogn iber uns?
Vos ken der benodem, dos shvakhinger, die brie fon
kleyner konsekvenz,
vos hot ehr geton far ale oyneshen zu kasherten,
di mageyfn,
di kamfn,
di shendung,
dos akhzoyres fon a glaykhgiltiger velt vos hot unds
mit fayer un krankhayt bashpritst,
mit erd-soyserdike convulsyes,,
mit biter kalte un farsarferte hitsn?
Vos far a Tateh iz dos,
ver bahandlt azoy Zayne kinder?
Hobn mir geshafn umderkhgraykhbare kodn far lebn
un dan mit shuld un brutalitet zikh bashtofn
ven mir hobn nit gezigt?
Oyb mir muzn mit Im redn,
vi mir Yidn hobn tomed geton,
dan zoln mir ersht fregn:
"Vos veyst Got fon menschen,
un vos art es Im?"
THE MESSIAH
For thousands of years scholars have discussed and debated the meaning of certain passages in Isaiah. So we are in good company if we interpret and discuss that noted prophet who was so influential in our history.
Early in his career Isaiah expressed the belief that the Messiah was not a single man at all. The Messiah was not a matter of one great personality but, instead, a matter of the Hebrew people, chosen and anointed by God, who would represent His beliefs and bring them to the world: to bring the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the belief in only one deity to all of mankind. And then, when all of humanity finally believes as these people believed---peace and security and a humane world would exist. No people prior to Israel had the idea of a Messiah.
Also, the concept of resurrection was originally a primitive, a sort of pagan notion. It was a form of tribal wishful thinking that a great leader, some beloved individual, would come back from the dead. Would he be young and vigorous as he once was, or old and gray? Would he still have diabetes or clogged arteries? Would he have the wounds of battle or crucifixion when he returned? Would he wear the clothes of his era or shrouds, or be naked? These are questions that tax one's credulity. But the concept of a tiny nation, that feels itself chosen to fight for the world and to suffer interminably just to bring a message to the world---that was the early idea of Isaiah. This concept does not tax one's credulity. It was an idea, however, that later was changed many times, by Ezekiel and Jeremiah and others through the centuries.
It became an idea to some, then, of a man returning to life after death and it has challenged our common sense for thousands of years, requiring a vast suspension of reason and the acceptance of a deep faith that not all are capable of achieving. However, to conceive of a people being Messianic, a group that can be virtually destroyed time and time again and just a few remnants retain the capability of rising again and again to resurrect the original entity; that not only does not defy reason: it is actual historic fact!
This idea I have put into poetic form. This concept brings to mind those tiny birthday candles whose flames will not be permanently extinguished. Blow on them and the flames vanish for a moment, but an inner spark lies somewhere in those candles and before you can think about it the flames are bright and full again. Blow out those flames time and again and they are resurrected, as if by magic!
Written by Ed for the book of poetry, “Lots Of Questions”
BORN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
Born again, are you,
Messiah?
Your name is Israel--
slain by Philistines in every century
pillaged, burned, reduced to bones
and smoke,
Yet here you are!
Here, before my eyes,
numbers on your arms as though we
had to count ourselves
to be certain we had survived!
Isaiah knew! He called you by name
and drew the picture of you:
congealed blood, matted hair,
men screaming like children
torn from their mothers' arms.
Boundless cruelty has driven you
into a pen of horror.
Yet here you are! Still loved
Still hated
Still envied
Still misunderstood.
To bring a Law to savages?
To bring a Spark to light the world?
To hack a Path for humanity?
Is this why you are here?
Do you know, yourself, your reason
for survival?
Do you simply care in an animal way?
Do you care as a Jew, anymore,
Messiah?
VIEDER GEBOREN UND VIEDER UND VIEDER
Vieder geboren, bist du,
Mashiakh?
Du hayst Yisroyayl,
bey di Filoshtim derharget
in yeyder yorhundert,
faroyvent, farbrent, farminert tsu di bayner
un der roykh
Nokh altz bist du doh,
doh far meyne oygen,
di numeren oyf deyne orems,
azoy vi mir hobn zikh opgetseylt
tsu zayen zikher as mir ho0bn ibergelaybt.
Isaiah hut es gevust,
Er hut dir by dayn nomen gerufen,
er hut far dir a bild gemeldet,
fargliverte blut, farflokhtene hohr, mener shreyen
vi kinder fopn zayer muters hent gerisn,
onendike akhtsyores hut dir fartribn
in a shtib fon groyl areyn.
Uber du bist nokh doh,
nokh altz balibt,
nokh altz farhast,
nokh altz umfarshtanden.
A din tsu valdmenshen tsu bringen?
A foonk tsu makhen likhtig di velt?
A vayzn tsu shlogn far mensh-heyt?
Far dos bistu doh?
Vaystu, zikh alayn, deyn flikht
far iberlaybung?
Zorgst du bloyz vi a chaiah?
Zorgst du vi a Yid, mehle?
Mashiakh?
In the presence of so many requests for the translation of these two poems into Yiddish (which I wrote) I have enclosed these poems with “an explanation.”
I wrote a book, published in 1998, entitled, “Poet of the Ghetto.” It was a biography of my maternal grandfather, Morris Rosenfeld, who was a noted poet. Writing that book involved learning enough Yiddish to translate a substantial number of his poems from Yiddish to English. I used the services of Rifke Levine, which I was proud to accept. Also, I used the dictionary of Alexander Harkavy who admired Rosenfeld as the first of the classical poets who wrote in Yiddish just as Morris admired Harkavy for his genius in writing the first of the Yiddish-English dictionaries.
I sought out Yadja Zeltman to aid me in writing the kind of Yiddish that was spoken in Russian-Poland in the WW II days and when I showed her the poem “Born Again” which, for some reason I had translated into Yiddish, she corrected my Yiddish, saying, “You must have been using an old, old dictionary!” I told her that I had been using Morris’ old dictionary....dated 1891!
The American poet, Walt Whitman, whom Rosenfeld had always admired as the “poet of the future” was the subject of a poem that Morris wrote and to show you how much he admired Walt I include the last two lines:
Prohfet unshtarblikhen, ikh gib dir loyb!
Ikh fall in shtoyb itzt fun dayn shtoyb, un sing!
Aaron Kramer translated that poem from the original Yiddish.
Immortal bard, I honor thee: I kneel
upon the dust, before thy dust, and sing.
Apparently Morris appreciated free verse, which was not in the classical vogue of writing poetry in the time that he wrote.
Written by Asninka in the short story, “True Witness.”
WHAT DOES GOD KNOW
What does God know?
What family does He have, to create and nourish?
to love and to cherish,
What code of honor does He follow
to reward the good
to punish the evil
to encourage the weak?
His rules are those of science,
impersonal
cold
rigid
final.
If He is but a figment of our minds
we have created a monster,
If He is indeed a being
He is without heart,
If He is in league with his twin-brother, Satan,
we have been betrayed,
If our sages have dreamed a concept that exceeds
our rationality
then we have been misled.
What does God know?
Is He our alter-ego?
Is he indeed part of us and does he share our strengths
and weaknesses?
Are we perhaps God ourselves?
Are we so weak, so impoverished, so blind,
so primitive.
Are WE then what God is all about
Is He, too, weak, impoverished, blind like Samson
and primitive?
Is He struggling to save Himself from extinction?
Nebach!
Who would be left to say Kaddish over God
as they will soon say over us?
What could Man, that weakling,
that creature of small consequence,
What could Man have done to justify the punishment
Inflicted on him,
the plagues, the wars,
rapine,
the cruelty of an uncaring universe that showers us
with fire and brimstone
with earth-jarring convulsions
with bitter cold and scorching heat?
What Father is this who treats his offspring thus?
Have we created unattainable codes for life
then punished ourselves with guilt and brutality
for having failed?
If we must converse with HIM
as we Jews have always done,
Then let us first ask:
What does GOD know about Man?
And can He care?
VOS VEYST GOT ?
(What Does God Know?)
Vos veyst Got?
Vos far a familye hot Er, tsu libn un tsu derneren?
Vos far a kohdir fon koved geyt Er nokh,
di gute tsu baloynen,
di shlekhte tsu bashtrofn,
di shvakhe khoyshik makhn?
Zayne klolim zaynen di fon visnshaft,
Umpersenlekh
kalt,
shver,
der sof.
Oyb iz Er gor an oyskler fon unzer meynungen,
hobn mir a monkalb geshafn,
Oyb Er iz a briye, iz Er gor un a harts,
Oyb Er iz bekhavruse mit zayn tsviling-brider,
dem Sotn, hot Er undz farratn,
Oyb unsere khakhomim hobn a museg oysgetrakht
vos iz gresser vi unzer seykhl,
zaynen mir dan farfirt.
Vos veyst Got?
Efsher iz Er undzer mehane-ego?
Iz Er take a khelek fon unds, un
efsher teylt Er undzer shtarkeyt un shvakhkeyt?
Efshe zaynen mir Got alleyn?
Zaynen mir azoy shvakh, azoy faroremt, azoy blind,
azoy primitif ?
Zaynen mir, dan, vos iz Got, vos Er batayt?
Iz Er oykhet shvakh, oykhet faroremt, oykhet blind un
primitif vi shimshon?
Kempft Er zikh tsu farhitn zikh fun farnikhtung?
Nebakh.
Ver vet shoyn doh blaybn kadish tsu zogn iber Got,
vi zey vern bald zogn iber uns?
Vos ken der benodem, dos shvakhinger, die brie fon
kleyner konsekvenz,
vos hot ehr geton far ale oyneshen zu kasherten,
di mageyfn,
di kamfn,
di shendung,
dos akhzoyres fon a glaykhgiltiger velt vos hot unds
mit fayer un krankhayt bashpritst,
mit erd-soyserdike convulsyes,,
mit biter kalte un farsarferte hitsn?
Vos far a Tateh iz dos,
ver bahandlt azoy Zayne kinder?
Hobn mir geshafn umderkhgraykhbare kodn far lebn
un dan mit shuld un brutalitet zikh bashtofn
ven mir hobn nit gezigt?
Oyb mir muzn mit Im redn,
vi mir Yidn hobn tomed geton,
dan zoln mir ersht fregn:
"Vos veyst Got fon menschen,
un vos art es Im?"
THE MESSIAH
For thousands of years scholars have discussed and debated the meaning of certain passages in Isaiah. So we are in good company if we interpret and discuss that noted prophet who was so influential in our history.
Early in his career Isaiah expressed the belief that the Messiah was not a single man at all. The Messiah was not a matter of one great personality but, instead, a matter of the Hebrew people, chosen and anointed by God, who would represent His beliefs and bring them to the world: to bring the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the belief in only one deity to all of mankind. And then, when all of humanity finally believes as these people believed---peace and security and a humane world would exist. No people prior to Israel had the idea of a Messiah.
Also, the concept of resurrection was originally a primitive, a sort of pagan notion. It was a form of tribal wishful thinking that a great leader, some beloved individual, would come back from the dead. Would he be young and vigorous as he once was, or old and gray? Would he still have diabetes or clogged arteries? Would he have the wounds of battle or crucifixion when he returned? Would he wear the clothes of his era or shrouds, or be naked? These are questions that tax one's credulity. But the concept of a tiny nation, that feels itself chosen to fight for the world and to suffer interminably just to bring a message to the world---that was the early idea of Isaiah. This concept does not tax one's credulity. It was an idea, however, that later was changed many times, by Ezekiel and Jeremiah and others through the centuries.
It became an idea to some, then, of a man returning to life after death and it has challenged our common sense for thousands of years, requiring a vast suspension of reason and the acceptance of a deep faith that not all are capable of achieving. However, to conceive of a people being Messianic, a group that can be virtually destroyed time and time again and just a few remnants retain the capability of rising again and again to resurrect the original entity; that not only does not defy reason: it is actual historic fact!
This idea I have put into poetic form. This concept brings to mind those tiny birthday candles whose flames will not be permanently extinguished. Blow on them and the flames vanish for a moment, but an inner spark lies somewhere in those candles and before you can think about it the flames are bright and full again. Blow out those flames time and again and they are resurrected, as if by magic!
Written by Ed for the book of poetry, “Lots Of Questions”
BORN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
Born again, are you,
Messiah?
Your name is Israel--
slain by Philistines in every century
pillaged, burned, reduced to bones
and smoke,
Yet here you are!
Here, before my eyes,
numbers on your arms as though we
had to count ourselves
to be certain we had survived!
Isaiah knew! He called you by name
and drew the picture of you:
congealed blood, matted hair,
men screaming like children
torn from their mothers' arms.
Boundless cruelty has driven you
into a pen of horror.
Yet here you are! Still loved
Still hated
Still envied
Still misunderstood.
To bring a Law to savages?
To bring a Spark to light the world?
To hack a Path for humanity?
Is this why you are here?
Do you know, yourself, your reason
for survival?
Do you simply care in an animal way?
Do you care as a Jew, anymore,
Messiah?
VIEDER GEBOREN UND VIEDER UND VIEDER
Vieder geboren, bist du,
Mashiakh?
Du hayst Yisroyayl,
bey di Filoshtim derharget
in yeyder yorhundert,
faroyvent, farbrent, farminert tsu di bayner
un der roykh
Nokh altz bist du doh,
doh far meyne oygen,
di numeren oyf deyne orems,
azoy vi mir hobn zikh opgetseylt
tsu zayen zikher as mir ho0bn ibergelaybt.
Isaiah hut es gevust,
Er hut dir by dayn nomen gerufen,
er hut far dir a bild gemeldet,
fargliverte blut, farflokhtene hohr, mener shreyen
vi kinder fopn zayer muters hent gerisn,
onendike akhtsyores hut dir fartribn
in a shtib fon groyl areyn.
Uber du bist nokh doh,
nokh altz balibt,
nokh altz farhast,
nokh altz umfarshtanden.
A din tsu valdmenshen tsu bringen?
A foonk tsu makhen likhtig di velt?
A vayzn tsu shlogn far mensh-heyt?
Far dos bistu doh?
Vaystu, zikh alayn, deyn flikht
far iberlaybung?
Zorgst du bloyz vi a chaiah?
Zorgst du vi a Yid, mehle?
Mashiakh?
Saturday, May 17, 2008
I gotta thank all you people who ordered my book, "OUTA MY MIND". I hope you enjoyed those stories. This is the only way I can thank you....this blog and on Email. This blog has some interesting material. This is a modern day and age. You MUST get into the 21 century!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PURCHASE......Ed
How many stories do you think I have written in my 90th and 91st year? Let me list the creative aspects of my career, which surprisingly has not ended yet!
The Fortune Cookie Collector. (I just collected about 500 fortune cookie "fortunes" )
The Great Flood......( weeks of )research
Romeo and Juliet
Cristoforo.......( days of research)
Merrie Christmas
Scrambled Eggs
Across The Street
The Government’s Money
Vick
Armageddon ......(weeks of research)
Manfredonia ......(days ofresearch)
Hans
Disperse.........(months of research)
These were written since June-July of 2007 and I also edited that book you just read in line with the procedures of the iUniverse Comapny. Edited also were the Roosevelt Story and the book of essays and letters. I had decided that you wouldn’t want to read all those poison-pen letters I had written all these year so I just kept a few of the more humorous letters I had sent and re-did some of those essays that, due to the exigencies of time, were out of date.
What you may not realize is the amount of research that goes into many of these stories to give them authenticity. I have listed those titles that required a whole lot of research.
Almost all these stories were written during the Summer and Fall of 2007 and the Winter of 2008 after my wife, Janice, died. I suddenly become "fertile" (on the computer). I’ll have to admit that I had a pre-idea of some of these stories and I just had to research'em and write'em. By the way most of the stories listed above have been written for the next book that is already edited. It is temporarily called "Short Stories You MUST Read." The title mostly depends on the feeling of excitement that the pulisher has about the book. "Outa My Mind" gave them mucho excitement!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PURCHASE......Ed
How many stories do you think I have written in my 90th and 91st year? Let me list the creative aspects of my career, which surprisingly has not ended yet!
The Fortune Cookie Collector. (I just collected about 500 fortune cookie "fortunes" )
The Great Flood......( weeks of )research
Romeo and Juliet
Cristoforo.......( days of research)
Merrie Christmas
Scrambled Eggs
Across The Street
The Government’s Money
Vick
Armageddon ......(weeks of research)
Manfredonia ......(days ofresearch)
Hans
Disperse.........(months of research)
These were written since June-July of 2007 and I also edited that book you just read in line with the procedures of the iUniverse Comapny. Edited also were the Roosevelt Story and the book of essays and letters. I had decided that you wouldn’t want to read all those poison-pen letters I had written all these year so I just kept a few of the more humorous letters I had sent and re-did some of those essays that, due to the exigencies of time, were out of date.
What you may not realize is the amount of research that goes into many of these stories to give them authenticity. I have listed those titles that required a whole lot of research.
Almost all these stories were written during the Summer and Fall of 2007 and the Winter of 2008 after my wife, Janice, died. I suddenly become "fertile" (on the computer). I’ll have to admit that I had a pre-idea of some of these stories and I just had to research'em and write'em. By the way most of the stories listed above have been written for the next book that is already edited. It is temporarily called "Short Stories You MUST Read." The title mostly depends on the feeling of excitement that the pulisher has about the book. "Outa My Mind" gave them mucho excitement!
Saturday, May 3, 2008
"Outa My Mind"
Short Stories From a Long Life..
THIS IS A SUMMARY OF ALL THE STORIES IN "OUTA MY MIND."
PREFACE
This preface is interesting if you can stand reading something serious once in a while. The critical portion of the preface is the part where the publisher objected to the way I had written something. I left it in despite the publisher! I had said that every story in this book has a "surprise ending" and I was (and still am) annoyed at people who turn to the last page of each story before they read the story to find out how it will end! I find that to be so goddamned childish I can’t finish this sentence without an expletive! It negates the cleverness I used to write these stories. It negates the quality of writing descriptions, character studies and the tension that goes with a well-written short story. If you can’t read a book without going to the end don’t buy the doggone book!
Story #1, OOMALAH
These are stories that have a lot of truth in them but are mostly imaginative. For instance, this first story in the book, OOMALAH, has to do with the Hawaiian Island of Oahu where I spent about ten months in the Army before going on into actual combat. All the physical incidents are really the truth. I did find a skull in the ground where the GI’s were making an airfield necessitating the destruction of a papaya orchard. (And I still have the skull!), I did go to Moe the tailor, I did live in the house of Mr.King who did write all those Hawaiian classics.
But the story of Oomalah is imaginary. I just had to find a story that went with that skull! It certainly is an interesting, imaginative story that any sensitive person would love.
Story #2.....THE ONE
This tale is incredibly accurate as a description of the Holy Land under the Roman occupation. But I made up the ending.....where I found it hard to believe the story of Jesus and made up an alternative. I won’t tell you the alternative....you’ll have to read the story, which has its own excitement. The Holy Land had to be a tough place to live in when the Romans occupied it. This is a particularly well-written story, because I was so careful not to offend anyone.
Story # 3.....THE FOURTH FLOOR
This story is absolutely untrue. It has a tension built in where you begin to wonder why I am telling you this story. But in a well-written description I take an episode of a man’s life when he is distraught over losing his wife. I have just lost my wife and we brought her to the Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York City. I found that the Chapel was very much like my description of it which I got from a funeral of one of my patients. The idea for this story came to me when I went to see this woman in the off-hours, between patients, because I had a very busy day and I had to see this woman who had just passed away. A funeral chapel is no place to go to in the off-hours, I gotta tell you! It does something to your mind; like writing this story!
Story # 4......A PASSING OBSERVATION
This is an absolutely true story....not a classic, but it happened. For some unknown reason I have always felt that this particular tale is like a theme written for an English class where the teacher asks you to describe an interesting event in your day and she’s going to mark it on the basis of tension.. ..
Story # 5......COLONEL MAX was a riot! I gave this story to him and his wife although they were living at the time we visited them in a not particularly attractive apartment. They were most appreciative at the accuracy of this story. It is the honest truth and is a delight to read. They subsequently lived in their mother-in-law’s fabulous apartment in Boca Raton after she passed away. Max was exactly as I depicted him: an exceptional person and lots of fun. But don’t play pool with him!
Story # 6....58TH AND BROADWAY This is an imaginary story. I practiced Dentistry on the corner of 58th and Broadway for some 45 years and we saw innumerable people who were run down by automobiles on that corner and this idea just occurred to me one day recently. There is a lot of truth in there but you have to like a Mexican accent like I do to appreciate this entirely.
Story # 7 ....POP This tale is about a genuine man whose character was most interesting. This is all autobiography and it’s all very absorbing, especially the ending which was a bad dream. As I said in the story, a shrink would have a field-day with this exposure of my persona. I won’t tell you the ending because it is so wild, but not as wild as the truth, which is the ending of the sequel which is the next story.
Story # 8, THE REAL STORY ....You have to have confidence that the truth can be so unbelievable! I really mean unbelievable!
Story # 9.....TRUE WITNESS
When someone tells me a tale about his family in Russian Poland before and during World War II I simply cannot ignore it; especially such a subject as this one. A friend told me about his uncle en passent (as a means of passing time.) He had no idea that it made such an impression on me that I immediately wrote this tale and re-wrote and re-edited it many times. It is not enough that I wrote this story: I wrote two poems which were actually written by one of the characters in this story and I translated one of them into Yiddish, which was her native language. Of course they are in English in this book. But for those who are interested in Yiddish as a language I would be pleased to send you a copy. Because they are the creations of one the characters I made up for this story out of my mind. Perhaps I should not take credit for it!.
This amazing story is not true, but it could be. There is so much reality in this tale it never ceases to excite me! I think that you would be better off reading these stories than watching television! Of course I have every intention of watching Tiger Woods in whatever contest he will appear. He is a phenomenon all by himself. But Tiger Woods to the contrary, these stories are exciting in a different way and you’d be best advised to read them. It has twists at the end of each story. If Tiger had such a twist he would be a golfer like I am, which is nothing to brag about.
Story # 10....A CASE OF LIFE OR DEATH
This is a murder mystery. Who got killed? The killer goes to a legal specialist to find out what he should have done to get the cops off his back. Read it carefully. Twisty! So help me, I have never killed anybody in my lifetime, so far as I know. But that doesn’t mean I never wanted to! You never know what is in the human mind.
Story # 11....OVER THE HILL
A singer hits the audience right between the eyes. This really happened and if one of your friends performed this way you would be inspired to write about it. Angie Ross is the singer. He used to be a film editor in Hollywood. I have had a great many exciting people among my friends, patients and relatives. A formidable memory and a knack for telling the story is all one needs. Angie had a voice that was a rarity. His voice was a tenor that became a baritone in the deeper registers. It enabled him to sing love songs with a terrific tremolo that was more than impressive. Angie was very much interested in self-improvement. He had never gone to college so he educated himself in music and bridge. He had, on its own stand, the largest dictionary I ever saw. He practically memorized it!
Story # 12.... THE DANCE OF LIFE
Of all the stories I have written none shows off the extent of my learning more than this one.
It is a tour de force. It is the most unreal of all my stories but it shows a verifiable understanding of history and the politics of the world. Read it, please, with your tongue in your cheek. It has a wild ending! There are so many sub-plots in this tale! I also revealed the knack for humorous dialogue which I developed in the 26 musical plays I have written. Come to think of it this is an extension of the nights when I was a counselor in a boys camp and the kids would ask me to tell them a story. Most of the time they wouldn’t be able to fall asleep!
Story # 13....SABCHA
This is about one of our best friends. Her name nowadays is Sabina but I do not know what she was called in the concentration camp. I understand from her husband that nobody has the real story from her, even her two daughters. I had to get it from him. She does not like to speak about her experiences. You can’t blame her, if this story is any indication. It is full of tenseness alleviated by an occasional expression in Yiddish. I had to leave out most of the Yiddishisms to get it published for the American public. That is too bad. Yiddish is very expressive. This is one of the stories that has all the symptoms of a happy ending. We will see what the real ending is like if we live long enough.
Story # 14.....COINCIDENCES When you start writing your autobiography I hope you are aware that you might bore your readers if you don’t have an interesting life, whatever you may think about it. I am amazed that now that I have written four books of short stories, a book of poetry, one biography (of my maternal grandfather who was a world-famous poet) that was published, a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (that was used for a course I taught about FDR at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, for years’n years), a book of essays that will turn the world on its ear when it is published, a book describing the creation of New Cities and three books of letters. Oh, of all the things to forget, I also wrote a book of one-act plays, a significant musical show called MORRIS! MORRIS! and a three-act play that is great (Alec Baldwin thought so, anyway!) I spent 21 years at the Garden State Yacht Club writing one musical shows per year! I used to write nice music....not as good as my lyrics.
The following stories are all the absolute truth. ( 14 a-i) They are all coincidences that have occurred to me or one of my friends, relatives or patients. Read them all but you don’t have to have your tongue in your cheek....they are all true. I cannot say too much about each one of these stories without ‘giving away’ the punch-lines of each one
Story # 14a ....Allan....
Instead of writing a biography of my middle brother Allan I am writing about him as variegated characters in several stories. This is to demonstrate the various characters that made up his personality. He was really a talented, many-faced, creative person. This story tells just a few things about him: he could be surprised!
Story # 14b....Mister President
This faked me out beyond belief...and when this character became President of the United States I couldn’t have been more surprised. I did not vote for him. He was too Conservative for me.
But truth really is stranger than fiction!
Story # 14c....The Landing and the Angel:
This is a true story, as all of these "coincidences" are. Wartime was always surprise-time and this was ridiculous If I tell any more then I will give away the coincidence. All I can say is that, for this kind of a wartime experience, this story has no equal.
Story # 14d....Moe The Tailor:
I told you in the story "Oomalah" about Moe the Tailor. He deserved more space than I gave him. He was very knowledgeable about Waiwah and the Island of Oahu. I often wonder what became of the characters that find their presence in the pages of my books.
Story # 14e....Walter:
Truth is stranger than fiction and this is evidence of that aphorism. We had our share of politics and this was part of it. If I failed to name the leading character you would be wondering who he was.
Story # 14f.....The Sisters:
This is a painful reminder of the after-effects of a world war. It just was not fair, the things that happened to this family. I wrote "The Fourth Floor" after the funeral of Esther. This is one of the wildest coincidences you ever heard.
Story # 14g....Ethel Rose:
Ahhh, Esso! Such a wonderful woman! She succeeded in concealing a whole universe of experiences from us. I don’t know why. It might have made a great story! We would have thought even more of her had we known the secrets she concealed from us. But this incident was scary.
Story # 14h...Karl:.
He was as unforgettable as any man can be...: one of the characters who added a certain balance to he richness of my life. That’s all I dare say about Karl!
Story # 14i....Mosei Keino:
This true incident is one of the reasons I wrote (above), "Wartime was always surprise-time." If you are interesting your lifetime will attest to it. Everything and anything I experienced when added to these pages is exciting. This really happened just as I wrote it: believe it or not. There are deeper concerns here that you are entitled to find.
Story # 15..........REMEMBRANCES (The stories from this one to the end are not coincidences)
This is sheer autobiography, but I have the feeling it is just universal enough to be interesting.
I have lived a long, long time and that alone could be plenty boring. But these items are just different enough to attract your attention. Read it and see!
Story # 16........PERCHANCE TO DREAM
Did you ever wish you never had that dream? Was this a dream or did it really happen? I was never sure. There was a murder. I have never been sure whether I did that killing. But let me tell you that I was in enough doubt that I really came home from Camp Leonard to witness the destruction of my old home. This is another reason for me to have gone to a shrink! (I never did go!)
Story # 17......NICHOLAS
Aha! This is my piece de resistance! It is the most exciting story based on a newspaper article I have ever written. A kindergarten substitute teacher tells her class that Santa Claus is a phony. What happens from then on? Only a writer with my imagination, who gives free reign to his characters, experiences this kind of trauma. It is trauma: there is no better subject in the lexicon of the English language. You must read this! The characters actually trade arguments!
Story # 18......RELOCATION
If you watch the History Channel on TV you might be inspired to take some action: either to vote one way or another, alter your portfolio of securities or write a story just like this. I had been impressed by the idea of global warming and the melting of the ice in the polar areas of the earth. What more does a febrile imagination such as mine have to see? Outside of The Great Flood, which I wrote two years later, this is a possibility that stirs one up to create imaginary tragedies. It is a valid possibility. This is not a true story; but is it?
Story # 19.......ANNIE
We had a house on Lake Hopatcong, in New Jersey, and Annie was one of our neighbors. My sons do not have the same degree of imagination or the same type of character assassination as I do so they muight disagree with my estimation of Annie. But all the facts are true here, including my trip to the garbage disposal place, so it’s a matter of putting two and two together. Some people will get "five" but I always come up with four. Murder is murder, regardless of the name.
Story # 20.......JEREMY
This is the wildest story I ever wrote. It is not the funniest or the dreamiest. It is not the most intellectual or the most historical. It is the most upsetting doggone piece of writing I’ve ever done..bar none! Of course it is not true. You simply cannot get away without reading this story!
Story # 21.....THE POOR FISH
There was an article in the New York Times in 2003 which described a fish in a fish-store which could speak in English and Yiddish. That intrigued me. I thought of my brother Allan who was quite a linguist. He could converse in English, German, Yiddish, French, Chinese and Japanese. So I wrote a story that held a lot of truths but the main portion of this story is "made up" to produce a funny, sad, interesting tale that was based on the article in The Times. You have to read this. It justifies my thinking that I am a writer. Of course this had a great deal of truth in this. It is my brother Allan one hundred percent!
Story # 22.....MERRIE CHRISTMAS
And a merrie Christmas to you! Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. They can be wrong, especially in their headlines. This is a murder mystery with a fetching headline. Anything I add will give the killer away. This is the second story I have written about Santa Claus, by the way. Have you read Nicholas? That’s the ultimate.
Story # 23......SCRAMBLED EGGS.
This is a great finale to my first book of short stories. It is the undeniable truth in every detail and the details are insanely funny. Insanely? When you describe psychological problems you can laugh at them if you wish. But there is something sad about people being so "out of it" that they are just too bizarre. This is really too funny to be true but sad enough to be real. This is the absolute truth! (I just found a picture of the hero of this story and his oriental girl-friend!)
Short Stories From a Long Life..
THIS IS A SUMMARY OF ALL THE STORIES IN "OUTA MY MIND."
PREFACE
This preface is interesting if you can stand reading something serious once in a while. The critical portion of the preface is the part where the publisher objected to the way I had written something. I left it in despite the publisher! I had said that every story in this book has a "surprise ending" and I was (and still am) annoyed at people who turn to the last page of each story before they read the story to find out how it will end! I find that to be so goddamned childish I can’t finish this sentence without an expletive! It negates the cleverness I used to write these stories. It negates the quality of writing descriptions, character studies and the tension that goes with a well-written short story. If you can’t read a book without going to the end don’t buy the doggone book!
Story #1, OOMALAH
These are stories that have a lot of truth in them but are mostly imaginative. For instance, this first story in the book, OOMALAH, has to do with the Hawaiian Island of Oahu where I spent about ten months in the Army before going on into actual combat. All the physical incidents are really the truth. I did find a skull in the ground where the GI’s were making an airfield necessitating the destruction of a papaya orchard. (And I still have the skull!), I did go to Moe the tailor, I did live in the house of Mr.King who did write all those Hawaiian classics.
But the story of Oomalah is imaginary. I just had to find a story that went with that skull! It certainly is an interesting, imaginative story that any sensitive person would love.
Story #2.....THE ONE
This tale is incredibly accurate as a description of the Holy Land under the Roman occupation. But I made up the ending.....where I found it hard to believe the story of Jesus and made up an alternative. I won’t tell you the alternative....you’ll have to read the story, which has its own excitement. The Holy Land had to be a tough place to live in when the Romans occupied it. This is a particularly well-written story, because I was so careful not to offend anyone.
Story # 3.....THE FOURTH FLOOR
This story is absolutely untrue. It has a tension built in where you begin to wonder why I am telling you this story. But in a well-written description I take an episode of a man’s life when he is distraught over losing his wife. I have just lost my wife and we brought her to the Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York City. I found that the Chapel was very much like my description of it which I got from a funeral of one of my patients. The idea for this story came to me when I went to see this woman in the off-hours, between patients, because I had a very busy day and I had to see this woman who had just passed away. A funeral chapel is no place to go to in the off-hours, I gotta tell you! It does something to your mind; like writing this story!
Story # 4......A PASSING OBSERVATION
This is an absolutely true story....not a classic, but it happened. For some unknown reason I have always felt that this particular tale is like a theme written for an English class where the teacher asks you to describe an interesting event in your day and she’s going to mark it on the basis of tension.. ..
Story # 5......COLONEL MAX was a riot! I gave this story to him and his wife although they were living at the time we visited them in a not particularly attractive apartment. They were most appreciative at the accuracy of this story. It is the honest truth and is a delight to read. They subsequently lived in their mother-in-law’s fabulous apartment in Boca Raton after she passed away. Max was exactly as I depicted him: an exceptional person and lots of fun. But don’t play pool with him!
Story # 6....58TH AND BROADWAY This is an imaginary story. I practiced Dentistry on the corner of 58th and Broadway for some 45 years and we saw innumerable people who were run down by automobiles on that corner and this idea just occurred to me one day recently. There is a lot of truth in there but you have to like a Mexican accent like I do to appreciate this entirely.
Story # 7 ....POP This tale is about a genuine man whose character was most interesting. This is all autobiography and it’s all very absorbing, especially the ending which was a bad dream. As I said in the story, a shrink would have a field-day with this exposure of my persona. I won’t tell you the ending because it is so wild, but not as wild as the truth, which is the ending of the sequel which is the next story.
Story # 8, THE REAL STORY ....You have to have confidence that the truth can be so unbelievable! I really mean unbelievable!
Story # 9.....TRUE WITNESS
When someone tells me a tale about his family in Russian Poland before and during World War II I simply cannot ignore it; especially such a subject as this one. A friend told me about his uncle en passent (as a means of passing time.) He had no idea that it made such an impression on me that I immediately wrote this tale and re-wrote and re-edited it many times. It is not enough that I wrote this story: I wrote two poems which were actually written by one of the characters in this story and I translated one of them into Yiddish, which was her native language. Of course they are in English in this book. But for those who are interested in Yiddish as a language I would be pleased to send you a copy. Because they are the creations of one the characters I made up for this story out of my mind. Perhaps I should not take credit for it!.
This amazing story is not true, but it could be. There is so much reality in this tale it never ceases to excite me! I think that you would be better off reading these stories than watching television! Of course I have every intention of watching Tiger Woods in whatever contest he will appear. He is a phenomenon all by himself. But Tiger Woods to the contrary, these stories are exciting in a different way and you’d be best advised to read them. It has twists at the end of each story. If Tiger had such a twist he would be a golfer like I am, which is nothing to brag about.
Story # 10....A CASE OF LIFE OR DEATH
This is a murder mystery. Who got killed? The killer goes to a legal specialist to find out what he should have done to get the cops off his back. Read it carefully. Twisty! So help me, I have never killed anybody in my lifetime, so far as I know. But that doesn’t mean I never wanted to! You never know what is in the human mind.
Story # 11....OVER THE HILL
A singer hits the audience right between the eyes. This really happened and if one of your friends performed this way you would be inspired to write about it. Angie Ross is the singer. He used to be a film editor in Hollywood. I have had a great many exciting people among my friends, patients and relatives. A formidable memory and a knack for telling the story is all one needs. Angie had a voice that was a rarity. His voice was a tenor that became a baritone in the deeper registers. It enabled him to sing love songs with a terrific tremolo that was more than impressive. Angie was very much interested in self-improvement. He had never gone to college so he educated himself in music and bridge. He had, on its own stand, the largest dictionary I ever saw. He practically memorized it!
Story # 12.... THE DANCE OF LIFE
Of all the stories I have written none shows off the extent of my learning more than this one.
It is a tour de force. It is the most unreal of all my stories but it shows a verifiable understanding of history and the politics of the world. Read it, please, with your tongue in your cheek. It has a wild ending! There are so many sub-plots in this tale! I also revealed the knack for humorous dialogue which I developed in the 26 musical plays I have written. Come to think of it this is an extension of the nights when I was a counselor in a boys camp and the kids would ask me to tell them a story. Most of the time they wouldn’t be able to fall asleep!
Story # 13....SABCHA
This is about one of our best friends. Her name nowadays is Sabina but I do not know what she was called in the concentration camp. I understand from her husband that nobody has the real story from her, even her two daughters. I had to get it from him. She does not like to speak about her experiences. You can’t blame her, if this story is any indication. It is full of tenseness alleviated by an occasional expression in Yiddish. I had to leave out most of the Yiddishisms to get it published for the American public. That is too bad. Yiddish is very expressive. This is one of the stories that has all the symptoms of a happy ending. We will see what the real ending is like if we live long enough.
Story # 14.....COINCIDENCES When you start writing your autobiography I hope you are aware that you might bore your readers if you don’t have an interesting life, whatever you may think about it. I am amazed that now that I have written four books of short stories, a book of poetry, one biography (of my maternal grandfather who was a world-famous poet) that was published, a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (that was used for a course I taught about FDR at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, for years’n years), a book of essays that will turn the world on its ear when it is published, a book describing the creation of New Cities and three books of letters. Oh, of all the things to forget, I also wrote a book of one-act plays, a significant musical show called MORRIS! MORRIS! and a three-act play that is great (Alec Baldwin thought so, anyway!) I spent 21 years at the Garden State Yacht Club writing one musical shows per year! I used to write nice music....not as good as my lyrics.
The following stories are all the absolute truth. ( 14 a-i) They are all coincidences that have occurred to me or one of my friends, relatives or patients. Read them all but you don’t have to have your tongue in your cheek....they are all true. I cannot say too much about each one of these stories without ‘giving away’ the punch-lines of each one
Story # 14a ....Allan....
Instead of writing a biography of my middle brother Allan I am writing about him as variegated characters in several stories. This is to demonstrate the various characters that made up his personality. He was really a talented, many-faced, creative person. This story tells just a few things about him: he could be surprised!
Story # 14b....Mister President
This faked me out beyond belief...and when this character became President of the United States I couldn’t have been more surprised. I did not vote for him. He was too Conservative for me.
But truth really is stranger than fiction!
Story # 14c....The Landing and the Angel:
This is a true story, as all of these "coincidences" are. Wartime was always surprise-time and this was ridiculous If I tell any more then I will give away the coincidence. All I can say is that, for this kind of a wartime experience, this story has no equal.
Story # 14d....Moe The Tailor:
I told you in the story "Oomalah" about Moe the Tailor. He deserved more space than I gave him. He was very knowledgeable about Waiwah and the Island of Oahu. I often wonder what became of the characters that find their presence in the pages of my books.
Story # 14e....Walter:
Truth is stranger than fiction and this is evidence of that aphorism. We had our share of politics and this was part of it. If I failed to name the leading character you would be wondering who he was.
Story # 14f.....The Sisters:
This is a painful reminder of the after-effects of a world war. It just was not fair, the things that happened to this family. I wrote "The Fourth Floor" after the funeral of Esther. This is one of the wildest coincidences you ever heard.
Story # 14g....Ethel Rose:
Ahhh, Esso! Such a wonderful woman! She succeeded in concealing a whole universe of experiences from us. I don’t know why. It might have made a great story! We would have thought even more of her had we known the secrets she concealed from us. But this incident was scary.
Story # 14h...Karl:.
He was as unforgettable as any man can be...: one of the characters who added a certain balance to he richness of my life. That’s all I dare say about Karl!
Story # 14i....Mosei Keino:
This true incident is one of the reasons I wrote (above), "Wartime was always surprise-time." If you are interesting your lifetime will attest to it. Everything and anything I experienced when added to these pages is exciting. This really happened just as I wrote it: believe it or not. There are deeper concerns here that you are entitled to find.
Story # 15..........REMEMBRANCES (The stories from this one to the end are not coincidences)
This is sheer autobiography, but I have the feeling it is just universal enough to be interesting.
I have lived a long, long time and that alone could be plenty boring. But these items are just different enough to attract your attention. Read it and see!
Story # 16........PERCHANCE TO DREAM
Did you ever wish you never had that dream? Was this a dream or did it really happen? I was never sure. There was a murder. I have never been sure whether I did that killing. But let me tell you that I was in enough doubt that I really came home from Camp Leonard to witness the destruction of my old home. This is another reason for me to have gone to a shrink! (I never did go!)
Story # 17......NICHOLAS
Aha! This is my piece de resistance! It is the most exciting story based on a newspaper article I have ever written. A kindergarten substitute teacher tells her class that Santa Claus is a phony. What happens from then on? Only a writer with my imagination, who gives free reign to his characters, experiences this kind of trauma. It is trauma: there is no better subject in the lexicon of the English language. You must read this! The characters actually trade arguments!
Story # 18......RELOCATION
If you watch the History Channel on TV you might be inspired to take some action: either to vote one way or another, alter your portfolio of securities or write a story just like this. I had been impressed by the idea of global warming and the melting of the ice in the polar areas of the earth. What more does a febrile imagination such as mine have to see? Outside of The Great Flood, which I wrote two years later, this is a possibility that stirs one up to create imaginary tragedies. It is a valid possibility. This is not a true story; but is it?
Story # 19.......ANNIE
We had a house on Lake Hopatcong, in New Jersey, and Annie was one of our neighbors. My sons do not have the same degree of imagination or the same type of character assassination as I do so they muight disagree with my estimation of Annie. But all the facts are true here, including my trip to the garbage disposal place, so it’s a matter of putting two and two together. Some people will get "five" but I always come up with four. Murder is murder, regardless of the name.
Story # 20.......JEREMY
This is the wildest story I ever wrote. It is not the funniest or the dreamiest. It is not the most intellectual or the most historical. It is the most upsetting doggone piece of writing I’ve ever done..bar none! Of course it is not true. You simply cannot get away without reading this story!
Story # 21.....THE POOR FISH
There was an article in the New York Times in 2003 which described a fish in a fish-store which could speak in English and Yiddish. That intrigued me. I thought of my brother Allan who was quite a linguist. He could converse in English, German, Yiddish, French, Chinese and Japanese. So I wrote a story that held a lot of truths but the main portion of this story is "made up" to produce a funny, sad, interesting tale that was based on the article in The Times. You have to read this. It justifies my thinking that I am a writer. Of course this had a great deal of truth in this. It is my brother Allan one hundred percent!
Story # 22.....MERRIE CHRISTMAS
And a merrie Christmas to you! Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. They can be wrong, especially in their headlines. This is a murder mystery with a fetching headline. Anything I add will give the killer away. This is the second story I have written about Santa Claus, by the way. Have you read Nicholas? That’s the ultimate.
Story # 23......SCRAMBLED EGGS.
This is a great finale to my first book of short stories. It is the undeniable truth in every detail and the details are insanely funny. Insanely? When you describe psychological problems you can laugh at them if you wish. But there is something sad about people being so "out of it" that they are just too bizarre. This is really too funny to be true but sad enough to be real. This is the absolute truth! (I just found a picture of the hero of this story and his oriental girl-friend!)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Where do I get the ideas for my stories? That’s a legitimate question. Not only did I have an interesting life: the people I met in the army, in my practice, in every organization I ever joined had such exciting lives! They just didn’t act like they knew it was exciting. I did not go around with a pen and paper writing notes. I have a phenomenal memory, that’s all. For instance I knew the story about Sabina, who was our friend for about thirty or forty years before I wrote the story, Sabcha, about her experiences in relation to a concentration camp. It’s so poignant, so natural the way she behaved, so brave. And she didn’t even tell me that story; her husband, Georgie, told me that tale when we met on the SS France about forty- five years ago.
The whole world of truth is waiting to be told about what everybody who writes would give their eye-teeth to know. Eye-teeth are cuspids, by the way and I have a story (now that I think of it) about the woman who wanted me to straighten her dog’s teeth and I finally said to her, after I worked like a mashoogenna for months trying to straighten that dog’s teeth, "A bulldog is supposed to look like this!" and I imitated the dog .with my face all contorted! You see, that’s how I get off the subject and tell a funny story?!
It has been well-established for centuries that, even in a story that is entirely imaginary there is a certain amount of autobiography in the work, even if the author does not consciously intend it to be that way. What else does an author have to draw upon except what he has experienced, what he has learned and how he feels about important values? A creation is a product of one’s mind in which, like in a computer, there are many strange, esoteric, interesting, boring, disgusting, lovely and erotic elements. That is, by the way, what you will think of my "mental computer" when you get through reading these products that actually came our of my mind!
So anybody who wants to be my friend or patient or join an organization with me had better be careful what he has to tell me. He doesn’t have to say a word, in fact. Some people have things happen to them and they are not verbal at all. It’s life and what it does to you that interests me.
I have written three books of short stories, one book of poetry (Ahhh! I’d like to get that book published some day.) And I’m only 91 years old. One book published every three years and I’ve written twelve books, that’s thirty-six years----I’d have to live to 127 years of age before I would accomplish that! That’s not my problem. I’m wondering about you...will you live on after I’ve gone? After all is said and done, this is one scary world. How about those floods which are supposed to take place before 2070? How about the Chinese attacking us just for competition’s sake? How about a Muslim Jihad? How about those atomic thingies? How about the modern pressures taking their effects on you? And I noticed on the History Channel that the Sun will implode in 5 billion years. This is all temporary I tell you!
So what will happen to my books? Will I write an Ode To A Dying Sun? (That’s a great idea!) If the History Channel would go out of business would I run out of ideas for stories? Never fear. I always have you for inspiration
There are the stories that are not in this book that I want to recount. Let me tell you that I still remember what happened in my office where I practiced as a Dentist for my some fifty-four years. One of the means I used to promote this book was to send out seven-hundred and fifty letters, giving Email and phone number to every one I knew who wasn’t dead.. One of the first Emails in response to my letters was from a ninety-three-year-old man. I couldn't wait to reply to hsi Email. I thanked him, again, for recommending me to his friends and relatives and friends.
Whom did he recommend? The head of the Israeli Symphony Orchestra and a man named Netanyahu, the father of THE Netanyahu brothers from Israel and the brother (a famous man) of the guy who sent the Email.
Where do I get ideas for short stories? These are all the honest truth. One day, while I was treating Dr. Netanyahu (who was a professor at Columbia) there was a phone call for him. His elder son had just been killed on a mission to Africa. I never saw my patient again.
As for the famous man who was the brother of the Email expert? He had an appointment one afternoon He was always very impatient. We were busy doing surgery on another patient. It took all my "help" to take care of this patient. The Famous Brother wanted to use our phone. He had to make an urgent phone call. He shouted for recognition (we heard him but his urgency was not the principle urgency to us.) We had locked the door from the waiting-room to the office (we practiced in New York City–enough said). He had shouted that he wanted to use our phone. If he had yelled that he wanted to use our "john" Rosie would have let him into the office.
When we finished the surgery I saw to it that Rosie, our secretary, took care of the famous man. She came into the operatory to tell me that the famous man was stuck in the window between the waiting-room and the office.. Sure enough, when I rushed to the window (it was a small window, about twelve inches by sixteen inches) and sure enough this guy had tried to climb through that window and had gotten stuck. It took all of us plus the patient who had just had surgery to get this famous guy out of the window. He was most annoyed and when I said, "What about your phone call?" He replied, "He can wait. It wasn’t so important!"
That’s not all. My memory was joggled by the Email that this notable man had sent. I wrote this in my reply to His Email. Many years ago I had been doing some periodontal surgery on the wife of The Man on the Email. After two hours I was all finished with the surgery . The only thing we had to do was put a packing around the lower right quadrant. Suddenly I had a severe pain in the chest and it radiated to my lower jaw. Rosie mouthed that I was as pale as a sheet. I had had a heart-attack! I told Rosie to put the packing on and I got into the #2 operatory to give myself some oxygen because I had become short of breath. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten something. I snuck into my consultation room for a quick dose of Chivas Regal (Scotch) before I went into the #2 operatory to give myself some oxygen.
At that moment the door chimes rang. It was my 2:00 o’clock patient who had come in early for some more periodontal surgery. If I had known that two years later this man (he was just a kid) was going to die from Aids I would have postponed his appointment. But I really felt better. I really thought it was an attack of Angina Pectoris, but it was all wishful thinking. I should have known (I really DID know) that when the lower jaw had such pain it was a "coronary. To make a long story short, six montghs later, when I had the time, I found that my heart was so compromised that I had to have an angioplasty for three bloodvessels of my heart.
I saw that surgical case at 1:00 o’clock and spent two hours wondering whether I would live to finish him off. This was a story that I never told before.
Most of my stories are not the result of stupidity. Let’s see: the Famous Man did something stupid. The guy caught Aids because of stupidity. The man who was responsible for Netanyahu being killed, Idi Amin, was stupid (and mean and greedy) in the long run. And I, who knew I had a heart attack was stupid, stupid, stupid.
The whole world of truth is waiting to be told about what everybody who writes would give their eye-teeth to know. Eye-teeth are cuspids, by the way and I have a story (now that I think of it) about the woman who wanted me to straighten her dog’s teeth and I finally said to her, after I worked like a mashoogenna for months trying to straighten that dog’s teeth, "A bulldog is supposed to look like this!" and I imitated the dog .with my face all contorted! You see, that’s how I get off the subject and tell a funny story?!
It has been well-established for centuries that, even in a story that is entirely imaginary there is a certain amount of autobiography in the work, even if the author does not consciously intend it to be that way. What else does an author have to draw upon except what he has experienced, what he has learned and how he feels about important values? A creation is a product of one’s mind in which, like in a computer, there are many strange, esoteric, interesting, boring, disgusting, lovely and erotic elements. That is, by the way, what you will think of my "mental computer" when you get through reading these products that actually came our of my mind!
So anybody who wants to be my friend or patient or join an organization with me had better be careful what he has to tell me. He doesn’t have to say a word, in fact. Some people have things happen to them and they are not verbal at all. It’s life and what it does to you that interests me.
I have written three books of short stories, one book of poetry (Ahhh! I’d like to get that book published some day.) And I’m only 91 years old. One book published every three years and I’ve written twelve books, that’s thirty-six years----I’d have to live to 127 years of age before I would accomplish that! That’s not my problem. I’m wondering about you...will you live on after I’ve gone? After all is said and done, this is one scary world. How about those floods which are supposed to take place before 2070? How about the Chinese attacking us just for competition’s sake? How about a Muslim Jihad? How about those atomic thingies? How about the modern pressures taking their effects on you? And I noticed on the History Channel that the Sun will implode in 5 billion years. This is all temporary I tell you!
So what will happen to my books? Will I write an Ode To A Dying Sun? (That’s a great idea!) If the History Channel would go out of business would I run out of ideas for stories? Never fear. I always have you for inspiration
There are the stories that are not in this book that I want to recount. Let me tell you that I still remember what happened in my office where I practiced as a Dentist for my some fifty-four years. One of the means I used to promote this book was to send out seven-hundred and fifty letters, giving Email and phone number to every one I knew who wasn’t dead.. One of the first Emails in response to my letters was from a ninety-three-year-old man. I couldn't wait to reply to hsi Email. I thanked him, again, for recommending me to his friends and relatives and friends.
Whom did he recommend? The head of the Israeli Symphony Orchestra and a man named Netanyahu, the father of THE Netanyahu brothers from Israel and the brother (a famous man) of the guy who sent the Email.
Where do I get ideas for short stories? These are all the honest truth. One day, while I was treating Dr. Netanyahu (who was a professor at Columbia) there was a phone call for him. His elder son had just been killed on a mission to Africa. I never saw my patient again.
As for the famous man who was the brother of the Email expert? He had an appointment one afternoon He was always very impatient. We were busy doing surgery on another patient. It took all my "help" to take care of this patient. The Famous Brother wanted to use our phone. He had to make an urgent phone call. He shouted for recognition (we heard him but his urgency was not the principle urgency to us.) We had locked the door from the waiting-room to the office (we practiced in New York City–enough said). He had shouted that he wanted to use our phone. If he had yelled that he wanted to use our "john" Rosie would have let him into the office.
When we finished the surgery I saw to it that Rosie, our secretary, took care of the famous man. She came into the operatory to tell me that the famous man was stuck in the window between the waiting-room and the office.. Sure enough, when I rushed to the window (it was a small window, about twelve inches by sixteen inches) and sure enough this guy had tried to climb through that window and had gotten stuck. It took all of us plus the patient who had just had surgery to get this famous guy out of the window. He was most annoyed and when I said, "What about your phone call?" He replied, "He can wait. It wasn’t so important!"
That’s not all. My memory was joggled by the Email that this notable man had sent. I wrote this in my reply to His Email. Many years ago I had been doing some periodontal surgery on the wife of The Man on the Email. After two hours I was all finished with the surgery . The only thing we had to do was put a packing around the lower right quadrant. Suddenly I had a severe pain in the chest and it radiated to my lower jaw. Rosie mouthed that I was as pale as a sheet. I had had a heart-attack! I told Rosie to put the packing on and I got into the #2 operatory to give myself some oxygen because I had become short of breath. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten something. I snuck into my consultation room for a quick dose of Chivas Regal (Scotch) before I went into the #2 operatory to give myself some oxygen.
At that moment the door chimes rang. It was my 2:00 o’clock patient who had come in early for some more periodontal surgery. If I had known that two years later this man (he was just a kid) was going to die from Aids I would have postponed his appointment. But I really felt better. I really thought it was an attack of Angina Pectoris, but it was all wishful thinking. I should have known (I really DID know) that when the lower jaw had such pain it was a "coronary. To make a long story short, six montghs later, when I had the time, I found that my heart was so compromised that I had to have an angioplasty for three bloodvessels of my heart.
I saw that surgical case at 1:00 o’clock and spent two hours wondering whether I would live to finish him off. This was a story that I never told before.
Most of my stories are not the result of stupidity. Let’s see: the Famous Man did something stupid. The guy caught Aids because of stupidity. The man who was responsible for Netanyahu being killed, Idi Amin, was stupid (and mean and greedy) in the long run. And I, who knew I had a heart attack was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Friday, April 25, 2008
introduction
Dear Relative or Friend, 4/15/08
This is the ultra-modern way of selling a book, so pay attention! The idea is to buy my book On Line(on your computer) or on your phone.
Let’s see how much information we can get on a single page:
Name of the book, "Outa My Mind" by Edgar J. Goldenthal
published by iuniverse company (a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble)
Price of the book, Soft Cover..$14.95 This is a reasonable price, plus postage & handling. (about $2.50.) You may have to wait a few days for delivery. The book is printed up in response to your orders!
Price of the book, Hard Cover $24.95 plus postage & handling, probably about $3.00. You may have to wait a few days for delivery. The book is printed up in response to your orders!
***WHERE TO BUY "OUTA MY MIND"...........ONLINE
http://www.amazon.com/ (A good choice but amazon may take about 6 weeks)
http://www.bn.com/
http://www.booksamillion.com/
http://www.iuniverse.com// Visiting bookstore
***WHERE TO BUY "OUTA MY MIND"......... IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A COMPUTER:
PHONE NUMBER........amazon.com 1-800-201-7575 (A good choice but amazon may take about six weeks for delivery.’
PHONE NUMBER........call the iuniverse Book orders dep’t: 1-800-AUTHORS
(1-800-288-4677–extension 5035.)
I enclose a photo of the soft-cover book so your wife will have no complaints about the color! The jacket for the hard-cover books is the same color.
You will have to leave your credit-card number and your address to get this book.
A Blog (B-log in) is data. You may enjoy it or not. It is the equivalent of telling the world what you are thinking. You are entitled to change your mind but most people, once an opinion has been published, find it difficult to make any changes. My blog will tell you all about "Outa My Mind" but this is by the author. Of course I like the stories! You will, too.To get to my Blog:
1)...Get on line.
2)...Type: http://edgar/goldenthal.blogspot.com/ click on enter (you have to be careful to enter everything in that silliness.) Before you know it you are on my blog with all the data you need and some you’ll never need! It has a picture of what I looked like years ago. Some people didn’t recognize me from that photo. It has what I never was able to achieve: seriousness!
You may want to reply to me.....Please use my Email address: Valedor90@AOL.com, because after my second "stroke" I’m no good on the phone.(There is not very much that I am good on these days.) I am counting on you! Love ya.....
Ed
This is the ultra-modern way of selling a book, so pay attention! The idea is to buy my book On Line(on your computer) or on your phone.
Let’s see how much information we can get on a single page:
Name of the book, "Outa My Mind" by Edgar J. Goldenthal
published by iuniverse company (a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble)
Price of the book, Soft Cover..$14.95 This is a reasonable price, plus postage & handling. (about $2.50.) You may have to wait a few days for delivery. The book is printed up in response to your orders!
Price of the book, Hard Cover $24.95 plus postage & handling, probably about $3.00. You may have to wait a few days for delivery. The book is printed up in response to your orders!
***WHERE TO BUY "OUTA MY MIND"...........ONLINE
http://www.amazon.com/ (A good choice but amazon may take about 6 weeks)
http://www.bn.com/
http://www.booksamillion.com/
http://www.iuniverse.com// Visiting bookstore
***WHERE TO BUY "OUTA MY MIND"......... IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A COMPUTER:
PHONE NUMBER........amazon.com 1-800-201-7575 (A good choice but amazon may take about six weeks for delivery.’
PHONE NUMBER........call the iuniverse Book orders dep’t: 1-800-AUTHORS
(1-800-288-4677–extension 5035.)
I enclose a photo of the soft-cover book so your wife will have no complaints about the color! The jacket for the hard-cover books is the same color.
You will have to leave your credit-card number and your address to get this book.
A Blog (B-log in) is data. You may enjoy it or not. It is the equivalent of telling the world what you are thinking. You are entitled to change your mind but most people, once an opinion has been published, find it difficult to make any changes. My blog will tell you all about "Outa My Mind" but this is by the author. Of course I like the stories! You will, too.To get to my Blog:
1)...Get on line.
2)...Type: http://edgar/goldenthal.blogspot.com/ click on enter (you have to be careful to enter everything in that silliness.) Before you know it you are on my blog with all the data you need and some you’ll never need! It has a picture of what I looked like years ago. Some people didn’t recognize me from that photo. It has what I never was able to achieve: seriousness!
You may want to reply to me.....Please use my Email address: Valedor90@AOL.com, because after my second "stroke" I’m no good on the phone.(There is not very much that I am good on these days.) I am counting on you! Love ya.....
Ed
Who is Ed Goldenthal? Maybe he’s remembered from the Garden State Yacht Club where he wrote musical shows for twenty-one years. Perhaps he’s remembered from the Army of the US, where he served on Hawaii, Guadalcanal, Fiji, Bougainville, The Philippines and Japan. During WW II he was always in combat. Were you one of his patients in a lifetime of Dentistry in New York? Were you in the Americans for Democratic Action where he was a founder? Were you one of his Senior students when he taught about FDR at Lynn University in Florida? Do you live at Concordia, NJ? Did you ever hear his music or see his wood-carvings? Were you ever at Tamiment? Are you a member of the Independant Family Society?
Wherever he’s remembered from did you know he had such an interesting life? Does everyone have such an exciting past? Reading his stories, many of which are true, you have the impression that you are reading something highly privileged–or that Ed Goldenthal is another Baron Munchausen.
Wherever he’s remembered from did you know he had such an interesting life? Does everyone have such an exciting past? Reading his stories, many of which are true, you have the impression that you are reading something highly privileged–or that Ed Goldenthal is another Baron Munchausen.
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