• Creative Works

    Like Screech Owls at Noonday

    I will never forget the night back in 1995 when I woke up breathless as the ground rumbled beneath a column of tank treads. All the sway of the earth shook like a thing unfirm. In a state of terrified paralysis, I couldn’t even scream. I shook convulsively as something like an animal growl ravaged my vocal cords. The Marine I was with at an Observation Post held me down and kept me from running pell-mell into the dark forest. Above the tanks’ portentous din, he reassured me: the AmTrac AAVs were not driving over our hidden foxhole; we were safe–unlike another Marine, who had been accidentally crushed dead in…

  • Creative Works

    Into Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old

    Once in a while, I hear from somebody who has never read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Maybe they saw the films, and that was enough for them, or they couldn’t stomach the prose. This lost experience is indeed a sad thing in my book.   Looking back to the first experience as a reader of Tolkien, I was just a hobbit myself. Having moved frequently, school to school, state to state, all I wanted to do was hibernate in my bedroom. Every day of school was a day in Goblin Town, as if teachers were the weaponsmiths of a Goblin military-industrial complex, and we were all…

  • Memoir

    Midsummer – Year of the Fire Rooster

    After seven years of teaching in China, I’m glad to return to America–for the time being–and enjoy some good old fashioned reverse culture shock. There’s music on the car radio I haven’t heard in years. Weekly trips to matinees showing current/uncensored films that do not require government issue IMAX 3D glasses. There’s fresh air and blue sky and green lawns. Even all the mass delusion here in the wilds of Make America Great Again seems quaint to me. And right now there is much to do. Books to read. Trails to hike. Old friends to visit. An action-comedy script in the works. And finally, it goes without saying that I must…

  • Book Review

    The Perfect Halloween Treat for Ghosts and Goblins and Gumshoes

    Got G.U.M.? What’s up with the NeverEnding Zombie Apocalypse in Hollywood? Why is China perpetrating celluloid genocide upon the Japanese (1 Billion + since 2013)? And why should one ever want to venture into The Vale of Shadows? Anybody who has the Sixth Sense will be able to figure out some possibilities to these vexing nether regions of the psychosphere. But for the rest of us, we’ll need Goggles of Umbral Moonshine. You can’t buy these Goggles at any store. They must be found or constructed. Which is why I highly recommend Nguyen’s insightful critique of the ethics and aesthetics of war stories, Nothing Ever Dies. Though focusing on the…

  • Rambling

    Feigning Blindness in a Forest of Bared Necks

    What does it mean when an elected official chooses to disbelieve in climate change? No doubt they believe they are following in the footsteps of Cato the Elder who once said, “It is sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity.” And what a height we have climbed. Imagine two knights upon a great wall of ice. They quarrel over whatever the raven cawed. Meanwhile, winter is coming and legions of the undead march forth. We, the viewers, know the truth, but the knights know nothing. All we can do is watch in horror. A few us will get so upset we’ll throw the nearest object, maybe an ashtray, at…

  • Craft,  Creative Metanonfiction

    The Mitchellverse: A Primer on the Fiction of David Mitchell

    A Bloggy Introduction For many expatriate writers today, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein are still role models. And then there are the American MFA Programs, a host of which seem to be cranking out annual batches of Raymond Carver clones. Said one fresh-baked MFA clone from a prestigious fictioneering facility in Austin, Texas: “And they even taught me how to write the Raymond Carver story–it was required!” I can see his face now. A young Pakistani gentlemen who has a crush on Raymond Carver. Bushy black eyebrows, dark eyes, nerd glasses, the voice of a diplomat. Whenever we meet at the Bookworm café in Chengdu we talk shop, having forgotten…