So Long,
Captain Shoo-In

George Carlin
1937 - 2008

Queen Of Vernon
1994-2007

Reality Check Celebrates 10 Years!

Midnight For Cinderella
Released!
Order now!

The Gueem
1997-2006

Autographed copies of
Trailing Jesus available!

Reviews:

7/16 Brick Township Bulletin Feature

6/29 Minnesota Star-Tribune Review

4/22 Union County Advocate Feature

4/23 North County News Feature

6/5 Cary News Feature

American Writer Monthly interview.

Writer's Manual interview.

Erin Page

NEWS

RAINN
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network

City Lights Books

Flying Dog Beer

Friends of Gonzo

Rita J. King
Scribe

Denise - Artist

The New Book!

The Third Book!

The First Book!

One man's journey into the soul of a NJ club band full of fierce portrayals and moving stories.A runaway underground bestseller without the benefit of a big time publisher or much initial publicity. more info on this book More jc Inside! jc's haunting tribute to the Lost Generation, "Resurrections in Babes Clothing" is included in this intriguing collection of various poets and essayists born between 1960 and 1982 more info on this book More jc Inside! Two of jc's columns on the events of 9/11/01 are part of this charity compendeum available now from American Publishing. more info on this book

Februaryr 3, 2010

JEROME DAVID SALINGER - 1919-2010

The aura around this book of Salinger's -- which perhaps should be read by everyone but young men -- is this: it mirrors like a fun house mirror and amplifies like a distorted speaker one of the great tragedies of our times -- the death of the imagination.

I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us. Our boy Holden says, "What scares me most is the other guy's face -- it wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded -- most of the time the faces we face are not the other guys' but our own faces. And it's the worst kind of yellowness to be so scared of yourself you put blindfolds on rather than deal with yourself..."

To face ourselves.
That's the hard thing.
The imagination.
That's God's gift to make the act of self-examination bearable.

- John Guare - Six Degrees of Separation

I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.
- J.D. Salinger - Seymour: An Introduction

There was always something comforting about knowing that J.D. Salinger was still shuffling around the bending country roads of Cornish, New Hampshire, picking up his mail, stopping for a muffin and getting the grocery shopping done. It was reassuring, like kick-offs in the autumn and a first pitch in spring, haircuts and holidays; Ol' Mr. Cranky is still holed up in that large tin barracks on his woodland property banging away on an old Underwood, wrinkled beyond recognition but every gray hair in place. But alas, on a frozen New England January day, the author recluse, the last human standing who can claim Great American Novel status, checked out for good.

This was just another in a series of exits for Salinger, albeit his last. He'd not only made "checking out" an art form, his raison d'etre, but eventually outlasted Howard Hughes as American's most impenetrably ardent hermit. The subtler terminology for such behavior would be "retreating from unwanted attention", which in an ironic twist worthy of his most striking characters transformed him from dropout scribe to silent legend.
click here to continue

THIS WEEK