I write fiction, so there are short stories
and excerpts from my longer fictions.
I recently published a novel about a prep school
(having taught at several, one of them for 26 years!).
So I’ve posted part of a chapter
from EDUCATING LONGFELLOW.
John
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(Author’s note: The graffito on which this fable is based is – or was – actual. For several years during the ‘seventies it adorned a black railroad bridge outside Brattleboro, Vermont. During this time I knew nothing of its origin, but, whenever I passed beneath it, I used to smile to myself and meditate on its significance.
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I wrote “Lot’s Luck” a long time ago, after teaching GENESIS as literature in a freshman English class. I was fascinated by Lot, who pops up often during the story of Abram/Abraham. It’s something of a scandalous story, and I wrote this version, supplying dialog, to try to make it all hang together.
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John
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While looking over the manuscript of a friend’s novel about the Los Angeles writing scene, I was reminded of a story out of my past: the late-1970’s, shortly after the publication of my first novel. Never published, it’s pretty autobiographical, a party that a woman friend gave for me,
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A Cry From the Ground is a sort of Maine retelling of the Cain and Abel myth. The following excerpt occurs after the heroine, Elvina Denny, has arrived in Wiscasset from New Orleans to live with her dour, taciturn father. The year is 1921.
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[What follows is an excerpt from EDUCATING LONGFELLOW, my new novel. It’s set at Adams Academy, a fictional New England boarding school. The important players are Marshall Troublefield, 30, a Desert Storm vet, a newly minted M.A. in English, and a brand-new teacher at the school; Natty Sewall, a new ninth-grader from Wiscasset,
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I’m posting a story for Easter. It’s about a kind of rebirth. The heroine, Miss Agnes, is old but tough. Oh, and Latin students will recognize her name. I really like Miss Agnes.
TEETH
“Ain’t that something,” mutters Miss Agnes Day insincerely, her words as ever puncutuated by the clicks of her dentures slipping and sliding over the banana skins of her gums.
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John
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Carlton Sortwell
Beginning in June of 2012 I began writing a serial novel on this blog. It was called CARLTON SORTWELL and explored among other things Little League baseball. I finished in March of 2013. Like all of my other novels, it has strong ties to Maine,
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I’m living right next door to an angel,
And I’m gonna make that angel mine
Neil Sedaka is singing. It’s 1994, spring in Los Angeles, the waxed and buffed droptops spinning down La Cienega and along Wilshire,
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