Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone, my thoughts

I read “Outerbridge Reach” by Robert Stone in 1999. The following are the thoughts I wrote at the time: Stone is a good writer, who draws you along, especially as he is building the story in the beginning about a disappeared financier and three Annapolis graduates whose careers have taken different paths. But then what appears to be a thriller/adventure story turns out to be very much a psychological examination of a couple with a marvelous life style, who don't appreciate what they have--neither of them--and in the search for something exciting and fulfilling, in the search for a grail, their world is destroyed. The hero Owen Browne goes on a round-the-world, solo sailor yachting race. Neither he nor his boat is equipped for the storms ahead. The boat is poorly made and almost breaks apart on him. He comes apart too. He decides to cheat by creating a false log that will lead the world to think he won the race. In the final analysis, he is too honorable to be a cheat and he commits suicide. But in committing suicide, he isn't facing his life; he is avoiding it. His teenage daughter early in the book is distant from him, and ends up recognizing him as a liar and holding him in contempt. His wife, Anne, is a drunk. While Owen Browne is wrestling with cheating, Anne does cheat. She goes to bed and falls in love with a scurrilous documentary film maker, a man without compassion or roots or any sense of honor. The book ends with Brown's deception being covered up--although eventually the story will come out--and with the film maker punished the best way possible--with the underlying material for his film destroyed. He is passionately in love with Anne who comes to realize what a scumbag he is and how continuing with him would drag her into his gutter world from her middle class, comfortable life. The book ends with Anne continuing the search for the grail. She sets out on a solo sail around the world. I had the sense the writer intended to develop the story around the three Annapolis classmates, then pulled back. He tells of one's alcoholism in passing later in the book. And he uses another's time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam to illustrate that he had the right stuff to survive a prolonged solo crisis that he didn't cheat by betraying his country. Meanwhile at home, the prison of war's wife almost lands in bed with Owen Brown, but both were too honorable, although sorely tempted, to cheat in those circumstances. That wife grows older, of course, and fatter, and years later in meeting Owen again is reminded of her temptation. I have to assume that the prisoner of war character was used to illustrate that men can stand up to tests, and that his wife was used to show that she stayed true in trying circumstances too. The underlying theme is cheating and the inability to face life as it is. In an afterthought, I realized that Owen Brown's character that shown through in the end--being unable to cheat--was illustrated early on when he was tempted to adulterate his friend's wife, but couldn't bring himself to do it. It would have violated his code of life.

Five years of shingles

On the eve of my fifth anniversary of contracting shingles, I woke yesterday morning with the most intense ache around my left eye in months along with a headache. I swung into my current solution: I put drops in the eye, took a Motrin, and applied an ice pack for five minutes. In about half an hour, the serious ache reduced to my normal unpleasant sensation around the eye and the headache was gone. At one point in my journey with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), the medical term for the aftermath of shingles, I applied heat, but I have determined that ice packs work better. I have been taking Nutrigold Turmeric twice a day for the past four months with no discernible impact on my postherpetic neuralgia. I have gotten a pleasant side effect from the Turmeric: an ache in the back of my right thigh that had tortured me for at least a decade each night as I tried to go to sleep disappeared. As a result, I am going to continue taking this Indian spice, Turmeric, in pill form for the foreseeable future in hopes of a cure or at least an easing of my aches and itches. Turmeric has a reputation for reducing pain and inflammations along with easing the loss of memory that afflicts the old.

Free downloads of four-star novel, BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE Better

My novel, BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE, will be available for free downloads from Kindle for five Thursdays in a row: Sept. 12, Sept. 19, Sept. 26, Oct. 3, and Oct. 10, 2013. The book has had only one review, a four-star one, from a reader in the UK. He gave it the highest praise a novel can get: “Unputdownable.” The full review by S. Graham, which appeared on amazon.co.uk: “Beats Les Miserables into a cocked hat. “Based on the true account of a news reporter sent to cover the Paris Commune. Unputdownable. Sorry when it finished and am keeping it to reread another day.” Read it for free and please review it, whether you like it or not.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Better than Les Miserables?

The first review of my novel, BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE, has appeared on amazon.uk under the headline: Beats Les Miserables into a cocked hat. S. Graham wrote in the four-star review: “Ben Connolly in the Paris Commune (Kindle Edition) Based on the true account of a news reporter sent to cover the Paris Commune. Unputdownable. Sorry when it finished and am keeping it to reread another day.” I am overjoyed when any of my books get a positive review, but S. Graham appraisal was particularly appreciated since it is the first review of BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE. Up until this point, I wasn’t certain whether readers were enjoying the book. Now I know that at least one did.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

My quest to ease postherpetic neuralgia (or aftermath of shingles)

I began taking Nutrigold Turmeric twice a day on May 24, 2013 in my search for a solution to the never-ending aches, itches and swelling around my left eye because of postherpetic neuralgia (the aftermath of shingles). The postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) continues to afflict me, but interestingly, I recently realized that the constant ache I have gotten in the back of my right thigh in bed every night for more than a decade had stopped. Perhaps not by coincidence, I now get an ache in the back of my left thigh in bed at night. I am trying the Turmeric pills because this Indian spice seems to harbor almost magical powers to reduce pain, decrease inflammations, and even help ease the loss of memory that comes with aging. In September, I will have had PHN for five years. If the Turmeric helps me, I will let the world know through this blog.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Like a free drink: THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe

After two years, I am tearing up the price tag on my novel, THE TRUCKERS, to make the book free on various sites including Kindle, Smashwords, and Apple i-Tunes. For the more than a million Teamsters who haven’t read the novel, I invite them to download THE TRUCKERS onto their e-book reading devices. Briefly, the novel’s two protagonists, Tommy Kerrigan and Helmut Knall are uneasy allies dedicated to transforming the nation’s largest union, the Truckers International Union (obviously a name inspired by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters), into a progressive force capable of dragging the American labor movement out of the quagmire that has been sucking it under for the past 40 years. Tommy K emerges as a legendary hero experiencing great triumphs and tragedy. Nothing down, nothing to pay, just download THE TRUCKERS and read away.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Five Wednesdays of free downloads of Ben Connolly in the Paris Commune

My historical novel, BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE, will be available as a free download from Kindle for five Wednesdays beginning June 12, 2013, the 169th anniversary of the birth of Januarius A. MacGahan. The free downloads will continue on June 19 and 26 and July 3 and 10. BEN CONNOLLY was inspired by MacGahan’s exploits and reporting during the Paris Commune of 1871. The two-month-long struggle between the Paris working class, led by leftist revolutionaries, and the French central government was MacGahan’s first major assignment as a war correspondent for the New York Herald. MacGahan emerged as one of the foremost war correspondents of the 19th Century and his stories are credited with freeing Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. This weekend, June 7 and 8, The MacGahan American-Bulgarian Festival will be in New Lexington, Ohio. This will be the 35th year that admirers will celebrate MacGahan’s achievements.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.