#AmericanWriters
I had to fly to Illinois to give a reading at the University. I hated readings, but they helped with the rent and maybe they helped sell books. They got me out of east Hollywood, they g...
in the Valkerie Mountains among the strutting peacocks I found a flower as large as my head
I went upstairs to 409, had a stiff scotch and water, took some money out of the top drawer, went down the steps, got in my car and drove to the racetrack. I got there in time for the f...
here I am in the ground my mouth open and
They don’t make it the beautiful die in flame— suicide pills, rat poison, rope wh… ever... they rip their arms off,
Luckily I had auto insurance that paid for a rental car. I drove Katherine to the racetrack in it. We sat in the sundeck at Hollywood Park near the stretch turn. Katherine said she didn...
Bobby and Valerie came by and I introduced everybody around. “Valerie and I are going to take a vacation and rent rooms by the seashore in Manhattan Beach,” said Bobby. “Why don’t you g...
That summer, July 1934, they gunned down John Dillinger outside the movie house in Chicago. He never had a chance. The Lady in Red had fingered him. More than a year earlier the banks h...
There was death in that place on the hill. I knew it the first day I walked out the screen door and into the backyard. A zing– ing binging buzzing whining sound came right at me: 10,000...
listening to Wagner as outside in the dark the wind bl… trees wave and shake lights go off and on the walls creak and the… bed...
I walked into the counselor’s office. It was Eddie Beaver sitting behind the desk. The clerks called him “Skinny Beaver.” He had a pointed head, pointed nose, pointed chin. He was all p...
the dead can sleep they don’t get up and rage they don’t have a wife. her white face like a flower in a closed
Well, I took the scheme sheet and I related everything to sex and age. This guy lived in this house with 3 women. He belt-whipped one (her name was the name of the street and her age th...
Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears– Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone all around town putting in dozens of a...
there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often