Fiction

1. Y. Norman Ludosky had never stirred beyond the confines of the City. He had attended private elementary schools, the university, finally graduate school. All predicted a brilliant future for a singular and original student. He immediately secured a post on the leading intellectual magazine and speedily advanced from book review department to role of…

A. There was a man, Agur, toward the end of Proverbs. He wasn't a very important man. Maybe he was a failed prophet, these things happen. He wasn't very bright – a mesomorph, chunky and tough, not cut out to be a prophet at all, not good with signs, a stumbler, no king. As though…

a play in two acts (Note: each act should take five minutes to perform, with exaggerated silences between speeches: during that time son and father age from a respective five and thirty to twenty and forty-five. Their activities on stage will therefore change appropriately.) ACT I FATHER (somberly): I am giving you the ball, son,…

The painter Alex Alexander was sitting in his tower studio in the old Hall of the Arts watching the A.M.'s slow progress toward a January high noon, and the students below more slowly trudging off toward enlightenment, when they brought him the message that his dealer had called from New York. "You're made, Alex!" Philbert…

Gloria stepped carefully out of bed. The floor was rough and wooly under her feet. She went into the bathroom. She slid her pajama bottoms down and set herself neatly onto the toilet seat. As she went she looked at the crotch of her pajama bottoms. They were only faintly stained with yellow. Gloria flushed…

excerpt from a novel in progress (. . .Anna Maye Potts is thirty-six, fat, unmarried; since her mother's death some twenty years ago, she has been keeping house for her father and working days in a nearby candy factory. Now her father is dead too, and her younger sister, Mary, who is married and has…

The boy sat down next to them without being asked by Mrs. Tollerson to do so. He had on a black nylon bathing suit that was too tight, and his face was so tanned it almost covered up some pimples Mr. Tollerson spotted next to his nose. But his legs were white above the knee,…