The Voice of America, by Rick DeMarinis – 1991 [Anne Bascove]

“…a second chance is the sweetest blessing any of us can hope for.”

Contents

Safe Forever, from Story

Desert Place, from Epoch

Paraiso: An Elegy, from The Georgia Review

God Bless America

An Airman’s Goodbye, from The Paris Review

Aliens, from Antioch Review

Horizontal Snow, from Story

Fidelity

Infidelity

The Whitened Man, from Vox

Wilderness, from Epoc

The Voice of America, from Cutbank

Insulation, from Harper’s Magazine

Her Alabaster Skin

Rudderless Fiction: Lesson 1 (A Correspondence Course), from Harper’s Magazine

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How people could lie to themselves,
and believe it,
was the miracle of human life as far as I was concerned. 
(from “The Voice of America”, p. 177)

He’s on a mission of wild truth-seeking. 
He thinks he can solve his life if he keeps telling it. 
(from “Rudderless Fiction: Lesson 1”, p. 208)

A story should not mean; at best it should be meant.
(from “Rudderless Fiction: Lesson 1”, p. 213)

– Rick DeMarinis –

Damon Runyon Favorites, by Damon Runyon – 1946 [Unknown Artist]

Contents

Butch Minds the Baby
Lillian
A Very Honorable Guy
Madame La Gimp
The Hottest Guy in The World
Bred for Battle
A Story Goes With It
Sense of Humor
Undertaker Song
That Ever-Living Wife of Hymie’s
The Brakeman’s Daughter
Little Miss Marker
Dancing Dan’s Christmas
Princess O’Hara
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“Sense of Humor”

No one in the world can give a hot foot as good as Joe the Joker, because it takes a guy who can sneak up very quiet on the guy who is to get the hot foot, and Joe can sneak up so quiet many guys are willing to lay you odds that he can give a mouse a hot foot if you can find a mouse that wears shoes.  Furthermore, Joe the Joker can take plenty care of himself in case the guy who gets the got foot feels like taking the matter up, which sometimes happens, especially with guys who get their shoes made to order at forty bobs per copy and do not care to have holes burned in these shoes.

But Joe does not care what kind of shoes the guys are wearing when he feels like giving out hot foots, and furthermore, he does not care who the guys are, although many citizens think he makes a mistake the time he gives a hot foot to Frankie Ferocious.  In fact, many citizens are greatly horrified by this action, and go around saying no good will come of it.

This Frankie Ferocious comes from over in Brooklyn where he is considered a rising citizen in many respects and by no means a guy to give a hot foots to, especially as Frankie Ferocious has no sense of humor whatever.  In fact, he is always very solemn, and nobody ever sees him laugh, and he certainly does not laugh when Joe the Joker gives him a hot foot one day on Broadway when Frankie Ferocious is standing talking over a business matter with some guys from the Bronx.

He only scowls at Joe, and says something in Italian, and while I do not understand Italian, it sounds so unpleasant that I guarantee I will leave town inside of the next two hours if he says it to me.

– Damon Runyon –