In and out of Town

The stories for, ‘In and Out of Town,’ were collected over several decades from my experiences in city, suburb and country; the city being New York City, the suburb and country those areas around it. The art of the short story attempts to capture in a few pages moments in people’s lives that encapsulate lifetimes; to peer closely into moments of struggle and turmoil that often determine character and fate. The short story is where most young writers begin. My favorites were Joyce, Lawrence and Turgenev. They will always be guideposts for me. Whether I wrote in these stories about a third grader conniving to escape the rigors of school, a retail employee trapped all night by the ghostly sterile materialism of a suburban mall, or the father of a disabled child who suddenly wins the lottery, I was attempting to do what these writers did; to put into a few pages, a few scenes, a few moments the forces within us that make our lives such an adventure and such a discovery.