Once Upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties

By ClarkZlotchew

General Fiction

Language: English Restricted (R)

0.0

0 ratings

No. of pages

110

Views

Buy Online: Amazon.com clark zlotchew

Overview Ratings & Reviews

A man with a tortured psyche keeps a pink teddy bear on his food tray as he watches the Olympics on television. A waitress in New Jersey puts a curse on a sailor; his behavior becomes increasingly irrational. Two shipmates learn first hand about segregation in 1950s Savannah. A timid adolescent suffers the pangs of unrequited love. A sailor who wants no more complications in his life falls in love with a young prostitute in Cuba on the eve of the Castro Revolution. An academic meets Jorge Luis Borges and uncovers the mystery of an American writer with three different names. The seventeen narratives of this collection deal with love and death, triumphs and defeats, adolescent angst and the tension between ethnicity and assimilation against the background of the 1950s. Some present adventure on the high seas as well as a glimpse of Havana night life on the eve of the Castro Revolution.

The 1950s was a world in some ways more cruel, more demanding, less forgiving. In other ways it was safer, more secure, more comfortable. It certainly was different from the present. Yet, our basic nature has remained unchanged since humans became humans. The deepest of needs, beyond basic sustenance –love, sex, respect, self-esteem, power— always lie just below the surface as motivating forces. It is only the physical, political, social and moral strictures --fleeting conditions that channel those primary drives-- that change.