TOM FASANO
a writer's notebbok

Tom Fasano

Tom Fasano

Tom Fasano Articles.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner Audiobook

Tom FasanoAudiobooks27

This is an unabridged audiobook reading of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” Alan Sillitoe’s story about a boy in Borstal who uses his running ability to make a personal show of his contempt and defiance of authority. It was awarded the Hawthorn Prize for the best work of imagination in prose and established Alan Sillitoe as a leading English fiction writer.

In this audio presentation, the story is read by Tom Courtney, who starred in the highly acclaimed film version of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Part 1

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Part 2

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Part 3

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Part 4

10

Boult’s Triumphant Trilogy: Mahler’s Symphonies No. 5, 7, and 8 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Tom FasanoCD Reviews15

Gustav Mahler: Symphonies 5, 7, 8 (BBC SO/Boult) [Pristine Audio, 3CD] These bracing live 1947-48 recordings capture the BBC SO and Adrian Boult tackling three of Mahler’s most ambitious middle symphonies. The Fifth’s stormy opening gives way to the famous Adagietto, rendered with poignant restraint. Boult drives the Seventh’s “night music” movements with purpose, finding the threads linking its disparate episodes. But the real prize is the monumental “Symphony of a Thousand,” recorded at Royal Albert Hall, the massive chorus and orchestra conjuring cosmic vistas and earthly delights. Sound quality is decent for the era. Even Mahler skeptics may be converted by the sheer conviction on display. A-

A Poem by Matt Mason in Response to Capital Violence

Tom FasanoPoets1

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Nebraska poet Matt Mason won national attention for his poem “The Start,” which appeared in the New York Times. He drafted the poem three years ago when he wasn’t comfortable with the political climate, later realizing the poem’s relevance last month as an angry mob swept the Capitol. The phrase “probably started” conveys that small remarks or acts of hatred can lead to violent behavior.

“It’s seemed like we were going more and more with the (hateful) language and never hitting the point of saying, ‘This is too far,’” he told the Lincoln Journal Star. “And if that point never gets hit, the violence is inevitable.”

It probably started
in a whisper, a murmur,
a low tone hardly caught by the papers,
a sticker, a poster,
a brick wall with slogans in fresh black paint

Mason hopes to challenge people’s perception of the partisan environment. As state Poet Laureate, he has organized poetry events in every county.

Amanda Gorman: Innauguration Poet

Tom FasanoNews0

Amanda Gorman was writing a new poem two weeks ago called “The Hill We Climb.” Feeling tired, she was concerned that she might not have enough energy to complete the monumental task of writing a poem about national unity for President-elect Biden’s inauguration.

“I had this huge thing, probably one of the most important things I’ll ever do in my career,” she said in an interview. “It was like, if I try to climb this mountain all at once, I’m just going to pass out.”

Gorman had not finished the poem when pro-Trump rioters smashed into the halls of Congress, several of them carrying Confederate flags. Throughout the night, Gorman added verses to her poem to depict what transpired that day in the Capitol.

At 22, Gorman is a member of a unique group of poets recruited by the White House to write a presidential inauguration poem, following Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Miller Williams, Elizabeth Alexander, and Richard Blanco.

But Gorman faced unique challenges not faced by her predecessors. Her poem didn’t just acknowledge Trump’s incitement of violence but also inspired hope when our country is reeling from a deadly pandemic and barbarian hordes of white supremacists.

She also took cues from people like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King, Jr., all of whom understood how to call for hope and unity in times of despair and division. Gorman said she studied these speakers’ works to examine how rhetoric can be used for good.

She read her poem with unshakable poise, speaking to “a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it” and “destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.” It continued: “This effort very nearly succeeded/But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.”

She told the New York Times: “Now more than ever, the United States needs an inaugural poem . . . . Poetry is typically the touchstone that we go back to when we have to remind ourselves of the history that we stand on, and the future that we stand for.”

Hermann Hesse the Watercolorist

Tom FasanoAuthors2

Hermann Hesse is one of the most widely read German-language writers ever. He is most renowned for his literary works such as Demian, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, yet he also made a name for himself as a painter. After the First World War, he learned to paint with watercolors. His paintings vividly depict Ticino’s landscape (Switzerland), where he lived from 1919 to 1962.

HIs art is a glimpse into the more intimate and hidden side of this great popular writer. On his psychoanalyst’s advice, a student of Carl Gustav Jung, Hesse at first reluctantly took up watercolors. Eventually, he came to enjoy painting so much that it became his favorite pastime. What attracted and fascinated him was the magic of nature and the expressive power of colors. He painted thousands of watercolors, mostly Ticino landscapes in vivid colors, and illustrated small books of poetry throughout his life.

The Crucible Audiobook

Tom FasanoAudiobooks, Theater1238


This is a full-cast performance featuring Robert Foxworth, Pamela Payton-Wright, Stuart Pankin, and Jerome Dempsey and cast. I use this full audio recording of The Crucible in my classroom and intend no copyright infringement. It’s for educational purposes only. It was produced by The Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center (under the direction of Jules Irving and Robert Symonds) and directed by John Berry.

ACT I:

ACT II:

ACT III:

ACT IV:

Be sure to check out my Crucible Study Notes on YouTube:

7

Swintec Typewriters Keep Clacking

Tom FasanoTechnology, TYPEWRITERS8

The Wall Street Journal a few years ago ran an article about Swintec, one of the last surviving typewriter companies in the U.S. (Please see the WSJ article for more information.)

Edward Michael, who started the company in 1985, is quoted in the article as saying, “We’re typewriters. This is our specialty. This is what we know.”

Down to about 10 employees now from about 85 during the boom years, Swintec continues to sell typewriters at a click-clackety pace: between 3,000 to 5,000 units a year, mostly to universities, senior centers, and prisons. Yes, typewriters are quite popular behind bars — especially now that Swintec came upon the novel idea of a clear typewriter designed to prevent the smuggling of contraband.

From our point of view, typewriters aren’t going anywhere. After all, the vacuum cleaner, as Mr. Michael points out in the above video, failed to replace the broom. Nor did the typewriter replace pens and pencils.

Gatsby as Silhouette

Tom FasanoNovelists, Novels15

Sometimes a silhouette is more significant than an ordinary drawing. A few traces of the pen, a few vibrant adjectives, are often sufficient to bring a character to life.

Take Owl Eyes, a partygoer at Gatsby’s mansion, a quickly drawn and excellent character who wanders into the library with intoxicated admiration. I’ve always seen this man as wise, someone groping through the booze-haze to understand the mirage before him. Readers have been lost in Gatsby’s house ever since, lost in his never-ending revival.

Almost all the bitterness Nick feels about Gatsby has been directed back at Fitzgerald’s novel.

What major work of fiction is so well established in the curriculum and canon yet is constantly and vigorously contested for its literary merit and ethical character? We’re not talking about books like Huckleberry Finn, which got sucked into a rage about racial slurs and censorship and the tireless battle over the N-word. With Gatsby, one must ask: Could Fitzgerald write well, or was he, as Gore Vidal said, just a novice?

Almost all the bitterness Nick feels about Gatsby has been directed back at Fitzgerald’s novel. Just as Nick questions Gatsby, readers question his book: Is this mere shallowness or astonishing depth? Like Daisy, Nick has been criticized for his passive attitude or worse, for taking part in the spectacle.

Even admirers disagree: is the book good, or is it great?
The answer lies not in the assurance of the perfect text but its unknowability. Despite the tight structure and well-crafted three-act framework, it’s full of wild ambivalence, stiff morality, and a love of money, as well as a lack of empathy from many of its players.

Fitzgerald was proud of his achievement, but his work baffled critics and didn’t sell well. “Of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about,” Fitzgerald wrote to the critic Edmund Wilson.

That question remains unresolved. Some reviewers have seen the novel as a slapdash piece of work. John Kenneth Galbraith sneered that Fitzgerald had no real interest in class. “It is the lives of the rich — their enjoyments, agonies and putative insanity — that attract his interest,” he wrote. “Their social and political consequences escape him as he himself escaped such matters in his own life.”

True, Fitzgerald was bitter and envious of the rich. “I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich and it has colored my entire life and works,” he wrote to his agent, this coming from the same man who fell in love with Zelda because she looked expensive.

As we are borne back through this single text, we see that admiration might be one path to literary immortality. Still, we should be wary of endless interpretation and enjoy the traces of Fitzgerald’s knife-sharpened pencil.

The Cabbie’s Tale

Tom FasanoMemoir0

Tim Fasano, who died last November of cardiac arrest, penned a memoir of life at the margins of society.

Before his YouTube page became a sensation with over 1,300 videos of his search for Bigfoot, Tim Fasano wrote a popular blog called Tampa Taxi Shots. The blogging craze was at its height in 2006, and Mr. Fasano began documenting his view of life on the streets from behind the wheel of a United Cab.

Mr. Fasano often said there was more philosophy in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven than in a college lecture hall.

He often wrote about ne’er-do-wells and down-and-outs, strippers and prostitutes, nightclub patrons, and guys looking for a late-night date. He wrote of vacationers who thought they were long-routed, sick people headed to the emergency room in the wee hours, and the mentally ill. There was no shortage of surly drunks, bums with no money, and addicts who believed Mr. Fasano knew where to score drugs. Several newspapers wrote articles about his blog, and often Mr. Fasano appeared on local television — once for finding a suspicious package at the Tampa airport. News outlets from around the country published obituaries about him, including US News & World Report.

His short, concise posts were compelling and bewitching in their effort to find meaning in the hustle of cab driving. A student of philosophy at the University of South Florida, Mr. Fasano often said there was more philosophy in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven than in a college lecture hall. An amateur photographer, he filled his blog with photos of the road, billboards, and graffiti. He took dozens of photographs of his fellow drivers, many of whom have passed away.

We at Coyote Canyon Press had the pleasure of reading his manuscript a few years ago. Based on his blog entries but fleshed out significantly, his book focuses on the unglamorous lives of people on the margins, people whose stories are rarely told.

The Cabbie’s Tale will be published in the summer of 2020.

© 2024 Tom Fasano

Sliding Sidebar

Recent Comments

Typosphere