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Tom Fasano Posts

Gatsby as Silhouette

Published January 8, 2021 by Tom Fasano

Gatsby as Silhouette

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.

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Karl Shapiro

Published February 26, 2020 by Tom Fasano

Karl Shapiro


This is the only filmed interview I’ve been able to find of the great poet Karl Shapiro. It’s sourced from a 16mm film by Karl Shapiro and Arthur Hoyle, Santa Monica, CA: Pyramid Films, 1976.

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The Cabbie’s Tale

Published February 2, 2020 by Tom Fasano

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.

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Post Surgery

Published October 11, 2019 by Tom Fasano

Post Surgery

Not a pretty sight. Sandy took this snapshot of me in PostOp. My hernia repair surgery went fine. I’m home now, but managing quite a bit of post-surgical pain. A few takeaways from the experience: I had no idea how many people are involved in surgery, all the nurses before, during, and after; I also was surprised by how fast the anesthesia kicked in. One minute I was staring at the lights above the operating table, and then suddenly I’m waking up in the recovery room. There was no sense of time or duration. Boom! It was all over with.

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Visit to the Huntington

Published June 5, 2019 by Tom Fasano

Visit to the Huntington

Today, I ventured to the Huntington Library, only to be confronted by an enormous red modernist metal sculpture—an eyesore that immediately assaulted my sensibilities. One can scarcely fathom the logistical gymnastics involved in its creation and installation. The grounds remain marred by ceaseless construction, a Sisyphean endeavor that appears destined to persist indefinitely.

My pilgrimage was prompted by an exhibition of the works of Celia Paul, a British painter previously relegated to the periphery of my artistic awareness. Paul’s oeuvre is an introspective exploration of self-portraits, familial bonds, and the relentless, indifferent sea. Her mother’s death seems to haunt these canvases, with Paul claiming to sense her mother’s spirit in the ocean’s depths. Her art is suffused with an ineffable melancholy, a somberness that permeates each brushstroke, evoking an almost palpable sense of sorrow and introspection.

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Graduation 2019

Published May 31, 2019 by Tom Fasano

I had the honor of reading the names of the graduates of Sonora High School class of 2019. At the end, I captured this short clip of the graduates tossing their caps into the air.

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The Case of the Ancient Astronauts

Published August 18, 2018 by Tom Fasano


Erich Von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods – a book that’s more like a spaced-out jam session than a scholarly thesis. Von Däniken’s riff? Cosmic journeymen moonlighting as ancient architects. He’s laying down tracks about spacemen sprucing up our planet with pyramid power and Easter Island headshots. But here’s the rub – Von Däniken’s solo is all over the fretboard, missing the chords of credibility and the rhythm of reason.

Dude’s got a knack for spinning a yarn that could hook the most skeptical of skeptics, I’ll give him that. He strings together ancient wonders like a conspiracy theorist’s dream playlist, but when you crank up the volume on his evidence, it’s just white noise and static. He’s like a DJ mixing myths with a backbeat of pseudo-science, hoping we’re too dazzled by the light show to notice the lack of substance.

His leaps in logic? Olympic gold-worthy. His connection of dots? More like throwing darts in the dark, hoping to hit a bullseye in the cosmic canvas. Erich Von Däniken has this way of bending unrelated facts into a space-time pretzel that’s more entertaining than enlightening. His narrative is a high-octane, no-brakes ride that’s a thrill for sure, but when you get off, you realize you’ve gone full circle and ended up just where you started – nowhere new.

“Chariots of the Gods” is a head trip, alright, but it’s not taking you on the journey to truth-town. For those digging a blend of ancient mystery and sci-fi spice, it’s a trip. But if you’re after the facts, you’ll find this rocket’s running on empty – a flashy launch with no landing.

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