My Restless Sleep

  The Secret Court of David Stacton  In 1963, Time Magazine included author and sometimes-historian David Stacton in its list of the best American writers, alongside the likes of John Updike, Joseph Heller, Phillip Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Ralph Ellison.  These authors were identified as the future of American literature in the wake of Hemingway and Faulkner.  (Harper Lee merely got an honorable mention and James Baldwin is only noted through a comparison to Ellison, the only black writer on the list).  Of these chosen authors, several would fall out-of-print or into obscurity.  Sometimes both.  As is the curious case of David Stacton.  Dead by the age of 44, Stacton still managed to pump out more than a dozen literary novels, several books of history (most widely known is his biography of the Bonaparte family, as in, Napoleon Bonaparte) short stories, poems, and numerous mid-century pulp fiction books under various pseudonyms ('David Stacton' i...

  Love and Misery.  A Human Experience. Let Glasgow Flourish .    That’s the city motto of the setting, once again, of Douglas Stuart’s YOUNG MUNGO, his remarkably dark and resilient follow-up to his award-winning debut, SHUGGIE BAIN.  And like the city that nurtured Stuart and all his characters, YOUNG MUNGO becomes the tale of a child trying to flourish, and the people, the things, the events, the economics, the politics, all those family ties, that trip and pull and beat one into submission.  A tale of the first breath of love, and the forces that seek to drown it.   A story about what it takes to keep your head above water - gasping, grasping, surviving one beat at a time - and daring to believe you deserve love despite all the odds against it and in spite of every indication from others that you are not worthy of it.   The title character is named after the Patron Saint of Glasgow.   Saints come in varieties, but they are u...

  Welcome to my journey through the cultural artifacts of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries.   I'm fascinated by all the art, books, music, and film that are waiting to be remembered,  or maybe newly discovered. Everything from master painters to pop stars are fair game.  The purpose will be to document a legacy that has faded in time  or never been given proper consideration.