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Poor Advice is
a collection of about two dozen short stories by Lou Gaglia. Poor
Advice came to my Kindle in a
flash following a short email exchange with the author a few weeks
back. I first became acquainted with Lou Gaglia when my magazine
Umbrella Factory Magazine
ran his short story “Little Leagues” in December of 2011.
It has
been my experience in the years I've worked as an editor for a small
literary magazine that the writers who succeed are the prolific ones.
It's also been my experience that writers who are unafraid of the
process of publication are the writers we get to read. In Lou Gaglia
case, every short story in his Poor Advice
has appeared in a literary magazine first. If there is a lesson to
take from this writer and this book, it is this: write good fiction,
send it out to magazine editors, get rejected, rewrite this good
fiction for a better product and repeat the process. This entire
collection warrants respect because it is well written, well arranged
and it's downright fun.
I get the
impression from many of the short stories that locale or settings are
very real. Mr. Gaglia uses the well known places such as Carnegie
Hall or Long Island trains as backdrops in his stories. It feels like
his New York, and places within it, are oftentimes characters
themselves. Those who live in New York, or those who even have a
perfunctory familiarization with it will no doubt love this
collection.
Many
of these short stories have a surrealistic or perhaps absurd bent to
them. “Tony the Mustache” which is a story told from the point
of view of an actual mustache or “The Spy and the Priest” which
has a priest named Father Don Rickles certainly illustrates the
absurd. Even so, these stories are delightful. The feel of these
stories may be likened to the William Kotzwinkle of Elephant
Bangs Train or perhaps newer
work by Etgar Keret.
But
there is something more noteworthy about Poor Advice.
I find that the more heartfelt and certainly less humorous stories
are fantastically potent. I ran “Little Leagues” in Umbrella
Factory Magazine a few years
back. At the time I read “Little Leagues” I knew it was a higher
caliber story than many I was reading at the submission desk. “Little
Leagues” also felt like it could have been my neighborhood growing
up. There was a very universal feel to it. When I reread it in Poor
Advice I felt the same way. But
it wasn't my favorite Gaglia story anymore. “This Is My Montauk”
has to be one of the most quiet, beautifully heartbreaking stories
I've ever read. It's the story of two guys who live on Long Island
and and they go help out a dead friend's mother. It's not a
particularly long story. There is more going on in this small space
than many novels I've read. Perhaps this is the definition of a good
short story writer: a writer who can swing from the very funny to the
very serious and still retain a sense of universality.
In our
ever quickening pace of daily life, I worry about people losing
interest in reading. I worry that the mass produced flavorless
corporate fiction is replacing fresh creative voices. I worry that
the fresh creative voices are turning to the flavorless corporate
fiction to make a living. However, when I read a book like Poor
Advice I feel better knowing
there are writers like Lou Gaglia. He is a creative voice. He is
great writer. I hope he's making a living at this. And I hope you're
doing your part by buying a copy of this great book.
Lou Gaglia is the author of Poor Advice (Spring to Mountain Press, 2015). His stories have appeared recently in The Writing Disorder, Per Contra, Eclectica, Pithead Chapel, Referential Magazine, Rappahannock Review, Blue Monday Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in upstate New York after many years as a teacher in New York City and is a long-time T’ai Chi Ch’uan practitioner who still feels like a beginner. Visit him at www.lougagtcc.wordpress.com Contact: Lou Gaglia, gaglialou@gmail.com springtomountainpress@gmail.com
Poor Advice is available through
Amazon for the print and Kindle versions, and then there’s Kobo,
iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and Page Foundry for the e-version, or
Oyster Books for those who subscribe with them.
Anthony ILacqua holds a Master of Fine Arts of writing at Goddard College. His third novel Warehouses and Rusted Angels is forthcoming 2015. His former novels, Dysphoric Notions (2012) and Undertakers of Rain (2013) are both published through Ring of Fire Publishing. He currently functions as editor in chief for Umbrella Factory Magazine that he co-founded in 2009.
Sounds like a potent book, will have to pick it up. ~Andrea
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