Lester Goran

Short stories about life in a working-class Irish American neighborhood in Pittsburgh between World War II and the Vietnam War, some told from the point of view of a Jewish resident, focus on the men who frequent the local branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians

A Collection of Short Stories

Tales from the Irish Club

Toby Miller

Luc Sante

Barry Gifford

Nicholas Christopher

Dahlia Schweitzer

Andrew Nette

Jonathan Aaron

Noel King

Matthew Asprey

Contrappasso Magazine

Mick Counihan

Morris Lurie

Suzanne Lummis

Chris Oakey

Robert Mezey

Floyd Salas

A special noir-themed issue of Contrappasso Magazine, an independent journal of international writing. This one's a grab bag of essays, interviews, and new and classic poetry focusing on noir in film and fiction. We cover everything from 'The Maltese Falcon' to 'The Strange Love of Martha Ivers', from Dashiell Hammett to Charles Willeford and Walter Mosley. Contains essays by Luc Sante, Lester Goran, Dahlia Schweitzer & Toby Miller, Morris Lurie, Andrew Nette, Mick Counihan, Noel King, and Matthew Asprey; poetry by Barry Gifford, Nicholas Christopher, Suzanne Lummis, Jonathan Aaron, Robert Mezey, Chris Oakey, and Floyd Salas; and interviews with Adrian Wootton, Matthew Moring, and Dennis McMillan.

International Writing

Contrappasso, Noir Issue

Kent State University Press

With evocative settings and narratives ranging from the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy hilarity to detailed realism, These stories create a world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women.

She Loved Me Once, and Other Stories

A novel by the author of The New York Times Notable Book, Tales from the Irish Club It is June 1968: Robert Kennedy has just been murdered, the streets are simmering with discontent, and the Irish community of Oakland Park in Pittsburgh is being swept away by change. Daly Racklin becomes the reluctant leader of a dying neighborhood, culture, and people. He is at once a man torn by his father's omnipotent shadow and the struggles of his own heart, and as his elevated position brings him from one home to another he increasingly discovers the importance of what he sees disappearing. Bing Crosby's Last Song is a hilarious, touching, heartwrenching story of survival and love, a community's demise and a wanderer's rebirth. Full of barroom lore, hard-bitten wisdom, wry humor, and faith tempered by skepticism, this novel will delight readers of William Kennedy and Frank McCourt.

A Novel

Bing Crosby's Last Song

In this, his third collection of stories, Lester Goran moves us again through the times and places indelibly stamped with his wit and insight about people and events lost to history. Outlaws of the Purple Cow centers around the domains of Irish-American men and women in Pittsburgh. Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. Goran's evocative settings and narratives range form the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy to richly detailed realism. Goran, with his mastery of language and images, chronicles in stories the unheralded laughters and sorrows of Americans seldom noted in fiction. Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. Goran's evocative settings and narratives range from the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy to richly detailed realism: the bewildering ceremony enacted on a suburban lawn on Good Friday; an inventory of the loves of a lifetime compiled on scraps of paper and matchbook covers; the young man home on leave from the army who encounters a woman whose entire life is reflected in the wires holding together her threadbare Christmas tree; and the young man on the first day of his first job who delivers roses to a house where the homeowner had died since ordering the flowers. Goran, with his mastery of language and images, chronicles in stories the unheralded laughter's and sorrows of Americans seldom noted in fiction.

Outlaws of the Purple Cow and Other Stories

Lester Goran

Books

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