By Sally Deering

Like many young writers in their 20s searching for the road less traveled, Vincent Czyz packed up his car one day and hit the highway for a cross-country trip. Jack Kerouac did it as a member of the Beat Generation; Hippies in the 60s did it to find girls with flowers in their hair. To a budding writer, The West can be as inviting as a ballpoint pen and a clean sheet of paper.

Czyzâ€s travels to find adventure led him to a town in Kansas and a colorful cast of characters who were hard-drinking, had their hearts broken more than once, and could tell a story as good as Louis C.K. Guys with names like Zirque, the Blue Jean Queen, and Stevie “The Duke of” Pallucca.

These characters – and others – are the heart and soul of “Adrift in a Vanishing City,” (Rain Mountain Press, 239 pgs; paperback; $18;) a collection of short stories Czyz wrote with a sensitivity for soft-hearted, lonesome everymen – and women – roaming restlessly through life like stray dogs searching for a home.

Czyz says his style of short story writing breaks away from the convention where things get tied up in a neat little bow at the end. Instead his characters slip in and out of the stories like ghosts haunting each otherâ€s dreams.

“What I tried to do was fuse poetry and short story,” Czyz says, taking a mid-afternoon break at a Jersey City coffee shop. “I wanted something more intense. I didnâ€t want disposable sentences.”

Hereâ€s an excerpt from the character “Pap” who stands 5â€1”, with a clubfoot. Heâ€s the town drunk in love with the prettiest girl in town, similar to the main character in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Czyz says.

“…Lookin out the window, the light growin, he spotted a pale moon, cold round rock up there, white and frostbitten, a high school-age god hurled himself an iceball through space. A new meaning to cold if he could be up there to feel it, him and his pot-belly stove, everything on the whole miniature planet (misshapen like him, only done half way, sâ€posed to be a planet but look what happened, got shortchanged in a big way, only gets away with bein so ugly ‘cause it gives off a shine), him and his pot-belly stoveâ€d be all the warmth in that corner a the universe, any other life up thereâ€d come shuffling over to the beacon light. Pap Prometheus and his Amazin Woodburnin Stove…”

 “One character, Earl Kukovich, heâ€s a colorful character of Polish extraction, and one of the funniest people youâ€d ever meet,” Czyz says. “Iâ€m skipping over the fact that he killed five people.”

Then thereâ€s Stevie, “The Duke of” Pallucca, who was educated at Notre Dame and worked as a bookie. Czyz says: “I would go fishing with him, partying, horseback riding and go with him on his bookie runs. This is the late 1980s-90s. Stevie was intense. He could recite T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg. He wrote poetry, too.”

Czyz roots poetic language with character, he says, and his writing has won several awards including the 1994 W. Faulkner -W. Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction. A 2011 Truman Capote Fellow at Rutgers-Newark, Czyz teaches freshman composition at Saint Peterâ€s University in Jersey City, and creative writing at The College of New Jersey in Ewing. His students need only read his bookâ€s first chapter, “Zee Gee and the Blue Jean Baby Queen” to see that their teacher elegantly fuses prose with imagery, describing timeless moments as if remembering a dream.

“Every writer expresses something intense,” Czyz says. “You ask yourself, ‘what words do I use that will make people feel what I felt? Like a sunset. How do I capture that in words?â€â€

Many of Czyzâ€s characters are mysterious, and poets at heart yearning for something just beyond reach. Czyz, who cut his journalism teeth writing features for the North Jersey Herald News in Passaic, writes his characters with empathy and a deep feeling for humanity.

On his travels to and from Kansas, Czyz says he had no intention of writing a book about the friends he had made. He kept a journal, sure, but he was just one of the boys, not a writer peeking into their lives from the outside.

“Iâ€m so sorry I didnâ€t have a tape recorder,” Czyz says. “They were so funny. There are a lot of good storytellers in The West where conversation is still more of an art.”

Czyz earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Rutgers-New Brunswick; a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers-Newark, and a Masterâ€s degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. His short stories have been published in periodicals like Camera Obscura, Georgetown Review, Skidrow Penthouse, The Massachusetts Review and Quiddity. He lived in Istanbul, Turkey, for 10 years where his fiction has been anthologized in Turkish, and Czyz now resides in Jersey City with his wife, Neslihan.

In October, Czyz has a new book coming out, “The Christos Mosaic,” a thriller written for the commercial fiction market, he says, whereas “Adrift in a Vanishing City” was more a labor of love. At the end of the book, he recalls a pair of sneakers Steve “The Duke of” Pallucca gave him in 2006. When he learned Pallucca had passed away, Czyz and Neslihan took a road trip to visit Palluccaâ€s grave.

Czyz writes: “They were well past their expiration date, but I couldnâ€t bring myself to throw them out, so we rode half way across the country and put the sneakers on Stevieâ€s grave with a note – laminated with packing tape and tied to a lace – explaining their significance.”

Where to buy “Adrift in a Vanishing City”

 “Adrift in a Vanishing City” can be purchased online at Amazon.com; and at Barnes & Noble bookstores; Three Lives Bookstore and Co. in Manhattan; and at Word bookstore on Newark Ave, Jersey City.

 

Visit Vincent Czyzâ€s page on Facebook.

The post ADRIFT IN A VANISHING CITY NEW BOOK BY VINCENT CZYZ first appeared on River View Observer.

 Like a femme fatale in a “dime novel” Jersey City has had its share of bumpy roads, raw deals and men that done her wrong. But the past is the past and take a look at her now, bustling with new construction and waterfront with a skyline of skyscrapers that have given the old girl a much-needed facelift and a shot at the brass ring.  

At the 4^th annual Book Fair hosted by Jersey City’s Free Public Library on Sat, Sept. 10^th in Jersey City’s beautiful Van Vorst Park, twenty local and no-so-local writers will exhibit their newly published books – all with some connection to Jersey City.  Many of these writers have taken their experiences and/or fascination with Jersey City’s past and placed them on the pages of their new books, not just as a backdrop to the action, but as one of the characters that grabs your attention like a cold-blooded blonde with a pearl-handled Derringer.

The event is free and run by Jersey City’s hard-working library staff hip to fostering new and established writers.

When you stroll over to the park that day, you’ll meet Eunie Guyre, author of  “Happy Victory: Celebrating a Jersey City Childhood,” (publisher: Xlibris, 2011) the story of a little girl who revisits the Polish household she shared with her father, grandmother and aunt in Jersey City when her mother was hospitalized in a sanitarium. And although it seems like a sad story, Guyre emphasizes that hers was a happy childhood nurtured by a loving Jersey City family.

“The book is a tribute to my father,” Guyre says from her New Hampshire home. “I was 14 months-old when my mother went into a sanitarium for tuberculosis and she died there when I was 7. The book is a collection of short stories from birth to eighth grade. We lived on 3^rd Street in Jersey City, that was our first house, and then we moved to Greenville. I attended Sacred Heart and the book has a lot of funny Catholic and Polish stories. My Polish grandmother would read the obits. If the dead person had a Polish name, off we went to the funeral parlor.”

Fascinated by Heavyweight Champion Jack Demsey, a colorful boxing figure and World Heavyweight Champ from 1919-1926, writer Jim Waltzer’s book “The Battle of the Century: Dempsey, Carpentier, and the Birth of the Modern Promotion” (Praeger Publishing) tells the story of the infamous bout that took place in Jersey City on Montgomery and Cornelison Streets and promoter Tex Rickard, described as one of the best fight promoters of the 20^th century. Rickard erected a special stadium for the heavyweight champ and his opponent, Georges Carpentier, and 90,000 spectators came to Jersey City to see them fight.  

“The focus of the book is how the promotion came to be in the first place,” Waltzer says. “It was promotion that went beyond sports and entertainment. This was the one that set the standard for those that followed in the 20^th century. This was the first event in a big way to bring together celebrities, prominent people from all different fields – bankers, Hollywood stars, roughnecks, you name it. They were at ringside. This took the whole promotional arts to another level for a single event.”

Waltzer, a Philadelphia resident, has written more than 600+ features, mostly for regional magazines. In 2001, Rutgers University Press published his nonfiction book “Tales of South Jersey,” and in 2007, Five Star Mysteries published his first novel, “Sound of Mind.” He’s now working on a new book, a crime novel based in Atlantic City.

Maureen K. Wlodarczyk, who lived in Jersey City until she was five and whose family has been a part of Jersey City’s fabric since the 1840s will be at the fair promoting her second book, “Young & Wicked: The Death of a Wayward Girl (Publisher: Ultra Media Publications, 2011) The story is about the doomed relationship between two petty criminals, William Flannelly and Polly Sexton. They were criminals in love, who lived in the fast lane of the 1890s in Lower Manhattan.

 Wlodarczyk was researching her Irish ancestors when she came upon her distant relative, Flannelly, and accounts of his relationship with Sexton who lived like “Bonnie and Clyde” outlaws.

“A few months later, down in the Bowery, they had a falling out and she wound up dead by his hands,” Wlodarczyk says. “He goes to trial on the Lower East Side for murder. He’s sitting in the Tombs and crosses paths with people who are famous and infamous of the 1890s, the Tammany Hall people like William Devery who was to become New York City’s Chief of Police. I wondered how a little punk from Jersey City jailed in the Tombs could cross paths with Devery and top Tammany Hall commissioners.”

Also at the Book Fair, photographer and writer Alina Oswald of Jersey City will present her three books: “Vampire Fantasies”  a collection of vampire-inspired photographs; Journeys Through Darkness (a biography of  a blind photographer), and “Infinite Lights: A Decade of 9/11 Tribute Lights,” which is a collection of 9/11-related photography.

“Although I wasn’t in New York on 9/11, I made it a point when I moved here in 2003 to photograph all the ceremonies, the lights in the night,” Oswald says. “I made it a point to take pictures.”

The Book Fair will also feature Thomas Belton and his book, “Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State,” Cherese Bracey and her mystery “The Case of the Withering Books,” Elijah M. Brown and his book, “Missing Pages, Out of My Life,” “Taco” by John E. DeJesus, “Those Sweet Nothings” by Cynthia Fabian, Jacqueline Hallenbeck’s “Poem-atic,” Sandra Guzmán’s “The New Latina’s Bible: The Modern Latina’s Guide to Love, Spirituality, Family, and La Vida,” Judith Natelli McLaughlin’s “Poems on Fruits & Odes to Veggies,” Clarence Matthews’ “Jacob’s Rite of Passage & Teen Jacob,” Valerie A. Mitchell’s “Emotional Rollercoaster: A Depicted Mind,” Peter O’Reilly’s “Oh Really, O’Reilly,” Jane Pedler’s “Wisteria Rose,” Alyssa Pierce’s “Caroline & Rebecca’s Day at the Beach,”  Keith Smith’s “Men in My Town,” JoAnne Williams “Escaping from the Victim or Volunteer Role in Your Relationship,” and Edna C. Zalenski’s “Los Cuentos de mi Abuelito,” (“Stories of My Grandfather”.)

Many of the fair’s featured writers praise the Jersey City Library, especially the New Jersey Room and the help they received during their research. “They allowed me to use images from their collection,” Wlodarczyk says. “They’re wonderful people and a valuable resource.”

The annual book fair is co-sponsored by the City of Jersey City’s Cultural Affairs Division, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy and the Municipal Council. Chairwoman of the Book Fair is Assistant Library Director Sonia Araujo.

“We are so happy it’s the fourth annual,” Araujo says. “When we see all the people who come to the book festivals, we know we’re on the right path.” 

 A Tale of Our City

Jersey City Free Public Library’s

4^th annual Book Festival

Sat, Sept. 10, 2011, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Van Vorst Park

Opposite Main Library

472 Jersey Avenue

(Corner of Montgomery Street)

Jersey City

For more info: (201) 547-4500

 

 

 

 

 

The post TALES OF OUR CITY: Jersey City becomes the Main Character at Upcoming Book Fair first appeared on River View Observer.

Way to Wealth Book

 
Jack Vincent is a loving father of four who married at 17 and quickly learned responsibility. He read Way to Wealth, and its message transformed him. His lifelong application of its principles has made him a multiple award-winning successful business, real estate, and insurance entrepreneur for a quarter of a century. He is now passing the keys to success to readers. Young people and adults ready to change their lives can benefit from this bookâ€s transformative message of hope.

Each copy purchased provides the reader opportunities to directly ask Jack Vincent questions online; he handles his own email. His goal is to get a million copies of this life-changing book to the public. Just because Vincent rewrote a book about financial prosperity does not mean he is selfish; on the contrary, he has offered to donate copies to religious organizations, libraries, schools, and individuals unable to afford it. Those in need can click on “Request for Donation” on his website for more information.

Jack Vincent is living proof the wisdom in this book changes lives and leads to financial success. Fans can find and follow Jack Vincent on Facebook by his name and on Twitter as “AskBenFranklin.” The book is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or upon request from local bookstores. Readers can even buy a limited number of signed copies for $12.95 and find other interesting information at Jack Vincentâ€s website at: www.TheWayToWealthBook.com.

*The River View Observer and its parent company Ad Vantage Publishing Inc. does not  make any claim of financial prosperity after reading this book.

This is soley the opinion of its author. This post about the book is purely for entertainment reasons, and your information about such books being in the market place.

The post Reading- Benjamin Franklin’s comeback – founding father gives financial advice first appeared on River View Observer.

YOUTH POEM By: Samuel Ullman

The post Easy Reading-Youth Poem by Samuel Ullman first appeared on River View Observer.