Please pardon us for snitching the title of William Faulkner’s momentous novel about race relations in the 1930s South, but it’s on our minds a lot as we continue to see ugly racism rampant in our country. Which, of course, begs the question posed in the gorgeous song, “Why Can’t We Live Together“, performed by Diana King and Kyle Eastwood. We hope you’ll find interesting and provocative aspects of what’s good about a diverse culture in our offerings this month. That’s about it, save for the more obvious metaphor of our contributors shedding some light into your own personal August with our bountiful creative offerings. Fiction. Sandor Blum has given us a short story about an American Jew who encounters latent – and perhaps blatant – discrimination in “My Last Night in Paris.” We also…

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(Photo Credit: Audubon Society) A number of years ago, while visiting the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, I was struck by the fact that many science fiction authors had envisioned the future in their novels, then watched as their vision become reality. Well, guess what? It’s happened at the Fictional Café, too! We recently published a short story by Kathryn Holzman entitled “Rattlesnakes.” It concerned a group of people demonstrating against creating a sanctuary on an island in a Massachusetts reservoir for…yep, rattlesnakes. Oooo, I thought, that’s a creepy idea! But I liked the story a lot, especially the dream-like ending. So it was with some surprise that I read this article by Jan Gardner in the Boston Globe a few months later: “Tale of the timber rattler” “After a public outcry, the state of Massachusetts earlier this…

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I wanted to quote Jack Kerouac in celebration of his birthday later this month and recalled the photo above (in true Kerouacian form, I wasn’t even standing still long enough for the photo to finish taking). Four years ago, at the Harvard Coop bookstore, I stumbled upon this curious sign. I inquired about it as I purchased a copy of “The Sun Also Rises.” The cashier told me that they had this placard made because so many people were stealing these authors’ books as a tip of the cap to the jobless, anti-capitalism, beat generation writers. The staff had to start keeping those books behind the counter a-la cigarettes and scratch tickets. It seems other bookstores have done the same. Maybe Kerouac’s quote should read: “Live, travel, adventure, bless and don’t pay for books.” *…

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