SPLICE: 3 fictions

by David L. Swartz

The title work in this volume is truly the narrative of a "SPLICE," that is, the conjoined, rejoined, temporary, temporarily, sanity of a man-deeply fragmented, wounded by his era, having fled employment and household out of dread and profound depression-who, arriving at the old cannabis buddy's hometown, of all potential oases on a harsh Jehovah's earth. Des Moines, Iowa . . having sought sustenance and support and having received the total sum of both-negotiates seven weeks of respite in an employment program and the loving arms of a wonderfully endowed African-American (black) "older woman" to eventually "deconstruct" i.e., implode toward his formally diagnosed "schizoid affective" chaos and misery . . and again, flight-return at last to the arms of his estranged, long-suffering helpmate and wife, bride of a dozen years-and there with no certain resolution or promise on any imaginable horizon, terminate this terrible, non-redemptive, dark and foreboding, utterly idiosyncratic, fictive phase of his living. "SPLICE," and the stranger "Dinner Party" and "Adam and Evan," are indeed fictions . . yet are truer than real. Darker than the necessary. More amusing than credulous. Sensitive than credible. Valid than factual. Sudden than visual. Important than published. Greater than read. Larger than critiqued. Scarier than privilege. Tender-even the concluding apocalyptic parody-tender-the very last brush of a butterfly's wing.

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008