Junk Shop Window: Essays on Myth, Life, and Literature

by Nathan Leslie, James J. Patterson

In the world of Junk Shop Window, nothing is quite what it seems. A visit to the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere, England, results in a meeting with a telepathic dog. A trip to see the Irish Rovers on St. Patrick' s Day becomes slapstick worthy of the I Love Lucy show. An attempt to record the right background sounds for a Sherlock Holmes radio play opens a doorway in time to the world of a century ago. And Hermes, the messenger god, appears in various guises, relaying sometimes cryptic, sometime life-saving messages. In these pages, Patterson offers us a curiosity shop of the mind, in which everyday encounters yield unexpected gems. Seen through this author' s eyes, our contemporary world is full of portals into myth and history, leading to serious questions about the nature of time itself. Add a little alchemy, a dash of metaphysics, some scholarship, and some well-earned humor, and you' re inside Junk Shop Window, where every experience gleams with insight, and the world is at once more strange and more deeply beautiful than you ever knew.

166 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 6, 2023

About the author

Nathan Leslie’s ten books of short fiction include Sibs, Three Men and Root and Shoot. He is also the author of Night Sweat, a poetry collection. His first novel, The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice, was published by Atticus Books in 2012. His short stories, essays and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines including Boulevard, Shenandoah, North American Review, South Dakota Review, and Cimarron Review. He was series editor for The Best of the Web anthology 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books) and edited fiction for Pedestal Magazine for many years. He writes a regular music column for Atticus Review and was interviews editor for Prick of the Spindle. He is also the host of Reston Readings--a monthly reading series featuring three authors/month. Check him out at nathanleslie.com, on Facebook and Twitter.