Lloyd Bowers was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1952, graduated from Furman University in 1976, and has lived in Charleston, South Carolina since 2002.
The Results of Polar Bear Research is Lloyd's first novel and was published in 2007. Lloyd's next book, Keep These in the Family, is a collection of twelve stories and was published in 2010.
"I grew up in the South," says Lloyd. "The Southern Appalachians is a sort of fixed foot in my life, and the summer-time is a great time to gravitate unpredictably in social settings."
"Freedom is a Public Utility, published 2014, developed from the discovery of a stash of old family letters, dated 1812 to 1857, mailed to my great-great-grandfather John Siegling, who emigrated from Erfurt, Germany, and settled in Charleston in 1820. That he was en route, or 'unterwegs,' for five years impressed me.
"Divide the Country! was published February, 2020. It reflects my concern about the disunity, and even partisan hatred, that plagues the U.S."
I went with several family members to see the movie A Room With a View when it came out in 1985, and we were nearly the only ones in the theatre. We went during a week-day afternoon, which is typically a slow time, but I doubt a British movie set in 1905, with hoity-toity characers, would draw much of an audience at any showing, even with discounted prices. The movie-title, script, and story-plot are derived from a novel by the British writer E. M. Forster.
In 1984, I went with a group to see Passage to India, starring Alec Guinness, James Fox, and Peggy Ashcroft—based on the novel by the British novelist E. M. Forster, who published it in 1924. Guinness and Ashcroft were already long past their prime when they did Passage to India. Guinness first appeared in the 1946 movie, Great Expectations, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Ashcroft had starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps from 1935. Even James Fox appears too old to play Cyril Fielding. What they lack in youth, at any rate, they more than make up for it, with a relaxed professionalism.
My old German teacher Hermine Kahl suggested that I listen to a recording of German poems, as the means to adopt a spirited intonation of German words. She played the recording for me in her home. When a poem particularly touched her, I could hear her chortle with a grimacing smile, that signalled a personal connection to it, as if savoring it.
I first tackled the novels of Bernard Malamud back in prep school. They include some sex scenes; so the public school system could not put them in a library, or recommend them, even if Malamud was one of the greatest writers in American literature. Barry Levinson directed a bowdlerized film version of Malamud's The Natural in 1984, starring Robert Redford. John Frankenheimer directed Malamud's The Fixer in 1968, starring Dirk Bogarde and Alan Bates. My literature professors told me, "Don't bother with a movie." I'd say that's true for Malamud. Read the book!
After I finished college in 1975, I returned to my home in Columbus, Georgia, and started working for my father at his livestock feedmill. The first six months or so was pure hell for a guy who had studied literature in college, knew next to nothing about running a business, and I was spindly and out of shape from doing schoolwork continuously for four years. I walked a fairly steep learning curve for so long, I really don't remember when I finally settled into a routine.
I saw this article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper back in March of this year. The title of it reads "Rejoicing Over the End of the World". The article begins "We live in an apocalyptic age". Many people consider themselves the "Last Generation". Humanity once had a vision of itself as "sapiens"—the best of the Homo genus. Now, we might consider changing it to "Homo destruens", in view of our appetite for destruction through global-warming and nuclear weapons,
The murder of actress Sharon Tate and four other people took place over the night of August 8-9th, 1969. Witnesses in the same neighborhood said they heard gunshots and screams through the night. I was seventeen at the time, concerned with meeting girls and going off to college, so that the deaths hardly registered with me. My World remained pretty small until I went off to college. I just didn't pay much attention to current events at that time.
According to the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, no one knows for certain who first uttered this truism. The circus-owner P. T. Barnum may have originated it, since he exhibited fraudulent freaks as part of his circus acts. Besides him, Wikipedia names Michael Cassius McDonald, the nineteenth-century gambling-parlor-boss of Chicago, as the first person to actually say it—or just any swindler looking to get rich quick by bilking poor fools out of their money.
Historically, a "stalking-horse" refers to a hunter who hides behind a dummy horse to allow him to get close to his prey, without the prey seeing him. Movie and TV executives employ a similar ruse, which involves concealing a horrifying movie-plot behind an attractive young actress, that a female audience can identify with and trust, and sit through slasher movies that don't generally appeal to them. The stalking-horse actresses permit the cruder aspects of the movie-culture to pass through a woman's protective cultural cocoon and imbue her personal space with fear.
It goes without saying that Donald Trump is his own worst enemy. You have to ask, "Why can't the man quit insulting people, stop looking so ornery, or at least adopt a better way of speaking? Is he really that uncouth?" He has shown his crudeness and arrogance time and again. What is there to like in such a man?
I saw Thunderball for the first time when it came out in 1965 and watched it several additional times, for as long as the cinema hosted it. The late Sean Connery made quite a career for himself and played many roles after James Bond. None of them moved me like Thunderball. Other actors took up the role of Bond—after Connery moved on to other projects—and continued the success of that franchise; but none of the other actors carried it off like Connery—the commanding voice, the malevolent twinkle in his eye, and exotic facial features.
Governing a country is like steering a ship. It requires a constitution and a man who knows how to use it to ply the political and diplomatic waters and promote the interests of the nation..
