|
Whileaway: erotic
 tales to revitalize the weary traveler
(Read excerpts below.)
by T. Martin Woody, Paperback, Buy here at $10.95 , iUniverse, 2005.[1]
 Clever plotting of ribald tales, June 16, 2005
With the NY Times having published a 2/3rds page article on the sex book industry (6/5/05) can a resurgence of old-fashioned erotica be far behind? Apparently not judging by the June release of Whileaway: erotic tales for the weary traveler , by T.Martin Woody. The six tales in this slender volume consist of 5 short stories and one "novella" (a long short story or a short novel).
The short stories vary widely in subject matter. "The Hunter," is a tale of a frustrated school marm who discovers a camouflaged hunter skulking in the woods near her house. Her efforts to disrupt his activities result in a hilarious cat & mouse game that ultimately lead to the discovery of true love.
But there the innocence stops. "Monika," the story of a young girl at a Baltic Sea resort is outright steamy. "The Nun" is one of the most developed and satisfying tales of innocence lost--and regained--I have read. (But make no mistake about its pedigree.)
Yet surely the pièce de résistance of this light-hearted collection is "The short happy life of Harry A. Winston." What an amazing confabulation of plot twists & turns in this wanton tale of a 44-year old illustrator who awakes--Kafka-like--in the body of a 17-year old boy. One week he has, before he will return to his previous condition of decrepitude. Like a shot, Harry is off to enroll as a transfer student in Montclair High School. The ensuing marathon is both stimulating and unusually well-plotted.
Victorian ribaldry that is plot-heavy; what more could one want?
| Ad Space Censored by Google AdSense |
************************************************************************************
"Whileaway"--Hemingway & Kafka on Viagra!
Author interview by Tom Holzel, Editor http://www.velocitypress.com/
What happens when a Lutheran minister pens a book of erotic short stories? T. Martin Woody of Sioux Falls, South Dakota found out. He was ridden out of town on a rail. The grave offense: his book Whileaway: erotic short stories to revitalize the weary traveler. We caught up with Mr. Woody at a Greenwich Village book signing.
Q. Mr. Woody, we’re here to learn more about your book. But first tell us, “ridden out of town on a rail”? Is that true?
A. True enough. I was forcibly abducted while leaving my apartment, gagged and bound with duct tape and dropped off in a corn field 40 miles outside of town. Any town. I got the message.
Q. Why?
A. Because the good parishioners of Sioux Falls were deeply offended that their minister not only has a lively brain, but dared to use it. Plus, I suspect that a few of them thought the work might be a roman à clef—and they were terrified the next thing I would do is supply the key.
Q. I read the book. It seems a mixture of stories ranging from the ribald to the flat-out pornographic. The stories are all very clever--intellectual, even. There are lots of good belly laughs. Most of them have a sentimental undertone of the good guy or gal wining out. There is no denigration of women that I could spot. Is there no sunny pornography in Sioux Falls?
A. None by working ministers.
Q. The book is publicized as “Kafka & Hemingway on Viagra.” I don’t get the references.
A. It’s a reference to the novella—“The short happy life of Harry A. Winston”--that is part of the book. Franz Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis in which the subject awakes one morning to find that he has been turned into a beetle. In “Short Happy Life,” the hero is a flabby 44-year old illustrator who has been turned into a 17-year old boy. The short happy life of Christopher Macomber by Ernest Hemingway is about a coward who goes on African Safari with his cheating wife. For one glorious split second as an elephant charges him, he overcomes his life-long fear and shoots it, just as his wife shoots him. My 44-year old man remains a 17-year old a little longer—a full week. Long enough to live out the life-long dream of every man—to return to high school as a youth, but with the mind of an adult. In this case a very randy adult.
Q. “Short happy life” has more plot lines and twists than a Möbius strip. How did you make them all resolve so slickly?
A. Now that is a good question. Which is why I can’t answer it. Not won’t; can’t. I don’t know how it happens. I just start writing, and as amazing to me as to you, the story which starts as a bunch of unrelated saucy vignettes soon takes on a life of its own, and miraculously comes together like separate strands that make up a rope.
Q. And the work is definitely aimed at a male audience?
A. You bet. 18 to 80. Unless there are lots of really self-assured women out there. I think of it as the perfect businessman's book for a coast-to coast airline flight.
Q. Like the nun in “The Nun’s Story”?
A. Yes, the dear thing. That was to prove to my publisher that I could write characters who are radically transformed by, ah, experience.
Q. But this interview is for the mainstream press. So how this shy inexperienced nun is transformed will have to be left entirely to the readers prurient imagination.
A. Right. Or they could buy the book.
[1] Purchase from Amazon.com.
*************************************************************************************************
The Short Happy Life of Harry A. Winston
Chapter 4 (Excerpt)
"Oh, Harry." It was Miss Cynthia Palmer, my English teacher calling me, and motioning me to come up to her desk.
"Yes ma'am?" I asked. She was an odd one. Tall, in her mid- forties, almost regal in her bearing, she was also a devoutly committed feminist, and probably a man-hater. She insisted we write "his/her" or "he/she" instead of "his" and "he" in all our essays. In class I had pointed out--to her to her acute displeasure--that no authoritative journal of any kind used that ideological and grammatically incorrect formation. She quickly changed the subject, but not until shooting me a dirty look. It was a shame because if I had been a 20 years older, I might have made a play for her. She had a commanding bosom, that she carried proudly like the prow of some great battleship--or was it a merely a great battle ax?
"Harry, you're a tall person (she could not bring herself to utter the word 'man') with strong arms," she said, eyeing me appraisingly. "I have a water valve in my basement that won't open. It's the one that goes outside, to sprinkle the lawn. It's in an awkward spot I just can't quite reach it. I wonder if you could force it open. It won't take but a minute after school."
Sure, Miss Palmer," I said, puzzled by her attention to me. Except for my one comment about her grammar, I thought I had managed to keep out of her sights.
I followed her home in my car. She lived fairly far outside of town, in a horsey region of gentlemen farmers. She led me down the rickety basement stairs of her old Victorian mansion and pointed out the water valve to her outside faucet.
"It's hasn't been used for a long time--years," she explained.
The faucet was in an awkward spot all right. It had obviously been jury-rigged into place long after the house had been built. I stood on tiptoes and could just reach the valve. But my wrists were bent so that it was difficult to apply any force to the valve stem.
"Here, maybe I can help," Miss Palmer said. She stood on a small stool and reached up to clasp her hands over my own. Through our clothes, her considerable superstructure pressed hotly against my back. I could feel my moronic penis twitch awake.
In her hand, Miss Palmer wielded some kind of silver tool-- a universal wrench or something, I thought. She clicked the de vice around my left wrist and then around the right one. They were handcuffs, and they looped over the water pipe.
"Hey what's going on?" I said, completely baffled by her actions.
"That, young man, is exactly what I intend to find out," she answered. She turned the corner of her gloomy basement for a few minutes. I struggled with the manacles. But each of my wrists was firmly clasped, and the chain connecting them was looped over a one-inch water pipe. My hands were held up at full extension; I could just stand on my feet.
When she came back, I gasped. She was dressed only in a long shirt, unbuttoned to the naval, and in a pair of long brown boots. She had let her hair down. It was quite long, almost down to her waist. In her hand she held a small whip.
*************************************************
Can't wait a moment longer? Purchase Whileaway from Amazon.com.
[Click here for a look at the sex-partner search engine industry]
|
