Stephen Poleskie
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WorksVigilia's Tempest
WHEN JOHN VIGILIA, a well-known American stunt pilot, and university professor, lands at an abandoned air base in Canada to avoid a thunderstorm he meets a strange old man named Caliban who tells him the story of his twin brother who as a young boy flew with Charles Lindbergh as his secret copilot on his famous solo trans-Atlantic flight. The copilot was supposedly picked up in Nova Scotia and dropped off on a beach in Ireland, while Lindberg went on to Paris alone. John travels to Europe to explore the truth behind the story he has been told and finds himself in the middle of a decades-old international intrigue. Has John discovered the conspiracy of the century, or is it just the old man’s hoax? And why is John Vigilia now being followed everywhere, and has had an attempt made on his life? After tracing him through Ireland, Rome, Como, and Munich, Vigilia finally catches up with the alleged copilot, Ariel Angelucci, in Locarno, Switzerland, where he reveals that he was indeed in the airplane with Lindbergh when he flew across the Atlantic. Not sure if he believes Ariel’s story, Vigilia takes the man up for a flight in a biplane to see if he really knows how to fly. The old man wants to do some “stunts,” but has a heart attack at the top of a loop, jamming the controls and causing John to crash. John Vigilia wakes up confined in a private clinic on an island in the Lago Maggiore. He is told that, despite what he believes, there was no one in the airplane with him when he crashed. His injuries heal, but when he is not released, John realizes that he is being held prisoner at the clinic because of what he now knows. Miranda, a woman John Vigilia had a brief affair with when he was in Como, and who has fallen in love with John comes to visit him at the clinic. He convinces her to come for him at night in a boat and take him off the island. The two motor to the airport at Magadino, where they steal an airplane and attempt to flee over the mountains before an approaching thunderstorm. They run out of gas and crash land in a field, but are never found and believed to be dead. Three years later Vigilia’s nephew, also named John Vigilia, comes to Europe looking for his uncle. A search for him by the Italian authorities and the FBI has not turned up anything. The nephew stands to inherit his uncle’s estate, but needs proof that the man is dead. He goes to Rome and looks up the Italian count who, according to letters the stunt pilot Vigilia sent back to himself at his home, was the son of the man behind the conspiracy, and is continuing to keep the matter a secret. The count tells the young John Vigilia a completely different story about Ariel Angelucci, and the nephew goes away wondering which of the two stories is true, but determined more than ever to get to the bottom of the mystery. Click on Vigilia's Tempest above to read first chapter. Review
DID LINDBERGH HAVE A SECRET COPILOT? _____________________________________________________________ In his latest novel, “Vigilia’s Tempest,” author Stephen Poleskie confronts history as it has been written by posing the question: What if Charles Lindbergh had a secret copilot with him to keep him from falling asleep on his famous flight from New York to Paris, and what if the man who flew with him was still alive? If he could be found, what would he tell us? And why has he kept hidden all these years? Poleskie, an aviator himself, constructs this complicated and perplexing story with a virtuoso display of practical expertise, compassion, and poetic vibrancy. When John Vigilia, a well-known American stunt pilot, and university professor, lands at an abandoned air base in Canada to avoid a thunderstorm he meets a strange old man named Caliban who tells him the story of his twin brother, Ariel, who as a young boy flew with Charles Lindbergh as his secret copilot on his famous solo trans-Atlantic flight. The copilot was supposedly picked up in Nova Scotia and dropped off on a beach in Ireland, while Lindberg went on to Paris, and to fame, alone. Seeking a diversion after his wife’s sudden death, John Vigilia travels to Europe to explore the truth behind the Lindbergh story he had heard. Unexpectedly, John finds himself in the middle of a decades-old international intrigue. Has John discovered the conspiracy of the century, or is it just the old man’s hoax? And why is John Vigilia now being followed everywhere, and has had an attempt made on his life? One might be tempted to call “Vigilia’s Tempest” a “literary thriller.” Poleskie takes Vigilia through a series of adventures in Ireland, Rome, Como, and Munich, before finally allowing him to catch up with the alleged copilot, Ariel Angelucci, in Locarno, Switzerland. Ariel reveals that he was indeed in the airplane with Lindbergh when he flew across the Atlantic. Not sure if he believes Ariel’s story, Vigilia takes the man up for a flight in a biplane to see if he really knows how to fly. The old man wants to do some “stunts,” but has a heart attack at the top of a loop, jamming the controls and causing John to crash. John Vigilia wakes up confined in a private clinic on an island in the Lago Maggiore. He is told that, despite what he believes, there was no one in the airplane with him when he crashed. When his injuries heal, but he is not released, John realizes that he is being held prisoner at the clinic because of what he now knows. Does Vigilia ever get off the island? I am not going to spoil it by telling you. Suffice it to say that he has a few more adventures, and even a love affair, yet to go before the end of the book. The conclusion is both tragic and uplifting, as are all Poleskie’s endings, confirming the author’s strong sense of the continuity of life. Poleskie, who writes with a rich and full vocabulary, in the manner of such European authors as Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz, and with the dark praise of obscurity and failure found in Fernando Pessoa, also manages a tip of the hat to William Shakespeare. “Vigilia’s Tempest” is filled with numerous storms, an island, and character names and chapter quotes from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.” At 500 pages this is the longest of Poleskie’s novels to date, but the plot’s many characters and interesting twists will keep the reader engrossed until the very end, and then even wanting more. OE a Literary Blog - 9 April 2010 Grater Life
A thoroughly engaging collection of short stories, brilliantly interwoven into a dialog between a volunteer hospital visitor and an apparently friendless patient afflicted with AIDS. Reluctant at first, the patient opens up to his visitor and they begin telling each other their stories; witty, delightful, and sometimes violent and tragic. As the months pass we learn of the patients life, and how he acquired the disease from which he is dying. The visitor also reveals his own past, and the two soon discover that they are only different sides of the same coin. Or are they? to read first three pages click on title above Review ESCAPED FROM GOGOL'S OVERCOAT Anthony Di Renzo “The more we examine a joke,” observed Russian satirist and fabulist Nicolai Gogol, “the sadder it becomes.” Gogol’s maxim could serve as an epigraph to Steve Poleskie’s short story collection Grater Life. As its title implies, this bleakly funny book grinds hope into bigos, a Polish stew often served at Christmas. Bigos also means “confusion,” “trouble,” “mess,” and Poleskie serves up all three like a melancholy babushka. Retired sculptor Janus Klossowski, whose varicose veins resemble a map of the Mississippi Delta, daydreams about the past while dying of AIDS in a squalid Pennsylvania nursing home. His two pastimes are identifying the plane engines droning from the nearby airport and baiting his do-gooder visitor John Klaus, a former Peace Corps volunteer turned jingle writer, whose claim to fame was designing a best-selling Easter card. (Q: “How does the Easter Bunny keep his fur clean?” A: “He uses hare shampoo!”) At the beginning of the collection, Janus dominates, reminiscing about his hard-scrabble childhood in Anthracite Country, his Henry Milleresque escapades, and his futile struggles with the academy, the art world, and the health care system. But as these twelve stories unfold with the corresponding months, the focus shifts to John, who is more kinked than he admits. What else can you expect from a schmuck who has been cavity-searched by the Sierra Leone police and humiliated by two blowsy dominatrixes? The two men mirror each other until they seem to trade places. The narrative becomes more feverish and absurd. Bureaucratic errors cause patients to disappear, microwaves turn Frankenstein, and hunting guides apologize for the lack of big game in a dying Africa. Finally, language breaks down into the cacophonous cawing of crows. All that survives are the rambling of the senile and the natter of a hospital television. Poleskie subtly draws on his Eastern European heritage. His work echoes Karel Kapek’s Stories of a Pocket, Milan Kundera’s Laughable Loves, Jerzy Kosinski’s Steps, and of course Anton Chekhov’s Ward Six. But its style and vision are grittier and bawdier. Insulted and injured, his characters have shed Gogol’s overcoat and are loitering buck naked on Main Street. *** The Balloonist, The Story of T.S.C. Lowe, Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force.
Lowe was a showman, scientist, and starry-eyed dreamer. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he went to the federal government with the hope of convincing the authorities to use balloons for observation purposes. He eventually was made chief of the aeronautic department and rendered valuable service to the Army. to read the edited prologue click on title above Review "The first full-scale biography of Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913) makes fascinating reading for aviation buffs and students of nineteenth-century eccentricity. . . . Aviation and history collections may acquire this seemingly tangential book with clear consciences." --Jay Freeman, Booklist *** The Third Candidate
Review During a primary marked by bowling fiascos, flag-pin debates, and assassination sweepstakes, Stephen Poleskie's "The Third Candidate" could not be timelier. By turns funny and frightening, this book explores the moldy underside of American politics. In a bankrupt democracy that considers thinking elitist and irony treason, this is risky business, partly because no satire can fully do justice to current events.... to read the complete review click on title above for book's first three pages click on excerpt in header *** Aristotle Thinking
a short story A BRIGHT, YELLOW AND ORANGE FALL DAY was rapidly sinking into the grayness of dusk when Aristotle arrived home with an arrow through his backside. He tried to go into the house, but couldn’t get in by way of his cat door as the shaft, which was sticking out of both sides of his body, was too wide. A good cat, Aristotle sat on the porch in the lengthening shadows, licking his wounds, waiting for Josa to return to let him in. But she was away getting things from the old house. Aristotle didn’t know that. click on title above to read entire story *** My Son the Philosopher
a short story by Stephen Poleskie Riding on the early train, Jean-Paul Riposte, a wine merchant from a fashionable section of Paris, was traveling to the southern town of Toulouse to visit his mother. Never married, Monsieur Riposte spent his holidays with the woman who had raised him, his father having died when Jean-Paul was only three. Monday was Bastille Day; his shop closed, Jean-Paul would spend the extra day in Toulouse, and return home in the evening. to read the entire story click on title above Marta's White Painting
I wasn’t Marta’s painting teacher, only her academic adviser. In fact I had never had her as a student. Marta came to see me because she was having trouble with her other professors; she brought along one of her paintings to show me. When she unwrapped the small canvas I was taken aback. I had seen many student paintings in my thirty years of teaching, but I had never seen anything like this before. In truth I cannot describe it to you, as I have nothing to reference it to. All I can say is that while it had very little color, appearing mostly white, it had all the colors within it, the way snow is not really white. The painting was pink or gray or blue or lavender or green. The painting was winter, yet it encompassed all the seasons. The work was a landscape and a figure painting at the same time. If you stared at it long enough, images appeared faintly, reminding me of the Shroud of Turin. to read the complete story click on title above *** Cemetery Watcher
LAST SUMMER I BOUGHT cemetery plots for my wife and me; even though we didn't need them. Now I don't mean I think we are not going to die, but we already owned three plots. These had been given to me by my father when he decided he and Mom should be buried in a vault. He reasoned that since my wife and I lived 125 miles away, and my sister was 3200 miles farther, no one was about to come around regularly to put flowers on their graves and to see they were taken care of, especially since the service the diocese provided was rather remiss; that is except when it came to putting around the little American flags, which I shall refer to later. to read the complete story click on title above *** Fishkill
THE TELEPHONE RINGS, interrupting our dinner, the tense, jarring sound phones make when you are waiting for a message; perhaps word that someone close has died. "Hello! How's your father doing?" "Hello! Who's this?" "John . . . ." "John?" "I'm at my nephew's house. We went fishing.... " "Dad's still in intensive care . . . .” I say, in answer to John's question that he had not asked. to read the complete story click on title above *** Victory Parade
RED, WHITE, AND BLUE CONFETTI was Falling, Falling everywhere, thrown from the windows of Tall and Taller buildings by Joyful people on the heads of the Joyful Sea of people below. On Broadway, a young Sailor recently returned from the Sea, and Milling among the Milling crowd, caught sight of a Pretty Girl. Catching her in his arms, the Sailor SPONTANEOUSLY gave the girl a kiss. to read the entire story click on title above *** THERE ARE SO MANY STORIES yet remaining in my heart and never enough time. Who will write them down for me when I am gone? SP |
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