This Thing We Call Love: Stories

By John Szabo

Szabo’s fiction centers around characters searching for love, redemption and purpose and our universal need to find meaning and structure in a world often filled with chaos. Trained as a journalist he writes in a concise, precise, style honed over many years with a command of language reminiscent of some of his writing idols; John Cheever, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. Szabo adds a dose of dry wit to make for an entertaining collection of short fiction that explore our universal quest for love, acceptance and understating. Through it all, sometimes in the most unexpected of circumstances, human connections are made revealing that those experiences and emotions we often feel are most isolating are in reality universal if only we take the risk of sharing our vulnerability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781483492346

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 John Szabo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9235-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9234-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

This work is registered with:

The Writers Guild of America, West

Registration Number: 1700211

John Szabo can be contacted at:

[e-mail].

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 12/3/2018

ABOUT THE BOOK

Szabo’s fiction centers around characters searching for love, redemption and purpose and our universal need to find meaning and structure in a world often filled with chaos.

Trained as a journalist he writes in a concise, precise, style honed over many years with a command of language reminiscent of some of his writing idols; John Cheever, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford.

Szabo adds a dose of dry wit to make for an entertaining collection of short fiction that explore our universal quest for love, acceptance and understating.

Through it all, sometimes in the most unexpected of circumstances, human connections are made revealing that those experiences and emotions we often feel are most isolating are in reality universal if only we take the risk of sharing our vulnerability.

While most of the collection addresses the dynamics of relationships there are a few pleasant surprises like Cher Ami told from the perspective of a Parisian pigeon who quotes Tolstoy and is a gifted abstract painter offering insight into the world of modern art fairs to Hippocrates about a man who confronts his own mortality after a motorcycle accident to Crystal Cove where an accomplished, aging novelist returns from New York City to Newport Beach, California to scatter the ashes of his deceased mother in the surf at the beach where she long ago drowned saving his life as a child.

Szabo describes all of his stories as autobiographical in the sense of having at their core and incipience some truth based on his his real life experiences.

John Szabo lives in Newport Beach, California in Orange County, where he was raised. Most of his stories are inspired by living in both Newport Beach and San Francisco, where he resided for 15 years.

Szabo’s stories have previously appeared in The Toronto Quarterly, The Rockford Review, The Stillwater Review and The Elephant Ear among other places.

He earned his BA at UC Irvine in Political Science and his MA in Journalism at Indiana University. He took creative writing classes at UC Irvine, Indiana University and UC Berkeley. Szabo also has worked as a reporter at The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Orange County Register.

This book is dedicated to my parents Joseph and Irene Szabo.

A special thanks to Leonard Arch Deeks for his editing consultation, being the inspiration for the story The River, and his lifelong friendship.

A little imagination and a lot of autobiography make the best fiction.

— Raymond Carver

In art economy is always beautiful.

— Henry James

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

— Robert Frost

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

— Anais Nin

To thine own self be true.

— Shakespeare

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

— Stendhal

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

— Leo Tolstoy

Beware of advice; even this.

— Carl Sandburg

To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.

— William Blake

STORY SUMMARIES

Crystal Cove

An accomplished writer suffers a midlife crisis when he is informed that an urn of his mother’s ashes have been found in a security deposit box and he is asked to fulfill her final request; sprinkle them in the surf below their home where she drowned saving him as a child.

This story originated from my dream diary.

Hippocrates

A motorcycle accident victim is instantly transformed, from a blissful ride through a wildlife preserve, to an emergency room.

This story is partly autobiographical based on my motorcycle accident.

Swimming to Catalina

A man hospitalized for a nervous breakdown realizes that his real strength lies deep within as he bonds with other patients.

Following Strangers

An unemployed executive wanders the financial district of San Francisco, convinced he must connect with a mysterious woman he follows.

Based on a period of my life in San Francisco after the start up where I worked failed.

This Thing We Call Love

A man struggles with whether or not he is in love and the meaning and significance of monogamous, romantic love.

Based on a Vegas road trip with a woman I was dating.

Crescent City

A recently married young couple, Jeff, a newspaper reporter, and Tina, an AIDS researcher, have an epic meltdown during a long drive from San Francisco to Crescent City that challenges the strength of their relationship.

This is about a woman I dated for a few months in San Francisco, who insisted I catch moths in our bedroom by hand, and safely release them outside.

Cher Ami

A Parisian pigeon, a gifted abstract painter who quotes Tolstoy, reveals the colorful lives and adventures of rebellious, artistic pigeons

I attended the prestigious Frieze Art Fair in London, where one of the esteemed galleries featured canvases splattered with pigeon shit complete with pretentious art booth girls who dressed in black and spouted pseudo-intellectual psychobabble.

Bottle Rockets

A successful Hollywood scriptwriter returns to his childhood home of Toledo, Ohio, to visit his ailing father, but struggles to repair their strained relationship.

One summer I worked at The Toledo Blade as a reporter and rented a room in an expansive,