Joseph Sciuto's Blog: A Curious View: A Compilation of Short Stories by Joseph Sciuto, page 12

“AN AMERICAN HISTORY, CUBA,” BY ADA FERRER.

I am going to make this review short, otherwise I might go on a rant that might be highly disturbing to a number of friends, family, and acquaintances, and I am simply not in the mood to have to deal with any of it.

If one is interested in learning about the history of Cuba, from the time that great explorer Christopher Columbus, landed on the island back in 1493, to the present day then this is most definitely a book for you.

Ms. Ada has done a wonderful job chronicling the history of Cuba and its relationship with the United States. The title, “An American History, Cuba,” might be a little confusing because when one thinks of America, one usually associates it with the United States. But the United States is just one territory in the American hemisphere, that also includes Cuba, Mexico, Haiti, etc.

ALICE HOFFMAN’S, “SKYLIGHT CONFESSIONS.”

The last book I read by Ms. Hoffman was the first book out of 12 previous books that I’ve read by her that I didn’t like.

Ms. Hoffman’s, “Skylight Confessions,” was so good that I read it in one day. The writing is superb, the characters are unforgettable, and the story is powerful and haunting. It deals with three generations of a family whose dysfunctional attitude toward love breaks it apart.

The Supernatural part of the book blends right into the story, and in many ways decides the future of the family. Ms. Hoffman is an expert at using supernatural stories and events to expand the meanings behind her stories…that highlight the psychological and sociological effects that leads to a maladjusted and deteriorating family unit.

I might not have liked the previous book by this gifted author by I simply loved this novel. She is an amazing talent.

SENA JETER NASLUND’S, THE DISOBEDIENCE OF WATER.”

Throughout most of my life, I have been a big fan of the short story, yet over the last 5 years, for no reason at all, I have read very few short stories.

The short story, when crafted and composed correctly, is as powerful as any poem, novel, play, essay, or letter. Many great writers have failed when it comes to the short story, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Whereas other writers like Edgar Alan Poe, Hemingway, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, and John Updike have excelled and produced pure magic. Hemingway literally transformed the art and after finishing one of his stories, I would sit slightly numb and dumbfounded trying to figure out the characters’ next moves. To quote a very famous writer, “Hemingway was a thinking man’s writer.”

Sena Jeter Naslund’s, “The Disobedience of Water,” is a wonderful collection of short stories and a few are absolutely gems. In the short story, ‘The Shape You’re In,” Sarah, a young twenty-five year old artist, takes a job at a Montana University and at first the new environment is so different from the environment that she lived in back in Atlanta that she is fascinated by all that she sees. Slowly, the fascination turns into a deadly, paranoia, where behind every tree she feels danger and with every conversation with another person she tries to figure out their motives and what they truly intend on doing with her. This short story has remnants of Hemingway, especially the way it ends.

“The Death of Julius Geissler,” is an absolutely beautiful short story about the magnificence of music. It is lyrical, enchanting, and heart throbbing.

My favorite of all the stories is the final one titled, “The Disobedience of Water.” It is in this story that she reaches the pinnacle of her craft. The one thing that distinguishes a good writer from a great writer and that is “HONESTY.” The honesty in this short story is so powerful that at times it tears you apart. It is in this gem of a story that we discover the writer, Ms. Naslund. The writer who differentiates herself from Hemingway, Capote, and all the great short story writers I mentioned above.

A CURIOUS VIEW: BY JOSEPH SCIUTO/ THE EXCEPTIONS: MY FRIEND, KEN GIVENS.

A CURIOUS VIEW: BY JOSEPH SCIUTO

THE EXCEPTIONS: MY FRIEND, KEN GIVENS.

I don’t have much trust or faith in internet friendships. I remember a few years back, I looked at a cartoon of two men, sitting before a coffin, in an empty Funeral Parlor. One man turns to the other and says, “I don’t understand it. He had over five thousand friends on Facebook.”

My experience with internet friends have mirrored the above cartoon, about 99 percent of the times, but there have been a few exceptions and one of those exceptions was my friend Ken Givens.

Ken and I first became acquainted when he left a review on my second novel, “Targeted Demographics,” on Goodreads.  In the reply section I left the comment, “Thank you very much for taking the time to read my book and to write that wonderful review.”

He replied to my comment, “That it was his pleasure. He could seriously relate to the characters, and greatly enjoyed the novel.”

Besides writing novels, I also have a blog called “A Curious View.”  Short profiles of famous people I have had the pleasure of meeting, stories about life-long friends and family from the Bronx and thoughts about some of my favorite artists, literary, musical and otherwise.

I do not discuss politics, unless it is in praise of such heroes as Presidents Harry S. Truman and Theodore Roosevelt.

Shortly after writing a piece on my friend, Hal Goodman, who was one of the principal writers on the Johnny Carson show, I got a reply to the piece from Ken. He had gone through the trouble of looking up Hal Goodman after reading my piece and said, “Your friend Hal would be so pleased with the beautiful tribute you wrote about him. Sorry for your lost.” Hal had passed away and that was the incentive for the piece.

My next blog piece was on a bar in the Bronx named, “The Golden Note.” It was the bar where my friends and I used to hang out in. We were mostly underage between 15 and 17 years old, but in the Bronx during the 1970’s fifteen years old equaled thirty-five or older.

Like my previous piece Ken was the first to reply and after praising the piece he said, “I was under the impression, from your novel, that you were from the west Bronx but you’re actually from the east Bronx.” In the piece I never mentioned the part of the Bronx I was from but, once again, he went through the trouble of looking up the “Golden Note” and finding out that it was situated right outside of Parkchester in the East Bronx.

If this doesn’t seem like such a big deal believe me, as a writer, am lucky to get a few ‘likes’ for each piece I write, nevertheless having the reader, not only reply, but to go through the trouble to find out more about the topic is simply unheard of even in the age of the internet.

Ken and I started communicating frequently. I learned things about his life and he learned things about my life. He read all my novels, eight in total, and never had a bad thing to say about any of them. He asked plenty of questions but to me that meant he read the novel carefully. His words about my work were extremely generous and very supportive.

In January 2021, he told me he was going to have surgery and would not be able to keep in touch for a number of weeks. He didn’t tell me what the surgery was for and I didn’t think it was my place to ask. He assured me that he was going to be fine.

After about a month-and-a-half, I wrote to him but I didn’t hear back from him but from his daughter Melanie. Over the course of the next year, she was the one I communicated with because her father had tubes coming out of his throat and it was difficult for him to write or to read. I sent him a copy of my last novel, and in back of the book, in the acknowledgement section, I mentioned my friend Ken and how much he meant to me and that he was fighting The Emperor of All Maladies.

A few days later, Melanie send me a video of her dad, sitting up in a chair, and holding my book. He thanked me for the acknowledgement and how much it meant to him. It was the first time I actually got to see him in what someone might call ‘real time.’ He was thin, but one could still easily see in his face how good-looking a man he was.

He passed away shortly after with his daughter beside him, holding his hand. He was the exception to rule I have about internet friends. But more importantly, he was an exceptional human being who I will greatly miss.

“GENOME,” BY MATT RIDLEY.

Mr. Ridley’s, “Genome,” was published in 1999. Needless to say, a lot has gone on since that time, and many dedicated scientists and researchers have greatly advanced our understanding of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome, and gene editing has seriously taken off. (Mr. Ridley, in my edition, adds an appendage where he discusses some of the new findings).

I am hesitant to say that this is a good book to start off with if you are interested in the human genome. I say that because after reading a number of books on the subject, there are parts of the book that I had to go back and reread a number of times to fully understand the point he was trying get across.(But then that could just be because am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier).

The analogues he uses to explain the jobs of different genes are wonderful.

“THOSE ANGRY DAYS,” BY LYNNE OLSON.

WARNING: If you are a fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt you might not want to read this magnificent book?

*If you are someone who is a Charles Lindbergh fan you might not want to read this book?

*If you think the politicians of today are obsessed with poll numbers, you might seriously want to read this book and see how obsessed President Roosevelt was with poll numbers, and how this obsession almost left half the world under the control of Hitler.

*If you don’t know who Wendell Willkie is you should read this book. He was the Republican candidate who ran against President Roosevelt in 1940, and going against his party’s wishes, called for the United States to get behind Great Britain and prepare itself for the inevitable entrance of the U.S. into the the war.

*If you think that anti-Semitism is at a fever pitch in America today, you should read this book and find out how bad it was before the war?

*If you are a fan of democracy you need to read this book because, outside of the Vietnam area, I don’t think democracy has shined any brighter than the pre- World War 2 years in America.

*And finally if you are a fan of history and the pre- World War 2 era this is a book for you. One of the best I have ever read.

“THE RADIUM GIRLS,” BY KATE MOORE.

“The Radium Girls,” is a powerful, beautifully written true story of young girls who work in factories, mostly between 1917 and 1935, in New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois who paint the dials on watches and clocks with paint laced with radium. The clock and watches glow in the dark and so do the girls. They use a process known as Lip-Dip-Paint where they place the tip of the paint brush into their mouths to get a more perfect, neat, and tidy layer of paint on the dials.

When some of the girls start getting deadly sick and dying, the company heads start a cover up denying any association with the sickly and dying girls and hailing the benefits of radium which at the time was not classified as a poisonous chemical. They have their doctors doing the autopsies and examinations and coming up with results such as the girl died from syphilis or the girls they examined were perfectly healthy.

It takes the courage and tenacity of very sick girls, and two lawyers, to fight the corporations and their lies and expose the deadly nature of radium, and in so doing they lead the charge that would eventually lead to regulations, and ultimately saving the lives of thousands of innocent women.

Ms. Moore’s depiction of the afflicted girls, some testifying from their death beds, is nothing short of brilliant, eliciting emotions that even the most stoic readers would find hard not to shed a tear.

This book raises the age old question: Is there really equal justice for all in America? The answer, in my opinion, is a resounding NO. Despite the millions of deaths caused by the tobacco industry each year, cigarettes are still legal. Despite all the mass shootings, one can still purchase a semi-automatic gun with no problem. Yes, there are settlements but that doesn’t bring back the victims, and barely touches the bottom lines of these corporations.

There is so much dark money in our politics that the idea of equal justice for all sounds totally insane.

“THE SONG OF THE CELL” BY SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

Many reviewers of Siddhartha Mukherjee say that his writing is lyrical, poetic, and suspenseful and they are one hundred per cent correct. They are all those things, but to me (and probably many others) he makes the byzantine and perplexing nature of medicine and biology understandable to the average person.

I have sat in on many pre-med courses and was a faithful subscriber to “Scientific American” for over thirty years and yet I am lucky if I came away from the classes and the reading of the magazine understanding 25 per cent of what was discussed and I have probably retained one per cent of the material over the years.

Yet like his previous works, “The Emperor of All Maladies, and “The Gene” Mr. Mukherjee’s latest non-fiction book, “The Song Of The Cell,”is another mesmerizing, beautifully written, intensely researched, personal, and totally understandable book on the history and the functions of human cells. Whereas blood is often considered the lifeline of a living and functioning human being, it is the cells in humans, and in almost all living creatures, that are the protector, educator, and in the end the undertaker.

Mr. Mukherjee’s detailed analysis and functions of cells and the knowledge and the intense research into cells that is currently going on will very possibly lead to the future cures of diseases and viruses that have plagued humankind since the very beginning of time.

For anyone truly interested in medicine, biology, and the future treatments and survival of the human species, “The Song Of The Cell,” is a must read, as are his two previous books.

A CURIOUS VIEW: “MY COUSIN CARMELA,” BY JOSEPH SCIUTO

A CURIOUS VIEW: MY COUSIN CARMELA

Sometimes a treasure chest that has intermittently passed before your unsuspecting eyes throughout most of your adult life suddenly catches your attention and when you unlock the door and look inside you discover the hidden pieces of a puzzle that you have unknowingly been looking for your entire life.

About six years ago I started writing a blog titled “A Curious View.” It was in response to the death of my aunt Rena, who was the last surviving member of the fifteen children my grandparents’ had on my mother’s side of the family. Of the fifteen children, four were boys and eleven were girls, and of all those children, my uncles, aunts, and a plenitude of cousins there was virtually no one left to carry on the name of my maternal grandparents, ‘Caggiano.’

My very first memory was of me, at about three years old, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen with my grandmother and my aunt Jeanette and being fed all the chocolate my little heart desired.

Both my parents worked and my grandmother and aunt looked after me until my mother arrived home. My grandparents’ house in the Bronx was very large and they converted the top floor into a two-bedroom apartment where my parents, two brothers and I lived.

Throughout the day, my grandmothers’ kitchen had a steady stream of visitors, aunts, uncles, friends who lived on the same block, friends from the days when they lived in Harlem, and while they sat there drinking coffee and helping themselves to the best homemade bread I have ever tasted, I listened to the stories they told about their families, unconditional love, grief at the loss of children, and the hardships they encountered when they first arrived in this country.

Many of their stories I still remembered quite vividly and together with the interactions I had throughout my life with my grandmother, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and many friends of the family I figured I had quite a significant amount of material to do an everlasting tribute to this amazing family and hopefully keep the “Caggiano,” name from going extinct… yet it wasn’t long before I realized that I had remembered a lot less than I ever imagined.

The first blog was about my grandmother and the second about my aunt Jeanette. They both were received warmly by family members and a few of my friends. The one surprise was the feedback from by my cousin Carmela Greco. My cousin, who I thought of more as an aunt than cousin, because of the nearly twenty-five-year difference in our ages. Carmela was one of the first grandchildren born to my aunt Mary, one of the older children, and my mother, who was one of the last to be hatched, and didn’t start having children until my cousin was nearly twenty years old.

My cousin liked what I wrote but she asked, “Why didn’t you include this person, or that person? Surely, you spend a long enough time in your grandmother’s kitchen to remember Mrs. Bruno who lived in the house next door and went to visit your grandmother and aunt all the time?”

I had to admit to myself that my cousin was right. Mrs. Bruno was there all the time but of all the people I mentioned in the blog about my grandmother and aunt I had somehow forgotten to mention her and she had a tendency to tell some really wacky stories. Not only that, but her husband Mr. Bruno would sit every night on the stoop with my grandfather and exchange stories while his dog, a lovely German Shepherd who was as laid back as any dog I have ever seen, would sit beside them.

I thanked my cousin for reminding me of Mrs. Bruno and promised that sometime in the next batch of stories I was planning to write I would bring her up. I kept my promise and wrote about her in a story about my aunt Angelina who died at the age of thirteen from an appendicitis many years before I was born but whose birthday and day of death were imprinted on my grandmother’s brain. My aunt Jeanette would always remind me the day before about the anniversary of her sister’s birth or death, and that I shouldn’t take my grandmother’s silence as a reflection on me.

My cousin Carmela was overjoyed that I wrote about my deceased thirteen-year-old aunt because she was fairly sure that many people had forgotten about her since it had been so many years since she passed away, and then she asked, “Why didn’t you mention your mother who almost died a couple of weeks later from an appendicitis but was miraculously healed after a visitation from Saint Joseph? Surely, you know the story and that’s the reason she named you Joseph after Saint Joseph.”

Of course I knew the story, and it should have been included. Both stories were always told in conjunction with one another. Maybe, I did drink one too many beers as a teenager and the damage to my brain was more substantial than I could have ever imagined.

My cousin really did enjoy the stories I wrote about the family and in a very real sense she became my biggest fan and her encyclopedia type memory allowed me to give a much fuller picture of the ‘Caggiano’ family than I ever could have hoped for.

During a short hiatus from my blog, “A Curious View,” my cousin wrote to me  and asked me if I had given up writing? I laughed and replied, “That I was simply taking a break so I could finish a novel I was writing.”

She said, “My God, I would love to read it. You need to send me a copy once it’s finished.”

I replied, “I certainly would but it probably wouldn’t be published for at least three months,” but before she could lodge a complaint about how long it was going to take I remarked, “I have six other novels which have already been published and I could send them to you if you like.”

“Yes, Yes,” She remarked and over the next couple of years she read all my novels and from what she told me she loved them, and not only had she read them all but she had given the books to one of her neighbors who simply loved my writing style.

The next to last novel I sent her was called, “The Ninth Sphere.” The title of the book was taken from Dante’s trilogy titled “The Divine Comedy.” Considered one of the great literary masterpieces ever written, the writer travels through his vision of hell/The Inferno, Purgatory/and Paradiso/Heaven.

It is when he enters the sphere of Heaven that the lovely Beatrice acts as his guide. When they enter Heaven’s final sphere, “The Ninth Sphere,” Beatrice leaves him and as he watches her and the other angels go to sleep inside the large petals of glistening roses the blessing of the Almighty is sprinkled down upon the sleeping children.

When he turns an all-encompassing light rises before him and it is inside this radiant, pure, and brilliant bubble of light that the Almighty welcomes Dante.

My novel, “The Ninth Sphere,” is the most personal novel I have ever written. It is an unbiased recollection of my life, including my many mistakes, my failure to live up to expectations, and how very lucky and fortunate I am to have been raised in a family whose love and support was unconditional and always available.

Needless to say, my cousin Carmela loved it and whereas I might not have mentioned every one of my relatives in the novel I have no doubt she understood that the point of the novel was the importance of family, and how our once merry army of relatives and friends had quickly diminished and that to remember them was the most important thing we could do.

Today is the first day in over 60 years that my cousin’s apartment in the Bronx, where she and her husband raised their two children, is empty.

She passed away after a relatively short illness, but I have no doubt as I write this that she is being welcomed by God into that radiant, pure, and brilliant bubble that Dante walked through. She is once again reunited with her husband who passed away nearly 45 years ago and by her sister, Grace, who was the only member of all our relatives to become a Catholic nun.

I will greatly miss her but I have a strong feeling that our story is far from finished and I could still hear her asking, “What? Are you through with writing?”

“No!”

“Well, then get to it.”

Love, Joe and Melissa.

A CURIOUS REVIEW: “MY COUSIN CARMELA,” BY JOSEPH SCIUTO

A CURIOUS VIEW: MY COUSIN CARMELA

Sometimes a treasure chest that has intermittently passed before your unsuspecting eyes throughout most of your adult life suddenly catches your attention and when you unlock the door and look inside you discover the hidden pieces of a puzzle that you have unknowingly been looking for your entire life.

About six years ago I started writing a blog titled “A Curious View.” It was in response to the death of my aunt Rena, who was the last surviving member of the fifteen children my grandparents’ had on my mother’s side of the family. Of the fifteen children, four were boys and eleven were girls, and of all those children, my uncles, aunts, and a plenitude of cousins there was virtually no one left to carry on the name of my maternal grandparents, ‘Caggiano.’

My very first memory was of me, at about three years old, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen with my grandmother and my aunt Jeanette and being fed all the chocolate my little heart desired.

Both my parents worked and my grandmother and aunt looked after me until my mother arrived home. My grandparents’ house in the Bronx was very large and they converted the top floor into a two-bedroom apartment where my parents, two brothers and I lived.

Throughout the day, my grandmothers’ kitchen had a steady stream of visitors, aunts, uncles, friends who lived on the same block, friends from the days when they lived in Harlem, and while they sat there drinking coffee and helping themselves to the best homemade bread I have ever tasted, I listened to the stories they told about their families, unconditional love, grief at the loss of children, and the hardships they encountered when they first arrived in this country.

Many of their stories I still remembered quite vividly and together with the interactions I had throughout my life with my grandmother, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and many friends of the family I figured I had quite a significant amount of material to do an everlasting tribute to this amazing family and hopefully keep the “Caggiano,” name from going extinct… yet it wasn’t long before I realized that I had remembered a lot less than I ever imagined.

The first blog was about my grandmother and the second about my aunt Jeanette. They both were received warmly by family members and a few of my friends. The one surprise was the feedback from by my cousin Carmela Greco. My cousin, who I thought of more as an aunt than cousin, because of the nearly twenty-five-year difference in our ages. Carmela was one of the first grandchildren born to my aunt Mary, one of the older children, and my mother, who was one of the last to be hatched, and didn’t start having children until my cousin was nearly twenty years old.

My cousin liked what I wrote but she asked, “Why didn’t you include this person, or that person? Surely, you spend a long enough time in your grandmother’s kitchen to remember Mrs. Bruno who lived in the house next door and went to visit your grandmother and aunt all the time?”

I had to admit to myself that my cousin was right. Mrs. Bruno was there all the time but of all the people I mentioned in the blog about my grandmother and aunt I had somehow forgotten to mention her and she had a tendency to tell some really wacky stories. Not only that, but her husband Mr. Bruno would sit every night on the stoop with my grandfather and exchange stories while his dog, a lovely German Shepherd who was as laid back as any dog I have ever seen, would sit beside them.

I thanked my cousin for reminding me of Mrs. Bruno and promised that sometime in the next batch of stories I was planning to write I would bring her up. I kept my promise and wrote about her in a story about my aunt Angelina who died at the age of thirteen from an appendicitis many years before I was born but whose birthday and day of death were imprinted on my grandmother’s brain. My aunt Jeanette would always remind me the day before about the anniversary of her sister’s birth or death, and that I shouldn’t take my grandmother’s silence as a reflection on me.

My cousin Carmela was overjoyed that I wrote about my deceased thirteen-year-old aunt because she was fairly sure that many people had forgotten about her since it had been so many years since she passed away, and then she asked, “Why didn’t you mention your mother who almost died a couple of weeks later from an appendicitis but was miraculously healed after a visitation from Saint Joseph? Surely, you know the story and that’s the reason she named you Joseph after Saint Joseph.”

Of course I knew the story, and it should have been included. Both stories were always told in conjunction with one another. Maybe, I did drink one too many beers as a teenager and the damage to my brain was more substantial than I could have ever imagined.

My cousin really did enjoy the stories I wrote about the family and in a very real sense she became my biggest fan and her encyclopedia type memory allowed me to give a much fuller picture of the ‘Caggiano’ family than I ever could have hoped for.

During a short hiatus from my blog, “A Curious View,” my cousin wrote to me  and asked me if I had given up writing? I laughed and replied, “That I was simply taking a break so I could finish a novel I was writing.”

She said, “My God, I would love to read it. You need to send me a copy once it’s finished.”

I replied, “I certainly would but it probably wouldn’t be published for at least three months,” but before she could lodge a complaint about how long it was going to take I remarked, “I have six other novels which have already been published and I could send them to you if you like.”

“Yes, Yes,” She remarked and over the next couple of years she read all my novels and from what she told me she loved them, and not only had she read them all but she had given the books to one of her neighbors who simply loved my writing style.

The next to last novel I sent her was called, “The Ninth Sphere.” The title of the book was taken from Dante’s trilogy titled “The Divine Comedy.” Considered one of the great literary masterpieces ever written, the writer travels through his vision of hell/The Inferno, Purgatory/and Paradiso/Heaven.

It is when he enters the sphere of Heaven that the lovely Beatrice acts as his guide. When they enter Heaven’s final sphere, “The Ninth Sphere,” Beatrice leaves him and as he watches her and the other angels go to sleep inside the large petals of glistening roses the blessing of the Almighty is sprinkled down upon the sleeping children.

When he turns an all-encompassing light rises before him and it is inside this radiant, pure, and brilliant bubble of light that the Almighty welcomes Dante.

My novel, “The Ninth Sphere,” is the most personal novel I have ever written. It is an unbiased recollection of my life, including my many mistakes, my failure to live up to expectations, and how very lucky and fortunate I am to have been raised in a family whose love and support was unconditional and always available.

Needless to say, my cousin Carmela loved it and whereas I might not have mentioned every one of my relatives in the novel I have no doubt she understood that the point of the novel was the importance of family, and how our once merry army of relatives and friends had quickly diminished and that to remember them was the most important thing we could do.

Today is the first day in over 60 years that my cousin’s apartment in the Bronx, where she and her husband raised their two children, is empty.

She passed away after a relatively short illness, but I have no doubt as I write this that she is being welcomed by God into that radiant, pure, and brilliant bubble that Dante walked through. She is once again reunited with her husband who passed away nearly 45 years ago and by her sister, Grace, who was the only member of all our relatives to become a Catholic nun.

I will greatly miss her but I have a strong feeling that our story is far from finished and I could still hear her asking, “What? Are you through with writing?”

“No!”

“Well, then get to it.”

Love, Joe and Melissa.