Changes need to happen in order not to become post-literate — Hey, World Citizens, Welcome Good morning or good evening — if you’re reading this yesterday in Australia. G’day, mates. Walter “Down with” Bowne here, talking about — er — wait — writing about — why independent reading is so vital in school. Here are two statistics: 33% of high school graduates never read another…

The Rejection Letters of Real Literary Editors Revealed — Dear Writer, Thank you for sending us “Vampire Bitches Breed in My Basement.’’ We appreciated the chance to read it. Once again, the piece was not successful. Please send no further work, with exception of your obituary. Best wishes, Sincerely, The Editor Dear Scrivener, Thank you for your recent submission to…

A short story — As the ETA group circled the 19th-century French gallery of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the American Matthew Brooks awaited trial, uttering a long memorized sentence: Guilty. Death by passive suicide. In the middle of the gallery, he collapsed on a black bench, rubbing his sore heal. …

Like Jake Barnes, we also felt new life on the Playa de la Concha — Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises had been enjoying solo time in San Sebastián, swimming and walking, finally resting — away from the chaos of The Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona. Then he gets a telegram from “Circe” — Lady Brett Ashley: “COULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA…

Sharing a Jerez with Jake Barnes from “The Sun Also Rises” — Cafés in Europe, of course, are like backyard patios and front stoops and enclosed porches and sunrooms in The United States. But cafés are communal. It costs more to sit and have a Sherez or espresso in Paris than to stand. This does not happen in the States. Consider sitting…

Two honeymooners revisit a scene from “The Sun Also Rises” — In July in Spain in 1996, a year after our marriage, Mary Jane and I did not think we would need jackets. In Pamplona, it was sunny and hot, but not humid. It was rarely humid. But I should have been warned. I knew my Papa. After all, in Hemingway’s…

Into the pages of “The Sun Also Rises” on a second honeymoon — For reasons only the mostly debunked theories of Sigmund Freud could explain, my father figure when in high school and college was Ernest “Papa” Hemingway. When my college professor, Dr. Glassberg, gave feedback on one of my short stories, “Divided I Fall,” she asked if I ever read Hemingway. I…

Short fiction — In an unusual business of mirth and pleasure, Billy Berne moseyed down a hotel corridor in the Latin Quarter. It was a quarter past four. In Latin, he sang “Angelus ad virginem,” a medieval carol studied in chorale at Catholic University with his best mate — Matthew Brooks. Yea. …

Feel the “rhythm of the rails” in these classic songs — When asked why I never had a real girlfriend until I fell in love at a dance on Boat House Row in Philly in 1994, I always blamed planes, trains, and automobiles. I was always on the move. My mum called me a “gasoline ass.” One could add jet fuel…