Published, appropriately, on this Seventh of December, which is both Pearl Harbor Day and the birthday of my namesake grandfather.
WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE PUBLICATION OF “THE LOUNGE CONVERSATIONS” BY ROBERT LAIRD.
A print book you can buy at Amazon right now. For the hideously expensive price of $6.99. You all know that in my years of blogging I have never ceased to beg, piteously, at almost half decade intervals, for tips in my jar. Now I’m doing it yet again. Erick Erickson thinks I’m an extortionist. Oh well. Buy the damn thing. I’m the real thing. Wait till you see the next book. That’ll be more.
A short book, about a guy careering through the subway system of a place very much like hell, or where we have somehow gotten to today. That’s why we’re publishing it. It’s almost exactly a quarter century old, and the conversations the infamous Daniel Pangloss has with bartenders and drinkers in the subway lounges of Shuteye Town seem as if they could have happened just this afternoon.
You can find it here at Amazon.com. For just under $7.00. But if you ever thought no one could have anticipated the America of Obama in 2015, you are very much mistaken. This is a path we’ve been jogging — or skateboarding — along for a very long time. And this slender volume proves it.
Not all doom and gloom. Daniel Pangloss is actually funny, in the way that only optimistic pessimists can be. Oxymorons are contradictions, which is the simplest definition of comedy.
But. As Daniel Pangloss says, “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”
The acknowledgment is to Voltaire. His real name? Francois Marie Arouet. Anagram. There’s a select club of the mean ones. They cross borders. Voltaire. Bierce. And me. I’ve experienced the Interdict twice. Crossed Candide and redone the Devil’s Dictionary. Destined to die like most of them, unknown, unrecognized and unloved. And, as Max Smart would say…
To hell or to Hadleyburg. Know where I’m going.