-- from “Nixie” in Pocket Full 0f Tales

Sometimes the most amazing events are what we might call everyday experiences.   There is a literary style known as “gothic” that comes with a box of effects from which writers can pull the standard, spooky elements – cobwebs, howling wolves, creaking doors, lots of shadows – that will make readers glance away from the book and back over their shoulder.  But sometimes the most frightening scenes happen in broad daylight, among otherwise normal people engaged in common activities.

Ernest Giordani’s stories embrace both the macabre and the mundane:  A man goes fishing and pulls in a mermaid.  A woman discovers that one of her late husband’s dearest friends was actually just a character in a story he wrote.   A white goat stands watch over a mountain village for years, then disappears and an avalanche sweeps everything away.

Pocket Full of Tales is an e-book and paperback collection of stories by Ernest Giordani.  There are about sixteen stories in its 262 pages – it’s easier to count the pages than the stories, since “The End” appears midway through several stories, the tale then takes a twist into the personal and continues.  Some stories are only two or three pages: “The Rescue” is a brief description of an incident on Binghamton’s Hawley Street told with a style and sensibility never found in a newspaper account. Pocket Full of Tales concludes with “They Called Her Little Jo Then”, which is actually a warm and straightforward recounting of Ernest Giordani’s family history.

Giordani is professor emeritus of English at Broome Community College, where he taught courses in creative writing, modern existential literature and psychological investigation.  He also founded the college’s literary magazine.  He is a veteran of the U.S. Army, serving during the period of the Cuban missile crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall.  Trained as a linguist, he interrogated persons who had escaped from behind the Iron Curtain.  He calls upon his experience as a military historian in “Rubble and Eggs”, a grievous letter from a German mother to her daughter at the end of World War II.

Writer Ernest Giordani joins WSKG’s Bill Jaker on OFF THE PAGE to tell about tales that fell out of his pockets, “from the mysterious to the merely curious, and from the allegorical to the symbolic.”  To join in this special Halloween edition of the program, call during the 1:00 PM live broadcast to 888/359-9754 or post an comment HERE or send an e-mail to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.