The 7 Poor Travellers by Charles Dickens

I'm back from an exhausting but fun-as-Hell weekend in New Paltz, albeit with more sunburn and mosquito bites than I had when I left. Nonetheless the audio-fiction show must roll on. To that end, a new story is up on the website. It's "The 7 Poor Travellers" by Charles Dickens, and it's here...

http://frankmarcopolos.com

For this podcast, I skipped over some of the beginning of the story and the end, where the narrator walks to and from the Master Watts charity house. If you want to read the whole thing, you can do so <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1392">over at the Gutenberg Project.</a>

Some of the themes I love in this story are:

- The almost Supernatural power of a mentor, and how that kind of a relationship can so dramatically change your life.

- The tranformation from boyhood (Doubledick's careless drunkenness, lack of purpose) into manhood (being responsible for his life, accomplishing his duties, being loyal.)

- The transformation at the end into a generative kind of manhood that allows for forgiveness, even in the most dire of circumstances.

- Again, like with Poe, we see the EYES playing a special role here. The watchful eyes of a mentor as having such a profound effect on Doubledick.

- One of the great things I found about the (U.S.) military in the mid-90s was that there are a TON of guys like Captain Taunton, who, although sometimes in a gruff manner, were always ready to help in the process of boys becoming men. It usually hurts at the time, but the growth you experience is tremendous.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Frank

FrankMarcopolos.com
Podcast Fiction AudiobookClub
http://frankmarcopolos.com

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FAQ:

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Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which the content is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. A podcaster is the person who creates the content.

-From WikiPedia


2) How does it work?

When you visit a podcast website, such as http://frankmarcopolos.com, you will see what looks like a blog. The difference is, each post also contains a media player. Click play on the player, and the audio begins playing. You can also download the media file to put on your portable media player (such as an iPod), by right-clicking the link and using "Save As..." You can then listen to the podcast at your convenience.


3) What's this "The Whirligig" thing you sometimes talk about? And what's a "zine?" Those sound like crazy, made-up words.

In the year 2000, I created an underground literary journal that I called The Whirligig. It was a paper document similar to a magazine filled with short stories, poems, and essays. I cut a distribution deal with Clint Johns of Tower Records to distribute it to the zine shelves of pretty much every Tower Records store on Earth. The exposure of that international distribution is what allowed me to attract great writers like Jeff Somers, Ann Sterzinger, Richard Kostelanetz, Nick Mamatas, and many, many others to submit pieces to me.

Sadly, when Tower Records went belly-up, so did The Whirligig. I sold the rights to it to J.D. Finch, and he eventually resurrected it. J.D. now runs things his way, with a slightly different name, here:

http://www.whirligigzine.com


4) Didn't you fall off the face of the Earth? I heard a lot of wild rumors about you over the years.

Not really. For 3 years after college, I was a paratrooper in the U.S. Army. After that, I was busy writing, working, putting out The Whirligig, and drinking a lot. If I lost touch with you, it wasn't intentional. Probably.