Everything but the Internet: Fiction, articles, plays

by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com

Copyright 2002 Richard Seltzer

This Web page shows the full contents of the CD "Everything but the Internet: Fiction, articles, plays by Richard Seltzer", which includes the complete non-Internet works of Richard Seltzer, plus his favorite classic works of fiction (Dostoyevsky, Cumas, Gogol, Hawthorne, O. Henry, Homer, Guy de Maupassant, Tolstoy, and Mark Twain.) Richard's Internet works are available on another CD, My Internet: a personal view of Internet business opportunities-- books and articles from samizdat.com. Both these CDs sell for $29 our online store at http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/myinperviewo.html

For details about this publishing service, check the readme document.

Brief bio of Richard.

Click on a category to go to one of the major sections of this index page:

The books on this CD are in plain text format. You can copy them onto your hard drive for convenience, or make an archival copy of the CD, as backup in case of damage to the original.

Bulatovich, The Name of Hero, The Name of Man, and Ethiopia

Ethiopia through Russian Eyes

Ethiopia through Russian Eyes consists of two books: From Entotto to the River Baro and With the Armies of Menelik II, both written by Alexander Bulatovich and translated by Richard Seltzer. This is a unique and detailed first-hand account of Ethiopia in 1896-98 -- at the change of an era -- by a Russian officer with remarkable understanding for the many varied peoples who lived there and keen insight into their destiny.

Africa World Press/Red Sea Press recently published a print edition of this book which you can buy from Amazon.com.

Articles and excerpts related to Bulatovich and Ethiopia

Articles Excerpts

The Name of Hero

The Name of Hero is an historical novel based on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Russian who was an explorer in Ethiopia, a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria in 1900, and later, as a monk at Mount Athos, led a group of "heretics" who challenged the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserting the divinity of the Name of God. (Originally published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin). You can buy the hard cover edition of this book at Amazon.com or at our online storehttp://store.yahoo.com/samizdat Related documents:

Letters from Princess Mary Orbeliani (sister of Alexander Bulatovich) to Richard Seltzer (author of The Name of Hero)

Timeline for Alexander Bulatovich from 1870 until he became a monk in 1907, with excerpts from his military record

The Name of Man

Sample chapters from this unpublished novel (a sequel to The Name of Hero): Related documents: Email from the great-great grandson of Emperor Menelik II, and news of the fate of Vaska

Sandcastles

Sandcastles is a modern family saga in which hopes, beliefs, and dreams pass from generation to generation. The story centers around an uncle, his nephew, and the two women they both love, as they dance in and out of one another's lives. Chapter 1 Mansions and Castles
Chapter 2 Aunt Rachel and the Wizard of Oz
Chapter 3 Charlie's Coming of Age
Chapter 4 Recruited
Chapter 5 The Pictures from Charlie's Wedding
Chapter 6 Irene in Munich
Chapter 7 Irene at the Beach
Chapter 8 Sixtieth Anniversary
Chapter 9 Romance in Camelot
Chapter 10 Traffic Jam
Chapter 11 Ghosts
Chapter 12 Frank and Marge
Chapter 13 Giving Thanks
Chapter 14 Mistakes
Chapter 15 California Dream
Chapter 16 The Reverend Schumacher and Son
Chapter 17 Modelling for Charlie
Chapter 18 Rebirth
Chapter 19 Cabin Fever
Chapter 20 Dreams are Contagious
Chapter 21 With God
Chapter 22 Pair of Dice
Chapter 23 Voices from the Past
Chapter 24 Charlie's Daughter
Chapter 25 Camelot's Ghost
Chapter 26 Alarms
Chapter 27 Dream House in the Woods
Chapter 28 How to Build a Roof
Chapter 29 Time to Tell
Chapter 30 Sharing Sandcastles

The Lizard of Oz

When an elementary class sets out on a quest to save the world from disenchantment, their adventures reveal paradoxes of the human mind and ways of awakening the magic within us.

Library Journal -- "An intriguing and very entertaining little novel"

Aspect -- "Carroll and Tolkien have a new companion"

Lancaster (PA) Independent Press -- "a work so saturated that the mind is both stoned with pleasure and alive with wonder"

Philadelphia Bulletin -- "A commentary on our times done delightfully"

Audio-book version of The Lizard of Oz (complete text, plus illustrations by Christin Couture and audio narration by the author). To hear the audio, you need to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer and must have the RealPlayer.

This is a new, expanded version of the underground classic, originally published in 1974. This edition (which includes new episodes and changes throughout) is not available in print. You can buy the original print edition at our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat

The children's play version of THE LIZARD OF OZ

Review from Plays for Children and Young Adults, an Evaluative Index and Guide, Supplement 1, 1989-1994 by Raschelle S. Karp, June H. Schlessinger, and Bernard S. Schlessinger, Garland Publishing, New York, 1996.

"1101. K-12 (+) Seltzer, Richard, The Lizard of Oz. CAST: 6f, 14m, u. ACTS: 1. SETTINGS: Bare stage. PLAYING TIME: 50 min. PLOT: Two fish, in a fishbowl in a basement classroom, remark on the boredom of the students. One of the fish, Mr. Shermin, explains to the other, Mrs. O'Rourke, that the boredom is caused by the Humbug's tune, which can only be changed by the Lizard of Oz. One of the children Eugene, overhears the conversation and conspires with the fish to travel to Oz in a little green VW with several classmates. On the way, the car falls into a pothole, and encounters a witch who gives them directions. They meet the potheads, people with pots for heads, who help them with more water for the fishbowl. The witch reappears at various times, and the group meets Sir Real, who has a cereal bowl for a head; eggheads, including Humpty Dumpty; a wallflower; an empty-headed pothead with blue eyes (Mr New Man); Mr. Francis Bacon, the librarian; Mr. Charon, the ferryboatman/undertaker; Lewis Carroll; William Shakespeare; Mark Twain; and Plato and the Muses. Mrs. O'Rourke swims off and Mr. Shermin becomes a human teacher. The gang reaches Oz and a bevy of further odd characters and returns to the classroom, refreshed, and with a new teacher, Mr. Shermin. RECOMMENDATION: The adventures and the characters are out of Alice in Wonderland, but the overall effect is comic and interesting."

The full text of the play is available here as a plain text file (without illustrations) and as a pdf file (with all the illustrations embedded). You can buy this playscript from in printed form at Amazon.com.

Plays

Without a Myth (or Amythos) -- a stage play

Without a Myth (three-act stage play) -- The characters are assigned roles in a fantastic myth. They can either go ahead and act out their lives in accord wth their given script or drop out and never have any role in life. They have 24 hours in which to decide. A flaw in the rules of this absurd, cosmic games makes the choices and actions of the two main characters a matter of life and death.

This play has not yet been been published in paper form. It was produced for the first time by High Impact Theater at the Met Performing Arts Center in Spokane, Washington, in the winter of 2001.

Making sense of the myths behind Greek tragedy, in particular the mythos of Pelops/Atreus/Agamemnon, article by Richard Seltzer

Mercy (a stage play)

Mercy (a two-act historical comedy) is based on the lives of Mercy Otis Warren and General Johnny Burgoyne. A recent biography of Burgoyne, entitled The Man Who Lost America, focuses on his defeat and surrender at Saratoga in 1777. A recent biography of Mercy Warren, entitled First Lady of the Revolution, indicates that she was intimately connected with principal actors and actions of the Revolution.

Both Burgoyne and Mercy Warren were playwrights. After the Revolution, Burgoyne wrote several "hit" plays for the London stage. In 1775, during the British occupation of Boston, he wrote The Blockade of Boston. Mercy replied with a play entitled The Blockheads.

These two historical figures are natural antagonists who should be made to meet on the stage.

Mercy Warren: Conscience of the American Revolution, Review of her book "The Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution"

 
The Death of the Federalist Party

Rights Crossing (a stage play)

Rights Crossing (a two-act historical play) was written for Columbia, Pennsylvania, where it was performed December 1-4, 1976, as part of that town's bicentennial celebration. The events of the play take place in December 1777 and center around the Conway conspiracy.

The action focuses on the strategic importance of the ferry crossing that would one day become Columbia; situated between Congress in York and the army in Valley Forge. The fates of the town-to-be and the nation-to-be are interwoven, with local historical figures playing significant roles in a plausible confrontation with Conway and Mifflin.

Conway, plotting to overthrow Washington, tries to seize the ferry. But he underestimates the determination and resourcefulness of old Susannah Wright, the owner of the ferry, and her nephew Sam, the future founder of the town of Columbia.
 

Spit and Polish (a full-length screen play)

Spit and Polish (AKA "The Barracks", AKA "The Summer of Our Discontent") has never been produced nor published. The setting is basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in the summer of 1970 (just after the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State shootings). The trainees are reservists, national guardsmen, and four black draftees who have been "recycled." The draftees want nothing to do with the war. They have been through basic before and deliberately failed in order to postpone being shipped to Viet Nam. For the others, basic is a brief, but painful interruption in their normal lives. So long as there is no major foul-up, they'll return to their school or job in a few weeks. But the disappearance of one of the blacks threatens them all. Version in standard movie script .pdf format

Traffic Jam (a short screen play)

Traffic Jam. An ordinary ride down a crowded superhighway becomes surreal when the drivers realize that they have no control over their vehicles. (10 pp.)
 

Stories

Children's stories

Poems

Articles

Books reviews, literary criticism, and history

 

Context: Richard's favorite fiction

Dostoyevsky

Alexandre Dumas (pere)

  • The Black Tulip
  • Celebrated Crimes -- 18 books in a single file
  • The Borgias
  • The Cenci
  • Massacres of the South
  • Mary Stuart
  • Karl-Ludwig Sand
  • Urbain Grandier
  • Nisida
  • Desrues
  • La Constantin
  • Joan of Naples
  • The Man in the Iron Mask (an essay, reflecting on the history behind the novel)
  • Martin Guerre (source of the movies "The Return of Martin Guerre" and "Somersby")
  • Ali Pacha
  • The Countess of Saint Geran
  • Murat
  • The Marquise de Brinvilliers
  • Vaninka
  • The Marquise de Ganges
  • Chicot the Jester (abridged translation of La Dame de Monsoreau)
  • The Companions of Jehu
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
  • The Three Musketeers Saga
  • The Three Musketeers (covering 1625-1628)
  • Twenty Years After (covering 1648-49)
  • The Vicomte de Bragelonne (covering 1660)
  • Ten Years Later (covering 1660-1661)
  • Louise de la Valliere (covering 1661)
  • The Man in the Iron Mask (covering 1661-1673)

    • Nikolai Gogol

    Nathaniel Hawthorne

    O. Henry

    Homer

    Guy de Maupassant

    Leo Tolstoy

    Mark Twain


    How to install and use the free ReadPlease software included on this CD

    ReadPlease has given us permission to include the free version of their voice conversion software on this CD.

    Click here if you would like to use this software. When you click on that link, you will then be asked if you want to save it on your computer or just run it. It will be easier for you if you install it on your hard drive; it will only take about 10 Mbytes; so choose Save. Then select the directory that you'd like to put it in. When the rapid, automatic installation is done, you will be able to open ReadPlease by clicking on an icon on your desktop.

    When running ReadPlease, click on File, then Open, and browse to the texts you are interested on the CD (or any other text file you have). Click on Play and it will start "reading" the complete file aloud to you. Highlight a chunk of text (of any size) with your browser and then click on Selection, and it will read the text you selected. Controls in the right column allow you to change the speed of the voice (with a sliding bar), change the font size (with a sliding bar), and switch among four different voices (with the right and left arrows). You can edit the text right in the text window of ReadPlease, adding your notations, and marks you might want to make to indicate where you last stopped reading, and then save that edited book wherever you'd like on your hard drive. You'll find other choices under Options. Enjoy.

    Please keep in mind that ReadPlease is their software not ours. They are the experts on it. They have even better versions with even clearer, more natural voices, which they sell. You can listen to samples at their Web site www.readplease.com, where you can also see detailed help files.  And you can contact them at:
    ReadPlease Corporation, 121 Cherry Ridge Road, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada P7G 1A7. Phone: 807-474-7702


    Tips for using/enjoying the texts on this CD

    The easiest way to get started is to click on My Computer, then on your CD drive, then on index.html. (That should bring you to here, in Word or your Web browser, or WordPad or Notepad, depending on your computer's setup.)

    From the index, click on an individual work to see the full text in your browser or in Word. Click "Back" in your browser to return here.  Use the "find" function in your browser (under Edit/Find in both Netscape and IE) to find any word or phrase within a document.

    When you stop reading, jot down the last phrase (a unique set of words) so you can search for that the next time you want to read and easily find the spot where you left off.

    If you just want to read and if you have a large screen, use your browser and under View increase the type size to meet your taste.

    If you just want to read and you have a small screen, try using WordPad or Word.

    If you want to take notes while you read, first save the file on your hard drive, then open it in WordPad or Word, enter your notes with the text (making them distinctive with bold or italic or by enclosing them in brackets] as you go along, and save the entire file, with those changes, when you are done.

    If you use Word, you can Select All [under Edit], and modify the font and type size (to make the letters larger and easier to read) [under Format and Font], and save the files on your hard drive [under File, Save As] with whatever changes you have made (including notes you made while reading).

    Reviews of our CDs at Large Print Reviews:


    You can contact us at seltzer@samizdat.com, B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. 617-469-2269.
    For details about this publishing service, check the readme document.

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