THOMAS LARSON

(Palo Alto Review, Fall 1995)

In 1991, when I finished my first year as a writing instructor at San Diego City College, I won an award for my teaching. The “Golden Apple” was given by a campus honors society, after it solicited recommendations from student members, voted and held a banquet to announce the winner. There, we heard students testify to our prowess in the classroom, until we were whittled down, ribbon by ribbon, to a plaque for the winner. I appreciated the honor for my first year, especially the good words that I know came from several students in my Tuesday/Thursday intermediate composition classes.

(North County Blade-Citizen September 17, 1995)

Not long ago I asked a young man, old enough to begin working for a living, what happens to people of his generation who don't graduate from college, who get suck earning minimum wage in the service sector.

"What happens?" he said, surprised at the obviousness of the answer: "You're a loser, that's what happens."

Read the rest of the article here.

(Talk given at American Literature Association's "Symposium on American Autobiography" Cabo San Lucas, Mexico November 14, 1994)

Sometimes, listening to my 17-year-old son speak of his future, I find myself staring at him, seizing a moment I desperately hope to hold forever. How tall he is; how much his acne has receded; how soon he'll be gone to college. How bushy black his eyebrows have grown, reminding me of his mother's dark beauty. How happy he seems. How quickly I forget that less than a year ago he swallowed a bottle of antidepressant pills, trying to kill himself.

He has attempted suicide more than once during adolescence, that mire of alienation which he has, I hope, outlasted. Hesitation marks remain on his wrists, as do severe pangs of anxiety in his stomach. When the phone rings after ten p.m., I steel my fear, then exhale, dramatically. Yes, he and I have searched for answers together, alone and in therapy. And yes, some of his depression is due to my failures as a divorced father, my inability to understand and express how that has affected him.

(Benicia Bay Review Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 1994)

How many times have I rushed home to San Diego on a Sunday evening from a weekend off in the hinterlands of California? From Carmel, Idyllwild, Tecaté B.C., from hiking in Yosemite, the Lagunas, Anza-Borrego. The flying drive home inspires me with its geographical spectacle, and the contour of meaning I take from the land I navigate. I always arrive not tired, but ecstatic, aware of something new, something perhaps magical coming to my work and life. I think clearly in the dark at seventy-five miles an hour. One benefit of freeways.

(Sunflower: A Literary Journal for Freewrites 1993)

The PDF file

is attached

and can be read

here.

(North County Blade-Citizen November 7, 1993)

Once for many Americans the question was: When will you get to Califronia? . . . Nowadays for many Californians the question is: When will you get out?

Read article as PDF here.

(Furious Fictions #3 October 1993)

Lucky you! Lucky me! Michael Stephens' prose offers us a choice. We can listen purely for pleasure to the sonorous wording and deft rhythms of these imaginative pieces, captivated by such marvels as "Sparrows,` which begins: "Dull tan, homeless, bleached brown, some even brindled, there is perpetual vagrancy to them, as though their only purpose were to cadge quarters from passersby, or ask for a cup of coffee."

Or we can receive careful instruction in the craft of prose compositions--the running sentences, the lack of connectives, the tonal registers, the stylistic illusions--in works like "The Runaway," in which clauses flow with rowboat regularity, gliding across the surface without once going under, to explain why the boy returned home.

The rest of the review is available here (opens a PDF).