Hello and welcome to the travel cast episode 475 the travel cast is an audio

fiction magazine that brings strange stories by strange authors to

strange listeners such as yourself I'm your host Norm sure strange letters are two flashpieces by the same author that kind of showcase what they're all

about. This guy, I love this guy, Donald Bartholme. Donald's an American short

story writer known for his modernist collages which are marked by technical experimentation and kind of a melancholy

gaiety and just, I don't know, wicked sense of humor.

He was born in 1931 and died in 1989.

A one-time journalist Bartholmei was managing editor of location and art and literature view and director of the contemporary art museum in Houston.

In 1964 he published his first collection of short stories, Come Back Dr. Caligare. Other collections of stories

include city life, sadness, 60 stories, and overnight to many distant cities.

His first children's book, The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, or The Hithering Thithering Gin, won the National Book the Slightly first published in 1976 in the anthology Amateurs and directly following that

will present the story Game which was first published in July 1965 of the New Yorker.

So without further ado we bring you some of us had been threatening. Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby for a long time because of the way he'd been behaving, and now he'd gone too far.

So he decided gone too far.

So he decided to hang him.

Colby argued that just because he'd gone too far,

he did not deny that he'd gone too far,

did not mean that he should be subjected to hanging.

Going too far, he said, was something everybody did sometimes.

We didn't pay much attention to this argument.

We asked him what sort of music he'd like played at the hanging.

He said he'd think about it, but it would take him a while to decide.

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