Fiction. A SARDINE ON VACATION collects 53 short essays, stories, dialogues, character sketches, and miscellaneous musings. Inspired by Flann O'Brien's Myles columns in the Dublin Times, the Sardine scornfully confronts and avoids the newspaper-reading Public who cannot quite figure out what the Sardine represents. Ultimately, the Sardine's success leads one man to take it up on himself to hunt down and unmask the Sardine. "A SARDINE ON VACATION does for the newspaper-column novel what Gutenberg did for the hand-copied Bible, that is, it completely redeploys, redirects, and redistributes the energies of a genre pegged so closely to the myth of old-time objectivity. The William S. Burroughs-inspired three-column format retrains the novel reader's eye—until the line between faux-journalism and recursive postmodern narrative excurses makes the Jason Blair and Stephen Glass scandals seem like the work of rank amateurs. Open this tin, and take a trip with the Sardine!"—Davis Schneiderman.

Author City: Collingswood, NJ USA

Robert Castle teaches American History, Film Criticism, and Sociology at a small academy outside Trenton, NJ. He studied English and got a degree in the Writing Program at Penn State in the early seventies. After attending Columbia University School of the Arts for a brief time, he traveled around Europe and lived on and off in Florence, Italy. For fifteen years he lived off his earnings as a cook at a New Jersey seaside town before finally giving up and getting a full-time job, teaching being the least objectionable profession to pursue. Castle has contributed regularly to Bright Lights Film Journal since 2000. He is married and has no children.

Reviews and Other Links
Robert Castle in Bright Lights Film Journal