The Laughable Feast – including Up With a Twist, The Claustrophobia of Wide Open Space, The Impossible Interviews, and The Way Back – is an all-you-can-read buffet of sometimes sad, occasionally poignant, accidentally profound, but mostly humorous takes on modern life and my life and sometimes both. It’s a literary steam table of entertaining entrées, silly side dishes, and salads dressed with piss and vinaigrette. The short stories and essays are told in the voices of several different characters and the narration is often unreliable, but the intent is purely to entertain. I’ll release at least a story each week. You can read them one at a time, or at your leisure in the Archive section. Grab a plate, spin the Lazy Susan, load up, and chow down.
I’m Eric Stromquist, an old new author drawing on my 65 years fogging the mirror and watching the world go by. Starting as a little boy, as most men do, I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and after toiling in a can factory and as a bus boy, earned what has to be the most aptly titled degree in all of academia, a BS in Political Science. I then embarked on an ad-libbed career as a waiter, director of a specialty food products company, semi-successful restaurateur, indigent consultant, and for most of the last twenty years a culinary educator and school president. I combine a weary worldview and deep-seated cynicism with cautious optimism and concern for humanity. Now living happily with my wife Lori in Astoria, Oregon, I write noirish novels, sullen short stories, recollections of tangled tales and funny moments from my past, musings on modern life, and in-depth interviews with people previously thought impossible to book. Inspired by Dave Barry and David Sedaris and other Daves as well, all of what’s stored in my literary larder is laid on the table for a laughable feast.
