A Line of Shorts: Breezy Stories & Holy Satires

Jack Loscutoff’s forte, as a writer, is the short story. Here, in A Line of Shorts, is a collection of some of his finest. Jack especially loved comical fiction. He enjoyed creating unlikely characters, like Sheriff Bob who’s nuts about writers. Or Sven, a typical Norwegian bachelor farmer who falls in love with an over-sexed parrot. Or Peggy, a wife who may (or may not) have returned from the dead. Or Robespierre, a rebellious runt pig who talks, or a Seven-Foot Woman. Jack also had a penchant for satire, including satirizing religion.

His religious satires are somewhat realistic, like the mortician who lacks bodies, or science fiction, and other times just plain old sarcastic. All of Jack’s stories, whether “Breezy Stories” or “Holy Satires,” depend, not just on exaggerated characters and plots, but also on language. Jack was an amazing wordsmith. He had studied words, first Russian, then English, from boyhood, and he had close-to-perfect recall of every word he had encountered. He used them, with good humor, in A Line of Shorts.