Answer Man - Softcover

Richard R. Karlen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0966083121 ISBN 13: 9780966083125

Publisher: Ironbound Press, 2001

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"They say, best men are moulded out of faults:

And for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad."

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure George Grossman has worked for twenty years as an assistant manager of Men's Clothing at a downtown department store in Newark, NJ. He is a quiet modest man with no special ambitions, other than to provide a decent life for his wife and two sons. The head manager dies of a heart attack, and Grossman's life is turned around dramatically. This quiet man becomes enraged by events that seem to conspire against him, and, ultimately, he fights back against those who would suppress his spirit and self-esteem. The title of the book is derived from Grossman's obsessive need to acquire knowledge through the reading of almanac's and encyclopedias, a dubious virtue given his benign nature when dealing with a sometimes cruel, unsentimental world.

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About the Author

Richard R. Karlen, author of DEVIL'S DANCE and LOOKING FOR BERNIE, grew up in Newark, NJ, where he later practiced dentistry for thirty-five years. He currently lives in Scotch Plains, NJ with his wife, daughter and twin grandchildren. His most recent novel MURDER AT THE SEXI will be published by Ironbound Press in the winter of 2002.

Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

George Grossman was inspecting a rack of newly-arrived men's top coats with Keith Killburn, the manager of Men's Clothing at J.P. Sterling & Sons department store, when, without warning, Killburn clutched his chest and cried out in pain. Moments later, his eyes shot up to the ceiling as if they had been unhinged, and he hit the floor with a heavy crunch, the ancient, worn carpet providing a dubious measure of comfort for the stricken man. Minutes before the ambulance arrived, Killburn was pronounced dead by a doctor shopping with his wife in Furniture.

The unexpectedness of the event stunned George. Killburn was only forty-five, a jogger, a racquetball player, and, in his own way, a missionary bent on converting the world to a diet of salads and fruits. George had thought Killburn would live to be a hundred and George would never have another chance to become the manager of the department.

At the funeral, the priest described Killburn as a loving husband, the devoted father of two wonderful teenage girls, and an outstanding community leader. The priest, whom George later discovered hardly knew Killburn, couldn't have been expected to know that Killburn's community leadership consisted of weekly meetings at the downtown Newark Lions Club, where his reputation for egocentricity and spreading malicious gossip was well known. As for being a family man, did adultery count?

What mystified George was the priest's assertion that Killburn had been a generous boss, "a friend of the working man, loved by all who were lucky enough to have known and labored for him."

On more than one occasion, George had witnessed Killburn firing an employee in the department arbitrarily, and without as much as a day's notice. When he had axed old Samuel Teitlebaum, a month after Samuel's recovery from prostate surgery, George protested, and almost lost his own job. It was Leon Torchik, the head man himself, who had intervened, the same Torchik who had chosen Killburn instead of George to become manager of the department eight years before.

As the priest drone on, George's mind wandered. Last month he had read in his 1981 New York Times Almanac that more than half of all Americans died of cardio-vascular disease. According to insurance stats, Killburn could have been expected to live at least another thirty years. We worry about the fear of a slow, agonizing death, such as cancer, thought George, but was dropping dead from a heart attack any better? Life to be blotted out without warning, without even a chance to say goodbye to those you loved, was not the way he would like his own life to end.

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