Live Cargo

by

Pauls Toutonghi

• Houdini's 1908 escape – handcuffed – from submersion in the River Seine.

• A day spent in the fish markets of Riga, Latvia.

• Love at a late-September baseball game at Fenway Park.

• A young boy struggling to survive in Cairo during World War Two.

 These are some of the stories featured in Pauls Toutonghi's debut collection, "Live Cargo."

At 27, Toutonghi has emerged as one of the most innovative young writers in the American literary marketplace.

 Born to Egyptian and Latvian parents, Toutonghi informs his writing with his unique cultural heritage. A fluent Latvian speaker, Toutonghi has been awarded a Fulbright Grant for study in Riga.  

 Always willing to take risks, and always entertaining, Toutonghi’s stories will surprise you with their love of language and attention to specific detail.

 As Jay Parini (The Last Station, Benjamin’s Crossing, Robert Frost: A Life) has said: “I would recommend this book to anyone. In fact, I already have. These quirky stories are a pleasure to read. One of the strongest first collections I’ve seen.”

 Toutonghi’s work has appeared in numerous periodicals, including the Boston Review, Glimmer Train, the Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Book Magazine. He was the winner of the Zoetrope: All-Story First Annual Short Fiction Competition, and was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2001. He received his MFA from Cornell University.

ISBN 978-1-931982-19-1, trade paper, $14.95

ISBN 978-1-931982-18-4 , library binding, $25.00

Excerpt from the book:

Picasso is in his studio in the Bateau-Lavoir, cooking an omelette on the wood stove.  There are three brown eggs—two centimes each on the street this morning—and a small iron pan, black, with rust on the handle.  The heat from the bulbous stove brings a slash of perspiration to his forehead.  The light slants in through the windows that are high-up, that are high near the top of the wall, broad windows, mouths of light, open.  The omelette is almost cooked; he inhales the musk of the egg. 
    It is 1907, a morning in December, and this is what he is wearing: a broad, palm-wide blue tie, a white shirt with a wrinkled collar, a pair of taupe wool pants with wine-stains along their length.  There are nearly fifty canvasses in his studio.  Most of them face the walls.  He has given up on painting; he sketches instead, tracing the lines of his subject with a Spanish-made charcoal pencil.
    As he finishes cooking, Picasso retrieves a loaf of bread from the top of one of his smaller paintings.  My shelf, he thinks, and opens the bag, brushes away a spider with his thick workman’s hands, rips off half the remaining loaf.  Standing over the stove, he eats the omelette and thinks of the night just past, a long night, and the crooked smile of the whore with whom he’s slept.  He thinks of the way she half-smiled when he left, how she kissed him softly on the left side of his face.