Irv Pliskin, Author and WWII POW

IRV PLISKIN

We were sad to lose Irv on October 6, 2009, after many years of enjoying his terrific writing contribution to LSS. He will be missed by all of us here. Feel free to leave a comment in Irv's guestbook.

Here's how Irv described himself:

"I have always wanted to write. I had the bug in High School, way back before the war. I am not sure if this was my own idea or an idea inspired by my older brother’s unsuccessful effort to be a published writer. I thought I could outdo him, so I decided to write. (He was 11 years older than I, and so that kind of sibling rivalry is not usual, I don’t think. Moreover, He never knew specifically about my competitive feeling.)

"I began to write seriously, I thought, in High School, and wrote some poetry and things that got the teacher’s attention if no on else’s. I remember that I even wrote a comic review or the drama club to perform, based on my exposure to burlesque at the time (clandestine, certainly. But I grew up in Flushing in NY City and the burlesque shows were only a five cent subway ride away).

"I was also influenced by vaudeville and the Yiddish theater. (I was at that time fairly literate in Yiddish, I could speak it, read it and even manage to write it. I had been going to a Yiddish School (the famous Workman’s Circle Schools) for years. I am not talented in foreign languages, since I am too lazy to do much of the work on vocabulary and grammar, so I was never as gifted as some of my peers.)

"As a matter of fact, after the war, I was looking for a college where I could learn to write. Silly boy. The college advisor at the Army suggested that Bowdoin (Brunswick, Maine) would be the place. I had never heard of it, but I applied and was accepted to the Junior Ivy League school and went there. I had some small writing experience there with fiction and news material. I edited the college Literary magazine and was published therein.

"After one of my pieces was published, Vance Bourjaily, who had by then had some writing and publishing success said to me, “You’ll never make it. You have nothing to say.” I am afraid I believed him, and so I did nothing for some years. Graduating from college, I got a job as a cub reporter for a New York City newspaper and disliked it. So then, I went into advertising as a copywriter and then as an ad manager (all this in Retail advertising, not Madison Avenue and ad agency stuff). During that period of time I tried some writing. I Wrote some articles, and things of that nature, but no fiction.

"I think I lacked the sitzfleish--the ability to put my behind in a chair and keep it there, and the need to type and retype was not acceptable to me, at that time. The word processor and the way it makes writing easy changed that for me. I would not write as much as I do without the simplicity of the word processor - it covers lots of sins.

"After I founded my Ad agency, I wrote a series of articles for a trade magazine FLOORING on Advertising. These articles were designed to help the carpet retailer maximize his advertising dollars: I think I probably wrote about 20 of them over a number of years. I called the first article A is for Advertising. Do you think that Sue Grafton got the idea for her powerful series from that, I wonder?

"I think it is noteworthy to indicate that during my entire career years I was reading. I don’t know how many books I may have read in my lifetime: but there was a time, when I commuted to New York City from South Jersey by bus. On those commutes, I read three or four books a week. I did that for seven years: I have always been an omnivorous reader.

HERE'S WHAT IRV SAID ABOUT HIS FAVORITE THINGS

Music:

"Since I am an old guy, I go for the old music of the thirties and the forties, in terms of popular music. Sinatra is a favorite, and since we have a DJ who plays a lot of old blue eyes, I listen to it a lot. I am a devotee of Stephen Sondheim, and that sort of intellectual theatrical compositions. Of course, I like Rogers & Hammerstein, who wouldn’t, and some of the other musical experts. I am especially enthralled by the Yip Harburg’s lyrics. And although the now quite well known guitarist, ‘Doctor Luke,’ of SNL is my niece's son, I don’t understand his music or the music of the kids today at all. Incidentally, I may have seen or met Luke once or twice, he wouldn’t know me if he fell over me. I have been exposed to my share of classical music. My wife and I held ‘season’ tickets to the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra for over 35 years. We went with dear friends, but when those friends died a few years ago, we have been unable to bring ourselves to go to the Kimmel for concerts. So, I would guess one would say that my musical tastes are pretty much eclectic. What I have no interest in whatsoever is opera. Most opera leaves me pretty cold, and I think the composers belong with Salome, heads on a plate."

Books:

"It is hard for me to isolate the books I favor. I have read and reread Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn...repeatedly. I have even managed to read Ulysses--but I am not smart enough for Finnegan’s Wake. My favorite authors these days are WEB Griffin, whom I read and reread, Robert B Parker, Both of the Kimmelmans, Tony Hillerman, Sue Grafton, J D Rowling, my dear, personal friend Bill Hallahan, who is very good but lacks the public acclaim he deserves, Ed McBain; I read and enjoy Sara Paretsky and Lisa Scotoline, and others whose names do not come readily to mind. As I grow older my reading has been curtailed, and so I no longer devour books as I used to. I get a lot of them on tape though, and enjoy those a lot. When I drive somewhere, listening to books on tape is a great way to spend my time."

Movies:

"Like many of my generation, I believe that Casablanca is one of the great entertainments of all time. I can't recite it by heart, as some people can, but I love it. I am also thrilled when I can see The Wizard of Oz. I think Judy is wonderful, and the lyrics...ah the lyrics, lovely. One of my favorite movies is the Spencer Tracy classic: Bad Day at Black Rock. War movies are painful for me, but I still like Twelve O'clock High. I thought Private Ryan was great, as was Von Ryan’s Express with Frank Sinatra. I thought the Guns of Navarone and Force 10 from Navarone are worth watching again and again. They were making The Godfather when I worked in NY and I watched them convert Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street for the movie. (I worked on Madison and 32nd, so I could see the transformation of the area.) Of course, it, too, is one of the great movies. So are some of the musicals: Singing in the Rain, Meet me in St. Louis and A Star is Born. No doubt if I thought long and hard, I could come up with a lot more like On The Town, West Side Story and the Harry Potter films."

TV Shows:

Number one on my list of TV shows is, of course, MASH. I prefer those done after McLean Stevenson left the cast. Also on my list of favorites are Jag and Cagney and Lacy. Like everyone in America today I watch TV. Not many shows at the moment, except Jeopardy, get my attention. As did NYPD Blue and some of the Law and Order episodes. I don’t have HBO so I haven’t seen Sex in the City or those shows. And I can make no comment about them. "

Theater:

"I have gone to a lot of Theater in my life. I started with the famous Yiddish theater on the east side of NY, and at that time, I even could understand the language. (I don’t do that very well anymore). I saw the famous Orson Welles performance of Julius Caesar, and can still remember the stark stage and the actors in Nazi black shirts. I was a New Yorker then, so I saw the original Oklahoma and all of the others from that point on: Carousel, King and I, South Pacific, even Flower Drum Song. I’ve seen most of the Sondheim plays, and an awful lot in between. My favorite shows include My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, Most Happy Fella, Fiorello, The Rothchilds (which I loved) Annie, and of course Les Mis, and Phantom. I was almost destroyed by Cabaret, which I first saw in London. We go to the theater here in Philadelphia often. We probably see ten to twelve shows a year."

IRV'S PUBLISHED WORK:

Irv, said, "Once I got a word processor, and then a computer, I began to write and I wrote short stories. Generally flash fiction. I discovered that genre about 7 or 8 years ago, and I was fortunate to be able to become a part of Pam Casto’s flash fiction list and her FlashXer list. I have been the moderator of her FlashXer list for the past three years, by the way. Once I became a member of those lists, I decided to write, if I could, to every prompt on FlashXer. And I did, for some time.

"That meant three stories a week there, and it also meant three or four stories a month for the Flash Fiction list as well as crits for both lists. I maintained this pace for some time, and then got involved with KEEPITCOMING.NET--which I thought was a splendid Idea. That involvement required the writer to provide three chapters in an ongoing ‘soap opera’ type story a week. The idea was that the stories would be sold and the writer get a portion of the revenue. I had an ongoing mystery/police procedural piece called THE HYDE PARK ADVENTURE...My serial killer was pursued by the police with diligence, and it went on for about l60 episodes.

"Each episode was at least l000 words, so it was a lot of writing. Unfortunately, after a while I had no readers, and I stopped writing for it. Also unfortunately, the website bit the dust, she couldn’t make it work. I think it is a good idea, I think it could have done well, but she failed to learn a basic rule of business: concentrate on one thing at a time. She had too many balls in the air, and they all fell to the floor. There is no link to the site, sadly the site does not even come up on Google.

"I have had stories published in Mindprints and a defunct print magazine called Aggrapina.

"I have been published in DR--the magazine of the National Organization of Aerial Observers.

"I recently had two stories in Apollo’s Lyre.

The Turnpike Olympics

The Driving Lesson

"And of course, there is the work that I have had published here at Long Story Short.

"I have also had three or four l00 worders on Flashshot.

"As president and editor of the NJ chapter of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, I prepare and publish a newsletter three times a year."