Pinball Wizard Michael D. Meloan Author

Michael D. Meloan's new novella PINBALL WIZARD is a story of love, sex, jets, and Bukowski. Ralph is buffeted between a controlling father, international intrigue in the US defense industry, and a friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski. A wild g... Read more

Michael D. Meloan's new novella PINBALL WIZARD is a story of love, sex, jets, and Bukowski. Ralph is buffeted between a controlling father, international intrigue in the US defense industry, and a friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski. A wild girlfriend also ratchets-up the action.Are you the Pinball Wizard or the pinball? asks Ralph's manager inside a nuclear hardened bunker in England. That is the question driving Michael D. Meloan's new novella—a story of love, sex, jets, and Bukowski.Lights flash and bells ring as Ralph is buffeted between a controlling father, international intrigue in the US defense industry, and a friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski. A wild girlfriend also ratchets-up the action.But in the end, it is Ralph's turn at the controls.My mailbox contained a surprise a week or so ago: PINBALL WIZARD, a novella by Michael Meloan. It is one of the most satisfying reading experiences I've had in recent years, in part because it handles a famous writer (Charles Bukowski) as one of its main characters with nonchalant deftness. Meloan's slightly picaresque story is hard to classify, which is one of the things that makes it such a pleasure to read. He has a gift for writing unapologetically masculine prose; it's flavorful without being exotic, and it doesn't hurt that he has a fine ear for dialogue.—Bill Mohr, writer, critic, and English Literature Professor at California State University, Long BeachNo one creates a sense of mood and place quite like Meloan. He's staked out his own turf.—Joe Frank, Peabody Award winning NPR monologue artistFiction. Less