Dooling Fiction

This commentary originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal, “A Brush With Death and a First Novel,” by Richard Dooling. I was 34 in July 1988—a lawyer living in St. Louis. I was at my desk, leaning back in my swivel chair, hands folded on top of my head, when I felt a rough spot on my scalp. Probably that old scar I got running under the swing set when I was a kid, I thought. A few days later I was sitting across the table from an oncologist who told my wife, Kristy, and me that I had melanoma of the scalp and an 8% chance of living five years. We had a son and a daughter, both under 2. “Actually it’s probably less than 8%,” the doctor said as he showed me a bar graph from a recent study. “We see satellite lesions, meaning the cancer has probably already spread.” A week later, a surgeon put me under and scalped me. The doctors sent the lesion to three different experts who would get back to us in a few weeks. For almost a month, I woke up every night at 3 a.m. and felt cancer spreading through my […]

Published in the The New Yorker magazine, Richard Dooling’s Bush Pigs is a harrowing tale of reverse culture shock and a cult favorite among expats who wander abroad and are sometimes unprepared for the trauma of returning to the first world. After three years in the bush, a Peace Corps Volunteer is evacuated from war-torn Sierra Leone and sent home to Omaha, Nebraska, where he attempts to celebrate his return in a steak house. What happens next is called reverse culture shock. G.K. Chesterton put it this way: “The whole object of traveling abroad is not to set foot on foreign land; it is to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land when one returns.” By Richard Dooling, author of White Man’s Grave, a novel. Actor Mark Nelson read Bush Pigs live at Symphony Space in New York City for the famous Selected Shorts program. His performance was recorded and played on NPR over the years. You can listen to Mark Nelson’s performance of Richard Dooling’s Bush Pigs by clicking HERE.   Bush Pigs, a short story, by Richard Dooling   Bush Pigs participates in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program.    

What Woolrich lacked in literary prestige he made up for in suspense. Nobody was better at it. He achieved financial success and even fame during his lifetime, but enjoyed neither, living alone or with his ailing mother in a series of decrepit New York City hotel rooms for most of his life.