I've been feeling down about literary fiction lately, so I'm glad I checked out an unassuming novel called Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames, a Brooklyn writer who grew up in Buffalo, New York. With a frothy winter beer on its cover and a title that recalls Vincent Gallo, the novel appears on first glance to be about the quirky people of a small cold American city. In fact Buffalo Lockjaw has a different purpose, though its Buffalo charm is a hit as well.
We glimpse the purpose on page 4, when the book's slacker hero reveals that a copy of Assisted Suicide for Dummies is in the back seat of his car. He's returned to Buffalo (from Brooklyn) to spend time with his family and with his mother, whose mind has been completely destroyed by early onset Alzheimer's disease.
-->
read more
Where, and by whom writing was first developed remains unknown, but scholars place the beginning of writing at 6,000