THE APOTHEOSIS OF WALTER SMITH: A COLLECTION OF STORIES, VERSE AND ESSAYS

THE APOTHEOSIS OF WALTER SMITH is a collection of short stories, verse and essays that have never before been submitted for publication. In the title story a man in his mid-sixties, the manager of a branch office of an Illinois small loan company, overwhelmed by a mid-life crisis, flees in a panic to Chicago in a cold blustery February twilight. There, on a bridge over the Chicago River, he attempts to examine the past events of his life, and to find some purpose or reason to continue living.
As the existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus observed: "Man has reasons, myths, ideals, miracles.....all manner of means of accomplishing that fatal evasion of reality and betraying life. But nature has consequences. She always has the last word. If time frightens us, this is because it works out the problem and the solution comes afterwards. During every day of an un-illustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live in the future: tomorrow, later on, when you have made your way, you will understand when you are old enough.
Such irrelevancies are wonderful. After all it's only a matter of dying". Yet a day comes when a man notices that the future is now. Then he makes a decision.