Mark Gaberman

The Completely Guilty Bystander: a Collection of Casual Observations and One Seriously Dysfunctional Family Mark Gaberman

After reading Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", Robert Louis Stevenson called it "a book which tumbled the world upside down for me." Stevenson died in 1894, so we can only imagine what he might have thought of "The Completely Guilty Bystander". Perhaps after leafing through stories such as "Grace Jones and the Garden of Eden", "Playing Doctor at the Reception" or "Mortal Combat with the Paper Pillow", Mr. Stevenson's view of the world might once again have spun dangerously out of control. Maybe "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" would have mentioned the hidden but surprisingly possible benefits of organized crime to the community. Or the desperate lengths a man will go to in the course of trying to get his phone service re-connected. The world can only be left to wonder if he even would have added a section on anger in everyday life and how it could relate back to TV''s "The Incredible Hulk". Of course, if Robert Louis Stevenson read those stories today, he'd be about 150 years old, so really, that act alone would have been very impressive.