510-326-2644
billsnyder@sbcglobal.net
My writing career began with publication of short stories and poems in the Philadelphia literary arts newspaper, The Queen Village Crier. While working as an Information Technology and Business consultant I was published in technology journals and presented at technology conferences. I have edited and been a reader for Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story magazine in San Francisco in addition to teaching English Literature and Composition in various schools in the Philadelphia area.
Read Part One of the Songs of IcarusSynopsis
It is December 1959 when the consonance of conformity begins to morph into the dissonance of dissent. Jim Collins wins the Philadelphia Holiday High School Basketball Tournament for his team with a last second shot. Soon after this moment of triumph, he attempts to intervene as his father beats his mother. Thinking he has killed his father he runs away to Miami. There he meets Marita, a descendant of Antonio Maceo, Cuba's Bronze Titan. Marita is Jim's dreamgirl from "Over the Mountain" - a song that's been in his head from the start of the story. While in Miami Jim is introduced by his friend Nick to the writing of James Joyce, the art of Henri Matisse and the jazz pianist Bill Evans. Having learned that his father is alive and fearful of returning to Philadelphia, Jim takes a basketball scholarship at a New Jersey prep school when Marita leaves Miami to visit Cuba.
Reunited on New Years Eve, Jim and Marita scale the fence of Philadelphia's Rodin Museum to see its doors,"The Gates of Hell", and dance in a snowy blizzard
on Times Square. Marita stuns Jim when she tells him she is returning to Cuba to become part of Castro's all-women Mariana Grajales Platoon. They part, promising each other they will meet again. Jim visits his family and the Barnes Institute's world famous modern art collection before beginning prep school. He fights a racist teammate over Marita and flees. On his way to Cuba he revisits the Barnes Museum for the beauty of Matisse' "Le Danse" and "Le Bonheur de Vivre." Violette Demazia, the Barnes' curator, tells him of the artistic connection between the Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of Cristine de Pizan in medieval France. Jim’s boat to Cuba capsizes and he is rescued by Hemingway’s friend, Santiago, immortalized in “The Old Man and the Sea.” Jim is last seen on the prow of Santiago’s boat remembering the lyric "somewhere beyond the sea somewhere waiting for me" yearning to "fly like Icarus flew with a fire in his heart."