ADDLED ESSENCE The most plausible excuse for a short story collection as varied and scrambled as this one is that it’s a grab bag of oddities that couldn’t be disguised within a sensibly-themed book. But anchored by the longest, Addled Essence, a belated story of two late teen KoreanWar veterans lost within themselves on a varied road trip of self-discovery as told years later in grandfather-hood, it compiles a litany of characters, situations and philosophy that forms an eccentric saga. A few titles from the other thirty-eight stories might produce reader vertigo: Idas’s Journey, Anonymous Anonymity, Matters Most Private, Excess Baggage, Celestial Bar and Grill, All In and Then Some, Brother and Sister Act, Human Factors in Daily Life, Wake the Dead and An Infinite Instant. Birth, Burglary, Childhood, Death, Drugs, Family, Fantasy, Fate, Fear, Humor, Love, Movies, Murder, Parody, Parents, Poker, Police, Politics, Psychoses and Senior-hood soar throughout like birds gone mad on alcohol-laced nut meats. These tales are an acquired taste for those who walk, lope or run on the literary wild side.