Lloyd Bowers | Discover Thrilling Stories: Divide the Country, Freedom as Public Utility, The Results of Polar Bear Research & Keep These In the Family

About the Author

Lloyd Bowers was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1952, graduated from Furman University in 1976, and has lived in Charleston, South Carolina since 2002.

The Results of Polar Bear Research is Lloyd's first novel and was published in 2007. Lloyd's next book, Keep These in the Family, is a collection of twelve stories and was published in 2010.

"I grew up in the South," says Lloyd. "The Southern Appalachians is a sort of fixed foot in my life, and the summer-time is a great time to gravitate unpredictably in social settings."

"Freedom is a Public Utility, published 2014, developed from the discovery of a stash of old family letters, dated 1812 to 1857, mailed to my great-great-grandfather John Siegling, who emigrated from Erfurt, Germany, and settled in Charleston in 1820. That he was en route, or 'unterwegs,' for five years impressed me.

"Divide the Country! was published February, 2020. It reflects my concern about the disunity, and even partisan hatred, that plagues the U.S."

Latest Posts

30 Apr 2025

National Divisions: a Brief History

I will state my position at the outset. If the United States has already split apart, why try to hold it together? The divisions have demonstrated plainly irreconcilable differences. The U.S. needs to divide into three new countries. How much violence and intimidation do the citizens need to experience before they deal with the inevitable? Perhaps I can persuade my readers of the urgency of our present situation by offering an historic view of disunity and intimidation.

25 Apr 2025

A Brief History of Suicide Literature

To recap, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides deals with the deaths of five sisters in a family. The novel does not happen in real time—no linear plot nor enduring scenes. All the boys who grew up with the Lisbon sisters remember them into middle-age and mourn their loss, but they filter their mourning through sexual frustrations and a paraphilic kinkiness that still bothers me—voyeuristic and unwholesome. Eugenides is every Feminist's Sigmund Freud.

21 Apr 2025

A Brief History of Horror Movies

I have never cared for horror movies, and just as video shops began to open in force during the 1990s, the temper of horror movies reached a fever pitch. I didn't own a TV at this time, thank God, so I missed most of it, but when I cruised the "Horror Movie" aisle of the neighborhood Blockbuster Video, I could hardly believe my eyes and wondered, "Who in the hell wants to watch this shit?" I was travelling a lot for work and worried that I had to share the highway with the creeps who got off on horror movies.

18 Apr 2025

Helpless

"Ohnmacht" is a scary word in any language. In a military context—like that of the Süddeutsche Zeitung article by that name—Ohnmacht means that the leaders of a city or country look through binoculars at the front positions of the enemy, at the columns of troops arrayed against them, and at the rows of artillery pieces and rocketry to support the troops. The leaders' stomachs turn cold, their scrotums shrink, and they whimper in despair, "We're done! We have to give up."

16 Apr 2025

United States, Inc.

Poetic sentiment has its limits. Most Americans don't read poetry. They have probably never even heard of Henry W. Longfellow. They only hear about this poem in school, where it goes in one ear and out the other. If we want Americans to connect to nationhood, to a "union," to the idea that we share ownership of a nation, and fate has entrusted its welfare to us, then the best approach has to involve money. Corporate ownership of something involves shares of stock, which have monetary value.

14 Apr 2025

"It Has Seven Elements."

My knowledge of the splitting of the atom comes from two sources, The Curve of Binding Energy, published by John McPhee, a staff-writer for the New Yorker, in 1974, and The Griffin, written by a nuclear-physicist Arnold Kramish and published in 1986. I recommend both to my readers.

11 Apr 2025

A Compass and a Map

Steering a ship, flying a plane, or just hiking through the woods requires a compass. The outdoor use of a compass recreationally goes by the name "Orienteering." Steering a nation also requires orienteering, although it requires two compasses, one to navigate the external environment using constitutional coordinates, the other to negotiate the political environment—using any means at our disposal to win elections and stay in office.

08 Apr 2025

Family-life is not a Democracy

I ran into a problem yesterday when I returned to Germany. On my first evening, I wanted to slake my thirst for German beer, big-time! So I ordered a liter-serving right off the bat; but I knew I also wanted some wine and ordered a carafe of it, as well. Shamefully, I have to admit to not finishing either. I slaked my thirst, but had to leave some of it undrunk. I hate wasting anything, but I had work to do and wanted to operate on all my cylinders.

04 Apr 2025

Rolexes and Wealth

I remember the day my eighth-grade teacher arrived at school wearing his new wrist-watch. We saw this guy for the 180 days of the school-year and knew him pretty well--as well as anyone did. We noticed that, among his other mannerisms, he tended to look often at the watch during class. We thought he was keen to know the time on a regular basis. Now, I believe he was just admiring his new watch.

28 Mar 2025

Caviar Gauche

In its obituary for actress Betsy Blair (real name Winifred Boger) a British newspaper wrote that Blair "stayed true to her left-wing ideals." But by her own admission, she self-effacingly described her allegiance as that of a "Gauche Caviar," literally a leftist who eats caviar. Blair said she wanted to join the Communist Party, but the Party said not to, that it gained credibility by her marriage to actor Gene Kelly, at that time one of the highest paid actors in the business.

24 Mar 2025

Whittaker Chambers and the Underground Conspiracy

Whittaker Chambers joined the Communist Party in 1925. His life as a communist started simply, first as a sales manager for the Party newspaper The Daily Worker, then as an occasional writer for the paper, then to more important positions. He survived the first major factional fight and purge at the Daily Worker in 1929, but resigned on his own terms shortly afterward and went to work for The New Masses, the Communist Party's art and literature magazine.

20 Mar 2025

A Retrospective of the Movie Badlands, 1973

Badlands tells the story of a violent man with no conscience committing murders in South Dakota and Montana. So I can't really recommend Badlands, except to say that I liked it. I don't remember when I saw for the first time—perhaps years ago when my alma mater Furman University hosted a relevant film series and showed it then, or perhaps I saw it in conjunction with my literary-criticism course.

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