IT’S TOUGH being an artist, of any kind. Struggling to carry through your dream even when the entirety of your life and the world in a conformist machine age is operating against you.

IN new summer fiction, “The Monologue,” Jack Coey examines those struggles– in this case involving a young actor about to audition for a traveling theater company. A lot is on the line for him.

Can you feel his nervousness?

He was twenty-eight years old, and his father was impatient for him to grow up. He didn’t think about it, but there was a lot riding on this audition. He watched a cockroach cross the floor.

****

(Art: “Performance in the Bolshoi Theater” by Mihaly Zichy.)