Irwin Lewis 21 min read

A nervous, Latin-quoting stranger walks into a Third Avenue bar with a plan to conquer the city.

A tall, stooped man in tortoise-shell glasses orders root beer, quotes Ovid, and confides an extraordinary scheme to a bemused barfly. Irwin Lewis plays his 1955 invasion story for comedy and character, unspooling in the low afternoon light of Shannon's Bar rather than across any battlefield. The charm is in the telling, an oddball encounter that keeps you guessing how seriously to take its unlikely would-be conqueror. Read it for a light, talky, quintessentially Manhattan take on the alien-among-us tale.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

21 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Leo Summers