Not too long ago, I was a rather depressing young man. I saw the world as an ugly place, and I saw humanity as a deep and dark cesspool. My novel is a reflection of my perspective as it was years ago. If I have done my job correctly, the tone is marked by sadness…
Writing My Novel: The Importance of Time in Self-Critique
It's been forever since I first started writing my novel. It's been so long that I can't quite remember just when I really started. Do I start counting from the day that I started the screenplay? OrdoI start counting from the day that I even thought about the basic story? According to my blog, I…
Mr. Bickle, Meet Mr. Shiftlet: Disillusionment and Displacement in Flannery O’ Connor
My all-time favorite misanthrope is Travis Bickle, protagonist of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976). One of his most famous lines is, "Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets." Travis Bickle wasn't the first person to find the world to be a "sick, venal" place. Mr Shiftlet, the protagonist…
One Paid Hour
Having too much time on my hands and a need to be fulfilled, I was wandering the streets of Manhattan when I decided that I would do something about my unfulfilled desires... [Originally drafted on 5 April 2012]
The Merits of Hollywood Film in Writing Literary Fiction
I find that most of the great works of literature that are touted by the intellectual elite are often long, arduous books written in language that is either difficult to understand, overly stylistic, orsomehowmaligned by too much literary meddling. I have a deeply-held belief that if a work is not easily accessible to the general…
