My Literary Autobiography

I can remember being interested about reading at a very early age. I do not remember the exact motivation that drove me to invest my treasured free time into learning to read, but I do remember being especially proud of the fact that I could. While perhaps most children began to read and write in kindergarten, I was learning years earlier. Maybe the desire was no more complex that an insatiable curiosity, a compulsion to do what I couldn't, or merely a need for self-sufficience. Something in me, though, could not stand being read to night after night and having those complex symbols elude my comprehension.

I suppose to make my own troubled, antagonistic, hell-raising self into a worthy pupil of my mother's—for it was she who remained at home, while my father worked—it must have been my own insistence. What would have made her think I was ready to read before any other child?

But I was, and I did. Of course there was nothing complex or grandiose about a child learning to read at that age, nor anything particularly special—but in the self-revolving world of child-logic and self-importance, it was crucial to my social and self-worth that I learned how to read before all those other kids.

Writing, however, proved ever more elusive. I feel that this problem was of a dual nature. At a young age I was very creative, yet how expressive was writing lower case alphabets between solid and dotted lines time after time, eternal minute-hour after minute. Second, my actual writing skills—literally—were poor. I was never a neat writer, and it seemed as if I could not be. Perhaps this reflected the partial boredom aforementioned, but maybe it just was not meant for me. Even back then in the wonderful Oz-like quality of the Apple IIGS, I dreamed of the "you talk, it types."

* * *

As I child, I often rode my bicycle to the public library, eating up whatever books caught my fancy. Whether the feast was Dr. Seuss or Curious George or the later fascination with sports and history or ultimately a transition to fantasy and science fiction novels, I was there. From an early age I obtained my own library card and used it well. It was always the fantastical that intrigued me: never the norm. Dickens, Sir Conan Doyle, and other classics were unfortunately too mundane for my tastes.

The only sidestep in this fantastical voyage was that first of cleverness and goodness, in the Hardy Boys books I so relished, later to be replaced by overwhelming humor. If only I could remember his name. He was a Canadian author, commissioned to write a novel for a high school class. It was so good, the teacher helped him get it published. His heroes were always the brilliant but miscreant adolescents, not unlike Val Kilmer's character in the movie Real Genius. Perhaps something in me identified with those characters, something which desired to escape the normative stricture that most students were chained to; or maybe it was the stifling methodology of elementary pedagogy from which I needed to escape.

Although, in time, my interests returned to the dreaming and I read an assortment of fantasy and sci-fi books (somehow, even eluding the more literary Tolkien along the way), finding my own niche at the library. More often than not, my choices were made by which cover looked neat in association with a good back cover description. In one way or another, I was searching for another reality, for something extraordinary.

During this period evolving readership, I still did not relish writing, weighed down by the Albatross of my poor handwriting. Unfortunately, I associated the very instance of writing, with the role of actually writing, and was negatively reinforced by scoring my lowest marks in that subject. My only linguistic redemption was my adeptness at spelling. This landed me in more than one school spelling bee. But I suspect this had more to do with a good memory than anything else. Either way, it seemed as if the pride that accompanied my good marks was an effort to overshadow the lack of proficiency at writing.

It was the glory of seventh grade, finally, where we were given the option of print or cursive. Despite my continuing inadequacy, there was a sigh of relief as I could at least return to the simplicity of print. And having been educated in this regard, we were no longer solely measured by writing alone a grade basis.

* * *

Seventh grade also brought something else magical. For the first time, it enabled me to mix my interest in reading with writing; I was given an opportunity to take something exciting and work with it. My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Early, had us read a set of Arthurian tales. These were wonderful; there was a mix of magic and fantasy, with nobility, intrigue, and romance; heroism walked alongside betrayal and anything seemed possible. It was all exciting to the creative self that I did not yet fully understand.

Mrs. Early asked us to write our own Arthurian tale. And so I did. It was long—it was excessively long. Written about the pure chair of the Round Table, of which only the purest soul could sit in. None dared, not even Galahad, for they feared the death that would accompany failure. No one except for my knight. Yet through tragic circumstances, he was brought to do wrong the night before his attempt. Fearing to lose face, he sat; he died. Perhaps I did too well. Instead of being pleased with an excellent story, the grade became a node of justification. For the boy who sat next to me, getting As was like a heroin fix, and his arrogance irked us all. He only received an A+ on his story. I, on the other hand, received an A¹⁰. How could you beat that? That day was my V-day against his snobbery. Yet because of the glory of the battle, it became just that: a battle won, an exercise ventured. The lesson to learn, that writing could be made fun, eluded me.

So, I did not know that I really wanted to be a writer until ninth grade: Mrs. Nash’s English class. Our assignment was to cut two pictures out of a magazine, book, or newspaper. We were to describe these people: who they were, what they did, what foods they liked, and who their friends were. I selected a cool looking picture of the long-haired Jake E. Lee, former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne (then in a group called Badlands), and a beautiful woman from an advertisement which has long since slipped my memory. He became my protagonist, she the antagonist. He was a buyer and seller, a man who worked for himself, marketing rare or valuable items at better prices than he paid. He had an entourage working with him and made quite a healthy living. She was an evil love interest. She was the woman who fell in love with him, but then was scorned, and came back with a vengeance. Looking back, I know it was nothing new, but interesting nonetheless in the context that I had never so much as come close to a relationship with (or even kissed) a girl at that time. It seemed odd that I would then choose such a story. A reflection of culture I suppose. Yet, those characters became the formation for a set of short stories, which I embarked on, and for the first time, on my own initiative. These characters even made a comeback my freshman year of college in a short story, that continued their story. It was this ninth grade experience, though, that was truly the beginning of who I am now as a writer. This was the formative experience that made me truly realize I could not only absorb such ideas and thoughts, but create them.

* * *

When I began to write stories, I think I stopped working on reading so much. Not that I ever stopped completely. I suppose this could be also attributed to an increase in schoolwork. But reading became more something that I did on vacations, weekends, or summers.

It was as a sophomore and a junior in high school that another thread popped into my head. I knew then, that I was "obviously" ready to write a novel. I had written six whole short stories other than school assignments. I wish I could say it was justified precociousness, but I fear it was more the arrogance of youth. No doubt also lurking in my subconscious is a leftover resentment derived from what I was working on then, which I was told was unfeasible.

The plot was a complex array of events built around simple constructs. The president was kidnapped from his Camp David retreat and somehow the kidnappers had spies in the FBI, CIA, and armed forces, so they could not use any of those people to save him (all is explained by the end of the novel). The vice-president manages to get the head of the CIA and the FBI to Camp David, to coordinate with the Secret Service there to find a solution. They call in a bounty hunter: Denton Pace. This plucky rogue starts his mission with a blank check. He follows red-herrings in Turkey, returns to Virginia, and is joined in the rescue by an amiable thief, who ends up helping Denton, and everyone ends up safe and happy.

I was told the story was not plausible. Nobody could kidnap the president without the entire government or media knowing. Bounty hunters? Thieves? All thought ridiculous. Less than a year after finishing this novel, the world had the scare of Russian President Boris Yeltsin disappearing; pictures to prove his good health in May were determined to be the same ones that were shown in March; he could have been missing the whole span. Another few years, and the movie, Air Force One came out, where the president’s plane was hijacked. Rolling Stone, 1997, featured a cover article on modern day bounty hunters. And for the coup de grace, Marvel Comics came out with an amiable thief turned hero who became one of their most popular characters. Unplausible, hunh? It was all vindicating.

I just wish it had been good enough, or had had the kinks picked out of the story. Besides just poor, inexperienced writing, there were lots of factual errors that derailed the effort: for example, I had no Marines at Camp David, only secret service. Nonetheless, I wish I could have put the story out sooner, seeing as how popular some of its ideas became. Yet I suppose it does teach a lesson about the timeliness and the precipitousness of writing. Novel ideas are only novel so long; eventually, someone else will think of it. Regardless, I knew I was creative enough. I just had to figure out how to be a better writer.

* * *

Between the end of my senior year in high school and my freshman year of college, the worlds of writing and reading crashed in such a way, that only now am I fully realizing the impact. During that time, the unmitigated disaster that was to be my second novel was created. I had been intrigued at that time by intra-system science fiction: the exploration of our own solar system. Thus, my Martian Colonies were created. This time, I spent quite a lot of time researching how a colony could feasibly be posted in the next several decades and what it would be like. That part of my project I am still okay with. Yet the writing itself proved problematic.

It was written sporadically, basically as schoolwork allowed. Unfortunately, I made the huge mistake of constantly going back and re-reading and editing what I’d already done. This prevented me from simply surging forward. I still vomit when I read this unfinished work. The ideas change, the style changes, and the tempo changes: and it’s all still crap. It was a much more ambitious work than my previous novel in many ways; the full length of my first work was encompassed in the one-third I finished of the second novel. Yet the writing, simply put, was horrible. There were bright moments, but that was it.

What I realize now, is that I was unprepared to go any further as a writer. My scholastic background was so meager, it was beginning to show. I didn’t have any sense as to how to use a colon or a semi-colon, and there were just too many clichés, as well as the old cliché of telling and not showing.

I did work on several short stories between the novels, and during the second, which didn’t turn out too bad. I also spent time writing lyrics for the band I was in. (Probably one in every ten was good. Not a bad average considering how many I wrote.) So as a writer, I wrote for fiction workshops, delving into short stories; as a reader, I read what I was told to in class. As a student, I drank and partied, and looked somewhere for sex. But at that point, I was stagnant, floundering, waiting for the great world-shattering novel to materialize. Yet how could I be ready for that yet when I had so much growing up to do?

* * *

It was in my junior year in college that much of that growing up took place. I suppose the prequel to that growth came during my sophomore year. I took a class on Contemporary British and American literature in the fall semester. It wasn’t so much that this course changed me, but it got me ready for change. Reading William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway presented me two very different styles of writing. The stream of consciousness, the time slips, colons and semi-colons—at the time, much of it went over my head, but then again, when we compared those works to Hemingway or other writers, it just seemed confusing.

It seems that one of the tragedies in college is that we really only have time to read things once. Time constraints upon ourselves rarely allow an entire novel to be read multiple times, yet that sometimes is the only way to really get everything (or perhaps simply more) out of a work. I was fortunate to later take an entire class on Faulkner. Not only did this let me read The Sound and the Fury again, but it changed everything.

The teacher of that class, Professor Pindell, is to this day a model of teaching for me. He came across as a brilliant man, with stores of knowledge to share, but always in a comfortable, relaxed manner; he never appeared arrogant or overbearing for all he knew. I never felt that his knowledge was forcefed. I wanted to go to his class. Yet it was not only that; his excellence illuminated Faulkner’s genius. No other single writer has ever latched onto me in the same way, taking grasp of everything I hold dear and both turning it upside down and bonding to me as if we were lovers always destined for each other.

Faulkner’s freedom of style and grace of wit, tearing, searching, for one true thing burrowed into my brain and I found the missing inspiration for which I had been searching. This was what had made me incomplete. But at this point, I had it.

I say that this was all the prequel to who I became as a writer because it was what has most impacted my style: but as of then I had no purpose. Two coinciding classes a year later broke through my mind and awoke me from my dogmatic slumber. I was always uneasy about my natural conservatism and something pragmatic seemed to want to punch through my acceptance of the world as it was presented to me. Spring of my junior year I took two life-changing classes. One was an English class, taught by Professor Spanos, about the American Novel on the Frontier: an examination of works that both depicted that frontier and decried the monumentalization of the things that we now take for granted, undermining the assumptions that govern our upbringing. I fell asleep in most of the classes and missed another bunch more, but looking back at my notes, I am amazed at the amount of knowledge that I transcribed from the Professor’s head to mine. It makes me despair at how much more I could have learned. The other class that was pivotal for me was a philosophy class taught by a graduate student, Ms. Hadjikhani: Philosophy and Public Policy. We focused on American drug policy. We studied government articles and reports, dissident essays, the classic philosophers that many policies were based on, and everything in-between. It was an educated class, which presented different sides of the issues and different students came out with different conclusions. However, the stress of the class was to question what we read. Not to question it as if it was wrong, but to question it to see if it was or was not. We did not just study what Kant said and revere it, we studied him and looked for both flaws and strengths: not being intimidated by his stature, but not disrespecting it either.

That class taught me the method to critically think. I found what could be methods of control and manipulation in several structures: I was opened to a new pragmatic cynicism. Perhaps I found myself in a similar social situation as Dickens. He was living in probably the most advanced civilization of his time, yet by the mid to the end of his career, he wrote stinging social criticisms. That is where I also stand. I live in a magnificent country with wonderful opportunities for its people, but I still see problems that I feel the need to address. My job has never been to stand in line at demonstrations or to organize petitions. I see now that I am not the participant: I am the instigator. I am the author who gets the ball rolling. Just as I have my literature idol of Faulkner, I dream of the social impact of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle. Lofty goals, but if I can come anywhere near them, I will feel accomplished. I feel I have created a style of my own and have set my eyes on several issues. While most literary scholars, as well as writers, will tell you that writing is not a linear process, we do not necessarily get better with each work, I hope to continue an overall trend of maturity and precision, aiming all the time for the best I can be.

* * *

Graduate work has introduced a new phase to my literacy as a reader and a writer. I was forced first semester to read a lot of things that I hadn’t been exposed to and I perhaps didn’t want to be. Nonetheless it was educational, if not difficult. Perhaps more telling was the ability to construct longer papers. During that particular philosophy class I loved, I had written a paper over twenty pages. But for the most part, this semester introduced me into a new level of writing. I had to write a convincing enough paper to convey the theme of the entire class and have it still concise, rhetorically effective, and well-written. I had mixed successes, but the push upon me was learning for itself.

The second and third semesters contained even more challenges. I’m now taking both Dickens and a Medieval Women in Society class. One lets me get another crack at classics I’ve been waiting to re-read or read for the first time, the other presents me with yet another way to examine a subject. I’m pushing my knowledge base and widening the angles with which I look at things. This summer I’m looking forward to Shakespeare again, as well as 19th century writers, many whom I’ve wished I’ve had time to get at for awhile now. Maybe most importantly, I’m in a writing workshop that lets me work on my new novel, the one that is the culmination of all my dreams, hopes, skills, and knowledge; the work that will let me know if I am all bluster, dreams, and delusions of grandeur, or the real thing.

Ethnographic Supplement

I grew up in a white house with black shutters in a middle-class suburb around a fairly affluent middle-sized city; we had a brown picket fence. My parents had a boy and a girl, two cars going on three and a boat. We all had bicycles and childhood playgrounds. This is the environment in which I learned to read.

With nothing better to do on certain weekends or after school days, I would ride my bicycle the two or three miles down Main Street to make the trip to the public library. I even had my own library card. There was a time when I would have had my mother drive me, and used her card, but I was getting older; I wanted my own independence.

Even as I stagnated my reading and writing in high school, I was too concerned with who I was picking up on my way to school—packing friends in the small white Pontiac Sunbird or piling them in the full sized Chevy van—and who I was taking home, and what I was doing afterwards. In those years I avoided reading and writing for different reasons. My junior year was a time of intense study and preparation for college; these were the grades that counted. I had no time for it. Senior year was a relaxing, study-hall filled, card-playing, play-time, when I got all of my work done in school, and refused to take any home. Why would I do work when I could be hanging out with friends every day after school, playing ping-pong, basketball, baseball, or whatever.

In college, I was also fortunate enough not to really need to work. Or at least, so I thought. But instead of spending extra time on reading and writing, I played video games and got drunk. Even when my monetary funds expired half way through my junior year and I was forced to get a job, I was so tired from the day to day operations, that all I wanted to do was spend any free time playing, not working—even if the work was for myself.

Maybe only now that I am almost done with college and I can look back at my life with greater maturation and introspection, I can see how fortunate I have been. I grew up in a good neighborhood, with good parents who have always supported me emotionally and economically. My problems with the law and the opposite sex have been small enough to keep life from being derailed, but still enough to keep me humble. Compared to many people I’ve met, I have had it easy. Maybe until now, I never saw the privilege that reading and writing was and never really appreciated the opportunities that I have had and will continue to have.