about this website
about the books
about the writer

Introduction

to the

Projects

and the

Genres

 

 Preface

When I was young and half-starving for light and life, my writing explored – with intense but short-lived enthusiastic dashes – every path I could find. That’s pretty typical, I guess. And a useful instinct for artists, I think, especially young artists. Settling too soon on a stable sense of self, world, and work, it forecloses adventure, limits one’s horizons. Still, though, exploring in this way, every new piece of work soon got set aside as the next idea, attempt, experiment pushed previous ones farther to the fringes of the studio space.

 

Eventually, without any map, with no broader plan beyond simply struggling forward, working and working, a few experiments (The Where House, Satyricon III, “and shopping”, “New China” etc.) seemed to reach beyond the beautiful shadow-world I felt trapped in, like trees that finally grew beyond the canopy of the dense forest I’d been lost in for so many years.

 

Sometime between 2000 and 2010 these efforts got organized into projects. That become a pattern for my work, most of which now gets arranged into projects. I live in a system of tree-houses built near the tops of those few high-growing trees, all connected by vines and rope bridges. I spend a lot of time perfecting my lonely tree-house village. A few experiments are exceptions to that, as I long to escape these limits too.

 

Because I miss the confusion of those early years on the forest floor when I had no idea what visions might come, what strange flora and fauna I’d find, or what I’d be working on next week. In those days not everything was connected, or the connections were so wild they were out of control, almost unknowable. I want to spend more time trying to regain the confusion and clarity, the visions. But mostly I need to finish the projects listed below. Night’s coming, after all.

 

The list of projects:

 

Satyricon III and The Where House were conceived as sister-books, the former Dionysian and the latter Apollonian. The end of Satyricon III came to me in a vision around 1982. At that time I had no idea what it meant. Figuring out what it meant has been much of my life’s meaning since then. The book was finished between 2014 and 2015. The Where House was sketched out between 2000 and 2012, then set aside, then picked up again in 2024. I’ve hit a stone wall since then. Hard to crack through. Impossible to climb over. The idea of genrelization LINK? developed while working on these two books.

 

Reading for Satyricon III and The Where House is where the idea of genrelization gets worked out in workshop theory. By “workshop theory” I mean a theoretical exploration that’s also an experiment in writing: is it possible to write literary theory in a way that’s human, quotidian, accessible, even playful, enjoyable to read while still being accurate or even acute, and above all useful?

 

The idea of genrelization began, if I remember correctly, with the resume essay. It’s a pretty pedestrian bit of theory by a masters student. After writing it I had to decide: get a PhD? Or try to be the writer I’d dreamed of being since I was 10 years old? While reading Zizek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology I realized I have nothing at all to say as an academic. “Oh that Slavoj!” I thought to myself. He seemed like the kid in middle school who won all the prizes and was adored by all the girls. What hope is there for the rest of us? Plus it’s fun to say out loud. Give it a try: “Oh that Slavoj!”

 

So writing’s the road I took. I see it this way (LINK TO THE BLOG BIT):

 

Breakfast in a strange land has three parts: 1) Momento Phainos, 2) The 7 Hills of Time, and 3) free-standing vignettes.

Momento Phainos is an attempt not to die. The genre it tries to initiate, self-biography, may or may not catch on, but the method and focus – daily life, insignificant events of daily life, 99% of human experience – and the thing it tries to do with that contents, I’m thinking nothing’s been done quite like it before. So there’s that. Oh, and it focuses on the present moment.

 

The 7 Hills of Time focuses on the past and tries to answer the question: “What does history mean to an individual life?” Like Momento Phainos it’s got a phenomenological method to it; the question’s not about truth (whatever that means) but about experience. In fact, the question it asks might be better phrased: “What is the experience of history and how does it overlap, coalesce, shape and receive shape from the experience of a single human life?” LINK TO BLOG BIT.

 

FREE-STANDING VIGNETTES

 

Bootes-Waugh, the light-hearted existentialist was created in response to my friend Mark Williams’ note on Breakfast in a strange land, Momento Phainos. Mark said it has no romance. “Well then let’s romp some sweet romance, by dang!” is my reply. The name “Bootes-Waugh” was originally associated with Breakfast in a strange land when that project was first conceived in summer 2011. At that time it was to be a series of travel articles. So Bootes-Waugh and Breakfast in a strange land grew up together, then separated into two distinct but related projects. The form, tone, and so on of the Bootes-Waugh stories comes from a combination of 3 literary models. I won’t tell you what they are, as some readers may want to guess. If you send me a message with your idea, I’ll tell you whether you’ve guessed correctly or not.

 

Bird and Ocean dot com (this website). My newest project began in the summer of 2024. It tries to genrelize the writer’s website form of text, to dance with artistic schizoidery. I hope it’s a new literary form or genre, one that combines elements of magazine, zine, personal website, traditional writer’s website, performance art, and others.

 

Strange Spectacles is a collection of early stories, the more-or-less best of some early experiments. “and shopping” is in here.

 

The short essays project has a motto: “Bring all of language to all of life”. And vice versa. The first short essay (it’s actually the third, but the first two were too rough to share and I think they’re lost now), “New China”, was begun in 2005 and finished around 2013. Most readers can’t get through part 1, and I understand why, so I usually only share part 2. Part 1 is crucial, though, for the essay’s representation of a personal journey. LINK TO BLOG BIT?

 

Aristotle on Role-playing games. What would Aristotle say about role-playing games as literature (especially Fallout New Vegas, but also games like The Outer Wilds, The Forest, Subnautica and many others.). I’ve sketched out a story titled “A game called ‘Desolation’” which I think would work really well for a Fallout mod. The main point, theoretically, is to explore what elements and patterns make for good RPG mod stories.

 

“Readers are not people.” Audience is understudied, I think, and radically misunderstood (in a positive, creative sense, the way Lacan means “misrecognize”). Our relationship is strange and (for me, anyway) uncomfortable. I want to figure this puzzle out. Treating “readers” and “people” as identical categories seems … paradoxical and full of contradictions. The title’s click-bait, by the way, which I think fits with the project, which is bound to fall flat on its face before standing up and dancing (I hope) like Fred Astaire. Here’s a crux: what’s the logic of treating a subset (readers) like one of its supersets (people)? Would a 3-dimensional Venn diagram be useful here?

 

I’ve agonized over “audience” for half a century. The only thing that’s eased the pain of this headache has been the realization that “readers are not people”. An artist must not treat readers like people. They’re more like a cross between … what? … angels and fictional villains of 18th century stage melodrama? It’s strange talking to you like this. Especially when I’m not talking. But actually I am talking because I often talk while I write. But that’s not really the same thing is it … this monologue has gone on too long and i want to wrap it up.

 

Annie’s Columbine, a kids’ book.

 

Alice in Interwebsland is something i’m trying to make for Bird and Ocean dot com. “Interwebsland” refers to geographical, psychological, sociological, historical webs as well as the internet. All the tangled web we weave. The first try at this genre is here.

 

A “novel” (i call it a sonnet in novel form) written using AI, exploring whether AI is helpful in producing high-quality literary writing. The working title of the piece is And Then Comes Death.

 

Backburner projects:

  • Lumpy and Scraps (a TV series)
  • Roman comedy is ripe for an updated comeback
    • The Manaechmi. Can The Manaechmi be genrelized?
    • Others?
  • Novelistic
    • Minor paradise (make it more roman comedy-ish?)
    • Sun in lockstep, or whatever
  • The Hope Paradox (or Puzzle). A sci-fi thing. Maybe a short story.