Authors Electric

Ask me what I've been doing lately and chances are I'll rattle off bullet points like a Ted Talker. I recognize that the questioner is only making conversation, but I feel compelled to provide you with at least a semblance of substance - without overdoing it I hope. In turn, I may ask: "How about you? Any pancakes on the griddle?" But what if I respond: "Nothing! Nada! Zilch! Bupkis!"? Honest, perhaps, but sounds rude. A brush off. What a curmudgeon, that Tosi guy, a prima donna ! Worse yet, it comes off as feigned humility. Shrug. Gee. Little me? He's so humble, that Tosi guy.  Still worse: Instead of bullet points, I give you a full accounting, a quarterly report on my works-in-progress, launches and lunches, with recipes.  God forbid, you should think that I am really doing nothing. You should find me out as an idler, a time-waster, an Internet triva-addict, a gamer, a social media gabber.  You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one t...

The Russian, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, has been oft-described as one of the first “psychological novelists”; followed up, some would say, by the 1890 publication of HUNGER by the starving, post-tubercular Norwegian, Knut Hamsun. Tough books, coming from the toughest of experiences/life stories…nothing precious about Dostoyevsky or Hamsun. They both seemed to set down the facts/details of a decade of suffering and survival in a first book: Dostoyevsky in HOUSE OF THE DEAD, Hamsun in HUNGER. But, this done, they would tend to let the imagination and spirit soar in the following books…the facts and details of their histories still embedded there though, felt, sensed, like psychological rock strata, unyielding. D. H. Lawrence, the English miner’s son, took on the “psychological” penetration of that rock strata next, delving deep, fusing the exploration with elements of impassioned drama and story which brought such a potent mix of public acclaim/disapprobation. While, in Cze...