About Me

 I read Call of the Wild (Jack London) as a kid because my local librarian considered it a "good book for boys." To her, the themes of  freedom, harsh reality, and a call to adventure did not seem too much for a boy of eleven or twelve. She knew that boys were drawn to things she was not. She didn't try to make boys into something other than what they were by offering pablum that guided them to be gentler and more feminine. She knew that some fiction, some writers, could reach a place deep inside a boy where she could never go. Still, she was wise enough to show me the path. I would go on to read Hemingway, Faulkner, Larry McMurtry, Graham Greene,  Somerset Maugham, and Raymond Chandler, all of whom knew how to write books men could read without feeling ashamed to be men, or apologizing for it. I may fall short, but I hope to write like that, so men might read fiction again.