WHY A WEBSITE?

Because I, an aspiring author, have been advised by people in the profession of writing that writers today must fill the boundless universe of cyberspace with massive electronic commercials: endless clutters and collections of digital advertisements for ourselves: binary billboards screaming immortal talents, exploits and beauty; cyberscreens of self-promotion to clog the information superhighway, just as the three-dimensional billboards clutter our asphalt interstates, covering the landscape with boundless commercial eyesores and announcements. Eventually everyone will have a website, filling the cyberwaves with tawdry, ego-and-commerce-driven exercises in self-congratulatory, narcissistic solipsism, with little left of the informational/educational domain, as everywhere will be only commercial self-promotion, braggadocio, and empty, self-praising puffery.

But as abhorrent and repellent as this act may be, and even as self-promotion and its aura of endless ego are unnatural and contrary to my nature, I too must compromise, surrender to commercialism, capitulate, indulge this exercise in ego massage and have my own website.

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Included here you will find articles, an editorial, a film review, and an interview I wrote when editing the Grapevine, (March, 1978, to April, 1984), a free weekly newspaper in Fayetteville, Arkansas, as well as song lyrics (“Boogie-Woogie Momma’), because a writer should be capable in many forms and formats, and lastly, my explanation of the unpublished manuscript I have written (“Skin of Wealth.”)

My book manuscript, Skin of Wealth; Class and Complexion Fashions from Pale to Tanned, is explained in the section, “Skin of Wealth.” The last article is my review of the movie, “ET.”

The first article from the Grapevine is an investigative story on the inequitable use of sales-tax exemptions in Arkansas (“Taxing Times for Arkansas”), followed by an editorial on the same subject (“Editorial: One More Special-Interest Exemption”).  Next is an interpretive piece that began as a club review and became a meditation on music and the road (“Zebras on the Pirate Bus”).  Following that is my interview with the Playboy centerfold model for June of 1978 (“In Pursuit of Miss June; Conversation with a Metaphor”)

Finally, while many websites of aspiring authors feature their photograph prominently, I have foregone the practice, so 

WHY ISN’T MY PHOTOGRAPH HERE? OR, Where is the substance of the writing?

Is it in the face of the writer? What does that face tell of the writing? Does it speak to the aptness and facility of expression, complexity and coherence of ideas, range of thoughts, prejudices and position; exactness and wealth of vocabulary, tone and tempo, melody and cadence of voice; accuracy and honesty? Or does it simply tell of  the bend and broadness of nose, pinch of nostril, white of teeth, height of cheek, thick and curl of lip, loom of brow, depth and dark of eye, span of scalp and style of hair, rondure of chin, tone of skin, gender and generation? Only at best it may reveal social, sexual, and intellectual pose and pretensions.

What substance surface?

On the surface of this page is discovered more substance than in any author’s photograph.