|
My father was murdered when I was seven, and mom began wandering off in an alcoholic daze a few years later. I suppoerted myself with two early morning newspaper routes, burglary, and social security checks, which I signed, and cashed by an elderly Chinese grocer who was my friend, mentor, fence, and surrogate grandfather. I managed to dodge the authorities and graduate from high school. At seventeen, I joined the Marines, which I disliked. Miltary discipline and adherence to authority was difficult for me. After all, I had been on my own since I was eleven and made all of the decisions in my life. When I got out of boot camp, the drill instructor told me I was the first civilian to enter boot camp and graduate from boot camp as a civilian. He said, "You are a lone wolf with no idea what it means to be a Marine." I smiled. "And you think that was a complement." So, I ended up in a small training unit with 140 officers and 120 enlisted men. My duty at the Navel Amphibious Warfare training center was to paint scenic 12 by 60 foot mountains framed from above by blue skies and fluffy white clouds embeded with an atomic bomb mushroom cloud. Every few weeks the amphibious assault demonstration on the mound of dirt at the base of the purple mountains culminated in the thunderous atomic bomb expolsion. This is where I developed my sense of the absurd while watching military officers give a standing ovation to mass destruction.
For this autodidact, the short list of the major literary influences in my life are Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov, Borges, Raymond Chandler, Hammett, Lorca, Marquez, Mayakovsky, Mickey Spillane, Mishima, and Hemingway.
|
Bookmarks
Share
Save
[