Born and raised in the South End of Boston, I lost whatever illusions I may have had about life at a very early age. In order to avoid becoming terminally depressed, I moved out of Boston in 1971, and have traveled extensively since then, finally settling in southwest Virginia. In my writing, I have taken a relentlessly satirical approach to my perceptions, and am furnished with an endless supply of material by the ridiculous universe in which we are all trapped. Since there is clearly neither point nor remedy to any of it, laughter really is the best medicine. Some major influences: Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Omar Khayyam, William Blake, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Joseph Campbell, Bob Dylan, Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Robert Anton Wilson.

Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of Virginia, 1974.