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Introduction: Hi, my name is Roger. I’m an aging, vengeful healer currently stalking my wife whilst befriending the man she had an illegitimate child with. In my spare time, I enjoy long walks through patches of Belladonna and slipping Poison Sumac into disrespectful young children’s salad. I also play golf.

Ideal Novel: Novels in general are a frivolous genre. The majority seem to have been written for bored young women to ruin their minds with during their copious amounts of free time (which they should be using to help their poor old parents with chores), or as long-winded tributes to the authors own meandering thoughts, with the bare bones of a plot concocted in order to hold these rambling discourses together thinly. Of course, there are a very few selection of pieces within the genre of the novel which are nearly “ideal,” comparatively, I suppose. These would be the novels with a real structure to them: a clear plot arch, rich with symbolic – but not sentimental – meaning, and a nice, classic lineup of characters, you know, the villain, the hero or heroine, the wicked witch, those sorts of things.

Sample Blog Entry: Why yes, I would love to read a sample. Of course, keep in mind, writing is the lesser form of communication, but nonetheless, it is a necessary evil in the modern world, where distances between brilliant old colleagues can be so very far, and then writing becomes the only means by which one may communicate one’s latest ruminations… But yes, without further ado:

A Treatise on Vengeance

My esteemed peers in the universities I once frequented often held long and in-depth discourses on the subject of revenge, in all its forms. Those delicate, God-fearing ones among us held fast to their opinions that it was a vile practice, engaged in by men who allowed their baser, animal instincts to overwhelm them. Once upon a time, I agreed with them; nay, I argued forcible in their favor when confronted by our friends of differing views. Many of those friends were men whose depth of belief in the scientific order of the world led them to reject any such high morality; and normally I would have counted myself among that latter group, but for this one subject, the importance of which I simply could not comprehend.

My time in the forests of the world, however, has taught me very much otherwise. In order to prosper, man must take advantage of all that nature has to offer us – in the way of her various botanical bounties, her medicinal teachings, and above all, the tutelage of our wise animal brethren, who live out their simple, complete lives, much more simply than we struggle through our intricately complex daily tasks. Man is indeed the next step up from beast, but we should remember the lessons learned by our lesser kin, while we try to forge our way in the world. The topic of revenge is one such lesson we can learn.

In the distant coastal regions, women and children used to delight in swimming off-shore, because the cuttlefish, or squid in some areas, were bold enough to venture right up to a passing human, recognize us for friends, and swim alongside the Homo sapiens. They were even content to be touched, as many reports tell us.

But one day, man got it into his head to hunt these creatures. It was pitifully easy; they lined themselves up for the nets, thinking they were to receive a friendly pat, when instead they were hoisted from their watery homes, held away from their life-giving waters until they drowned in mid-air, and then taken home by victorious mankind to be boiled and eaten.

The survivors of this catastrophe – those cunning sea-dwellers who had not been ensnared by the nets, whether through an instinctual presentiment of danger or mere chance – did not stomach this insult easily. Indeed, many of them performed vengeance-driven acts of violence: an entire group of the creatures, who are small enough to be harmless on their own, would swarm an unsuspected human (out for his or her usual swim with the critters, not suspecting that the order of things had been disrupted by other animals of the bipedal type) and drag him or her underwater, overwhelming the person by their sheer numbers, and condemning the human to a watery grave.

Some call this the makings of a horror tale; myself, I say it is the natural way of things. If you take advantage of someone just because they may not physically be on par with you, then beware – for they may outmatch you intellectually.

Favorite Theorist: Derrida, because I heartily agree with his general conclusion, and would like to add – I see writing as a poor substitute for personal discussions betwixt two human beings of equal intelligence and wit. I find his texts as well-organized as a piece of writing, being naturally inferior, can possibly be and his conclusions both sound and comprehensible.