A. Pseudonym

About Me

I am currently of the "frustrated academic" crowd, working not too enthusiastically on political science PhD applications and considering whether I might not be happier in some other field (writing?). I'm from the Midwest, did my M.A. in Canada, and lived in Asia for several years.

I suppose writers need websites. I've just put one up, here:

http://web.mac.com/smittyandsupere/Benjamin_Smith/home.html

It's a blog for now. I (sometimes) publish the same entries on Tumblr:

http://benjaminsmith.tumblr.com

I use "Benjamin Smith" for the strange reason that many of my friends and relatives would be hurt to find me writing anything interesting about sex, God, politics, or "the environment." Benjamin is my middle name.

Why do you write?

I write to fashion my thoughts into something beautiful. Ideas drive me. After that, I love words, for their own sake. In creative writing I know this can be a weakness, as my eye for story and character is often overshadowed by my fascination with "what is being said" and how the author is saying it.

I'm interested in themes like the struggle and promise of personal change, the transformation of interpersonal relationships, the morally complicated diversity of human character, and the contemporary obsession with personal "authenticity."

I have a mind to write in such a way that complex mental processes, usually too quick and complex for us to see, get revealed in new and interesting ways. What is happening, for example, when we feel something like "nostalgia"? What does it look like on the inside when two apparently opposite attitudes or emotions combine? I admire characters, stories, and words that can describe these exceedingly small and complex "points of experience."

On the other hand, I'm also fascinated with epic narratives and the creation of worlds and landscapes with room for a large imagination to get lost. The fantasical, virtuosic sprawl of an Umberto Eco novel, for example, or a good piece of unapologetic science fiction.

Any favorite authors? Books?

I have a deathless man-crush on Cormac McCarthy - undeniably the Platonic ideal. For something completely different I turn to Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco. The Canadian writer David Adams Richards holds a high place in my pantheon, as do his compatriots Margaret Atwood and Margaret Lawrence. Tobias Wolff, Ursula Le Guin, Marilynne Robinson, and Kent Haruf are delightful. Terry Pratchett is a treat. And I'm forever devoted to "classics" like Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche. Also philosophy, especially social philosophy - I've probably spent more time with Jurgen Habermas' god-awful prose than with any of the above.

For good and bad l I grew up on a steady diet of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the King James scriptures, and while I've since moved on from a lot of the ideas, their stories and styles have a deep and continuing influence on my imagination. As a kid I also read a lot of James Michener.