Brent Powers

About Me

I'm not very interesting. I'm a retired failure who writes a lot and publishes little. I wrote a novel some years ago which I put out via Xlibris. It is called The Dog's Tooth and, although it has a couple of raves on Amazon, has never been reviewed, and sold maybe a hundred copies. My friends say they like it. The more up front type friends say they don't understand it. Those to whom it should be of great interest, and the community it secretly addresses, have mostly ignored it.

Other writing of mine has appeared in small press and on line zines from time to time, most frequently during the first decade of the 21rst Century. Lately I confine myself to my Blog, Backroom News, and a lot of attention-getting posts on Facebook.

I am old and full of days, hence I have little to lose by what I say.

Why do you write?

The need to be rich and famous and for everyone to love me. This is why my Great Subject is often horny losers who never get laid. I feel that my time will come, hopefully soon enough that I can still taste the fine wine and food, still hear the Opera and Symphony Orchestra from my box seat, still see the Great Sights, touch ... yeah ... touch.

To be completely truthful, I must say I have no idea why I write.

Any favorite authors? Books?

My first inspiration was Henry Miller. After that I read many of the great modernists beginning with Joyce. I love Samuel Beckett, Donald Barthelme, Kafka, Borges, etc. I don't read MFA fiction, in fact very little serious contemporary fiction at all. The newest book I've read is Meg's own Damn Sure Right, which I admire very much (not a plug, Meg, nor even a come on, which is unusual for me).

Others I should mention are William Faulkner, Henry James, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, the Brontes, Rabelais, Oswald Spengler, Gibbon, T. E. Lawrence, Flannery O'Connor, Robinson Jeffers, Dylan Thomas, Hart Crane, Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, James Ellroy, Patricia Highsmith, Dennis Etchison, Peter Straub, earlier Steven King, Cormac McCarthy, The King James Bible , Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, above all Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche, my great teacher and master... The list goes on and on.