Writing

I used to write a lot in high school and college, but stopped when I discovered Robbe-Grillet, who did just about everything I was trying to do, only much better, as well as things I didn't even think were possible. Only recently have I started to recover from that shock and think about writing again.

Bibliography

Here's my partial bibliography--to be added to as I remember it. I'd like to put electronic versions of the better stories here eventually. If you have any comments on what's here, please send me a note!

Pre-High School

(197?) Poems
(197?) Those Three Days
[doubtless others I can't recall right now]

High School

(1979-80) Freshman year stories: All of these were really bad, so I'm listing them separately.
(1980) Operation Crusader (The Po-em): Uncompleted. The "BPL Rising" poem in "In the Wake of Poseidon" may be from this, and is at least related to it.
(1980?) Hymenoptera: The first major story I wrote on my own. It was a parody of the insect collection assignment we had to do in Sophomore biology. I had classmates read it and write comments on the back of the pages, which kept me going. I think it ended up being around 40 pages long.
(1981) TUL-RoM (The Ultimate Locked-Room Mystery): Written for Sophomore English class.
(1981-2) Summer stories: I wrote a lot of stories summer 1982, so they are listed separately. My goal was to write one story or a part of a story per day, and although I didn't get close, I did write quite a bit, pretty much all of it awful. I suppose it was good practice, though. I've also put the two stories I wrote summer 1981 here.
(1982) Thanksgiving Themesgiving: A one-act play, never completed. Looks like it was an attempt to do a Hofstadter-type dialog.
(1982?) Avec les Bentfin Boomer Garcons sur Petit Vieux Nouveau Orleans a la Station-Servise s'Appelle Desire: A one-page French play, co-written and acted out with Dan Nickolich. The title is a combination of a SF short story called "With the Bentfin Boomer Boys in Little Old New Orleans" and Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire"; the names of the two characters were taken from these as well.
(1982) We have heaven: Satire for English class.
(1983) Tales from Tautological Oceans: Epic for English class.
(1983) Crime and Punishment Essay
(1983) In the Wake of Poseidon: Background and Notes
The first story I wrote in the summer after high school ended. An imitation of Finnegans Wake, except Joyce wrote his story in 18 years and covered all of human history, whereas I wrote mine in one day and covered only my (nonexistent) romantic life during high school. I unearthed this recently (2/95) and was surprised at how well it turned out. I've more recently (7/95) gotten around to making an electronic version.
(1983) Quest for the Applesauce: One page throwaway, written on the back of a placemat at work.
(1983) Indoor Games: Subtitled: an existential soap opera.
(1983) CA: Joint work with Eddy Nickolich. This was a sort of imitation of Ring Lardner's nonsense plays, with all sorts of other stuff stolen and thrown in. We only wrote about 12 pages and never made it to the start of the plot, which was later described in a paragraph of Rush (about the alien creature landing in the ice bin and so forth).
(1982-3) Dan's Birthdayland Adventure: I wrote this for my friend Dan Nickolich's birthday, but after 13 months and 120 pages I had missed two of his birthdays before finally finishing it. The title is a parody a "ME Book" my little sister had received as a birthday present in which they insert your name into some lame story. This story is a mix of all kinds of stuff, most of which is pretty terrible but some of which came out quite well. I may put some better excerpts here some day.

Undergraduate

(1983) Out
(1983) Random Animal Parts
(1983) The House of Convergent Series (math problem sets)
(1984) The Lovecraft (math problem sets)
(1984?) Against Cuteness (essay)
(1984) Rush: A story (sort of) about Rush Week at MIT, written Fall of my Sophomore year. I revised it in 1994, removing most (but not all) of the more dull parts and making a few other modifications.
(1984) (a story so bad I destroyed it and have forgotten the title)
(198?) (pseudorandom cut-up of a passage of a trashy romance titled "Prisoner of Passion")
(1986) In Every Dream Home a Heartache (trilogy)

Simultaneity is Harder than Agreement (ten fables)
Five Lectures on the Theory of Computation
In Every Dream Home a Heartache

Graduate

(19??) [some skits for Japanese class]

Post-College

(1994) Jean(ne) de Berg: A Journey (nonfiction)

An account of how I discovered two novels by Catherine Robbe-Grillet.

(1994) Le cheval (collaborative French poem)
In Progress

(1993-) Now The

(1994-) Cinq nouvelles topologiquement équivalent à une sphère

The idea was to write a single story in French five times, expanding it and making it more complex as my French improved. Unfortunately my French hasn't improved much lately, and only the initial story has been written.

Un des deux trois
Hélène et les garçons [kashou]
[daime mitei]
La passion de Nancy [kashou]
La mort de Cora [kashou]

(1995-) 440 (12 Studies for Now The)

The current plan is as follows. Look here for a little more detail.

277 Indianapolis
293 Cambridge
311 Palo Alto
330 Yokohama
349 Ai ga tarinai -> Atarimae (Japanese dorama)
370 (a story from Cinq Nouvelles (French))
392 This Week's Girl (roller rink, girl in red)
415 (potions)
440 12 Studies for Now The
466 Girls make me happy (Japanese)
494 Tokimeki (Cosmo essay)
523 (synthesis)

(1995-) Party

One short story to be written in 100 different ways, just like Queneau.

(1995-) The Cookie Mail

Cookie Stories added.

(1996-) Pacific Coast Highway

(1996-) Please Happy End

This may be short enough that I'll actually write it. It looks like it should be part of 440, perhaps replacing "This Week's Girl".

Abandoned Stories

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