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Rails to Light came about as a result of my reading the book Riding the Rails. I was appalled by the teenagers experiences, and I wondered what such experiences would do to an individual. Reading about the teenagers experiences was interesting, and writing about them was exciting and invigorating. I came to know just how dangerous such a way of life was and, even though I saw the romance and the attraction, it was a time in teenagers lives which was subtracted from their childhoods. After they rode the rails, they could never return.

I was inspired to write Song of Fools by an article I read about Oscar Hartzell. As I read about him, I wondered about the motivations of those Iowans, Missourians, Nebraskans, and Kansans who gladly sent him money. I determined that the type of faith that caused them to send him money is also the kind of faith that is found in bedrock religion. It transcends analysis and must simply be accepted, just as those poor Depression-era Americans believed in Oscar Hartzell and the Drake fortune. But what folly to listen to and heed the songs of fools. The other songs are those which Harold sings and directs the other boys to sing. These, too, in a way are songs of fools as we are all caught in this intricate web of life, seeking meaning as we somehow muddle through. May we ultimately discover the true music of life.

When I was a boy in Missouri, I could have visited President Truman as Independence was only a few dozen miles from Utica. Yet the thought never occurred to me. Thus, the tribute is based on what might have been. I have few positive memories of Initiation, however.

There are numerous townsites in western Kansas where people tried to build a settlement. They trusted in the land, in themselves, in their children, and in the future. One of the sites was Cordia.

As a community volunteer for several years, I have come to know many elderly people, to listen to the stories of their lives, and to witness their needs and complaints. Some are no longer with us, of course, but others soldier on, enduring lifes challenges, suffering ungrateful children, and combating an indifferent society. One important discovery I have made is that it is elemental to listen. The listening is the best and most affirmative part of my service to the elderly. Hardly anyone actually cares what they say or what they think. It is necessary that their voices be heard. What I have tried to do in The Dying of the Light is to restore their voices.

Bedtime was special when my children were very young. We enjoyed reading aloud and telling stories to each other. Such times were special, to be savored and treasured; out of those times came The Davey Family Stories. Each is an extension of our family at the time, and each embodies a modicum of truth--the way it was and the way we wanted it to remain. This wish is still true. As with all fiction, this book is a roman a clef, life remembered but couched as fiction. That doesn’t make it any less true; in fact, it may serve to emphasize the truth of being, of existing, of our petty attempts to make a mark on time, an enduring impression which may outlast our lives and memories. At any rate such can I hope.

King John is quite problematic. As the ending is not a satisfying resolution, the audience is left without a sense of completion. It appears everything is left up in the air, unlike the satisfying endings of Lear, Macbeth, or even Hamlet in all of which it is clear that the world will go on despite the tragic events which transpired before. The ending rushes not to closure, as some have suggested, but to another threshold, thus reinforcing the plays overall fluid, mutable temper (Curren-Aquino, 266).

Cymbeline repeats many of Shakespeares plot devices: villainous slander, homicidal jealousy, cross-gender disguise, a deathlike trance, the appearance of Jupiter in a vision, and final repentance, forgiveness, and reunion (Mowat, xiii), all of which result in an improbable story (Mowat, xv). As a romance, the play calls to mind the need for Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief (Biographia Literaria, quoted in Greenblatt, 478). Yet it is still Shakespeare.

I have pondered the contemplative life, wondering how it could be useful or applicable to one in the twenty-first century. Might it be useful—even in this age of high-speed electronics, of smart phones, and Wikipedia—or should it be consigned to the annals of history to days when life was apparently simpler and quotidian challenges easier to resolve? Reduced to its essentials, the life of a recluse or eremite might, after all, prove to be instructive, freeing, and liberating. It might still be generally relevant.

Neither Venus and Adonis nor the Rape of Lucrece is widely read. Both poems were quite popular during Shakespeare’s time, however, and each gives promise of future development of the playwright’s later skills. Still, as the Riverside Shakespeare says, “Venus and Adonis . . . is an Ovidian poem that does not fully succeed” (1798). One might assert this about the Rape of Lucrece also. Still, the Shakespeare scholar can profit from the poetic approach in both.