A Norman Spinrad Page

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This is Norman Spinrad, as our eyes reveal to that that we call our mind while we are looking at the bidimensional reproduction of his face.

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What follows, is the beginning of a document that you may entirely get clicking here.

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Note: This is an autobiographical piece that was commissioned for a reference book. I might turn it into a free- standing book someday.

Copyright 1994 by Gale Research Inc. Right to download granted. All other rights denied.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

by Norman Spinrad

FRAME
Although it presents certain technical difficulties, maybe you shouldn't write an autobiography until you are dead.
The story of a life, even if your own, published for the benefit of readers, becomes, well, a story. And true or not, a good story requires, if not necessarily a traditional beginning, middle and end, then at least certainly some sort of structure leading to a sense of satisfying resolution at the end of the reading experience.
But since I'm 53 years old as I write this, not exactly on the brink of retirement, I can hardly be expected to bring this story to a successful thematic closure in any of the usual manners.
Then too, while "write what you know about" may be the hoariest of literary maxims and autobiography seemingly the ideal exemplar thereof, upon a moment's uncomfortable reflection, maybe not.
Sure, you know the sequence of events better than you know anything else, but it's no easy task to negotiate the treacherous literary waters between the Scylla of the extended brag and the Charybdis of a deadly dull recitation of the complete bibliography and nothing more.
So what I've opted for here is a rather experimental form, itself perhaps a bit of autobiographical characterization, since fairly early on in my career I came to the realization that form should be chosen by the requirements of content. And this particular content certainly seems to call for something rather schizoid--a montage of split points of view, persons, that is, in more than the usual technical sense.
So this autobiography is divided into three clearly-labeled tracks.
"Continuity" is, as Sergeant Friday would have it, just the facts, Ma'am, written in third person as if "Norman Spinrad" were someone other than the author thereof.
"Flashbacks" are little novelistic bits and pieces designed to illumine some of the events of "Continuity" with some more intimate visions of what the character in question was thinking and feeling at the time.
"Frame" is what you are reading now--the author and the subject, the novelist and the literary critic, speaking to you and maybe myself as directly as I can manage under the circumstances, and trying to extract some overall meaning from it all.

CONTINUITY
Norman Spinrad was born in New York City, on September 15, 1940, the son of Morris and Ray Spinrad. Except for a brief period in Kingston, New York, he spent his entire childhood and adolescence residing with his parents and his sister Helene in various locations in the Bronx, where he attended Public School 87, Junior High Schools 113 and 22, and the Bronx High School of Science.
In 1957, he entered the College of the City of New York, from which he graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major.

FLASHBACK
I was a subway commuter as a college student, living in the family apartment in the Bronx, hanging out in Greenwich Village on the weekends.
My father....

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Other Spinrad stuff on the WWW

The official Norman Spinrad Homepage http://julmara.ce.chalm...horlists/Spinrad.Norman

Book Review of The Mind Game

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