Excerpts from A Gospel for James  These segments are from my long (about 120,000 words) fiction manuscript relating to the Gospel tradition.  Novelized gospels have appeared periodically over the past century, each with its own theological positions. My book was written between 1991 and 1993, and is heavily influenced by my critical studies of the Hebrew Bible.  In grounding my work for readers, I point out that the received Gospel tradition is filled with one-liner references to Torah, wisdom, and prophecy.  Indeed, the Gospel of Thomas (a non-Gnostic text in the library discovered at Naj Hammadi, Egypt, in the late 1940s) is an example of a text on Jesus largely fashioned as "wisdom" quotations.  At any rate, my gospel elaborates the story using the canon gospels of Mark and John as key reference points--why I did that is a long story which will be covered in the afterword of the published book. And so, I think of A Gospel for James as a form of criticism more than as fiction, even though it is written to be read as fiction.  Publication will await me having time to push for a reasonable printing and distribution deal. 

Basal Memes, Deep Structure, and Culture  This page begins with a position paper written with Karen Haworth as part of the memetics seminar in which we are engaged this term.  Additional material is being added as is warranted by the discussions in the class.  I have been revising my own positions on the relationships between biology and culture, especially as they relate to human evolution.  The material on this link accomplishes some of the initial explorations of my shifting theories.

Trickster and the Universal Elvis   An original draft of an article written with Robert Philen.  The style of the piece shifts back and forth between narrative and critical voices.  Although the "story" may seem impossibly surreal, we like to stress that all the events noted in the narrative actually occurred.  This article is now printed in The American Journal of Semiotics, Volume 14 (Winter 1997), pp. 79-97., available through the Semiotic Society of America, Linda Rogers, Executive Director, Educational Foundations Department, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242.

Harvest Visit A short story inspired by experiences in Ireland in 1986.  This variation of this story, along with other vignettes placed in "the West," form a work in progress.  The illustration is a drawing by George Dodge made from a slide of St. Brighid's Well in Liscannor, County Clare.