A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT AUTHORS (AND LOTS OF IMAGES)
By Alex Ness
March 23, 2026
TO MY READERS
I've discovered that my doctors had known way more about my health than were telling me, and only now do I also know that I've had a return of cancer
without questions. It would be true to say I am in remission, but it isn't a hopeful thing. The recent clarity of the situation does explain a great deal of the last 4 years of issues. Prior that, I had a broken neck, messed up shoulders, and that was a lot to deal with. But currently with lymphoma cancer, diabetes type 2, recurrent mono, I wonder how to go forward. I also know,
in the past I was told grave expectations for all the different health
issues, and mostly, rather than killing me, they just suck. I appreciate that they haven't killed me, and perhaps
they won't. However, I sleep little, I'm in near constant pain, and
my desire to write remains great, but my mind isn't always able, as it had
been in the past.
Facing delays, disappointing efforts and lack
of funds, I can't go much further. If you are interested in buying
copies of my work let me know. My facebook offers a look at what I have
available usually, though my books for sale are many, I have to catch up
with other projects before I am done sorting. Currently therefore it'll
be a couple weeks before I begin sharing. My good friends have helped.
My my wife and son have allowed me to endure, and my cousins and besties
are responsible for giving me hope. And I am grateful to all of them.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Reasons I like Hemingway's work? His economy used words to create a canvas of light and shadow, the absence of information becomes as telling as the kind of words create detail. Whatever you choose to see, a subject covered in light casts shadow. Wherever something doesn't become illuminated, is it the narrator's decision to not express, is it a case of not knowing, is it meant to evoke isolation, quiet and absence. I like many authors, I like many genres, and I am aware that some authors, perhaps many, do exactly the opposite than Hemingway, choosing to leave no detail unconsidered. They are each writing, but the finished work is largely different.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
When I learned that Ernest
Hemingway could be said to have written similarly to Robert Heinlein and
Truman Capote, I read all the books I could find of both. Capote is
often judged for his personality, flaws and flashes of brilliance. But
his writing is amazing. I can honestly say, even if I had read Capote in
writing about war or adventure, I suspect it would be a delight. This
is because whereas Hemingway often felt lost and isolated, Capote wrote
about a different isolation, and he fought it by the lives his
characters live. I know people long for
their favorite artists to have the same views on things, to hold the
same morals or outlooks. But in the case of Truman Capote, I just wanted
to see how an outcast who found himself the focus of attention could
respond. His work is beautiful.
FRANZ KAFKA
Kafka writes clearly about subjects that are confused, complicated, and difficult. He uses his voice to describe the emptiness mental illness can feel like. He also offers tools to consider how someone who is lonely, left alone kind of loneliness, or uncomfortable amongst many people. To live in this kind of reality is difficult, painful and hopeless. Kafka often reached into the dark heart of personal despair and gave it clear perceptions. His lucid clarity makes for tales not told for their horror, but can evoke such pain, the reader is left agreeing. Perhaps though, other than to further dig, one is not interested in revisiting those works.
MARY SHELLEY
There is a quality about the writing of Mary Shelley that is new, for its day, and is new in intellectual history. The reason for that is that women were not expected to speak about, if they knew, science, adult themes, and more. Some science minded people will see the Last Man as being written in a casual and less that strictly logical ways. But in her writing, she is less speaking about a pandemic or disaster, but the human impact of disaster. And knowing all of that, I found her level of intelligence to be enormous, with an exquisite command of language, and a greater concern for the human vision of life and death, written in ways that most in the present do not command.
ANTOINE de SAINT-EXPÉRY
The
Little Prince was such a great book that I endeavored to understand it
in the original language, not the translated one, so that my brain could
grow in reading it. Saint-Exupéry is able in novella or short stories
to penetrate my heart and infuse it with hope. More than most anyone
else, he associated hope and ascent to higher realms, with his
optimistic themes, with his deft language use to create something that
appeals to multiple audiences, age ranges, and reasons for reading the
works.
Albert
Camus wasn't telling stories that people had an easy time interpreting
the meaning. He was telling human interactions and choices in the form
of story. He was explaining through them his desire to have humans rise
to a level of being able to hope, be happy and struggle but overcome
fears. For me his writing brought understanding and awareness, and
purpose. We all labor, and all have a task, but however difficult or
constant the struggle is, our purpose is found in how we go about our
life's tasks. He would say, we must find in ourselves the knowledge that
we can be content in our labors, and find happiness in that. It changed
my life, really.
YUKIO MISHIMA
My best friend reads Cormac McCarthy and says it is difficult but worthy of the time spent. McCarthy was seriously talented, but for me it didn't come with a reward for the effort. Mishima is my difficult writer. He constantly told stories that have beauty, but death, isolation, alienation, and sorrow mixed with patriot blood. His personal grief over being closeted in a sexually repressive society, his belief in beauty as a truth, and shedding of blood to atone for acts of violence, led him to a ritual suicide the day he sent off his final manuscript. I can't unread his work, it lingers in the palette.
KAZUO ISHIGURO
I first read Ishiguro when I found a cache of his earlier books at a book outlet for 3 bucks each. I thought to myself, this is kind of an embarrassment of riches. So I tried sharing them since they were so good, different, thoughtful compared to anyone else who wrote novels, in whatever language, or translated. His work, Never Let Me Go was the one book that took me from gee, I like this, to WOW this guy is great. It investigates how we will have to make some decisions as humans if we begin to clone, and asking ourselves, why are some forms of intelligence more important than others. Even by extension, how can we do so much of what we do, if all beings are equal in importance and worth. The answer is highly disturbing.
CLIVE BARKER
While I read Stephen King, and think him a
great writer, he didn't always pull my trigger. I find his work very much
smart and able, but King is nowhere near as interesting as Clive Barker.
The reasons for this comes from original ideas, beautiful darkness, and
characters that bring ruin to the idea that there will be a happy
ending. I never interviewed Barker, never tried to either. But I like
him, his work, and find it a good time to invest in a story. Movies
based on his books are less interesting to me.
STEVE NILES
Since 2003 I began reading the comic book work
of Steve Niles, and I liked it, often the quality of writing was
somewhat harder to appreciate and I know some set it aside by the uneven accompanying art. He did also work with brilliant artists who were
magnificent who worked with him. But in prose, his work was presented
without distraction. From IDW with covers by Ashley Wood, Timothy
Bradstreet, and Ben Templesmith, the horror stories in prose were far
more explicit, graphic and creepy that in comics. That suggests to me,
it is the words of Niles more than the setting, ideas, or collaboration
with artists that bring out the best of his ideas, concepts and
completed stories.
MICKEY SPILLANESpillane himself was quite a character,
having written all sorts of works, pulps, comics, crime novels and even
more. And even being prolific, I loved the power and economy of his
writing. It is crime, but nothing like a real detective no matter how
well he details the investigation. It is a raw, violent and well told
tale, and every work manages to evoke a mystery, without redoubling the
themes and characters time after time.
The power of Spillane is offset in
Collins by attention to fine details, motives more than emotions, in his
historical crime events and Dick Tracy novels. It is less, for me,
about enjoying the author's person, or about being a mystery reader,
over all I am not. But what he does is quite good, and I love Dick
Tracy. I do not mean to demean him or any other of his work, I like what
I like of his works that I like.
AJP TAYLOR
Not even 20 years ago, if you mentioned the name of AJP Taylor it was a declaration of accepting the leadership of one who refused to follow obediently the thoughts of and opinions of others, especially those who built thought. As a professor he had often memorized the entirety of a 3 hour long lecture, and gave numerous long lectures daily and weekly. He was entertaining, that is certain, because he was kept on a television show teaching about the roots of Europe and the UK, without action scenes, without illustrations of note.
More or less, it was one man speaking, well, and amazingly, he took the gathered common view, that war was all Hitler's doing, and made it into a group cluster @#$&&^&. It was easy at the end of WWI to blame Germany, they had lost, and the world, however injured, remained in a shape that could be repaired. Germany lost, so of course, they deserved to be blamed. But it wasn't the same about WWII. Germany was an aggressor. Hitler and his followers and soldiers did evil. But the world had long recognized the stakes required a final accounting, and soon enough, as Taylor points out, all the security promises, treaties, pacts, were worthless, because of the people involved in making the war happen. His mind was without any peer for the depths of it, and while I think there are some approaching his excellence today, he hasn't been bettered. If you want to get the full view with excellent reading of emotional motives, AJPT was the best historian for a century and a half, OR MORE.
I didn't read the main works of Peter
S. Wells for what it was I received from the reading of them. I expected
some insight into advantages of the Barbarians, or hubris of Romans. I
learned that the German leader had lived among the Romans and became a
citizen, was made a military leader of sorts, and had understood the
Romans. And the Germans, actually German Celts, were not a defeated
people. While the Romans had kept them from fully breaking through the
frontiers, Germania burned with an anger towards Rome. Arminius was the
leader who did what must be done to defeat the Romans.
Wells understood
them. Romans were brave, smart, dangerous, organized and had agendas.
The Germans just wanted to do what they do, and everyone else could go
to Hell. Eventually the Romans were drawn into an enormous trap, and
wave after wave of Germans were cut down, but with every wave, some
Romans were wounded and died. The numbers game was one thing, but the
Romans were exhausted, and soon, their military training meant nothing.
They began surrendering. And the Roman leaders committed suicide. Few
survived. And Wells writes about the differences between these people
and what led to the sort of meeting that had been brewing, but no one
likely predicted anything like this successful of an event. Wells speaks
about how the victory also changed later academic views of Barbarians. They'd stunning art and deep culture. They had value more than those who
beat Rome.
These weren't the kids who beat the bullies. They were a mature culture. It had
organization and culture that informed the world how deeply woven they
were as a people. And that cultural unity remains. Wells is a
Archeologist more than a purely trained historian. It informs the reader
that what he finds, is that the world was far more complex in deed and
ongoing borders and diplomacy, than ever before imagined. It is truly
excellent reading.
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