Writings from a Literary Ugly Duckling

The Introduction to Writings from a Literary Ugly Duckling describes the situation of the author Richard Schain (apologies to the memory of Hans Christian Andersen). He is a total isolate as a writer, ignored by critics and public alike. The various reasons for this state of affairs are summarized. Nevertheless, Schain asserts that the situation has benefitted him greatly as a writer and as a human being. Writing for himself has made him into an independent personality, has chiseled out his spirit, and formed his soul, which is the one thing truly worth doing in this increasingly technological and spiritless society. There are eleven essays following the Introduction that represent the range of Schain's philosophical and political interests. (He often rereads his own writings when the mundane nature of his societal life weighs too heavily upon him.) Some of the essays express Schain's intuitions about the reality of the human soul, its metaphysical fate, and its role as the 'workshop' of Divinity. Others are devoted to Jesus the Jew (Yeshua ben Yosef), the never-ending relevance of Friedrich Nietzsche, the single human cause of the tragedy of the American Civil War (Abraham Lincoln), and the necessary future breakup of the global American empire. A final section is a narrative story in verse (Ivan Carter), modeled after Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. It deals with the suppressed but ubiquitous 'erotic impulse' and its effects on conventional social life