THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF CREATIVE WRITING All People BRYCE THOMPSON SPRING 2021 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in Creative Writing with honors in Creative Writing Reviewed and approved* by the following: Thomas Noyes Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing Thesis Supervisor/ Honors Adviser Aimee Pogson Professor of Creative Writing Faculty Reader Craig Warren Professor of English Faculty Reader *Electronic approvals on file i ABSTRACT This thesis is an exploration of the cumulative time spent in Behrend’s creative writing program by creating a story that actively engages in the texts and philosophies introduced within the BFA and my own experiences with art. The thesis also includes a reflective introduction that more directly discusses the writing process and how that theme developed during the writing of the story. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ iii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 Tears in the Rain .......................................................................................................... 24 Chapter 2 She Swallowed Burning Coals ..................................................................................... 40 Chapter 3 A Real Hero .................................................................................................................. 59 Chapter 4 No Love ........................................................................................................................ 79 Chapter 5 Hacker .......................................................................................................................... 93 Chapter 6 Overdrive .................................................................................................................... 105 Chapter 7 I’ve Seen Footage ....................................................................................................... 117 Chapter 8 1:42 ............................................................................................................................. 125 Chapter 9 Miles Wakes up on a Farm ......................................................................................... 148 Chapter 10 Miles Helps on the Farm and Learns about History ................................................. 154 Chapter 11 Miles Helps on the Farm and Learns about History ................................................. 165 Chapter 12 Comfortably Numb .................................................................................................. 173 Chapter 13 Miles Throws his Writing Away .............................................................................. 186 Chapter 14 Miles Creates a Philosophy ...................................................................................... 187 Chapter 15 Miles Writes his First Stories ................................................................................... 190 Chapter 16 Miles Writes his First Poem ..................................................................................... 214 Chapter 17 Goodbye to a World ................................................................................................. 218 Chapter 18 Burying the Dead ..................................................................................................... 224 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 226 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am nothing if not a sponge; the sum of my parts I’ve absorbed from elsewhere. To every teacher I’ve ever had, thank you. 1 INTRODUCTION Truth be told, this is an odd thing for me to write about. I already had the hubris to include a quote from Ezra Pound at the start of my novel, and now I have to present an introduction to myself rather simply letting the work speak for itself like a conceited pseudo- artist. Still, I understand that this novel undertaking was also influenced by research, an aspect to art that I’ll address later in the introduction, so I hope to speak to the creative process that I went through in writing my first novel length story. Now, I’m not sure if this breaks any Schreyer’s code, but I would insist that the story be read before the introduction to experience its plot the way it was intended to be read. Frankly, it’s an experience I never fully had, or could have, since I am the writer, so I hope that you could enjoy that luxury in my place. It was strange to go think about all the sources that influenced me during the writing process and then sort them into a bibliography even though the story directly pays respects to some of its influences. What felt strange to me, though, was thinking of this relationship between myself, my writing, and other art surrounding it as a sequential set of events from past, to present, to future. That’s thinking about it all too linearly. As I write, my story and the stories surrounding it go through my head freely, and they all seem to exist simultaneously. I’ve come to coin this term for myself as Dr. Manhattan Syndrome. For those who are unfamiliar or need a refresher, Dr. Manhattan is a character from Alan Moore’s Watchmen, where the character is essentially omnipotent to the point of experiencing all of time simultaneously, completely void of feeling time pass second by second. Instead, it’s all set out in front of him like reels of film or panels on a comic book. This is the best way I could describe how I think of my stories. It’s not as if I know every word that will be written, or I’m never surprised by new developments in the plot, or that I never 2 change my mind on something I’d previously decided on. I wouldn’t enjoy writing if that were the case. No, for me, most if not all the primary story beats, imagery, characters, etc. are set out before me in my head before I type a letter, and it’s my job to string them all together in a way that is present to read from start to finish. I understand the big ideas, but it’s the necessary little details that allude me more easily. Like a collection of stories waiting on a shelf in thousands of pages, each of those worlds are playing out each part concurrently, it’s only the reader that has to shift through them page by page that determines their chronology. Though I may not be consciously thinking about them at all times, my mind is aware of my story and the stories that influenced it whenever I go through my writing and wonder where everything fits into place. Hence, why I named it Dr. Manhattan Syndrome. It, like many other philosophies in writing, comes with its own set of benefits and hindrances. Like the titular doctor, I always have a big picture in mind, but that can often obscure the little details in front of me, the necessary ones, like how Manhattan casually forgets that people need oxygen to breath when he takes them to see his castle on Mars. This, naturally, caused some problems for me as I went along. A good example of my disillusionment during this way of thinking was during the scene where Miles gives the girl he just kidnapped her new name, Leda. As it is in the story, Miles sees an incomplete and damaged passage from a collection of Greek myths that includes a picture of an innocent girl of the same name. Given his fascination with the antiquated, he decides to give this name to the girl he found since she can’t provide her own from her vocal injury. The story then leaves Miles’ perspective to briefly explain that the full picture in the book would have shown Leda in her most infamous myth, being raped by the hands of Zeus while he’s disguised as a swan. This really played up the generational irony of messages being lost through time and being repurposed for a new age while also offering some metaphorical foreshadowing as to what 3 Leda’s past was. Admittedly, in the first draft, I screwed this up. Originally, Miles would have seen the first picture of a happy looking Leda, give this name to the girl he found, and then would go on to read the full passage that shows the rape painting and tells the rest of the myth. The implications for Miles understanding the full context of the painting are far different and far more insidious for what it implies about his character than it is if he only saw a fragment. The problem was that I knew that Miles, while having plenty of issues, is the farthest thing from a sex pervert, so the implications completely flew under my radar. I knew by the end of the story that the reader would have no evidence of Miles’ actions to think of him in such a light, but my advisor didn’t know that at that point and helped me fix my egregious error. Thanks for that, Tom. This acknowledgment of the fluid borders in a world of creativity is what led to the story to become more of a kunstlerroman, a story about the coming of age for a writer, than I had anticipated when I started, mainly because I hadn’t thought it would be one at all when I started. I had always intended to deal with the juxtaposition of a world filled with endless data about the collective masses, yet still more isolated through the breakdown in communication á la T.S. Elliot’s The Wasteland. Even though I had only read the poem after my first couple of attempts at the story in my own time, it attached itself to