Books by Paul Quintanilla

These modest lines which I wouldn't dare call poetry for lacking the power of art may at least bring a smile or a new thought into bold momentary relief for being something new, unexpected, though not very deep or certainly profound. My voice may be odd, too and may not harmonize immediately or comfortably with your own inner voice or what you expect or hope for in lines like these. And you may be right! But if there's any worth in these words and if they touch a few hearts and minds and spirits perhaps a certain commonality may have briefly come to life here among us and the foolishness and vanity of wasted time, wasted days pursuing art may not becomemy epitaph.

Most novelists consider the daily routine of a menial job in an office to be too dull and uninteresting to merit the treatment of a full length novel. How can such an unchanging dull monotony hold the reader's attention, they may ask? Though the clashes of the titans at the top have been fully explored often enough. The daily experience, though, of being at work in an office is one of the most common experiences of everyday life. And for that reason merits our attention. What's more, these basic realities should be more openly dealt with. Abuses which are not covered in any union contract occur. Great ambitions flourish. And petty cruelties can abound all within a larger framework of a deep boredom and monotnoy. This is a novel about the simple daily experience of being on the job. Of going to work everyday. A drama which is large enough on its own.

Ernest Hemingway stood out in a significant manner back in the fifties. He had a beard. And he went about flaunting his beard in an "I don't give a damn" manner. We should remember that the fifties were a time of great conformity. Those who flouted society by wearing a beard could be severely punished. Today such a rigid display of personal conformity may seem odd. Few people would care about such facial hair. But that's the way it was back then. This then is a novel about the ridiculous. Through a variety of deviations we, the human race, continue to create a great deal of needless suffering for ourselves. For the same senseless strife in human affairs seems to appear over and over again.