I am a ghost writer.
In life, I was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Hudson University. I was a distinguished feminist scholar who illuminated the female experience through erudite interpretations of classic English literary texts and with literate mystery novels written under the name Miranda Castle.
Using chloroform, I committed suicide in my New York City apartment at age 66. I had long held the determination to commit suicide before 70 since my motto was "quit while you're ahead." Like the Epicureans, death had no meaning for me. I was a confirmed atheist. I left no instructions for my memorial, or about what to do with my body: “You can flush my ashes down the toilet, for all I care,” I said.
Little did I know there really is an afterlife!
I am best known as the author of nine scholarly books including Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, Reinventing Womanhood, and Writing a Woman's Life—plus scores of articles interpreting women's literature from a feminist perspective.
My novels are ostensibly murder mysteries whose amateur sleuth sometimes seeks clues in literary texts and a killer's motives in academic politics. My novels offer scathing depictions of academic backbiting, observations on Ivy League social pretensions, and thinly veiled, unflattering, portraits of male Hudson University professors.
In life, some critics complained that satiric wit and clever talk filled half my novels before the victim fell dead and that some of it sounded like an imitation of Jonathan Swift or Charlotte Perkins Gilman. But my readers took it all in good fun, and some compared my work to the cerebral puzzles of Carolyn Heilbrun and Raymond Queneau.
Fiercely and playfully, often at the same time, I used fiction to challenge the basic precepts of the Catholic Church and the world-wide patriarchy.
I think that the future offered to us by the world-wide patriarchy, especially by current technology—and by the politics represented, for example, by President Hump—makes it very obvious that the patriarchal future has no future—it’s dead. The patriarchal future is a repetition of the same bunk.
I look forward to a Future that is rooted in a deep sense behind patriarchy, earlier than patriarchy. This "Archaic Future" is the possible future that is rooted in that which existed before patriarchy. I’m talking about a woman-centered, life-centered society in which you don’t have the horrible oppressiveness and hierarchies that characterize the world-wide patriarchy.
I define patriarchy as "a society manufactured and controlled by males. The Fatherland. A society in which every legitimate institution is entirely in the hands of males and a few selected henchwomen. A society that is characterized by oppression, repression, depression, narcissism, cruelty, racism, classism, ageism, speciesism, objectification, sadomasochism, necrophilia, and the rest—a joyless society ruled by the Godfather, the Son, and the Wholly Ghost; a society fixated on proliferation, purgation, and perversion—bent on the destruction of all life.
So, come! enjoy! laugh! Read my fractured fairy tales!
I lurk behind them waiting for you!
Open Access Policy
You are free to share, copy, or redistribute the materials in this text in any medium or format. You are free to adapt, reuse, modify, transform, or build upon the materials in this text for any purpose whatsoever.
In life, I was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Hudson University. I was a distinguished feminist scholar who illuminated the female experience through erudite interpretations of classic English literary texts and with literate mystery novels written under the name Miranda Castle.
Using chloroform, I committed suicide in my New York City apartment at age 66. I had long held the determination to commit suicide before 70 since my motto was "quit while you're ahead." Like the Epicureans, death had no meaning for me. I was a confirmed atheist. I left no instructions for my memorial, or about what to do with my body: “You can flush my ashes down the toilet, for all I care,” I said.
Little did I know there really is an afterlife!
I am best known as the author of nine scholarly books including Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, Reinventing Womanhood, and Writing a Woman's Life—plus scores of articles interpreting women's literature from a feminist perspective.
My novels are ostensibly murder mysteries whose amateur sleuth sometimes seeks clues in literary texts and a killer's motives in academic politics. My novels offer scathing depictions of academic backbiting, observations on Ivy League social pretensions, and thinly veiled, unflattering, portraits of male Hudson University professors.
In life, some critics complained that satiric wit and clever talk filled half my novels before the victim fell dead and that some of it sounded like an imitation of Jonathan Swift or Charlotte Perkins Gilman. But my readers took it all in good fun, and some compared my work to the cerebral puzzles of Carolyn Heilbrun and Raymond Queneau.
Fiercely and playfully, often at the same time, I used fiction to challenge the basic precepts of the Catholic Church and the world-wide patriarchy.
I think that the future offered to us by the world-wide patriarchy, especially by current technology—and by the politics represented, for example, by President Hump—makes it very obvious that the patriarchal future has no future—it’s dead. The patriarchal future is a repetition of the same bunk.
I look forward to a Future that is rooted in a deep sense behind patriarchy, earlier than patriarchy. This "Archaic Future" is the possible future that is rooted in that which existed before patriarchy. I’m talking about a woman-centered, life-centered society in which you don’t have the horrible oppressiveness and hierarchies that characterize the world-wide patriarchy.
I define patriarchy as "a society manufactured and controlled by males. The Fatherland. A society in which every legitimate institution is entirely in the hands of males and a few selected henchwomen. A society that is characterized by oppression, repression, depression, narcissism, cruelty, racism, classism, ageism, speciesism, objectification, sadomasochism, necrophilia, and the rest—a joyless society ruled by the Godfather, the Son, and the Wholly Ghost; a society fixated on proliferation, purgation, and perversion—bent on the destruction of all life.
So, come! enjoy! laugh! Read my fractured fairy tales!
I lurk behind them waiting for you!
Open Access Policy
You are free to share, copy, or redistribute the materials in this text in any medium or format. You are free to adapt, reuse, modify, transform, or build upon the materials in this text for any purpose whatsoever.
