Ogres are like onions, the great philosopher Shrek once said. Onions have layers, ogres have layers. And, one might add in an irrational syllogism, ogres and onions are a lot like Odd Hours by Dean Koontz.
“People too content with their lot make lousy protagonists. (laughs) There has to be a source of drama, a source of conflict. You can start with a character that’s out of tune with his time or his life or some aspect of his life. And then if it’s a Hollywood movie with a Hollywood happy ending it’s the story of redemption, the story of how you get from that discontent position to your own perfect space. The first Back to the Future movie is kind of archetypal in that respect. You start by showing all the things that are crappy about the kid’s life and then he comes back to this sort of paradise at the end. My characters don’t tend to find paradise, but they do sometimes find themselves.”
He has taken it upon himself to examine society’s present milieu under the lens of traditional western mores and in so doing has presented the public with works that are perfectly entertaining and, more importantly, prescient.
Throughout his career Dr. Kirk, the only American to earn a degree of doctor of letters from St. Andrews University in Scotland, published over thirty books and countless articles, essays, and reviews.
Dean Koontz has always been a master of plot, dialogue, and description. His talents are such that he not only details, for his constant readers, the events as they unfold, he can, through his magic or, more precisely, through his gift, transport you there!
An old Cornish prayer that has become part of the American lexicon goes, “From goulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!”
Kornwolf raises the question of whether or not one can endure one’s heritage. We all have tendencies to repeat that heritage, spend our lives rebelling against it, or enacting an unconscious treatment plan for it. As one character says, “Better off dead than a prodigal son,” but one is still tied to that which one hates.
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