Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, structures, events and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Well, mainly it is, that might be a better way to put it.
A work purely of my imagination.
Mainly.
A purist I suppose could find a certain resemblance between the character Laramie Jauphlin, the high school math teacher, and my sophomore year math teacher Jeremy Laughlin.
They both wear their wristwatches on their right arms, have a distinctly curt manner of dismissing the more imaginative of their students, and express a disinclination to accept perfectly reasonable excuses from students who choose to exercise the creative side of their brains over the dry, quantitative side.
They both have crew cuts, this is true, and they both have the same address on the same street, but is this enough to conclude that there is a resemblance? Seems a reach to me.
Simply noting that the two could be carbon copies of one another shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the artistic process.
The creative spirit churns up these characters from the richness of his subconscious, you see.
To suggest that just because this or that character has the same make and model car, the same license plate, the same parking space in that lot over to the side of school, and carries the same make of pencil, pen, notebook, and wallet as someone in ‘real life’ well, this is a laughably far-fetched surmise from a perhaps feverish brain. Dismiss the idea from your mind.
Let’s see, anyone else?
I have heard some say that Boss Tom Radford, the cattle baron who tries to run roughshod over the brave farmers seeking to tame a sprawling, brawling land, looks a lot like Tom Raddison, the neighbor three doors down who never did like the way I cut his grass and complained to my parents more than once that I all did was run through the yard as quickly as I could and that wasn’t his idea of cutting the grass.
Come now. I think you have heard me mention that the creative spirit churns up these characters from the richness of his subconscious. What need would I have to work from these photographs I have taken of Mr. Raddison pinned up here over my desk, or refer to my diaries of the lawn-cutting days from that stack under the window?
Spoiler alert: Boss Tom Radford ends up in financial ruin; his main regret on his deathbed being that he wasn’t more encouraging to youngsters showing extraordinary talent at an early age.
Chantilly DeBryson, the owner of the 1920s speakeasy that turns away the young hero for running up his tab with “seemingly no intention of every paying it off,” is said by some to be based on the proprietor of the local bar and grill around the corner who is always saying things like that to me.
This is totally false. I lifted the character lock, stock, and barrel from a novel published in 1953 shelved on the back stacks of the library. I don’t think anyone will really notice.
The main villain of the piece, industrialist Ebeneezer Wartmore, is not based on my uncle Danial Waring, who time and again has refused to even consider providing me with a weekly stipend to further my artistic development.
The Wartmore character is instead a composite character, comprised of disparate elements of my uncle Daniel Waring, my uncle Daniel Waring, and my uncle Daniel Waring.
This is how artists work, this composite thing, we take this from that person and that from this person. I simply streamlined the process by limiting myself to one person.
If that is what I did.
Which I didn’t.
What else, what else?
It isn’t fair to say that the beaked, tentacled monster that rises roaring from the deep to devour the seaside town at the dramatic conclusion of the novel resembles in any overt manner my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Livingstone, sophomore year in high school – there’s that year again! – who kept me time and time again in detention for exercising my right to self-expression.
Based upon her, yes, you could argue that, and sharing certain aspects of personality.
But come on, Mrs. Livingstone didn’t squirt poison from the ends of her slimy tentacles. She didn’t even have tentacles!
And Slrothra, the Demented One, didn’t toss breath mints into his beaked mouth via one tentacle or another every five minutes like Mrs. Livingstone did, or make you do your math problems on the blackboard in the front of class.
And Kip Dangerford, the hero of the novel, irreverent, charming, dashing, prodigy from an early age, a struggling novelist seeking to bring his genius to light in an uncaring world? I can’t tell you whom he is based upon at all.
Modesty forbids.
