Casually Writing Forum Michael Carr's Chronicles of B..

I've done my review, so let's discuss. I liked it generally, and was curious what people thought of a few things.

Bob really inhabited his manic-schizophrenic world. Did he go overboard? Did it lose believability? I think it did, but maybe that didn't matter. I've been accused of going so deeply into my character that I didn't develop various aspects of the story - someone even accused me of being that character. (That was pretty sick.) Did Michael go too deep? Would you like to have gotten more background, more setting, or more characterization?

Those are my questions. Any opinions?

You bring up a great point here, Atlanta. Yet, I don't think it was the background, setting, etc. that Michael was trying to highlight and bring out in this piece. I particularly enjoyed it because it really had no specific plot. There were no details to get lost in and names to confuse. Instead, you focused on Bob. In my mind, as I read it, a lack of this background information made it easier to focus on Bob himself and on the bleak conditions of the outside world. It enhances his quality of isolation, of not knowing what else is going on. In the same effect, the reader does not know what is going on either. By adding such information, I think he only created a more pure character. "Why include this background, setting, etc. if Bob himself doesn't know this?" is what I am trying to get across.

I, in particular, enjoyed the depth with which Carr was able to bring Bob to life.

"But beige is soothing, they tell me. I tell them so is sex, but I don�t want to have it 24/7."

I am immediately reminded of the movie "A Beautiful Mind." You have the same idea of a skitzophrenic person with this dashing sense of humor in such bleak surroundings.

I was really just asking the obvious questions to stimulate discussion. I probably agree with you, although in part 2, Bob was supposed to be on medication, and I felt that he should have been more relaxed and "normal". That might have been a place to make some rational commentary.

I agree. Although, unfortunately, it seems only the two of us are active in this discussion...