Beyond the Pale Growth of a Messiah

This project came about as a result of disillusionment with the ephemeral or redundant nature of much autobiographical writing, which can be alarmingly quick to date, and consequently instead of one timescale for composition there are four different timescales, viz. 1983,'85, '93, and '96, corresponding to the divisions of the book into four headed parts, each of which was written quite independently of the others both in timescale and even, to a limited degree, in style. Thus the result is certainly 'beyond the pale' of both retrospectively inclusive and introspectively exclusive autobiographical writings and remains, to this day, open-ended. The cover shows a self-portrait taken 'beyond the pale' of his mirror and reflecting back at him towards the crammed shelves of ring-bound print-outs in his personal library.