Synopsis "forms of life"
Forms of Life narrates a journey that ranges from early 2,000 B. C. E. to the mid-fifties C. E. to Renaissance and modern Florence, Italy, nineteenth and twentieth century Michigan, and on to modern times. To span those times and locations, three interwoven story-threads alternate back and forth across time, resulting in a braided strand which amounts to a collective intellectual quest or odyssey by virtue of entering the worlds of philosophy, history, biography, anthropology, religion, politics, cultural studies, mythology, poetry, cosmogony, and other fields. The resulting moasic within Forms of Life draws extensively on scholarly excerpts from those fields as they are set against the stories which, as with other works of the author, also interweave elements from actual, authorial experiences, with fictional characterizations involving both John Sherman -- the author's alter ego -- and others. The dedication is: "To the University of Chicago which, for fifty-two years -- through three years of correspondence courses, four years of a great books program, two master's degrees (MBA and MLA), and twelve years of audited classes, too numerous to list -- has never ceased to be on my mind." Like the ten short stories in the author's book, Western Michigan Tales of Mystery and Adventure, Forms of Life begins and ends at Bass Lake, north of Pentwater, Michigan.
