Look and Listen

Biography

Wild for an opera career, Paul Pfarr won a voice scholarship at 18 to the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He was caught there by his wife Justice (Molly!) (still in captivity), caught by the Army during the Vietnam War (paroled), and caught by the back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s (exorcised). With Justice, he wrote Build Your Own Log Cabin, Winchester Press, 1978. Suspect has two computer-related degrees, and is webmaster of http://www.choosing-natural-health.com. But writing, especially humor, seems necessary to keep him away from the cliff. Paul is still not a joiner, but no longer hangs himself by the neck (even by request).

Inspiration

Grammaw Does His Duty was written in a blaze of inspiration following a lifetime of frustration. My chance came at the age of 54, when my warden slipped and left a door open. I was working for a large company at the time, and it was my job to mind the store alone on the weekends. All I had to do was answer the phone, take messages, and dispatch men. I soon discovered that this left TIME. (Wow!) At first I just slept, exhausted from prior sojourns, but one day I woke up, thinking, Well, hey! … the door is open! Why not write that novel! I had always told stories about my childhood again and again, and had wished I could make a book, to share them with those who hadn’t had an extraordinary childhood, but there had never been an opportunity. Could I write it successfully? I thought so, even though my last published book was Build Your Own Log Cabin, in 1978. And, once begun, I was possessed -- swept away, tiredness forgotten. The only issue was whether I could get the stories down fast enough, before the sun burnt off the mists. It took four years of writing and editing, and fortunately the inspiration never left me. Grammaw Does His Duty has been very slightly fictionalized, and has been arranged as a novel, but 99% of it actually occurred. In writing a very right-brain book, I had to do a lot of left-brain thinking, and it has helped me to revisit those events through different eyes. I feel that my childhood has come together and crystallized.