The Topical Autobiography of Mark Dorset

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am an unaffiliated sociologist with a special interest in the history and dynamics of interpersonal behavior. Among my publications are How Come You Do the Things You Do? (A Study of Motivation); “The Dorset Diagram and How to Use It” (reprinted in Sociology Made Visible); I See by Your Outfit that You Are a Cowboy: How We Look the Part; I Know I’m Right (Correct Me If I’m Wrong): a Study of the Acceptance and Dissemination of Notions that Are Wrongheaded, Boneheaded, and Just Plain Emptyheaded; Hats in Fiction; “What Do You Want to Be If You Grow Up?” (reprinted in Children at Risk); and “Fuck You, Asshole: The Death of Civility in Everyday Discourse.”  For years, I have been intending to write a confessional memoir in encyclopedic form; if I ever get around to writing it, I will call it The Topical Autobiography of Mark Dorset.  I am the husband in every sense but the legal one of both of the Glynn twins, Margot and Martha, and together we have two daughters, Martha and Margot (each of the twins having named her daughter for her sister). The twins and I were childhood friends of Peter Leroy, whose memoirs, The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy, are a voluminous work of fiction by Eric Kraft.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He met or invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year at Harvard. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they have two sons, Scott and Alexis. After earning a Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. Since then, he has undertaken a variety of hackwork to support the Kraft ménage and the writing of the voluminous work of fiction that he calls The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. He has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England; and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.
 

Copyright © 2008 by Eric Kraft. All rights reserved. Photograph by Eric Kraft.