Marc Estrin - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Early life and education

Estrin was born in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. He attended Queens College, studying Chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

and Biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

, then studied Theater Directing at UCLA. Estrin came to novel-writing late. In the fall of 1998, he and his wife Donna were on holiday in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

and decided to visit the grave of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

, whose work had always been important to him. His father had challenged him to read The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....

during the summer before he attended college. He left a note on the grave, inviting Kafka to drop by if he ever found himself in Burlington.Through the 1960s he worked in various repertory

Repertory

Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...

theaters in the United States, including the Pittsburgh Playhouse and the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. But, the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

and Bertold Brecht encouraged him to become politically active.

He helped found and was the first coordinator of the Burlington Peace and Justice Center, working on anti-war campaigns, and most recently has stood for seven years in all weather with a Monday-through-Friday peace vigil

Vigil

A vigil is a period of purposeful sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching, or an observance...

in Burlington. These days, his political work focuses on two arenas: a just settlement between Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

and Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

and what he considers to be crucially unanswered questions of 9/11. These political issues are discussed in some of his writings. In 1985, he enrolled in the Starr King School for the Ministry

Starr King School for the Ministry

Starr King School for the Ministry is a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California and part of the Graduate Theological Union. Starr King School opened in 1904 as the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry...

. He became an ordained Unitarian Universalist

Unitarian Universalism

Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a...

minister in 1988, and was active in the church, but found it conflicted with his political work. He is also a cellist and vocalist who has worked with several orchestras including the Vermont Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lyric Theater Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Chorus.

Writing career

Estrin said that the concept, an outline and the opening episodes of Insect Dreams arrived in Vermont one morning at 3 AM, three weeks after he visited Kafka's grave. Insect Dreams appeared from BlueHen/Putnam in 2002. Since then it has been re-released (by Unbridled Books). The book has the insect/man from Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

's Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...

meet several historical literary figures. The New York Times mentioned the character's generosity and "heroic persistence." The Washington Post questioned whether fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

was the best vehicle for Estrin's passion for ideas. The San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

placed it in one of their top 100 books for the year in 2002.

Insect Dreams was not the first Estrin book to be published. In 1971, Dell Publishing

Dell Publishing

Dell Publishing, an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte, Jr.During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Dell was one of the largest publishers of magazines, including pulp magazines. Their line of humor magazines included 1000 Jokes, launched in...

released reCreation: Some Notes on What’s What and What You Might Be Able To Do About What’s What, a Whole Earth-like book which Fat Liberationists have considered helpful. In 2004, Chelsea Green released an analysis by Estrin of the work of Peter Schumann through his cultural activist theater. Of The Lamentations of Julius Marantz (Unbridled Books, 2007)— The reviewer for The San Francisco Chronicle said the story had heart, but turned into a "bit of a nonnarrative mess" at the end. and The New York Times said it was full of anachronistic mistakes, and the protagonist dull, the book full of Estrin's own enthusiasms.

External links

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