Steve Almond

Skull was a captivating story about alternate love and desire, which I think is what this course is really about. We aren't interested in the fairy tale endings as much as were are in love gone wrong. Almond wasn't talking about love gone wrong, but love gone, well, weird. The eye was symbolic of everything in us that is flawed and unlovable, and her boyfriend's acceptance of this feature through intimate contact reveals his view of love as a process of understanding the significant others' flaws.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about his lecture was his talk of writing about sex. He said that sex isn't just a physical act, but it reveals the psychology and emotions of the person who is having it. This doesn't have to be applied to just writing sex, but reading about it as well. I thought of a series of books I liked written by M. C. Beaton and how when the protagonist has sex it shows something about their current psychological and emotional state. At one point she is ditched by her ex husband while that are on vacation together after she is accused of murder and her old friend Charles comes to visit her. They spend the day together and then split a hotel room, they've been drinking and he climbs into her bed. He kisses her and after all that time of being rejected by her ex she finally feels the love of another person and she likes it. Charles goes after her to piss off her ex husband who calls in the morning to see if she's ok, and Agatha does it because of her low self esteem. From this experience she learns a lot about herself, not to get suckered into a night in bed just cause you need to feel loved because you'll just feel worse in the morning and that she deserves better than her ex. I would've never thought about this story in that why had Almond not pointed out to us the psychology behind sex not the act. He said if the act is all you're concerned about then basically you're just writing porn. Sometimes I just thought sex was included in a plot to spice up the story, but now I realize in many cases it is used to reveal something about the two characters engaging in the act.