BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
AND THE AMERICAN SOUL

Essays on the songs and influence of a Cultural Icon
Early 2011 from McFarland Publishing.

I was always trying to shoot for the moon. I had some lofty ideas about using my own music, to give people something to think about--to think about the world, and what's right and wrong. I'd been affected that way by records, and I wanted my own music and writing to extend themselves in that way.

Bruce Springsteen

100% of the author's royalties will go to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey

David's creative writing ranges from a philosophical fantasy about mystical cats to a gritty reality drama of urban angst to a historical novel and a historical play based on the authors he has written about. As for his non-fiction, David is a fan first. He greatly admires the people he writes about and wants to have others learn about these authors so they can share in his enthusiasm

Recent Accomplishments:

February 2013
“Setting a Foundation for College Composition:  The Cardozo High School Writing-Reading-Literature Program.” North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing, North Carolina State University,

December 2012
The Muse-An International Journal of Poetry: two poems
“Cycles,” “That Which is Imminent”

November 2012:
"Orwell: Language as Politics and Action." Luvah Volume 1, No. 3 (2012): November
Poems: "Deep Curl" and "Hummingbird: Visitation from a Famous Author." Luvah Volume 1, No. 3 (2012): November.

November 2012:
“The Influence of Tony Kushner on Contemporary Drama,” Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Durham NC

“Bruce Springsteen and the American Soul: Songs of Conscience on His Three Albums The Rising, Magic, and Wreckin’ Ball,” Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Durham, NCa

“Isherwood’s Prater Violet: the Novel as a Spiritual Journey through The Bhagavad Gita”
Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Durham, NC

June 2012:
The Muse-An International Journal of Poetry (http://www.themuse.webs.com) Four poems: 'The Vision of Dame Kind: Every Picture Tells a Story', 'Sermons in Cats (for Aldous Huxley)', 'The Art of Seeing' and 'The Well of Silence'

Appointed to Editorial Review Board of publisher Rowman & Littlefield

April 2012:
Luvah: Journal of the Creative Imagination, "Thornton Wilder and Mysticism: an Exegesis of his Early Plays"

March 2012:
"Teaching the Introduction to Literature Course," Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice.

January 2012:
Review Board: Diesis: Footnotes on Literary Identities.

May 2011:
Sylvia Lyons Render Award of the Charles Chesnutt Association for the book Charles Chesnutt Reappraised, presented at The American Literature Association Conference Boston, May 26.

April 2010:
Raleigh Little Theater, North Carolina, discussed Thornton Wilder's Our Town after the perfromance.

March 2010:
Christianity and the Detective Story-Christianity and Literature Conference, Pace University, NYC. Paper: "W.H. Auden's 'The Guilty Vicarage.'"

Sept 2009:
Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium, Monmouth University, New Jersey, "Bruce Springsteen Live: Transcendental Celebration."

June 2009:
International Virginia Woolf Conference, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, Panel Chair: "Woolf and the City."

May 2009:
Conference on Consciousness, Literature, and the Performing Arts, Lincoln University, England, 1. "Mysticism as a Literary Theory"; 2. "Reading from Maximus in Catland, a Mystical Novella"

Nov. 2008:
A Tribute to Laura Huxley, Los Angeles Philosophical Society.

Oct. 2008:
Thornton Wilder in the 21st Century, College of New Jersey, "Wilder's Cosmology"

July 2008:
Aldous Huxley International Symposium, Huntington Library, San Marino CA, "Aldous Huxley's Time Must Have a Stop: A Mastery of Mysticism.

July 2006:
Thomas Paine's Legacy - Three Centuries of Revolution in Philadelphia: Lecture on activist Scott Nearing, a leading social activist before World War II.

June 2006:
Triad Stage (Greensboro, NC).
Lectured on Thornton Wilder at the conclusion of the play The Matchmaker.

April 2006:
Speaker in the Fiction Writers Series, Barton College, Wilson. NC.

Dec 2005:
MLA Annual Conference - "Schopenhauer and Iris Murdoch"

Charles Chesnutt Reappraised
Just Published:

One of the best known and most widely read of early African American writers, Charles W. Chesnutt published more than fifty short stories, six novels, two plays, a biography of Frederick Douglass, and countless essays, poems, letters, journals, and speeches. Though he had light skin and was of mixed race, Chesnutt self-identified as a black man, and his writing was often boldly political, openly addressing problems of racial identity and injustice in the late 19th century.

This collection of critical essays reevaluates the Chesnutt legacy, introducing new scholarship reflective of the many facets of his fiction, especially his sophisticated narrative strategies.

Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays

Aldous Huxley’s prophetic novel of ideas warned of a terrible future then 600 years away. Though Brave New World was published less than a century ago in 1932, many elements of the novel’s dystopic future now seem an eerily familiar part of life in the 21st century.

Review from Choice, April, 09: Brave New World remains Huxley's best-known and most influential work, and the essays in this collection take a variety of approaches-literary, political, psychological, philosophical, social, economic, aesthetic-to Huxley's famous dystopia. George Orwell's 1984 figures in several essays. In sum, the varied perspectives in this interesting, accessible collection provide a useful picture of Huxley and his vision of a possible future. Summing up: Recommended. H. Benoist.

The Influence of Mysticism on 20th Century British and American Literature

This volume discusses the relationships between the philosophy of Mysticism, which traces its lineage back into prehistory, with that of the world of more traditional philosophy and literature. The author argues for the centrality of mysticism’s role in the philosophical and artistic development of western culture.

The connections between these worlds are underscored as the author examines the works of Heraclitus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Yeats, AE George Russell, T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Huxley, Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Tony Kushner, among others.