M.R.M. Parrott

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M.R.M. Parrott (Mark Ray Martin Parrott, born 12 October, 1966), author of Driving Home, the Timeless novel trilogy and Dynamism series in Philosophy and Science, developer of websites and software programs, such as rimric.com, SOHOdb and GetWiki, is a philosopher and writer, photographer, designer and programmer. Born in Fairhope, Alabama (near Mobile), he lived on the Gulf Coast until 1987, then completed college and graduate school in Philosophy at University of South Carolina in Columbia (BA, 1990: Philosophy, Theatre and Art Studies; MA, 1996: Philosophy, Theatre and Photography), living there until 2006.

Based in Chicago, Illinois, M.R.M. Parrott has published books of Fiction, Poetry, Travel and Philosophy. At age 40, Parrott put everything in storage and travelled by car on an open-ended road trip (more) across the North American countries of Canada, United States and Mexico, writing about his experiences. He wanted to see, as he wrote in Driving Home, "as much of North America as I could get away with seeing", and to find a new home, "larger and denser than Atlanta or Charlotte, more cultural than New Orleans or Miami, more diverse than any city of the South, and hopefully, liveable". After his five-month, 40,000 mile (64,000 km) journey, seeing more than 400 cities, national parks and attractions, M.R.M. Parrott resettled in Chicago, Illinois in the Spring of 2007 and has released his travelogue/autobiography, Driving Home: A North American Tour, in May, 2008.

table of contents

1 Writings and Influences

2 Design and Programming

3 Selected Bibliography

4 Related Links

Writings and Influences

M.R.M. Parrott's written works generally do not fit within the traditions of the American academies, or within prose and poetry traditions of the American "New" South. His philosophical works are situated with the European philosophical traditions arising out of the Enlightenment, through Kant, and up to Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, while his fiction and poetry works are often hybrids of many forms and traditions.

The Philosophy M.R.M. Parrott describes in his works is a form of Transcendental Idealism, a Kantianism and Dynamism, based upon belief in both the beauty and fallibility of individuals and societies and the infinite complexity of the Universe. Ethical principles, for Parrott, are built up through the development of the social animals and derived from interpersonal situations. Parrott's works are based in scientific research and reflect a need to recognize the "inherent powers of subjectivity while denoting the inexorable limitations of perception".

In his novels, M.R.M. Parrott has explored themes from "affluent decadence" and individual loneliness, to time travel and scientific triumph. He has said his prose is influenced by Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, but in his novella To Lie Within the Moment influences from Greek Mythology, Plato, and contemporary Philosophy are to be found, along with nods to Mrs. Dalloway, Moby Dick, Albert Camus and Marcel Proust, and the films Basic Instinct and Sleeping with the Enemy. The Timeless trilogy employs the famous grandfather paradox from time travel theory, thoughts on Relativity, World Politics and History, popular science fiction and greek tragedy are interwoven. He also calls on ethical dilemmas, futuristic economic theory, eastern religious symbologies, and echoes of many popular films to weave the action and story.

In poetry and short stories, M.R.M. Parrott prefers daring, lyrical, sometimes intentionally inchoherent or juvenile, sometimes restrained and erudite forms and tales. The many varied literary snapshots within his freeform chapbooks of poems and stories stand beside high criticism and seeming flights of fancy. Many are small standalone works, appearing intricately constructed with complex rhythms and imagery, and break with the popular non-rhyming prose-poetry and family "tell-all" stories in contemporary American literature.

Design and Programming

M.R.M. Parrott designs and produces his books, making use of his own abstract photographs, and has published them directly through his imprint and company, rimric press. The novels and other titles are commercially available through retailers, and directly available as PDF ebook downloads from his website. Also, on rimric.com there have been many essays and reviews from M.R.M. Parrott on topics such as The Matrix Trilogy, and Netochka Nezvanova.

Parrott is also a developer of websites and database-driven software. In January of 2004 he produced a fork of the software on which the popular Wikipedia runs. GetWiki then became a topic of controversy, due to its XML import of pages from Wikipedia, as well as its unconventional licensing. In July of 2005 he re-released the SOHO small-business database invoicing system as SOHOdb 1.0 under the Creative Commons License. Parrott's other software programs include an XML-to-PDF ebook application used to produce his ebooks, and he actively maintains GetWiki and SOHOdb, which run on PHP/MySQL based software, or LAMP systems.

Selected Bibliography

Opening Lyric (Poems and Short Stories, ISBN 0-9662635-8-8, e-book, discuss) 1990, 2002
Another Generation Cometh (Poems and Short Stories, ISBN 0-9662635-1-0, e-book, discuss) 1994, 2002
The Generation of X (Philosophy Essays, ISBN 0-9662635-0-2, e-book, discuss) 1995, 2002
The Ethos of Modernity (Monograph, Foucault, ISBN 0-9662635-2-9, e-book, discuss) 1996, 2002
The Empiricism of Subjectivity (Monograph, Deleuze, ISBN 0-9662635-3-7, e-book, discuss) 1997, 2002
To Lie Within the Moment (Novella, ISBN 0-9662635-4-5, and e-book, discuss) 1998
The Pure Critique of Reason (Monograph, Kant, ISBN 0-9662635-5-3, e-book, discuss) 1999, 2002
Synthetic A Priori (Philosophy Interviews, ISBN 0-9662635-6-1, e-book, discuss) 1999, 2002
Bartered Tide (Poems and Stort Stories, ISBN 0-9662635-7-X, e-book, discuss) 2000, 2002
Timeless: Book I (Novel, ISBN 0-9746106-0-7, and e-book, discuss) 2003
Dynamism: Volume I: Force (Treatise, ISBN 0-9746106-1-5, e-book, discuss) 2005
Driving Home: A North American Tour (Travelogue, ISBN 0-9746106-2-3, e-book, discuss) 2008
Exfoliate (Poems and Short Stories, Forthcoming, discuss) 2008
Timeless: Book II (Novel, Forthcoming, discuss) 2008