M.R.M. Parrott(philosophy, wiki, original, Proteus)
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, writer and professor, a 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), before leaving for what he calls the "trip of a lifetime" in 2006.
From Columbia SC and Chicago IL, 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 settled in Chicago, Illinois in the Spring of 2007 and has released his travelogue/autobiography,
Driving Home: A North American Tour, in May, 2008, before returning to Columbia, South Carolina to resume teaching Philosophy.
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, Parrott has explored themes of "affluent decadence" and individual loneliness,
time travel and scientific triumph, as backdrop to "timeless" love and familial belonging. His prose is influenced by
Virginia Woolf,
John Steinbeck,
Ernest Hemingway, and
Jane Austen, and his novella
To Lie Within the Moment shows influences from
Greek Mythology,
Plato, and contemporary
Philosophy, along with nods to
Mrs. Dalloway,
Moby Dick,
Albert Camus and
Marcel Proust, and the films
Basic Instinct and
Sleeping with the Enemy. In his
Timeless Trilogy, works rooted in
ethical dilemma and futuristic economic and geo-political theory, Parrott comments on causal
paradoxes and
Quantum Entanglement, present and future World
Politics and
History, and selected
Science Fiction ideas, with direct structural allusions to Austen's
Pride and Prejudice, Aeschylus'
The Oresteia Trilogy, and films such as the
Peter Jackson-filmed
Lord of the Rings.
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 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 (Chapbook, 1984-1988)
ISBN 0-9662635-8-8, discuss
- Another Generation Cometh (Chapbook, 1991-1994)
ISBN 0-9662635-1-0, discuss
- The Generation of X (Essays, 1991-95)
ISBN 0-9662635-0-2, discuss
- The Ethos of Modernity (Monograph, Foucault, 1996)
ISBN 0-9662635-2-9, discuss
- The Empiricism of Subjectivity (Monograph, Deleuze, 1997)
ISBN 0-9662635-3-7, discuss)
- To Lie Within the Moment (Novella, 1998)
ISBN 0-9662635-4-5, discuss
- The Pure Critique of Reason (Monograph, Kant, 1999)
ISBN 0-9662635-5-3, discuss
- Synthetic A Priori (Interviews, 1999)
ISBN 0-9662635-6-1, discuss
- Bartered Tide (Chapbook, 1995-2000)
ISBN 0-9662635-7-X, discuss
- Timeless: Book I (Novel, 2003)
ISBN 0-9746106-0-7, discuss
- Dynamism: Volume I: Force (Treatise, 2004)
ISBN 0-9746106-1-5, discuss
- Exfoliate (Chapbook, 2001-05)
ISBN 0-9662635-9-6, discuss
- Driving Home: A North American Tour (Travelogue, 2006-07)
ISBN 0-9746106-2-3, discuss
- Timeless: Book II (Novel, 2008)
ISBN 0-9746106-2-3, discuss
Related Links
(last updated by Proteus, 7:56pm EDT - Thu, Mar 26 2009)
