I began writing as a terrible playwright in Chicago. The founder of a scrappy Off Loop theater, I tried my hand at plays only to discover that almost all of them had the same structure:
The protagonist was always some form of me.
The rest of the characters were there to argue with me.
The conclusion was the the protagonist was always right.
So I quit writing plays and starting writing a blog spot, Angry White Guy in Chicago. That did well for awhile until I started dating a social justice woman whose godfather was a former member of the Weather Underground. She, offended at the declaration of my whiteness, pulled a Lysistrata and demanded I change the title. It became AWG in Chicago. Then, while working for NPR, I was told the blog title was still too close to offending those most ready to be offended.
So I started Literate Ape, invited a co-editor and we paid twenty-three writers to contribute.
The Ape still flourishes to this day but I needed an outlet for more because I write Ike the John Doe character in Se7en.
I chose the title Attention of Fools because I have a fundamental belief that none of us has any fucking idea what’s going on but we do have our curiosity to mollify.
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