College Essays: Statement of Purpose (Writing)

Statement of Purpose



     In a typical game theory model, two partners-in-crime are arrested. Lacking sufficient incriminating evidence, interrogators separate the prisoners into two different rooms and offer each the same deal: if one chooses to betray the other whilst the other remains silent, the betrayer will walk free and the other will be sentenced to six years; if both stay silent, both will serve six months in prison on minor charges; if both betray, both will receive two year sentences.

     Unable to meet with the second prisoner to talk it over, the first prisoner begins weighing the options in his head. He quickly comes to the conclusion that his choice will rest on the choice his partner will make: if his partner remains silent, then he should betray and walk free; and if his partner betrays, his best move would still be to betray and receive a lesser sentence than he would have received had he remained silent. At the same time, in another room, the second prisoner would have arrived at the same conclusion. Thus, it is highly likely that given two players in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, each would choose to betray.

     But there is no drama in equality, no tragedy in mutual giving. As a writer, I am not overly concerned with the rational or the likely. I place my characters in unlikely situations so that I might examine what happens from there. In my version of Prisoner’s Dilemma, one would betray and one would remain faithful, and subsequent chapters would delve into the mind of the treacherous character as he walks free but finds himself trapped in a prison of guilt, unravel the psychology of the second as he becomes fixated on the idea of escaping in order to exact revenge on the first. If I do my job correctly, the reader will gradually be persuaded, until the improbable event becomes the probable, the actual. It is at this moment, when the irrational becomes the rational and the lie becomes the truth, that the maddening paradoxes that we are and that we live are illuminated—it is at this moment that we are reduced down to exactly what we are made of.

     So I love to write. So when I write, I am in the here and now and the not-here and not- now; so I spend my days unraveling plot-knots and noticing that fly legs look like brittle eyelashes. So I carry a tape recorder everywhere I go and know exactly who Joseph Regal is when Audrey Niffeneggar thanks him on the acknowledgements page of her novel and think that playing with inverted sentences and making up words is as productive a way to pass time as doing physics homework. So what? I can live without writing. There is no force compelling me to write and my blood is thicker than ink and I don’t breathe in words and I am not less, or more, me because of it, but I am afraid that if I keep quiet, the stones will cry out.

     The following collection of short stories explores coming of age, the absurdities of love, the miracles of life and the defiance of the body in the face of death, the soft ache of damnation and acceptance; they speak to the real and the surreal in voices shaded by nostalgia, sinister whimsy, youthful stoicism, weariness. Underneath it all—myself, crying out, See this, this, the stuff of your insides and it won’t be broken.