Yes, but Aimee, the relevant question, to me, is when, how, and why he was/became a nutbar.

That and why people went/go to see the damn thing. (I will gladly admit that it is strangely compelling)

Oh I'm with you - I want to know also. I will be looking for that unauthorized bio.

Ten to one says he was hit with a clockwork carousel pony calliope that played "The Blue Danube" and was named Ghengis Khan as a child. That and his dad's hatred of FLW are the only explanations I can think of.

I should do my "this is what I'm piecing together from the official biography" post, and probably before I read the unofficial one [link] , but not now.

I read the official biography last night. Nothing terribly revealing in it.

Debet read it in the car on the drive back and read us bits and pieces from it, but her assessment was the same as yours. Not enough WHY or HOW!?!

Thanks for the friending! (if I can't GO to the F2F, at least I can see the pretty ... and sexy ....)

The Frank Lloyd Wright dis to his father (in combination with repeated proximity) seems significant to me. As does him hating to travel (Which makes sense with the idea that he was sort of trying to create something like Epcot, having only heard descriptions and being somewhat insane).

It also lead me to think that PHASE III (Which, apparently makes everyone who hears about it have a spontaneous orgasm, if you believe the blurb on the tour brochure) is The Dante's Inferno room.

I also think the biographer needs to read the definition of the word genius a few times.

Oh please. Genius means nothing these days. Everyone's a genius. The word genius is thrown around almost as much as the word champion was on Angel.

And almost, but not quite, as eyeroll worthy.

So... was the story behind Torq or Torque already explained? Is that what you're switching to VictorC? Details!

Having read his prose (btw, did you notice the paragraph that shows up twice?), I'm not sure he's ever had any contact with a dictionary.

I was unable to read the bit (ok, 5 pages) that was in Jordan's handwriting without more work than I was willing to expend.

I was quite struck by how uniquely American Jordan seems to have been (i.e.- that there's something of the national psyche that got writ overly large in his own, which would explain some of the compellingness of the place. I wonder what the foreign tourists think of the place), and marveled at Neil Gaiman's ability to dig up these actual historical crazy people to put in his plots.