Samuel Taylor Rothschiller eschewed what he called "Biological Data"
and never disclosed his age, though he looked about 30 when I met him in 1978.
He did tell me that he was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, but called
it "Quotidia" as both an insult and a way to hide its true location.
From our conversations I managed to discover that he had grown up in a devout
Roman Catholic family with two brothers and two sisters, himself the youngest
of the group. Early on, he was a true believer, until thirteen years of Catholic
grade and high school changed his mind. He then became a profoundly cynical
agnostic, after a brief flirtation with Buddhism which he later called "too
cloudy and too vegetarian." The prospect of college seemed a good idea,
at least at first, but he couldn't decide on a major. Then he discovered that
he could pay a one-time fee and get a degree without having to study anything.
He did so, being granted both a B.S. in Psychology and a license to practice
psychotherapy from a mail-order house in Berkeley, California.
STR set up shop in his hometown, while working as a hired hand for a local chicken
farmer. He fed the birds, collected the eggs, and conducted seminars for hen-pecked
husbands who wanted to stand up to their nagging wives. Graduates received diplomas
while standing atop step-ladders, an early sign that symbolism did not escape
STR. (As for his own involvement with women, he has made only two definite statements;
one is found in the collection of quotations and
epigrams and the other he made verbally, during a roaringly happy drunken
binge. He told me that he didn't understand why mothers-in-law were so unpopular.
"I’ve liked both of mine," he said.)
After a while, becoming bored with the routines of farm life and psychotherapy,
he decided to travel a bit and maybe discover the Meaning of Life while he was
at it. In Alaska he worked as an Eskimo, but decided, given the length of the
days so far north, that the hours were too long. He then became a mate on a
westward-bound ship. He landed in Africa some months later, and made his way
to Bangladesh where, while meditating under a rock, he thought he was achieving
Enlightenment. It turned out to be a severe case of heartburn, and so he decided
to return to the U.S. and try his hand as a writer. (Years later he confessed
to me that he felt, at the time, that the cause-and-effect relationship of event
and decision made perfect sense, as in a dream.) Over the next two years, back
in "Quotidia," he would churn out a vast catalog of short stories,
novels, poems, songs and screenplays. Alas, none of them would ever be published,
recorded or filmed. [See the list of his works.]
When not writing, he played the role of the local artist: dressing entirely
in used clothing, singing his off-color songs in public, acting indigent and
indignant, and showing the world how a tortured artist is supposed to act--all
the while waiting for the day he would flee what he termed "a life of desperate
quietude," and set off for Parts Known and Unknown.
© 2003 Stephen A. Schrum
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