Thomas Allen Nelson

Books by this author: "Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze," expanded edition (Indiana UP, 2000)

"Shakespeare's Well-Crafted Mystery: How a Playwright Turned Chameleon Created the illusion of Being

Everywhere and Nowhere" (Kindle Books, 2019)

I am a Professor Emeritus of English at San Diego State University. I taught Shakespeare and Elizabethan / Jacobean drama on a continuing basis from 1968 to 2008 and had the time of my life. Because movies had been a lifelong passion, I also developed a series of courses in our film studies program. I taught classes in European film and its influence on the language of film, as well as a range of courses on American film, from the classic studio films and Hitchcock's American films to changes in American film from 1960 to 2000. I also developed and taught screenwriting courses for our MFA program, where my background in drama and Shakespeare proved invaluable. It was during this period that I first wrote KUBRICK: INSIDE A FILM ARTIST'S MAZE (1982), which was later updated in an expanded edition (2000).

Reflecting on my past, I am stuck by how my love of storytelling influenced so many of my life decisions. And that includes the old radio shows, advanced storytelling forms found in the EC lineup of comics, and the Fifties television dramas of my boyhood. Particularly influential were the films shown in the second-run and first-run theaters of my home town and the novels and plays on the bookcases of my family home. I was intrigued by how gifted storytellers as disparate as Charles Dickens is from Raymond Chandler or John Ford from Stanley Kubrick were able to create such a broad range of response in me as a reader or viewer. It was the greatest of times, thanks in large part to a fantastic mother and four best friends who also happened to be my older siblings.

So it's little wonder that I was instinctively drawn to the plays of Shakespeare. After all, the greatest of storytellers unwittingly authored the greatest of literary mysteries: namely, how did he manage to create such a confounding range of contradictory responses to his dramatic achievement? Hence the origins of my book on his remarkable skills as a dramatic chameleon (SHAKESPEARE'S WELL-CRAFTED MYSTERY: HOW A PLAYWRIGHT PLAYED CHAMELEON CREATED THE ILLUSION OF BEING EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE).