Pisspoor Heroes

Author:

Sanders, Craig Steven

Area of Honors:

Creative Writing (Behrend)

Degree:

Bachelor of Fine Arts

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Thomas Noyes, Thesis Supervisor
George Looney, Thesis Honors Advisor
Robert Joseph Roecklein Jr., Faculty Reader

Keywords:

Pisspoor
Heroes
politics
fiction

Abstract:

This thesis is a collection of four literary works, preceded with a critical preface written by the author. The works deal with a variety of interrelated themes—the effects of alcohol (both negative and positive), ideas of political uprising (and the often misguided means of attempting to effect change), and the ultimate importance of forming alliances, friendships, real human bonds. Although the subject matter in each story is so drastically different from any of the others—from a semi-apocalyptic dictatorship where the oppressed left-handed people are the butt of every joke, to a misguided Communist who steals circus monkeys to do his bidding, to a kid obsessed with professional wrestling who crawls into his refrigerator on a hot summer day in Georgia, and finally to a couple of voluntarily unemployed young men thumbing their way through the Last Frontier in search of something. Influenced by the works of such renowned authors as Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and Junot Díaz, I hope to have produced a collection of works with some thematic relevance to the literary community.