One Version of Myself

 

Robert Castle studied English and got a degree in the Writing Program at Penn State in the early seventies. After attending Columbia University School of the Arts for a brief time, he traveled around Europe and lived on and off in Florence, Italy. For fifteen years he lived from his earnings as a cook at a New Jersey seaside town before finally giving up (the good life) and getting a full-time job as a teacher of History, Sociology, and Film.

Bob has regularly published articles for Bright Lights Film Journal since 2001. Other of his film essays have appeared in Film Comment, The Film Journal, The Journal of Religion and Film, Talking Pictures, Cinetext, and Metaphilm. He has had other regular writing gigs at Unlikely Stories (69 feature pieces of A Sardine on Vacation and at The Circle Magazine (a quarterly column called "Half-Baked Ideas"). He has also written two essays about teaching History for Archipelago, has several articles about his travels in Europe at The Paumanok Review, and has three pieces of literary criticism at elimae. His fiction can be found at many places online (or no online anymore): Fiction Funhouse, Fiction Warehouse, Gadfly Online, Wilmington Blues, 3 AM, 5_trope, The Sidewalk's End, Octavo, Double Dare Press, Arbutus, Eclectica, Facets, Skive magazine, and InDigest. His pre-Internet publications included literary magazines like The Sun, Gadfly, Timber Creek Review, Curriculum Vitae, The MacGuffin, The Monocacy Valley Review, The Iconoclast, and A Summer's Reading.

His first three book's include A Sardine on Vacation, a novel (Spuyten Duyvil), The End of Travel, a memoir (Ravenna Press), and Odd Pursuits, a collection of stories (Wild Child Publishing). All of these books were published in 2006.

Since then, new books by Bob have appeared through Kindle and Create Space. First was Berthcut & Sons, his first novel, the story of the birth of a salesman (sorry, Willie Loman). Two other works of his fiction available are a second collection of stories, Fits of Generosity, and a book of three novellas called The Lies Commonly Agreed Upon. He also has several nonfiction works: The Interpretive Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick, The Education Battleground, Half-Baked Ideas: excursions into improbable possibilities. In addition: there are Near Death Experiences: very short stories, con-Glom-er-a-tion, a novel in the form of a play (a sequel to Berthcut & Sons), American History in a Flash, a cycle of 28 short plays, Giving a Damn: three three-act plays, and A Few Minutes of Your Time, very short plays. 

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In September 2020, his latest novel, The Hidden Life, was published by Atmosphere Press.

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Not until the 21st Century did I turn to play writing. In 2006, I joined the Philadelphia Dramatist Center despite only have a few plays written. However, in the summer of that year, the publisher of Wild Child Publishing, an e-publisher who published my books of short Stories, Odd Pursuits, mentioned that my work reminded her of the one-act plays of David Ives. The first two if not the most important works of his I read, were Time Flies and Other Plays and All in the Timing. My most productive writing period occurred over the next twelve years, finishing a dozen or more full-lengths and scores of one acts, and ten- and one-minute plays (see below for publishing history and play productions). Unfortunately, many of these plays have only seen the light of day at workshops and table readings.

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Around the same time, I started writing film articles. Many made their first appearance in a film newsletter, Film Ex, which I published with my friend and prolific writer of film books, Kim Holston, from 1990 to 2010. My first major article on Full Metal Jacket, "Kubrick's Ulterior War," co-written with Stephen Donatelli, was published in 1998 in Film Comment. From April 1, 2001 to now, I have had over 40 articles published by Bright Lights Film Journal. One dealing with two films, The Caine Mutiny (1954) and Tunes of Glory (1960), led to my being asked to participate in an Extra on the disc of The Caine Mutiny in 2005. Another, on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) was used in film course at San Diego State University. My piece on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) led to my participating in The Kubrick Series at Movie Geeks United. 

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