M.R.M. Parrott

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M.R.M. Parrott (Mark Ray Martin Parrott, born October 12, 1966) is an American writer, designer and photographer, born in Fairhope, Alabama (near Mobile), and active in Columbia, South Carolina until October, 2006. Currently, he is travelling by car on an open-ended road trip (see Talk:M.R.M. Parrott) across the North American countries of Canada, United States and Mexico, and plans to relocate afterward. Parrott holds the B.A.(1990) and M.A.(1996) in Philosophy from the University of South Carolina.

M.R.M. Parrott is the author and designer of essays, books of philosophy, fiction and poetry, and developer of websites and software programs, such as SOHOdb, GetWiki and GetMeta. Parrott's written works generally do not fit within the traditions of the American academies, or within prose and poetry traditions of the American "New" South. His philosophical works are situated with the European philosophical traditions arising out of the Enlightenment, through Kant, and up to Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, while his fiction and poetry works are often hybrids of many forms and traditions.

Contents

Writings and Influences

The Philosophy M.R.M. Parrott describes in his works is a form of Transcendental Idealism, a Kantianism and Dynamism, based upon belief in both the beauty and fallibility of individuals and societies and the infinite complexity of the Universe. Ethical principles, for Parrott, are built up through the development of the social animals and derived from interpersonal situations. Parrott's works are based in scientific research and reflect a need to recognize the "inherent powers of subjectivity while denoting the inexorable limitations of perception".

In his novels, M.R.M. Parrott has explored themes from "affluent decadence" and individual loneliness, to time travel and scientific triumph. He has said his prose is influenced by Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, but in his novella To Lie Within the Moment influences from Greek Mythology, Plato, and contemporary Philosophy are to be found, along with nods to Mrs. Dalloway, Moby Dick, Albert Camus and Marcel Proust, and the films Basic Instinct and Sleeping with the Enemy. The Timeless trilogy employs the famous grandfather paradox from time travel theory, thoughts on Relativity, World Politics and History, popular science fiction and greek tragedy are interwoven. He also calls on ethical dilemmas, futuristic economic theory, eastern religious symbologies, and echoes of many popular films to weave the action and story.

In poetry and short stories, M.R.M. Parrott prefers daring, lyrical, sometimes intentionally inchoherent or juvenile, sometimes restrained and erudite forms and tales. The many varied literary snapshots within his freeform chapbooks of poems and stories stand beside high criticism and seeming flights of fancy. Many are small standalone works, appearing intricately constructed with complex rhythms and imagery, and break with the popular non-rhyming prose-poetry and family "tell-all" stories in contemporary American literature.

Design and Programming

M.R.M. Parrott designs and produces his books, making use of his own abstract photographs, and has published them directly through his imprint and company, rimric press. The novels are commercially available through retailers, while the Philosophy and chapbooks are available as free PDF ebook downloads from his website. Also, on rimric.com are many essays and reviews from M.R.M. Parrott on topics such as The Matrix Trilogy, and Netochka Nezvanova.

Parrott is also a developer of websites and database-driven software. In January of 2004 he produced a fork of the MediaWiki software on which the popular Wikipedia runs. GetWiki then became a topic of controversy, due to its XML import of pages, as used by Wikinfo to import pages from Wikipedia, as well as its unconventional licensing. In July of 2005 he re-released the SOHO small-business database invoicing system as SOHOdb 1.0 under the Creative Commons License. Parrott's other software programs include an XML-to-PDF ebook application used to produce his ebooks, and he actively maintains GetWiki and SOHOdb, as well as Wikinfo and GetMeta, all of which run on PHP/MySQL based software, or LAMP systems.

Selected Bibliography

External Links

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