Clotho's Loom Weaves Literary Tapestry of a Bygone Era

Professor Shawn StJean vowed to write an old-fashioned work of literary fiction, using symbolism, allegory, foreshadowing, an adventurous plot, plus both a male and a strong woman protagonist in Clotho's Loom.

Rochester, NY (I-Newswire) August 18, 2012 - A man is drafted to serve overseas in the U.S. military at the age of thirty-nine.  His wife is left to birth and raise their baby, while defending against threats to her career and family at home.  And they probably never should have married in the first place: can two ill-fated lovers find their way back to, and be worthy of, one another?

College Professor Shawn StJean treasures the novels and dramas of decades and even centuries past, and wondered if it wouldn't be possible to import those techniques to a contemporary, long narrative.  An enthusiastic student of overt allegory, willing suspension of disbelief, extensive allusion, symbolism, and foreshadowing, among a host of old-fashioned devices, he vowed to give it his best attempt in CLOTHO'S LOOM: A Novel of Literary Romance and Realism.

The novel marks the scholar's transition from teacher, researcher, and literary critic to author.  It aspires to reproduce the experience, in modern form, of reading the kind of hybrid Romance/Realist narrative pioneered in America by Hawthorne and Melville, and modeled after ancient Greek epic.  "It's not exactly what folks who prowl the new-release shelves of a 21st Century bookstore are used to finding," claims StJean.  "No vampires or werewolves: just flawed human beings, and equal stage time for male and female protagonists.  I risked horrific commercial failure, I suppose, but the project always has been a great source of personal satisfaction to me."

For more information about Clotho's Loom: A Novel of Literary Romance and Realism, please visithttp://clothosloom.wordpress.com/ 

Copies may be purchased at: http://www.amazon.com/Clothos-Loom-Literary-Romance-ebook...
Amazon ASIN: B008QOCHIA

The Author is available for interviews, and to speak with community organizations. Contact SHAWN STJEAN at sstjean@gmx.com or 585-978-1057. 
 
About the Author
Shawn StJean is a college professor of American Literature, Film, and Writing currently living in Rochester, New York.  His current subject of study is social criticism, including gender relations, among authors and filmmakers.  He is the author of Pagan Dreiser (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2001,) editor of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Dual-Text Critical Edition (Ohio UP, 2006) and has published criticism in James Joyce Quarterly, Feminist Studies, and The Massachusetts Review.