Meet the Authors: Manuel Gonzalez

In today's Meet the Authors lecture in the Honors Forum, Manuel Gonzalez talked about his life as an author and how his writing has influenced his life. He talked about always having a notebook in hand wherever he went during his childhood, because he cultivated creativity throughout his daily life and always had ideas to write down. Writing was more than just words to him; they helped him sort through a difficult home life and internal conflict of thoughts and emotions that overwhelmed him at times. These aspects of his life reminded me of Tolkien, who also cultivated creativity throughout everyday life and wrote down ideas that would come to his mind. He also used writing to work out the internal conflict he struggled with after his war experience and found relief in articulating his internal conflict. Another parallel between Gonzalez and Tolkien is that Gonzalez was afraid to share his work with his friends, because he was afraid that they would think less of him. In the same way, Tolkien was afraid to share his work with others, fearing how they might criticize it. I find it interesting that two very different authors from very different times share so many characteristics.