Robert Inchausti

Born in Sacramento, California, Robert Inchausti attended Sacramento State University and received his Ph. D. in English from The University of Chicago. Robert is the author of many books and the editor of two anthologies of Thomas Merton's writings. His first book The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People was nominated for a National Book Award by his publisher SUNY Press. And his book on classroom teaching, Spitwad Sutras, is taught in teacher education programs across the USA..

"I am bourgeois to the core and plebeian beyond belief, and yet I am drawn to great writers and thinkers as my anti-type, my shadow, the voice of genius I never possessed. So I don't think of myself as a teacher or a writer so much as "an impersonator of profundities" inhabiting the wisdom of texts in the naked confidence that the value of the thoughts I express transcend the particular fraud that I am the one espousing them. It doesn't bother me when nobody seems to notice what I have to say because those anonymous, silent readers I know nothing about-- who value my books for their own personal reasons-- are enough to keep me going --- living on the wings of borrowed metaphors."