Surpassing Creation

An artist with the face of a fragmented Picasso strives for transcendent aestheticism, in sculpture defiant of his birth defect. A lady horticulturist continues to beautify her orchards, in spite of the environmentalist propaganda harming her enterprise. A postmodern scholar comes between these two potential soul-mates, operating under the conviction that Beauty is a myth, and that Western Bounty is an enemy to all. This fiction is preceded by my critical essay, 'Ugliness' for The Beautiful: Resurrecting the Romantic Monsters of Stoker, Shelley, Hugo, Leroux, Rostand and Poe to Defeat Jason, Chucky and Freddy.