Someone has said The Birdcatcher is just the story of the Ugly Duckling retold.
Well, yes, that’s what it is. That fairy tale was written especially for shy solitary people. Human ‘ugly ducklings’ have been told for a long time, maybe thousands of years, that they should stop being different, that they should behave like everyone else.
Shy solitary people needed the story of the ugly duckling to see who they really were.
The idea that the human species might not be a single species, that it might harbor many unidentified sub-species, or yet unidentified races based on psychological differences, has been latent in our culture for a long time.
In The Birdcatcher I showed that you can learn to understand what it means to be an ‘ugly duckling’ – to understand that you can be different, yet still able to function in this turbulent, hypocritical, selfish, often unfeeling society without denying who you are.
Because we keep forgetting who we are, The Ugly Duckling, the story of the duck who couldn’t be a duck no matter how hard he tried, is a story that needs to be retold again and again.
That’s why I wrote The Birdcatcher.
PS – update, May 2/2018 – For some reason the book is no longer listed on any of the Amazon sites, or elsewhere as far as I know. Until I get this resolved, here is a free PDF copy for anyone who wants to read it now:
For the time being, please ignore these Amazon links:
Alan Conrad 