Alan McManus, M.Theol.(hons), M.Phil, PGDE, M.Litt., Ph.D., is a freelance academic, novelist, playwright and dramaturg. His doctoral thesis, "Alchemy at the Chalkface: Pirsig, Pedagogy and the Metaphysics of Quality", is on the work of the creative and contrarian American Philosopher, Dr Robert M. Pirsig. "Only Say The Word: Affirming Gay and Lesbian Love", published by Christian Alternative in 2013, is the first in a series of considerations of the ethical implications of his reading of Pirsigian metaphysics (ontology) and is followed by "Life Choice: the Ethics and Ideologies of Abortion" and "Trans/Substantiation: The Metaphysics of Transgender". His latest book, "Silence & Dissent: Expert Doubt in the AIDS Debate", includes the Pirsigian topics of the character of scientific researchers, data selection and rhetorical strategies used to support or oppose ideas. All this work has attracted high praise:
"The author accompanies the reader in a sophisticated network of reflections on homosexuality, on violence, or child abuse, through an extremely eclectic and original approach of cultural references ranging from ethics to spirituality, from philosophy to metaphysics, from philology to biblical exegesis. Creative writing is not lacking: into the nonfiction prose the author interweaves a "rainbow of churches", one for each colour of Pride, seven different denominations presented on the basis of how the gay community is welcomed inside. A book that requires careful reading and some little effort from the reader, but which at the same time offers a new way, firstly logical and rational, then spiritual, of tackling issues that, commonly regarded as taboo, are often set aside." Luca (review on Goodreads)
His ethnographic work, "Dreaming Anarchy: A Shut-Eye View of a Utopia", has also been highly praised:
"In a bravura narrative of his own highly personalised odyssey through graduate studies, McManus places receptivity to learning at the centre of qualitative research. but it is a receptivity open to traditions of though, study and self-examination often marginal to Western rationalism in even its most postmodern and ludic forms. Accessing dreams, esoteric knowledge, literature, myth, and a metaphysics, McManus seeks to raise transgression to the level of an art tempered only by the moral seriousness of the researcher-adventurer invested in the fortunes of the marginalized and the forgotten."
(Prof. Robert A. Davis, Head of School of Education, University of Glasgow, in the Introduction to the "International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational Research" 2015)
He has also published articles on political philosophy and WW1 remembrance in the online journal, "Citizenship, Social and Economics Education".
As Alan Ahrens-McManus, he has published two novellas and three novels of his Bruno Benedetti Mysteries, a series of inclusive stories set in Glasgow, with another forthcoming. He describes his qualifications as a novel writer as:
"a life of getting into scrapes and out of them while hanging out with people so extremely different they wouldn't be seen dead with each other; years of living and working in dodgy situations in even dodgier countries; a Highland grandmother who passed on her gift of various experiences of second sight; a fascination with the peculiarities of people and a total inability to stop my words jumping around merrily on the page. I also have a respect for my characters, which are only vaguely my own creation, and the patience to let them tell me in their own time and in their own way what they've been up to since I wrote about them last."
Rather than just a form of escapism, these novels allows reflection on 'real life' as the main characters are multi-faceted and develop as they learn from experience and each other, a development which started with "Tricks of the Mind", and continues with "The Lovers", "Shades of the Sun", "Qismet" and "Tir nam Ban" - all in print and Kindle formats.
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