An Introduction by the Author

Daylight Savings Time was written during a period starting several months after I had graduated from college while I was living in Lake Forest, IL through the entire period that I lived in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, from January 2006 through August of 2007. The rough draft was finished no more than a week before I would flee Chicago for Los Angeles and foolishly squander everything that I had saved up to that point. That attitude may be apparent in the text, particularly in the later chapters. It was written in the wake of an event that caused me no small psychological dismay and is addressed in the early chapters in referencing a broken friendship. That is not the theme of this work, however. I was trying to write something like Bret Easton Ellis would. A bunch of young people in the city who don't have to worry about how they're going to afford to live and don't really have any serious plans for their own future. I set out to create something that would define an aesthetic, a characteristic, the idea of Being Carefree, that I saw rapidly disappear as my friends and I finished college and melded with the real world. They all had a better idea than I did of what they were doing.

To be sure, DST takes an idealized view of dating. Yes, the thing to do is to meet your mate in college, and if you don't, well, some people have no problem whatsoever with meeting someone in an unstructured setting, but my few experiences proved wholeheartedly depressing. As I wrote DST, I wanted to portray a world that was simpler, where the stakes weren't quite so high, where people could do what they wanted and not worry about being judged for it. DST depicts the Group or Clique mentality, whereby a collection of a dozen or so personalities that cling to one another allow each individual within that collective to achieve greater freedom (and respect) than they would as a wholly independent being. That was my true aim in this work--to show how a community can bolster an individual--which I'm sorry to say, I don't see very often in this increasingly isolating society we call USA 2009. But that's probably my own fault now isn't it?

There may be questions about whether or not this book deserved to be published. Overall, I think it's simple to say: it doesn't. People will find its narrative format intimidating and frustrating, but I still believe it is a work of (some) serious value. It is not a masterpiece, and I know I have done better since, but there are ideas within it worth communicating, I think. I unsuccessfully tried to pitch it as a screenplay while in Los Angeles in one ill-advised e-mail query to an online ad where I attached a young Hollywood actor to every role in the story, and while that didn't work and while I am not going to spend my time twisting it into a screenplay, I do believe this is exactly the type of movie that would be a "definitive account of this generation"--whatever you want to call it, Y2K (it's been a while since I've seen a term applied to those born in the early through mid-80s)--and would be able to make someone a lot of money if they knew what was good for them. Unfortunately it seems as if my time has passed and I already feel hoplessly outdated and worn out at 26 and my conceptions about this generation's attitudes towards a variety of subjects in life no longer hold any water.

Thus, as a timeless document, there are sections worth reading that will not be adversely affected by changing times. I am particularly proud of "Halloweeness"--the longest chapter in the novel, describing the day of Halloween. One particular passage I read from it for my writing class earned the praise of one distinguished class member, who later wrote me an e-mail telling me she really enjoyed it. Every chapter after that, I believe, is strong as well. Some of the concepts towards the end I would develop further in my second novel. I also like the sprightly way it begins and some of the random, prophetic elements that would occur in the months after I completed it (I would have a co-worker named Penny, there would be an incident involving a "bum" of some type, and the "Economy Watch" would prove more prescient than I realized). "Satyrs" is probably the most offensive chapter in the book and might cause people to think I am anti-American but I would just like to remind everyone about the period in which it was written--that is, mid-2006, when frustrations in this country reached a certain pitch about the ways things were being handled. There are other chapters that I enjoy for the feeling of exuberance they represent, and again, most of them lie near the end.

I had a good time writing this book and even though it led to nothing I am glad a few people read it and derived some small pleasure out of it. The greatest gift that a book can bestow on a reader is the sense of total abandon that the author has opened up their entire personality and given their full depiction of our world and the way they experience it, to be compared with the reader's own senses. I may not have done as good a job in this first novel as I did in my second in communicating that entirety, and I may be clueless about certain matters that help define a "real life" or a "serious life," but this was a learning experience for me, and one that I feel accomplished its goal, whether or not I am ever "seriously published" in my lifetime. At least there is this.

-Christopher J. Knorps
Winnetka, IL, May 18, 2009