B475-DES407
Dishonesty vs.
Stupidity: Exposing The Dumbing Down Of Culture by Hacks, Flaks, And
Apparatchiks
Copyright
© by Dan Schneider, 12/4/06
*to young writers with talent and potential
Introduction General Stupidity Agent Dishonesty More Online Stupidity Poetic Horror Blog Dishonesty & Stupidity Summary Addendum Addendum 2 Addendum 3 Addendum 4 Addendum 5
In the last few decades there has been the rise of a strong cult in the
Western World. I am not speaking of Christian Fundamentalism nor Radical Islam,
nor am I even speaking of assorted political persuasions. Yet, this cult has had
an even greater and more widespread deleterious effect on culture than any
religion or political party could ever hope to get. They go under many monikers:
Political Correctness, Postmodernism, Moral Relativism, etc., but they all have
in common the silly notion that there are no objective standards to what is good
and bad in the arts and sciences. Now, certainly there are some good ideas- or,
at least motives, behind these movements. It is manifestly wrong to be racist,
one needs to move beyond simply the old ideas in art for innovation breeds
growth, and there certainly is a relativism immanent in ethics (morals-
which are imposed from without, can be argued to be fundamentally unethical in
and of their nature), however all of these groups and schools have gone off the
collective deep end from their beginnings and plunged into the abyss that
propounds what I call The Myth Of Subjectivity.
Of course, there are subjective things in life. Many things are relative, but, if one truly believed what these cults propound, that all is subjective, then there is fundamentally no reason to do anything, for nothing matters. One should simply exist in an immobile idyll of life, for that’s all that can ever be achieved. But, there must always be objectivity, lest there is no rational explanation as to why anything is done- from the smallest biological action to those actions borne by free will and its exercise. Manifestly, you, as the reader, agree that there is an objective writer of these words you are reading, that the cup of coffee you last drank was objectively real, and so on down the line. I’ve long stated that one objective fact objectifies the whole universe in relation to it. Subjectivity has to be total. Objectivity does not. Therefore, in art and writing, there are objective facts and things to be gleaned. It is objectively provable, say, that Walt Whitman was a greater poet than current Poet Laureate Donald Hall. A great poem, while it will possess that mark of the ineffable, will also have tropes, images, phrases, music, line breaks, etc., that mark it as great, whereas a bad poem will not. And these things can be measured. One can disagree over the measuring sticks, but the very fact that they can be objectively measured means that there is an objective basis to claims of excellence, or its lack. Of course, one can ‘like’ Donald Hall’s poetry better than Whitman’s, and I, nor anyone else can seriously argue with that. I like Richard Brautigan’s slight, humorous doggerel better than Robert Frost’s poetry, but I’d have to be lobotomized to think Brautigan the better poet. The point is that what one likes or dislikes is far more subjective than excellence, for one need only point to the ugly spouse of a good looking man or woman and such tastes’ subjectivity is manifested.
Yet, the Subjectivist Cultists deny such manifest claims. Their reasons usually have to do with claiming that a writer or artist cannot be judged by anyone outside their own peer group- a black, a woman, a lesbian, a Jew, a disabled person, a blind person, an AIDS victim, a homosexual, a Christian, etc. These are valid points….to a degree. But, the idea that I cannot judge a cliché in a Maya Angelou piece of Hallmark greeting card level doggerel because of my skin color and sex is ridiculous. A cliché is a cliché because it is a phrase that is numerically used to a far greater degree than other phrases, and is used in the same contexts over and again. Angelou’s sex and skin color have nothing to do with a valid claim that she indulges in clichés, and points up the intellectual, if not ethical, bankruptcy of such defenders of bad writing. Most bad art- written or not, falls prey to clichés more than to other marker of badness, be it Maya Angelou’s ill worded boasts about her blackness or Donald Halls dull poems about tossing hay as a young white boy.
It should thus come as no surprise that most art is created by bad artists who claim they are ‘real’ artists, even as they willfully hide behind these false claims precisely because they know they cannot stand a true scrutiny. They use the myth of subjectivity as a shield from having to actually produce real art. They merely want the appellation, and ego boost, of being called an artist- for great artists are valued far more in the long run that diurnal professions. If you doubt this, ask yourself who was the richest merchant in Leonardo Da Vinci’s time and town? Who was the most successful diplomat in Shakespeare’s day? Who was the leading doctor in Vienna during Mozart’s day? The very fact that even a long search online and through libraries may not be fruitful bolsters my point, and the reason that so many people think that merely by the act of writing, they have somehow entered the craft of writing. I may be able to swing a bat at a baseball, but that motion does not make me Babe Ruth.
In this essay I will try to pull back some of the curtains that try to hide these bigotries and biases by the Subjectivist Cultists. Yet, is it all merely the dishonesty of their methods? Or, is it that culture has been so dumbed down that people truly are ignorant of what really constitutes excellence and what is trite? Is it a combination of both? If so, which is the predominant destroyer of good art and writing? I may not be able to parse that query down into constituent numbers, but I hope that an essay like this will show many other good writers and artists that are struggling- especially the young and talented, that they are not alone, and that when they think that there is some form of conspiracy against them that they may not be too far off. Granted, it’s not an active conspiracy, in the sense of the 9/11 bombers nor the JFK Assassination, merely a tacit attempt to keep out good and innovative writing by claims that it won’t sell, that it has no market, and thus these claims become self-fulfilling prophecies, just so that the hacks can feel that their promotion of bad art is somehow the result of a demotic impulse, not their own egos running rampant over higher culture.
To kick things off, let me start with a spate of items that show just how stupid most people, in or out of the arts, are; and if you have ever dealt with this sort of nonsense- in the arts or at work, you will empathize with where I am coming from.
Those who have read Cosmoetica for years know that I have, every so often, done essays where I display the idiocy of various people who send in hate mail and only display their own envy, hatred, and stupidity. They range from political bloggers like Dean Esmay to wannabe poets but bad visual artists like Bob Grumman, to atheist dogmatists to Academic bilge like Clayton Eshleman, to horrid wannabe arts sites like Web Del Sol to charlatans like Kent Johnson to bad boy poseur writers, and on and on. Of the tens of thousands of emails I’ve gotten over the years, the vast majority are of the ridiculously puerile, and self-defeating FUCK YOU! variety. I have usually written a piece that ‘disses’ the semi-literate emailer’s favorite writer, book, film, etc., and in their ignorant anger they resort to silly name calling. Such a tactic immediately renders the person a loser in their argument, for if one really knows what one is talking about, the lurch into profanity or ad hominem is a white flag of intellectual surrender. Of course, never are my legitimate criticisms accounted for. They are never spoken of or they are just lumped together as a display of my claimed bigotry against a certain group of people, thought system, or individual. That almost all my criticism are done with generous dollops of humor glides serenely above these folks’ disturbed little crania, for one of the hallmarks of the Subjectivist Cultists is a near total lack of humor- not to mention grace.
Yet, even supposedly humorous people lack this ability to laugh at themselves. Not long ago I receive the email below from a man named Dan Schneider. No, it was not myself, but an actor, comedian, and tv producer. He was best known as being the fat kid in the 1980s Howard Hesseman tv show Head Of The Class. In the last few years he produced a bad movie or two, and a few children’s television shows for cable tv. I’ve never seen any of his work save for Head Of The Class, but as Cosmoetica’s popularity increased I have become the most linked to Dan Schneider online, if you Google my name, despite the other Schneider’s two decades in television. In the last year or so the other Dan Schneider, or his publicists, have seemed to have taken some mild umbrage with the fact that a man with a mere website was more popular than a man with a long career in television, and thus started adding links to sources like Wikipedia and IMDB, in a weird sort of ‘arms race to try to take over as most popular ‘Dan Schneider.’ While the top slot for my name switches back and forth between me and the other Dan Schneider, due to the waxing and waning of hits that Cosmoetica gets, I never had any desire to ever contact the man who shares my name. Then, I received this email:
From: Quisp@aol.com
Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 1:05 AM
Well, Dan Schneider... my name is Dan Schneider. I live in Los Angeles
where I write movies and television. Back in the 1980s I used to star in a
TV show called "Head of the Class". I'm writing to you because,
on more than one occasion, I've been contacted by someone thinking I'm you. So,
I looked you up, discovered you're a poet, and I figured I'd write to you and
say hello, being that we have the same name and all.
Currently, I write and produce two TV series for Nickelodeon. One is called
"Drake & Josh" and the other is called "Zoey 101." If
you have kids or nieces/nephews between the ages of 6 and 14, they probably know
my shows pretty well. I created them and I'm the executive producer.
Well, that's all for now. Didn't mean to bug you. I just figured since
there are two Dan Schneiders in the world, both of whom are writers (albeit very
different kinds), I thought I should say hi.
Write back if you have time.
Best,
--Dan Schneider
P.S. Have you ever been contacted by anyone thinking you were me? If
not, say 'yes' anyway... I have a fragile ego. :)
Notice the manifest emotional references, such as thinking an email would bug me, or mentioning his ‘fragile ego.’ I won’t even get into the humor implicit with labeling himself a writer, and the metaphor of a Kindergartener commiserating with Picasso. Given that he’s likely a multi-millionaire and I have to slave for a living, this is a bizarre first correspondence. However, despite my always being busy with the website, work, and other diurnal do, I wrote back:
Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 6:48 AM
To: Quisp@aol.com
Hello. Yes, I recall that show: Howard Hesseman and a bevy of babes. I
don't have cable but I've seen your name, as well. Cosmoetica and your
IMDB listing seem to vie for top Dan Schneider Google slot. There used to be a
Florida fisherman with our name, but don't see much of his site now- must've
retired. Also a MLB player from the 60s.
A few people mail me thinking I'm you. I usually say you're richer but I'm
older.
Did you ever get to cozy up to Tyson's wife, or that sexy redhead gal who played
a poet?
Keep in touch. DAN
Tired of the way people constantly quote things out of context I always
BCC such emails to the regular Cosmoetica e-list so that I have hundreds
of ‘witnesses’ to the verities I state here. Notice how I did not even take
a sly jab at the man’s weight, and mentioned he was merely richer. I even try
to go ‘guy’ on him by mentioning the two sexy babes that starred on that
show. Likely, he never got within a mile of them sexually, but I’m trying to
booster his odd ego after the contact email.
The next day, after I was finished with a long shift, and had a day off,
I wrote back, when I got no reply. I figured the man might have been busy, or
that a spam filter did its worst:
Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 12:27 PM
To: Quisp@aol.com
Have a bit more time to write today. Had an 11 hour shift yester.
Have you ever wanted to write some op-ed pieces? If you do, you'd be welcome to
post them in my Bylines section, be they on the arts or politics, etc. I know
that that blond chick from Too Close For Comfort, Lydia Cornell, has a popular
blog; but that's dumbed down writing.
If you wanted to opine on life in the entertainment industry, it would be an
interesting perspective. Also any reviews on things. You could be 'you', rather
than what the industry expects of you.
If you got emails thinking I was you they probably mostly started off with FUCK
YOU! I've gotten tens of thousands of emails from the vapid anonymous losers
that troll online. I don't even reply to them any longer. Sorry if you've taken
some flak for me.
Every so often I get an angry email accusing me of being a hypocrite for ripping
bad literary writers because I wrote GOOD BURGER. I had no idea of what they
meant, until I Googled it. This was some indy film you did in the 90s.
Apparently it is a cult film.
Have you ever tried to move beyond comedy, and produce indy works in the John
Sayles/David Gordon Green mode?
Some reviews by you might benefit both of us. One of my most popular reviews was
of Gilligan's Island, and I even posted an email I got from the Professor,
Russell Johnson.
Anyway, lemme know if this interests you. Also, if you've enjoyed Cosmoetica
I can put you on my e-list.
Notice how I don’t state that his film is routinely panned as Lowest
Common Denominator tripe that makes the old Porky’s movies seem
intellectual. Yet, perhaps the fact that I mentioned ‘hypocrisy’, and
implied that others think the film is crap is what turned him off? I even offer
him a way to post ‘serious’ writings, and get on my e-list, but I never
heard back from him. Here was my last contact:
Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 7:35 AM
To: Quisp@aol.com
Have you rec'd these emails? DAN
As of this writing I have not heard back from the man. Now, before you ask what this has to do with the asinine domos who run college writing programs and the like, I will state that this just shows you the typical mindset of a Joe Average. Yes, the other Schneider may be rich and have some small fame, but he is manifestly a Joe Sixpack sort in terms of the arts. If one could buy into the biases that intellectuals have against the working class, this could be explicable, but the white collared degreed set are no better in their fundamental lack of understanding about the arts and anything else deeper in nature. Nor are they less prone to making asses of themselves to people they have never met.
My next example of the human tendency to just react strangely to people
online is of an intellectual who sent a bizarre email my way. His name is Peter
D. Ward, a college professor at the University of Washington. A few months back,
in August, I reviewed a book of his called Gorgon:
Paleontology, Obsession, And The Greatest Catastrophe In Earth’s History.
I actually gave it a positive review, even though I pointed out some of the
manifest bad writing within. Apparently, having been fattened on the fellatric
reviews that such books usually receive in the mainstream media, I got a bizarre
email from Ward, which I include unexpurgated, just as I do all emails and
selections I quote from, so that I cannot be accused of misquoting, selectively
quoting, or quoting out of context. It was bizarre, to say the least. Whether it
was an angry email, or merely evidence of a mental problem is difficult to
parse, even if one follows the link, which seems to lend support to some of his
book’s ideas. However, it also tends to diss the ideas of a rival science
writer I mention in my review of Ward’s book. That a college professor would
go out of his way to basically make de facto cyber childish faces at me because
another source claims that a rival of his was possibly wrong, says enough about
the man than I cared to know. Here it is:
From:
argo@u.washington.edu
Date: Oct 6, 2006
11:29 PM
So - just saw your review of gorgon jokes on you:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00037A5D-A938-150E-
A93883414B7F0000&pageNumber=2&catID=2
Professor Peter D Ward
Dept of Biology
The University of Washington
Seattle, 98195
206-543-2962 (Office)
Now, I don’t expect people to thank me for a positive review, but this is just a silly response. If you click on the link it details minutia that Ward sees somehow as relevant to my review. As stated, he was apparently miffed that I unfavorably compared his book and writing to that of a female scientist who has a much better way with words, and the link seeks to expose her book’s scientific flaw. Of course, that’s irrelevant to what is wrong with his book’s writing, and has nothing to do with the other writer’s style, either. But, never let it be said that emotional hysterics cannot overcome intellect.
I will return to Ward’s book and my review, later, for it will highlight another level of stupidity in the arts- specifically the online community which is riddled with the Lowest Common Denominator and cliques who seek to keep good writers and works of writing offline. Of course, this obtuseness that Ward displays is rampant in the arts and Academia, and I include both his and Schneider’s emails merely as appetizers for far greater stupidity to come. But, let me veer more toward the dishonesty side, now, for while there is a great deal of stupidity in the next group of people I will explore, it is their dishonesty which is the even greater sin.
That group of people is literary agents. Over the years, my wife and I have had limited success in landing literary agents. Usually, the agents are small, just starting out, and unconnected, therefore have little better chance of successfully placing a work than an individual has. To step back, the very nature and import of a literary agent is a tacit admission of the failures and artistic bankruptcy of most publishers, for the very profession has a parasitic quality to it. And this goes well beyond the plaint that it is the big monied corporations that are ruining literature. More books are published today than ever before, in the United States, but there are no big nor small presses that are regularly publishing great nor innovative literature on a regular basis. Years ago there would be an Ecco Press or New Directions, and even though they were hit and miss literarily, they discovered new writers of note and also brought foreign writers to an American audience. Today, as almost all small presses are suckled to the teat of the grant giving machine that is the National Endowment for the Arts, they are dumbed down by both government censures, as well as their own lack of knowledge of the art of writing by decades of promoting the noxious idea that anyone can be a writer, that everyone is creative. Yeah, and I can play basketball as well as Kobe Bryant because I can dribble a basketball.
Yet, this fallacious belief has led to the last few decades of terrible writers being churned out by the thousands by the American college writing mills- and, yes, they are as cruel as puppy mills in that they swindle money from talentless hacks, and foist bad writing on the public. Is this a crime in league with Nazism or Jim Crow? No, but it is a crime against literature, for the books that are being published, merely because of friendships, debts, or the well timed blowjob, take away slots that can be used for real writers of quality. There will always be far more bad writing than good published, just as there are far more ugly people than beautiful, but as long as all the good writing is being published I don’t care of the bad that sees print. In other words, to break it down into an easy equation, if there are 100 books published every year, and only five good books are produced in a year, I do not care that 95 bad books are published, as long as the 5 good ones get their due. It’s when only perhaps one of the good books gets published, and the four other slots are taken up by crap as bad or worse than the other 95 books, that I get angered.
Think of all the talentless poetry hacks- white, black, ethnic, lesbian, gay, male, straight, Jew, etc. Almost all these people get published because of who they know, not what they write. They gather in schools or –isms, like pond scum retreating to the dark edges of a pool so that the destroying sunlight cannot affect them. And they grow and grow. Of course, time will weed and winnow them, but nowadays the sunlight, or criticism, does not even exist- outside of yours truly and a few other folks. How many great writers suffer in anonymity, with good or great works ready to affect people, because detritus like the Louise Glücks, James Tates, David Foster Wallaces, Jhumpa Lahiris, and on and on are given book deals and awards for work that will be snickered at in a few decades, much as dozens of once popular, now forgotten, writers from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s are?
Yet, the agents, who have now become the first line of defense, so to speak, for Fortress Subjectivity, seem oblivious to this fact, as well as to what constitutes good writing, or what even is saleable. The very reason that writers typically get so little return for their intellectual effort- usually 15% of book sales, not including agent’s fees and taxes, is because the big book publishers have co-opted Hollywood’s Blockbuster mentality for making money, and dumbing down culture in the name of pelf, thus leaving the little presses to continue to foster the noxious cronyism, which dumbs down culture in the name of self-satisfaction and careerism. Rather than nursing fifty books of quality per year- assuming there are that many out there to be nursed, and promoting them with the hopes of making slight or solid profits on all but a few of those books within a few years, and guaranteeing that they come out a bit ahead, and that the writers’ names become ‘branded’, the publishers instead shoot their loads- editorially and financially, on four or five books they deem have blockbuster potential, not because of the writing, but because of the subject matter, the writer’s ethnicity, or story of grief, etc. That publisher might go 0 for 5 that publishing year, which only ratchets up their desire for a big payoff in a few months’ time, with a million seller, the following year. All of the ill-written titles only play into this delusive fever, so that one of the bad books will catch on for reasons that are ultimately indiscernible, and can cover the financial losses of dozens of other bad books. Could the financial success of an Angela’s Ashes have been predicted? After all, the spate of Irish themed books that inevitably followed it, in the late 1990s, failed to sell. Thus, it was not the idea of ‘suffering Irish’ that was the selling point. Perhaps it was because Frank McCourt’s book, albeit flawed, was pretty well written, and a cut above other memoirs?
If a sales frenzy like that attached to Angela’s Ashes does not happen, however, a panic cycle sets in, and the search for more all or nothing blockbusters takes hold, resulting in the publication of a piece of tripe, like Prozac Nation, a memoir of drug addiction by Rolling Stone reporter Elizabeth Wurtzel, that is not well written, and about how hard it is growing up white, female, and beautiful. When something like that hits it big- for sundry idiotic reasons unrelated to literary merit, the cycle kicks into an even more noxious mode, and the result is a spate of bad memoirs by even worse writers. Some sell well, like Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius- about, literally, nothing but how hard it is to be white, male, and privileged, or James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces- a terrible novel masquing as a memoir, about how hard it is to be white, male, and privileged, as well as a dumb drunkard; while other bad books are marginal sellers, yet pushed so hard by publicists that even their marginal financial notoriety is treated as if a blockbuster, and is optioned for a screenplay, like Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors- about how hard it is growing up gay, talentless, and with a psychotic mother, or Brad Land’s Goat- about how hard it is growing up white, male, privileged, and having to endure sexual hijinks at a fraternity. And I’m not even going to now digress too far into the fact that most agents, editors, and publishers cannot tell good writing from bad, much less provide good editorial criticism, for I shall touch on that as I proceed.
For those stating that this is merely the whining of a bitter writer on the outside looking in, this is not true, and I shall now quote from a raft of emails and rejections my wife has received for her and my works over the last few months of her querying about. This will show that the agents in question a) are clueless about quality, for I will do demonstrations of writing quality side by side, and even worse, clueless about how to even do their own jobs. For legal purposes, since these were not emails directed to Cosmoetica itself- for which I have the legal right to post any correspondence, for the sending of an email to the website is consent for its possible publication, I shall not quote the agents’ names within. I will, though, extrapolate on some of their points.
Jessica had been sending around the first book of my memoirs, True Life, to some agents, and as it is well written, mixes poetry with prose, and speaks of gangsters, art, philosophy, sex, violence, and beauty, and is truly innovative, it would seem to have a great chance at mass appeal, as well as having obvious staying power. You can read some excerpts from it here. Yet, here is a typically stolid reply from an agent:
Dear Jessica Schneider, I don't have the foggiest idea
how to go about placing your husband's manuscript TRUE LIFE. There may be an
audience for this sort of confessional fictional outpouring but if it
exists it is part of a generation and culture light years removed from mine. I
wish you luck in finding the appropriate agent and/or publisher.
Sincerely,
AGENT
Putting aside the poor punctuation and ill written nature of the email,
notice how he (and I use the masculine in the generic not sexual sense) likely
has not read more than even the first page. Jess submitted it as a memoir, yet
the James Frey effect- that all memoirs must really be repackaged novels, is in
place. Clearly, as my memoir is episodic, picaresque, and punctuated with great
poetry, it is not like a novel in form, much less fictionalized. Of course,
names, dates, and places have sometimes been altered, but that’s standard
operating procedure in memoirs, to avoid nuisance lawsuits from guilty parties,
or parties who do not like their true nature revealed.
Note, too, how he uses the term ‘confessional’ in a negative light.
This is decades of Confessional poetry’s decent from Plath, Lowell, Berryman,
and Bishop to modern poetastry, and its infection into the cultural
consciousness, skewing the very neutral reality of the term. Of course, by its
very nature, a memoir will be ‘confessional’ in that it reveals previously
hidden things in its writer’s existence. When the agent states, ‘it is part
of a generation and culture light years removed from mine,’ he is basically
stating that he has absolutely no idea what the market today is, nor even a
desire to find out. It ends with the trite ‘good luck’ bon mot. As you read
these writings, please note how these agents cannot even write mildly
interesting nor individuated letters, nor even state their ideas well. This
negates the idea that they are ‘pressed for time’. I doubt anyone online is
more pressed for time than me, yet I take my tasks as a writer and webmaster
seriously.
I generally do not respond to such manifest stupidity, for there is so much of it and so little time, but Jess was frustrated, and wrote this reply:
As per your reasons for your response, I felt they
deserved my comment. See interpolated.
Dear Jessica Schneider, I don't have the foggiest idea how to go about placing your husband's manuscript TRUE LIFE.
I said how to do it in my letter. A poor kid with a violent childhood who grows
to be a great writer. There aren't any of those being published today. What
other clients have a website with 62 million hits and growing? How did James
Frey's crap get published? There is no art there. True Life is real literature.
There may be an audience for this sort of confessional fictional
outpouring
It's a memoir, so of course it's 'confessional'. But it's not based in fiction,
it's based in memory. Frank McCourt did it, however more conventionally in his
approach. This goes beyond McCourt. And yes, there is an audience. Were there no
audience Cosmoetica wouldn't be receiving the many, many emails from
young kids who are bored with their dull writing professors and what's being
published, and are looking for real quality literature. They are starving for
something new. Not to mention that 1.5 million hits a month ain't a bad start
when it comes to promotion/placement.
Jess touches on one of the best points, how out of touch the fossilized set in the publishing industry is to the power of the Internet. It’s like how the music industry took years to get behind the download craze. Even if I were just another crappy political blogger, or rambling versifier, Cosmoetica’s popularity (which stems from my NOT being a crappy political blogger or rambling versifier) as one of the handful of big arts websites should clue someone in to the fact that there is a potential, at least, for sales, even if they are wholly clueless to the wads of great writing that exists within it.
but
if it exists it is part of a generation and culture light years removed from
mine.
Young people are the future, and there is a culture starving for real
literature, of which is not getting published. (Yes, it's much more exciting to
read James Frey- a druggie loser with no clue how to write or all these
self-indulgent works drenched in clichés).
I wish you luck in finding the appropriate agent and/or publisher.
Sincerely, AGENT
Luck is about the only thing that's going to do it, since quality doesn't
matter. And I'm sure a similar thing was told to Max Brod, regarding his pal
Kafka's work. Anyhow, thanks for skimming it.
Sincerely,
Jessica Schneider
I would have written a bit more deft of a reply, simultaneously making the agent look even more foolish while keeping it more impersonal, but Jess does twist the knife with her thanks for skimming the book- really the first two or three pages, most likely.
Of course, memoirs are not the only thing that stolid agents are clueless of. Here is an email Jess got from an agent regarding my novel The Trial Of Horacio Guzman, which is about a pedophile coming to terms with his life after he is falsely accused of a sexual crime he did not commit. The book also has the lead character reading excerpts from a science fiction about human-android marriage, and it has obvious parallels to the current ‘gay marriage’ issue. Here was the email:
Thanks very much for your query letter regarding the novel THE TRIAL OF HORACIO GUZMAN.
I'm sorry to say that I don't feel we could represent this
for you successfully because of the fluctuations in the publishing marketplace.
The publishing business has been erratic since the latter part of 1995, when
most publishers took a big fall in sales. Sales were mixed until 1999, and then
got better. However, 2001 was a very bad year in terms of bottom-line profits,
because most publishers produced too many units of too many different titles,
and therefore were either marginally profitable or actually took a loss for the
year. 2002 was also marginal, and sales fell apart in early October through the
Christmas selling season. 2003 was better for nonfiction, but fiction sales were
still very soft, and 2004 continued the same. It was similar in 2005, with
nonfiction selling much more strongly than fiction (even by the biggest
best-seller authors).
Publishers are still cutting their lists, and editors are
still buying extremely carefully. We take on very few new clients, and only on
projects that strike us as having very special "handles" that strike
us as fresh and vivid.
I wish I could say something more specific about what you've
submitted, but we are receiving between forty to sixty queries a week these
days--and it is just impossible to read and consider and comment in detail.
Of course, another agent may feel differently, and good luck
with your work.
Best wishes,
AGENT
This is another standard technique to discourage writers- the claims about the ‘toughness’ of the market. This is all bullshit, of course, for no one could predict that the aforementioned poorly written memoirs would become bestsellers, or nearly so. Now, look at what he describes the agency takes on- ‘fresh and vivid’ projects. A novel with a pedophile protagonist, in this age of rampant child abuse, and wild priests? Could my book be more timely in exploring the psyche of such an individual? Of course, had Jess sent my nonfiction memoir, True Life, the excuse would have been something else, albeit another off the rack comment.
The truth is that excellence has no place in today’s book market because a) most writers, agents, editors, publishers, and critics cannot discern what goers into quality writing, and b) even if they did, they feel- with some justification, that it would not sell to the deliterate masses. It’s all about what someone ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes.’ Period. Be they an agent or reader. When the agent claims ‘I wish I could say something more specific about what you've submitted, but we are receiving between forty to sixty queries a week these days--and it is just impossible to read and consider and comment in detail,’ he is stating that he only looks at what he likes. It’s a de facto admission of that, as well as his having no idea what the saleable market is, not having any desire to be a ‘leader’ and not a ‘follower’ in terms of promoting literature.
This time, Jess did not even respond. Instead, she merely wrote her response, to get it out of her system, and never sent it. Why bother with this sort of stolidity?
Dear
AGENT:
Thanks for your reply but I need to respond to 2 things. First, how can you be
so sure that the query isn't 'fresh and vivid' when the story itself also has a
novel within a novel that deals with the themes of homosexual marriage, in
addition to using the technique from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying about a
man wrongfully accused of a crime? I've never even heard such an approach by any
other writer. Second, how many clients do you have that already have such a
platform, i.e. one of the most popular literary websites in the world www.Cosmoetica.com
with a so far readership of 62 million hits and growing? I only bring these
points up because you went to such a detailed response, of which I think
warrants my response. The reason sales are plummeting is because too many books
are being published by too many bad/mediocre writers via cronyism and the public
doesn't care. Here you have a novel that not only is 'fresh and vivid' but also
from an online personality that would generate sales.
I wouldn't have said any of this if this had just been a standard 'dear author'
rejection you sent, but I know how the publishing business works, and from what
I can see even more so than the publishers as indicated by their poor sales.
Anyhow, thanks for emailing, but I just had to toss in my 2 cents on the matter.
Please don't read anything more into this email- I just wanted to make my points
and that's all.
Thanks,
Jessica Schneider
Again, my wife makes the good point that the downward spiral of publishing bad writing that no one wants leads to the effect I described before, of publishers panicking and trying to get a blockbuster all the time, rather than developing a few dozen good books and writers. I won’t touch upon the deleterious effects of writing workshops too much, because there are people who can write well, who are outside that networking vehicle, and an agent, editor, or publisher with a zest for great writing, would not have to dig that long to find some talent- as infrequent as it might be. Or, do they really believe that a literature that makes a star of a Dave Eggers is one of value? I doubt that because, both online and at readings, such writers are openly mocked. Granted, unlike me, the mockers have no ability to descry why Eggers and his ilk are bad, but they know he is, and that’s the point.
Yet, even when an agent shows a mild interest, it’s muted and puzzled. Here is one from an agent that seemed a bit less stolid than the other two:
Dear
Jessica,
Wow, that's a lot of work in one place! ;)
I looked around the website for a while, at both yours and Dan's work. You're
both very productive, but I can't say what interests me unless I know what it is
you feel is ready for, or in need of, publication. What is it you're
looking to achieve in print that you don't feel you're achieving in pixels? Or
what do you think would be enhanced by going to print?
I just want to be sure you have a definite direction you want to go, and then I
can decide if that's a place I can take you. It may not be for me,
but at the very least you'll have a better focus; better to attack the market
with a rapier than a blanket, you know?
Hope to hear from you soon!
Sincerely,
AGENT
Of course, there are some ridiculous things this agent asks- such as why publication in a book is preferable to print. Money, honey! This again shows how utterly clueless the literary world is to online popularity. Also, in her query letters, Jess details what the work- mine or hers- is about, what its market potential is, and how to best market it. If one reads between the lines one can see that this agent is already backing out- perhaps scared off by my un-PC writing? Perhaps because she has no clue as to what is good nor bad in writing?
Here is what Jess wrote back:
Dear AGENT:
Thank you for your kind response. Well, to answer your question, the one thing
that being in print that a website will never do is make money. Despite the
popularity of Cosmoetica, we've been unable to support ourselves from our
writing simply because it's not in print. The both of us have many works of
fiction that are not on the website- Cosmoetica is primarily criticism,
poetry, and essays, as opposed to straight fiction, which brings me to you.
Ideally, we were looking for an agent who could recognize the bulk of what Cosmoetica
is, and knowing that with such a strong starting point, the books could sell.
There are a few books of Dan's that I've been querying about, and one is his
novel called Tumbleweeds, which is a sustained meditation on loss and
grief in youth, as it details the other 1960s in America, the unspoken of, the
urban poor, and not the spoiled rich hippy movement. It takes place over a
several year time period from the late 1960s through the early 1970s. In a
sense, it is a later 20th Century version of A Tree Grows In
Brooklyn, or a 20th Century equivalent to Huckleberry Finn,
save that it follows the lives of three male children, covers a shorter time
frame, and deals with more modern problems, as it takes a deeper, broader look
at the violent world of inner city New York during those turbulent times, of the
Vietnam War and Watergate scandal, that changed a nation forever. Dan
brilliantly writes of that time and era like only someone who experienced it
could.
He also has a memoir series that is the non-fiction version of Tumbleweeds,
called True Life, about his having grown up poor in urban New York,
educating himself on literature and poetry, and becoming the writer and critic
he is today. In addition, he also has a non-fiction work called Show &
Tell that discusses the current scenes involving race in America, (and
especially in light of Katrina couldn't be more relevant) as told from
the point of view of someone having grown up in poorer neighborhoods.
I think that with his online personality, and especially since these works in
particular deal with his background and how he grew up, it makes it easy to
market a 'personality'. His True Life I think could be what Angela's
Ashes was in the 90's (only Dan claims that his childhood was worse than
McCourt's simply because McCourt wasn't getting shot at). As for me, I have
multiple works as well- one which I've been sending around is the beginning of a
sibling series called American Earth. I have been querying for the both
of us, sending whatever book might interest an agent, depending on where that
agent's interest lies, which is why I queried you- to find out what you were
looking for and see if we had something that might interest you.
If this sounds interesting, I think that Tumbleweeds would be a good
place to start commercially, because it really is a lot like A Tree Grows In
Brooklyn , and for many people I know (including me) that is a personal
favorite. I don't want to overload you with tons of synopses and excerpts, but
rather just give a single place to start and see what you think from there.
Thank you for your consideration, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Jessica Schneider
Note all the things Jess details, and compare it to the sorts of agent and publisher query letters you can find online by Googling. Yet, this agent declined. Of course, he did not display some of the stolidity that the next agent did, who fell back upon the use of bald clichés to make his point:
From:
AGENT
Subject: Young Adult Query for Winky Tales
Hi:
Thanks for thinking of our agency.
I'm going to pass. The narrative both opens and closes with "author
telling."
The middle is more traditionally developed with scenes and dialog, but the
author keeps stepping in to tell the reader about the characters. Better to show
the characters performing actions that develop a story.
I'll pass.
This was a query about a group of short stories, The Winky Tales, Jess wrote about a minor character from another of her novels. Set in the Great Depression, the character is a more smart-ass version of Tom Sawyer, although the tales are more adult themed than Twain’s story. What he is basically saying is that he and American readers are so dumb that they need to have things ham-handedly plot-driven to follow what’s going on. God forbid there is an interior monologue- often mislabeled as stream of consciousness (as I will show in a bit), or some depth of character where the protagonist proves he is more than an automaton- or someone very like the agent and average American reader.
Jess replied:
Subject: Fwd: Young Adult Query for Winky Tales
Why is it better to show than tell? Who made the rules?
Jess is right, for if one only shows, not tells, then the poetry of a Wallace Stevens, as example, is ‘bad poetry’. The question is not whether a writer nor a piece of writing tells, but whether it tells well. This sort of advice is Workshop 101 level, and shows where the agent comes from, as well as how unsophisticated and unable to cope with innovation a reader is. Beyond poetry, however, this sort of advice wholly exempts lauded foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Haruki Murakami, Franz Kafka, and Milan Kundera, not to mention great American fictionists like Mark Twain and Herman Melville. Moby-Dick is almost all telling!
The only thing worse than seeing the first sentinels to published literature reciting clichés is when they try to sell you something- just like writing contests that want you to buy the crap they chose in favor of your great work. Here was another agent reply:
From: AGENT
Hi:
Cannot use your story. Get the book My Little Writer's Book by James V Smith a
novelist. You do have talent, so keep learning and writing and developing your
craft into detail that sets up imagery for the reader's entertainment.
Thanks for thinking of us first.
Let’s overlook the ill writ email, and all that suggests about the agent’s ability to discern good writing. The book recommended is itself is a horrid little book that, naturally, tries to sell a formula on how to write banal stories. There are the sections on how to develop a character, which involves setting up hurdles, and include ludicrously bad examples of writing. While I think much PC pseudo-art never even tries to entertain, when this joker says ‘entertain’ he’s really advocating stripping writing of its depth, lest he would not recommend such a formulaic book, likely by an acquaintance or client of his. Or, even more pathetically, he might actually find such delimiting tripe helpful. Of course, one must realize that many of these ‘agents’ are really assistants to the real agent, who is too fat and sassy to even deign to read most submissions, and merely using the real agent’s name in business. Trolling through the slush pile is usually left to college aged interns, often unpaid and working for college credit, to decide what gets passed on.
Knowing this, is there any wonder the pseudo-angst laden deliterate crap of the Wurtzels, Eggerses, Freys, and Foster Wallaces is being published regularly? Remember that it is this age group that has brought the ADD-infected MTV-level film to Hollywood, and made television hits of such shows as Jackass and Fear Factor, where people are rewarded for their stupidity, as well as making anorexia and bulimia chic. This is not exactly a deep nor profound part of society. That they should be the arbiters of literary excellence, as well as taste, is exactly why this culture is so shallow and shortsighted, and its writing infantilized and dumbed down. That literary agencies trust their financial fortunes to such hands says as much about the reason the American economy is in such bad shape as it does why American literature is. If this demographic group cannot even decide whether or not to drink and drive, how can a socially important resource like literature be left in such hands?
Here is another example of an agent asking for work that is formulaic. He goes so far as to not only recommend a book, but quote a horribly uninformed and shallow attempt at literary criticism to back up his desire for inanity. That the agent cannot even use the tools of language to formulate his own opinion shows how much a joke the arbiters of literature have become. Imagine having your surgeon ask you, before a heart transplant if the heart was in the thorax or buttocks. Here ‘tis:
Dear Jessica,
Thanks for sending the opening chapters to your YA novel, but I don't think this can compete with newly published novels. The mix in diction, literary for descriptive passages and lowdown for dialogue, didn't work for me. I've copied below an excerpt from The Art of Fiction. Your writing doesn't show "defects in character or education," but the rest of the passage elaborates on my response to the manuscript.
With revision, I think this may have potential as a historical, but I don't read these books. Historical fiction has its conventions, so I would suggest you query agent and editors working in this area.
I appreciate the opportunity to consider your work.
AGENT
Diction problems are usually symptomatic of defects in the character or education of the writer. Both diction shifts and the steady use of in appropriate diction suggest either deep-down bad taste or the awkwardness that comes of inexperience and timidity. There seems little or no hope or the adult writer who produces sentences like these: "Her cheeks were thick and smooth and held a healthy natural red color. The heavy lines under them, her jowls, extended to the intersection of her lips and gave her a thick-lipped frown most of the time." "Her cheeks were thick and smooth" is normal English, but "[Her cheeks] held a healthy natural red color" is elevated, pseudo-poetic. The word "held" faintly hints at personification of "cheeks," and "healthy natural red color" is clunky, stilted, slightly bookish. The second sentence contains similar mistakes. The diction level of "extended to the intersection of her lips" is high and formal, in ferocious conflict with the end of the sentence, which plunges to the colloquial "most of the time." There may be slightly more hope for the writer who uses steadily elevated diction—sentences that pomp along like these: "The unique smell of urine and saltwater greeted him as he stepped through the hatchway. He surveyed the area for an open sink or shower stall but, finding none, had to wait in line." ("Had to wait in line" is of course a sudden diction drop.) The writing here has most of the usual qualities of falsely elevated diction: abstract language ("unique smell"), cliché personification, ("[the smell] greeted him"), Latinate language where simple Anglo-Saxon would be preferable ("surveyed the area" for "looked around"), and so forth. If a writer with difficulties like these sticks to the relatively easy kinds of fiction—the realistic story and the yarn as opposed to the tale—he can get rid of his problems simply.
-- John Gardner, "Common Errors" in The Art of Fiction (p. 101-102)
Of course, Jess’s novel, Quick With Flies, is not a Young Adult novel, and her writing is nothing like Gardner’s, nor the sentences quoted within the Gardner passage. Gardner himself was a very hit and miss writer who never approached greatness, and it’s always a curiosity when the mediocre are quoted from as if gods. The sentences quoted from are not in context, which makes much of the point of the Gardner quote useless, and some of the claims, like ‘"Had to wait in line" is of course a sudden diction drop’ are utterly baffling, for they are manifestly subjective. A drop in diction would occur if a Shakespearean sonnet ended with a hip hop couplet. The sentence this is taken from is wholly consistent, if rather generic. This sort of criticism is classic Dead White Male criticism, and, again, wholly inapplicable to Jess’s writing, for better or worse. Of course, never let irrelevance stop an ignorant from making a point; especially one who has no interest in historical- i.e.- literary- fiction.
To give you an example of the difference between Jess’s book and a recently published novel, here is the start of disgraced ‘memoirist’ James Frey ‘s latest book, My Friend Leonard. Initially it was marketed as another memoir, just like A Million Little Pieces. But, when that memoir was revealed to be filled with little factuality, his publisher’s PR department decided to market this book’s even less autobiographical tale as a novel. It begins:
On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray. I was standing in line for lunch and didn’t see it coming. I went down. When I got up I turned around and started throwing punches. I landed two or three before I got hit again, this time in the face. I went down again. I wiped blood away from my nose and my mouth and I got up I started throwing punches again. Porterhouse put me in a headlock and started choking me. He leaned toward my ear and said I’m gonna let you go. If you keep fighting me I will fucking hurt you bad. Stay down and I will leave you alone. He let go of me and I stayed down.
I have been here for eighty-seven days. I live in Men’s Module B, which is for violent and felonious offenders. There are thirty-cells in my module, thirty-two inmates. At any given time, there are between five and seven deputies watching us. All of us wear blue and yellow striped jumpsuits and black rubber-soled slippers that do not have laces. When we move between rooms we walk through barred doors and metal detectors. My cell is seven feet wide and ten feet long. The walls are cement and the floor is cement and the bed is cement, the bars iron, the toilet steel. The mattress on the bed is thin, the sheets covered with grit. There is a window in my cell, it is a small window that looks out onto a brick wall. The window is made of bulletproof glass and there are bars on both sides of it. It affords me the proper amount of State required sunlight. Sunlight does not help pass time, and the State is not required to provide me anything to help pass time.
Note the run-on sentences, with no emotional, aesthetic, nor dramatic need for them, the bad punctuation (there should be semicolon, not a comma, by ‘There is a window in my cell….’), and unnecessary- as well as poor, descriptions which serves no purpose. As example, a jail cell is a jail, but if one wants to describe it, and is going to, should not some effort be made to elevate the prose and/or description, or at least bring some insight to the plight of the character? Were there some dramatic reason- an internal monologue in a moment of crisis, or verbal poesy, a good writer, like a James Joyce, might be able to get away with descent into ostensibly the bad writing I’ve detailed, and yet raise it above the crap that Frey spews. Frey cannot. Yet his garbage is published.
Here, by contrast, is the poetic and engaging opening to Jess’s Quick With Flies. Ask yourself whose writing- hers or Frey’s, is more in need of the didactic idiocy that the agent spews?:
Spawned, no rain. The land was empty, but my mind was full. It was summer, 1934, with some of the hottest temperatures ever. Nebraska alone reached 118 degrees one day in July, and a week later I read how one man even lived in his refrigerator for a whole week, trying to keep cool. When they finally got 'round to yankin' him out, they had to treat his fingers for frostbite. Yes, I could read, and rather well at that. My mother was a schoolteacher who taught me well- books and the Bible to say the least. And don't think I didn't appreciate it- many Negroes at this time couldn't read or write, but I could do both. I always tried making my ma proud, and doing right by her, and some days when the summer air blew like a hot furnace upon my face, loosening the dust, I couldn't but help from thinking of this thing that killed her.
Pneumonia. Dust. She died almost two years ago, in the fall of 1932, coughing up clogs of dirt long enough to be pencils, or snakes even, until eventually the coughing ceased and she was left to smile at what was left of us: our rickety Kansas farm house layered in a foot of dust on all sides. Dad was wearing thin too- the crops weren't doing well, and we used to think that the color of the dust would tell you just where it blew from. Black was Kansas. Gray was Colorado or New Mexico, and Red was Oklahoma. But at our house there were so many layers filled with so many colors I could not tell what had blown from where. This dust would be the death of us. It spawned from the mere touch of human toes, from the hooves of tired animals and from the inertia of riverbeds. Even the weight of eyes seemed to rattle it out of place and drift it upwards, just to make the sky we saw a darker shade. It was everywhere in a land once fertile and full now dwindling to desert and as barren as our chances.
After ma died, my brother set out for the north- only to end up in Chicago. But last I heard he was traveling to the east, probably to stay with our cousin who had a farm in Maryland. Dad sent him out to earn a little more money. He sent some, but then the writing stopped and we haven't heard from him since. My father, Howard Johnson Sr., who was as close to me as any father and son would be during these times, fell sick and passed away a year after mom died. I had them buried together in the graveyard, between and under the dust. It was the dust that brought them there in the first place; living in our home and between our teeth until finally it lodged a spot within both their lungs and hearts- so to speak. And it would get me too if I just stayed and let it take me.
Earth was the name for when things stayed put. But dust- dust was when it was let to waft on the wind. We needed the earth for our survival, but it could have spared us the dust. I myself had keeled over many a time only to emit a black sludge- dust and saliva. No, these times were never very fun, so when fun came along you had to be sure to take it all in and have somethin' to hold on to.
Prairie dogs loved the dust. Now they could tunnel up several feet from the ground, burrowing their ways through their complex mazes, poking their little heads out every so often when there were no storms. Once one of those critters popped its head up at me and stared at me for what must have been a good minute. When it returned to its tunnel, it didn't seem to be too impressed with me, for it did not pop out again for the rest of the day. Even small things had their ways about them.
If you seriously have to ponder the query I laid out before this excerpt, go slit your wrists now, for you are amongst the walking dead, already. Despite the idiocy, and barely hidden contempt for good writing that the didactic agent showed, Jess wrote back and defended herself quite well:
Dear AGENT
Thanks for considering the mss, but I can't say I agree with this text below.
I've read John Gardner and while he's written some good stories, he's not a
great writer, so I take what he says with a grain of salt. There is a difference
between truly poetic and being overwrought, as in some of the examples he gives-
but I don't write like those examples. My writing has music and is light and
whimsical and doesn't clunk like these sentences he gives. The modifiers he uses
as examples aren't fresh, they aren't poetic because of their lack of freshness,
and I'm someone who avoids stale modifiers, where as writers getting published
today, don't. Prose today is so banal and straightforward, and all the fun and
art is taken out from it. This advice is like trying to make a Fellini film into
a conventional a-b-c Hollywood movie that no one will care about in five years.
Also, the mix of the elevated prose in my novel with that of the 'lowdown'
dialogue is meant to contrast the high and low, ala the way Steinbeck did in Grapes,
which isn't considered a historical novel at all, but a novel placed into a
setting, as is mine. I am very well aware that my writing style does not match
the conventions, which is why I know it will take me longer to find print than
some average writer, but I'm willing to deal with that. One cannot force an
artist into a box- that's what those editors back in the 30's tried doing to
Emily Dickinson's poems, and it didn't last. Great art will never follow rules
as these- I avoid reading books about writing for this very purpose, because
very often I've found that even a good, solid writer like Gardner isn't
necessarily the best critic for others' work, and even of himself.
Again, please know I appreciate you looking at the mss, but I just felt I had to
say these few things in response. Please don't read any bitterness, etc. into
this email, I just needed to make my points.
Thanks again for considering it,
Jessica Schneider
I stick by my original comment, when I forwarded this exchange around to Cosmoetica’s e-list:
Here's an email Jess got from an agent for one of her novels. What amazes is how, when you read between the lines, the agent is saying, 'Be unoriginal, uninspired, and generic.' DAN
Another variation on the recommendation of following formulae is when someone starts using phrases that make no sense. Here is a rejection Jess got for some short stories I wrote. The real reason for rejection was likely because of the un-PC nature of the stories, which all featured women who would not be considered physically attractive in contemporary culture. That I was critiquing the society, not ragging on the characters, of course, slipped by the agent:
AGENT wrote:
Mr.
and Mrs. Schneider,
I've reviewed the submission of three shorts from 'Ugly Girls'. I've
decided to pass on this project. It is my feeling that short stories
need to be very tightly written. Each word has to have validity. I
didn't find this to be so in these submissions.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your work and I wish you success
with this manuscript.
AGENT
Of course, anyone who reads anything I write- poem, story, essay, review, will note that I do not mince words. ‘Tightness’ is not a problem. Even more ridiculous is the vapid claim that ‘Each word has to have validity.’ This is a clichéd PC term for, ‘I do not agree with the political/religious sentiment here, and reject its worldview, which is not valid, and shows the writer to be a racist/misogynist/homophobe/uncouth bigot of some variety.’ People who use such off the rack terms simply do not want to address their own shortcomings as a reader and person and fall back on euphemisms as this. Again, if one were to follow his recommendation, a writer would have to overdescribe minor things and characters simply to overdescribe, or leadenly plot out tales so that every fart a character made was given cosmic import. What is implied by the agent is that well-developed characters and ‘real’ situations to deal with will not interest people yet weaned from overwrought teen angst and melodrama. It is usually not a good tack to describe things that serve no purpose for a tale, unless the nature of describing things is immanent to the story’s nature, or that of the protagonist.
Of course, if one does give a reader well-developed characters and ‘real’ situations, it’s no guarantee that the dimwitted will get it anyway. Here is a reply from an agent in regards to my novel Tumbleweeds, whose only interest was that Cosmoetica is a popular website. This agent was so obtuse that Jess called him a ‘fucking moronic tool.’ I simply called him the ‘Fat Man,’ and it should be noted that this agent is a fan of the Nicholas Sparks school of writing- i.e.- he likes cliché-dappled Romance novel level literature, and in a prior email did not know the difference between the words ‘loath’ and ‘loathe.’
From: AGENT
Dear Jessica,
I read the material you sent, well that's not strictly true. Let's say I read laboriously and found myself lost, continually. As a stream of consciousness it has it's merits but those thoughts are too idiosyncratic for my tastes. In the end, we have to represent material we can comprehend (not something I am sure I actually achieved with your husband's writing) and believe in.
So, I am sorry, but we'll pass. I'll destroy the sheets you sent.
Thanks for sending the material, sorry it didn't work out.
AGENT
Of course, after Nicholas Sparks even James Frey can be considered a ‘difficult read.’ Aside from the poorly constructed grammar of the email, the Fat Man has to reveal his ignorance by stating that he labored to read the first page or two of my work. His attempted diss chokes on his own stupidity. Let’s compare the opening of my book with another published work’s opening. Here is the sort of writing that appeals to the Nicholas Sparks-loving Fat Man. It’s the opening fourteen paragraphs of Dave Eggers’ atrocious memoir A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius:
Through the small bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic. Exhaust from the dryer billows clumsily out from the house and up, breaking apart while tumbling into the white sky.
The house is a factory.
I put my pants back on and go back to my mother. I walk down the hall, past the laundry room, and into the family room. I close the door behind me, muffling the rumbling of the small shoes in the dryer, Toph’s.
‘Where were you?’ my mother says.
‘In the bathroom,’ I say.
‘Hmph,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘For fifteen minutes?’
‘It wasn’t that long.’
‘It was longer. Was something broken?’
‘No.’
‘Did you fall in?’
‘No.’
‘Were you playing with yourself?’
Not exactly a great and memorable opening, and don’t you love these MTV-based ‘paragraphs?’ Look how he then tries to lend gravitas to the first sentence’s end with the word ‘calligraphic.’ Aside from being bad imagery, given the rest of the selection it’s very forced. The rest of the imagery is even more banal. Now, compare that to the physical description that starts Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Even worse than Eggers’ description is the horrid dialogue. Literally, this ‘Huh?’, ‘what?’, ‘yup’ sort of dialogue runs, at times for several pages, with nothing of import being said. Fans of Eggers think this is realism, but it’s merely bad writing. Great dialogue takes such banal situations and frames them so they do become poetic by contrast or by how the dialogue is positioned in the tale. Good dialogue appears to be merely tossed off, but focuses on the unexpected poesy that characters are unawares of speaking, not the immanent dullness of most real world conversations, which this dreadful book full of. By contrast, here are the first three paragraphs of my novel Tumbleweeds, which the deliterate agent, Fat Man, laboriously got lost in:
Without understanding, the distance of color is what drew me to the window. Such shimmers like spume off the sea of what was. It was close, to me, though; closer than I cared for its reach to go. Yet, it was deceiving in its approach to me. And that was surely what it was doing. I drew no steps, yet my mind could feel the approach of the other, that thing that is always within and without the self. Imagining all that has ever been stationed between each breath, each heartbeat, the murmur of self rustling against its own boundaries. Emotions roll in me not like tides, but a thing more conscious than that. I cannot well convey it, but I know what I feel. Perhaps my own flesh rebels against time? It has used me, not the other way around. I have been chosen as a marker to decay. Yet, I cannot withstand its approach. Like the shell of an atom I am affected by the other in proportion to its propinquity. It is the bonds that are unseen in the micro which rule the macro with such impunity. Yet, both worlds exist within each other. The smaller within the larger on a physical level, yet the larger within the smaller on a psychological level. A quark spins left, not right, and a year that is dead rages from the grave. Whether it is noticed by all, or the other, makes no difference to the percipient, for notice clangs through the cosmos individually, at all times. That which we choose to notice is usually an aspect of our own past or future manifesting itself ever so briefly before the mist makes its union.
The color I saw was, specifically, my cat Harry- orange, black and white. He was engaged by the day outside my 21st Century suburban Texas home. Or was he? Upon moving toward his color I noticed that he was focused upon a balletic scene just outside. It seemed two dragonflies were locked in what seemed mid-air mortal combat- one shimmering yellow and orange, the other a deep navy blue. Their iridescence had always fascinated me, when young, and reminded me of creatures dreamt of in science fiction novels or superhero comic books. Then, as their free tumble crashed into my window’s wire mesh screen I could see it was copulation, not destruction, which possessed the insects. Their legs would frantically, but only momentarily, lock upon the screen mesh as they did their deed, then they would tumble downward, relock their legs, and continue. Perhaps it was just the color scheme, but I felt the blue dragonfly was the male. They did not mind the gaze of me, nor Harry, for the long minutes they tumbled down our sight. This diseros lasted several minutes, as Harry and I were rapt. In fact, they seemed wholly oblivious to us, as if they realized we were unlooked upon, by them, thereby unimportant. Their struggle was somehow primitive, yet understandable. Harry might swipe at the pair, with his paw, and his gesture might cause them to fly off the screen, less than a foot, then tumble back at us, into the screen, to try to fasten themselves again, as if their very mortality were no price for their desire. Desire has little relation to reality- how many of us have desired a person or a thing that was clearly, in retrospect, not worth the effort? Yet, still we desired, just to desire, regardless of our desired thing’s quality, or qualities. So, too, it seemed with the dragonflies. Aimlessly they seemed to tumble, through space alone, at first. Then, of a sudden, as I looked into the vastness behind them, time was also in remission, and the insects were not outside where I thought they were, but I, alone, was back nearly forty years earlier, to my childhood, in an impoverished section of Queens, New York.
The struggle of a pair of mindlessly driven creatures had wedged me back, myself, tumbling through the memories and aridity of years that were not mine, alone, any longer. I was part of a larger scheme- stars, desires, losses, deaths, and trivial moments that framed all the rest. It was the smaller things that roared back into me, as if a first love. It is said that a first love fills the heart even as it empties the head. So it was for me in the return to my past. I was stripped of all presuppositions and rationalizations of that time, even as I was confident of their return. I was me, them, you, others, all things at all times in all ways. I was here there, and beyond, where any soul could read my meager existence like some newly discovered star, or a fossil whose heft weighed the life of its discoverer. It was as if I had fled past the barriers of the known cosmos and was waiting for someone to notice the schism. Having read Abbott’s Flatland, I was reminded of the scene where A Square encounters a testy Sphere, who resents his existence being denoted a hallucination, so sweeps into A Square’s world, and forever shatters his illusions of reality.
I use words of heft, but since my writing is literate, filled with imagery, and sucks a reader in, it loses deliterate dullards like the Fat Man. And look how, at the end of the third paragraph I play with the very notion of clichés that bad writers like Eggers simply indulge in. If one has read the book Flatland, one is aware that the phrasing of shattering illusions is not a cliché, but what actually physically happens to A Square. Yet, to bad readers like the Fat Man, a seeming cliché like this- especially one of many, will pacify them, and draw them in further, even as the same effect will be rendered upon a better reader who can discern what I am doing by undermining such.
Show me any book published in the last quarter century that has a better opening than that. Note he calls my writing ‘stream of consciousness,’ as I earlier said the ignorant mislabel inner monologues. There is no stream here. This is a catch all phrase that ignorants use whenever they encounter ANY interior monologue or writing where new phrases, great images, or deep characterizations occur, and they are forced to think and not just suckle on clichés. Now, aside from the fact that no writing can ever be a true stream of consciousness, the term is generally used for the James Joyce-Virginia Woolf brand of rambling on without punctuation. Of course, minds work punctually or else punctuation would never have been needed. But, aside from that solecism of logic, even if the agent is merely referring to the Joycean sort he’s absolutely wrong. This is like calling me an African-American writer simply because a hundred thousand years ago my dim ancestors stumbled out of Kenya. Even if one is referring to the less strictured so-called ‘stream of consciousness’ of William Faulkner, this too is clearly inaccurate.
Of course, the point is that the agent could not even ‘comprehend’ such vivid and lucid writing as starts my book. Ah, to be Nicholas Sparks! What pissed me more than his stupidity and ignorance was the fact that he shredded my manuscript. Apparently, most publishers and agents don’t give a damn about the expense of printing up a full manuscript. That’s why no more than fifty pages should ever be requested for a first read. If someone cannot get great writing in fifty pages- or really twenty should suffice, they are simply hopeless.
Then there are agents who reject a work with a form letter, then weeks
later email you to see if they rejected your work. Of course, this is the dead
giveaway that the ‘name’ agent never even read the book and that it’s the
teenaged assistant who’s pored over it, or- as Jess has said, skimmed the
first few pages, at best. In response to the constant idiocy, Jess has taken to
calling her writing style- i.e.- great and literate, ‘international’, as a
tacit admission that America is the land of the terminally dumbed down:
Dear AGENT:
Thanks for your interest. I've attached the first 2 chapters of the mss.
Just as a brief intro, as I mentioned in my query this is part of a three book
sibling series, and Quick With Flies is book one of that series. I follow
in the tradition of international writers such as Milan Kundera, Sandor Marai
and Kazuo Ishiguro, where there is much internal rumination within the lead
character, rather than point by point straightforward action like with most
American writers. So basically, it's a piece of Americana written in a more
European style.
Thanks for your willingness to consider it, and if you'd like anything else just
let me know.
Regards,
Jessica Schneider
Naturally, when the way out of claiming the writing is difficult or not as good as a hacks is taken away, there’s always the bullshit of ‘the market’ to fall back on, albeit not as rigidly as the prior email that detailed the supposed last few years in publishing:
AGENT
wrote:
Thanks for the look, but I'm afraid this didn't come across as something that would work for us commercially. Good luck, though, in finding the appropriate agent and publisher.
Sincerely,
AGENT
The book is about a black man in the Great Depression who deals with
familial loss, racism, and poverty. Jess replied:
Why? Edward Jones and Toni Morrison don't sell?
The doltish agent’s reply? Naturally, it’s to fall back on the old standby that he wants dumbed down work. Read the
codewords, as well as his huffiness at Jess’s daring to challenge his safe, cozy little vacuole: