Rick's June Tirade
Trouble in Book-Land
Something has gone seriously awry in the kingdom of letters. The
most successful authors today aren't our best writers. They're not
even hack writers. The fact is, they're not writers at all.
Who are these literary luminaries, then? In case you've been
sequestered in remote regions of Patagonia, Tajikistan or the
Internet for the past few years, let me clue you in. The book world
has been seized by a motley tribe of well-compensated opportunists:
sitcom stars and other celebrities du jour, motivational gurus and
inspirational lounge lizards, fifteen-minutes-of-famers,
in-your-face athletes and obnoxious radio jocks, malcontented
relatives and ex-spouses of the rich and famous -- and, of course,
anyone remotely associated with O.J. Simpson.
O.J.'s erstwhile inamorata, one Paula Barbieri, recently inked a
$3 million contract for her "memoirs"... despite the
all-too-obvious fact that the words won't be hers, with the possible
exception of a few "and's," "the's" and "O.J.'s."
Think about it, friends... imagine for a moment that you've been
handed $3 million for a book you don't even have to write. No
sweat-inducing deadlines. No strain on the brain cells. Just a hefty
$3 million in your bank account, with all the time in the world to
enjoy it. And all because you shared sheets with an acquitted
murderer and former rent-a-car spokesperson.
In publishing terms, that $3 million is equivalent to the annual
salaries of approximately ONE HUNDRED editors -- those diligent
intellectual drudges who graduate from Vassar, fill their minds with
the fine points of punctuation, and work 14-hour days so they can
watch semiliterate bimbos walk off with their loot. Postpone that
trip to France for another year, O meek and bespectacled one: Paula
Barbieri needs to buy an estate in the Hollywood Hills.
But why stop at Paula when the market is so lucrative... when the
public appetite for celebrity-wallowing is so insatiable? How about
tell-all accounts from O.J.'s dentist, chiropractor, astrologer,
hair stylist, tailor, weight trainer, golf caddy, veterinarian or
tree surgeon? What are the dealmakers waiting for? Why not add a few
MORE nonwriters to the bestseller lists? Why not display their books
by the bushel on the "New and Noteworthy" tables of the
nation's bookstores? Let's set them up in comfort and contentment
for life! Let's add a little MORE salt to the gaping wounds of the
real writers who are struggling to be heard over the din of tabloid
civilization!
As of this writing, the ghostwritten memoirs of Racist Cop Mark
Fuhrman are reputed to be selling at the rate of 30,000 copies a
week -- about twice what my own magnum opus, The Cynic's Dictionary,
has sold in two-and-a-half years on the bookshelves, and more than
Thoreau ever sold in his lifetime. Imagine the appalling
consequences of it, if you will: all those shekels being exchanged
to boost the socioeconomic status and self-esteem of a man whose
claim to fame is that he lied in court about using the "N"
word. I wonder how many words in the book are actually his: 37? 53?
Maybe 98 at most? But now he's one of the elect. No more night
duty... no more pit stops at Dunkin' Donuts. No doubt he'll be
making the rounds on the prime-rib circuit, eliciting huzzahs and
swarms of autograph-seekers for the next 30 years.
I can see it now -- some enterprising book club of the future
proudly announces a series of gold-tooled simulated leather volumes
of works by the immortals of our time, their hubbed spines each
bearing a single reverently embossed name: FUHRMAN... BARBIERI...
RODMAN... DRESCHER... FOXWORTHY... KAELIN... DE GENERES...
STEPHANOPOULOS... FABIO! Now THOSE are names to be reckoned with!
How breezily will their ghostwritten words resonate across the ages!
How admirably will their lives and deeds capture the Zeitgeist of
American civilization during the early postliterate era!
And well might those names flourish! They represent the tenor of
our times far more accurately than today's reedy-voiced
fictionmeisters, who invariably tailor their work to please an
audience of fellow-fictionmeisters who write book reviews.
Case in point: Take Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific
serious writers of our age. She's been churning out meticulously
crafted fiction at an alarming rate for a third of a century. She
lectures at a prestigious university. She has undeniable stature on
the slopes of Parnassus. But can anyone outside the academic world
name two of her books? Can they name ONE SINGLE Oatesian character
whose soul has imprinted itself indelibly on our times, in the
manner of Fagin or Huck Finn or even Dr. Jekyll?
I don't intend to single out Ms. Oates for creating forgettable
art; she is simply among the most eminent of her breed, and I
readily confess my admiration of her integrity and perseverance. But
I say with conviction that she and her ilk have unwittingly
contributed to the rise of the pseudo-writers, the millionaire
bimbos, the tabloidization of books.
Most of our serious writers have little or nothing to communicate
to the public. They offer no passion, no magic, no camaraderie, no
ideas or diversions. The writers' workshops and graduate-school
creative writing programs have spawned a race of thin-blooded
craftspeople with little to say except in the manner of their saying
it; they might as well be making quilts. By shunning readers outside
the academy walls, they've been shunned in return.
The serious writers of our time who DO have something to say are
generally content to declaim on matters of interest to their own
specialized subcultures. Thus we have Toni Morrison and Alice
Walker, Important African-American Writers; Philip Roth and Saul
Bellow, Important Jewish-American Writers; Tony Kushner and David
Leavitt, Important Gay-American Writers; Thomas Pynchon and Don De
Lillo, Important Paranoid-American Writers. Welcome to the ghetto!
We seem to have forgotten that the great masses of people used to
be moved to emotional hysteria by the works of Dickens... that they
used to memorize lines from Shakespeare and read Longfellow by the
fireside in the quiet of evening. We've forgotten that great
literature used to adorn the souls and imaginations of a public that
craved beauty and enrichment. In its place we have the anorexic
voices that emerge from the writers' workshops, or the soft-core
propaganda of the special-interest groups.
Is it any wonder that the book-buying audience is embracing
tabloid civilization? Any wonder that they happily enrich the
bulging pockets of nonwriters who scoff at the silly idea of
crafting their own books?
The works of our upmarket literary brahmins are pitched beyond
the ken of the general public, like a high-frequency dog-whistle. By
contrast, the bogus writers -- the Fuhrmans and Barbieris -- offer a
debased form of entertainment to a public that now CRAVES
debasement. The serious offerings leave them cold; the trash at
least provides some needed heat.
The lure of beauty is dying in our collective consciousness.
Serious fiction is moribund. All that remains is pop. And
unfortunately for those of us who crave something more fortifying,
today's pop is mostly poop.
