I’ve uploaded a new novel, The Modern Critic. This book was 99% complete ten years ago but I’ve been procrastinating on the publication because I thought I might expand it substantially. That expansion now seems unnecessary and even esthetically unappealing. The book was complete after I added a few comments to fill in as little information as is necessary about some characters who chased or escaped each other out of the pages of another novel: Corporate Sex.
Anyone who reads this book could probably guess the truth: I wrote it in a good-natured phase of my state of despair at discovering that books requiring good reading skills and active minds don’t appeal at all to the editors of the American publishing industry. In this, the denizens of that industry seem to be in front of the herd, not leading but following in front.
Older agents and a former editor who had left the publishing industry in disgust had warned me that weak minds were dominant in that industry and ideas were no less than frightening to these poor creatures better suited to gentler occupations having naught to do with vigorous exercise of the human brain. To be complete, a presentation more than 20 years ago of a spiritual conversion novel (now being rewritten in a more `difficult’ form) to a major Catholic press led to an initial offer of publication withdrawn after an outside literary adviser said that, “There is no market for serious literature in the American Catholic community.” I might have said, “American-Catholic,” but, details aside, I’ve learned he was right. The highly-praised Catholic education system, at least highly-praised by Catholics, produces populations of students who can marginally out-perform public school students on tests of mostly skills of interest to educationalist bureaucrats. Those skills don’t seem to include thinking at a level where it’s possible to make sense of the sort of literature which is a major part of the foundation of Western Civilization.
Yet, I’d had hopes. Even a decade ago, visits to bookstores more profitable than those now being closed had raised my hopes when I saw those tastefully decorated retail outlets had sections of new books which were interesting and substantial. Then I was slammed down to the hard earth of 21st century Western Civilization. Those better books were products of older authors who were in the final stages of their careers. Or of authors from lands not yet fully infected by American ways.
I have good reason to believe that the entire West has taken up those American ways.
A civilization is a terrible thing to waste.
Barbarian looting, however genteel, is so profitable and so much fun while it lasts.
To quote the preface in The Modern Critic: “Enjoy, if you wish. Take pleasure if you can.”