Three years

I sent an op-ed to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the last honest daily on earth. The piece was titled "In Defense of The Stupid" and the opening sentence said: "I am an idiot." Always good to lead with a simple, unexpected proposition.

Obviously true. I spent three years writing every day. Four adventures with Chris & Peachy, three volumes of essays, an autobiography, an audio drama, Film School in One Lesson with 61 diagrams and screenshots -- and finally Partners, a long bittersweet swan song that took 1000 hours to craft, a couple pages each day with occasional gaps of wonderment and slow cooked glimpses of the way forward. Brigid was right. The best work I've ever done.

She's also right that it can't be reviewed publicly, too hot to touch, addressed to straight male readers. A huge joke on all concerned. There are no such critters. I penned 68,000 words for nonexistent tough guys, an extinct species. Google won't show it as U.S. literature, relegated my magnum opus to Amazon's Mexican site, targeting caballeros who can't read English.

A better man would say screw it, plug along and publicize it to newspapers and bloggers who won't review it. I don't think I can do that. I'm finished, knocked out, down for the count and blacklisted as a novelist. Three fucking years of my life. Every atom of talent wasted.

Now what?

Last time I hit a brick wall was 20 years ago, and I thought about going to Hillsdale, to get a job as a short order cook. Makes as much sense as anything else.

Adios, amigos.

First person

Quite a lot of respectable stuff is in third person, notably Scott Fitzgerald and Gene Rhodes, plus a good deal of Chandler and Hammett, although the noir masters segued into first person for their mature work. RLS gave us first person accounts in Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

It worries me that I seem to be stuck in first person. The accusation of self-centered delusion and narcissism is a slam dunk indictment. No wonder people ignore my work. The last thing anyone wants to read is white male action adventure littered with bad language, gunfire, and sex scenes with preposterously willing babes. I can't recall how much of it is fantasy. Perhaps very little. There are such people, past, present, and future, for whom political correctness, decorum and cultural sensitivity are as significant as building codes and life insurance.

Authorship is exceedingly important to me. This morning I thought of it again, how my work for hire at a comfortable salary on the top floor of a Houston office building was destroyed by incompetents who had to twist their filthy thumbs on it. After a few months, it drained every gram of my enthusiasm. Common sense and fat paychecks urged me to play well with others, smile, go along to get along. I couldn't do it.

So. Here I am, isolated and unwanted, a dozen titles that no one cares to read, no milk in my coffee, terrible convenience store food that makes me ill, shunned by my wife and daughter because I'm broke. Money is the measure of all things to rational people. I like it, too.

My basic problem is lack of talent. Completely clear that Rod Stewart and Alice Cooper had oodles of it. I have trouble hanging sheetrock without goofy gaps, the only work available, stupid meatball carpentry that better men are too polite to ridicule. I'm willing to work but no one wants to hire a old amateur twice. Darn it. A dozen books that no one buys. Utterly ignored on Objectivist Living, except for an occasional insult or two.

After 68,000 words, four months of writing 7 days a week full time, I have to pitch reviewers and pray that a newspaper or blogger will glance at the first few pages. Good joke on me, the way to win is not for me, incapable of anything except white male action adventure, bullets and babes, an archaic artform that offends. It might be illegal, certainly immoral. News is a firehose of moral opposition, Moonves at CBS accused of smiling at chicks, Harvard sororities forced to admit boys, Boy Scouts to recruit girls and queers. What next? Impeach Trump for treason, because Hillary used a private server that exposed DNC vote rigging.

Terrible karma. I wrote first person, a hate crime.

https://youtu.be/HRGX2FiHOS0

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Sunday sermon

This is not a good moment for me to offend people, because it's important to attract friendly reviews of my new novel, Partners. One wonders if it matters. There is no urgent search for a dark tale set in 1975, no eager constituency for gun-toting white male wildcats on the wrong side of the law. To mention their atheism (and mine) is an honest acknowledgment, a sort of truth in book promotion, probably a mistake.

I do not object to other authors who ground their fictional tales in faith, nor do I doubt that it honestly reflects the truth of life as they see it. Heroism has been traditionally attributed to selfless sacrifice, transcendant inspiration, and faithful dedication to something larger than mortal life on earth. I join with my religious brothers and sisters who despise the grim grit of Beat Generation literature and the sly goofiness of Gen X icons. The meaning of life is not the number 42.

Most of the hippies and Boomers of my acquaintance operate on the fundaments of secular faith, in particular the Golden Rule, extending to others Christian benevolence, forgiveness, and equality. Their choice of sacraments and rituals are a bit different, but the Western world broadly agrees that aggression is wrong, democracy right, and discrimination a crime. It has become a widely shared article of faith that white men are despicable if they take advantage of women, although no opinion is dared to be thought concerning the behavior of blacks.

I suspect that all faith is driven by an anodyne puzzle. Why are we here? Materialists have no good solution, no matter how eloquently illuminated by science. At best, it dismisses Biblical accounts of Creation, but science leaves unanswered the question of why life should exist at all? Fantasies hypothesizing alien injections of knowledge in ancient Egypt or on Mount Sinai cannot explain how life arose from the Big Bang ex nihilo, something out of nothing.

The correct attitude toward life is to accept it, without speculation as to its origin or meaning beyond the plain fact of an individual lifespan and knowable conditions that advance or hurt one's survival. We were not endowed with the power of choice to please an immortal robot. We possess the practical faculty of human thought, sufficient to differentiate and perceive options in life, without reference to tales authored by ancient nomads.

Among the many choices open to man, one can certainly join a church or remain loyal to the tradition inherited from a clan that bestows material advantages to well behaved adherents. The surest path to poverty and defeat is to walk away from organized society. Atheism is no different than political heresy, unwilling to sing in a collective choir and pledge fealty to the marketplace of goods and services driven by opportunists. Undoubtedly, it requires diligence and sobriety to launch a successful product, develop and maintain infrastructure, organize a political campaign, and manage a legacy of paper claims to wealth and power. There are few denied a place at the collective table, unless they jump ship.

Right or wrong, treason is risky business. I have an acquaintance who is an Islamic apostate, a crime punishable by death. His example gave me courage and, although it is too dangerous to communicate or keep company with him, he animates the work I chose to do in life, in honor of the simple truth that honesty is a bright flame fueled by integrity.

https://youtu.be/HRGX2FiHOS0

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An outgoing personality?

Hmph. Explains everything. I'm shy, stammer in public, seldom speak to people who I know personally or professionally, although I'm a good listener and I laugh easily.

Talking might be a genetic deficit. I have no recollection of my father or mother speaking. Uncle Fred was silent. The only photograph of my grandfather showed him deep in thought, standing with a more animated (i.e., normal) person. My daughter is silent, too, unless she sings to herself in a remarkably singular style that's uniquely her own, perfect pitch without lyrics, a truly lovely creative warble. She's physically elegant, a natural dancer like I am.

From time to time I speak aloud to myself, addressing a big crowd in full voice, walking by myself, as if there's a deep unfulfilled yearning to speak because I have so much to say. No doubt that's why I write, tongue tied in public. It also explains why directing movies was nearly impossible. My orders on the set were terse and impersonal. I was hopelessly silent and stupid when I was interviewed for All Things Considered.

My fictional male characters don't say much, either, but they have rich internal monologues full of thought, capable of spontaneous deception or comic quips. I often surprise folks with wry remarks and penetrating observations. It's hell to be smart and to see the deep context, embarrassing to name it, no talent for diplomacy.

It disqualified me from normal employment, forces me to live alone.

What's most bizarre of all is that I'm affectionate, generous, glad to be alive and happy to witness every manner of human and animal life on earth. I talk to cows, dogs, birds, bunnies, total strangers, children, cops, lawyers, doctors, hillbillies, and shopkeepers, provided that I don't have to discuss serious ideas, unable to say what I really think.

It grieves me to edit what I say in print.

In a crisis 20 years ago, commemorated in Walking To Ayrshire, it was imperative to find an explanation for my silence and isolation, so I looked on the web and saw myself described as a victim of Asperger's Syndrome. On my first visit to a clinical psychologist, I told him, and he categorically dismissed it as rubbish. There was nothing wrong with my mind or personality. Five years later, I received an unsolicited email from him, amazed that "my star was shining so brightly" as author of The Freeman's Constitution. No other man on earth recognized it as an intellectual achievement, to advance a new theory of justice.

So, I'm silent, isolated, impoverished, incapable of small talk, shunned by the modern world because what I think and create is unwanted.

https://youtu.be/HRGX2FiHOS0


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Wildcat

Karen Breyer, the heroine of Partners

My first novel was written 30 years ago, first screenplay 40 years ago, first 16mm film almost 50 years ago. I wrote an original stage play in grade school, performed by the entire 5th grade class. Nonfiction books and paid professional writing attracted more readers, but my lifelong purpose was fiction. It took a long time to get good at it. I speak of it today to emphasize the depth of commitment that creative writing requires. It cannot depend on the good opinion and good offices of others, if your aim is signature work. There are many who believe what I write is disgusting and annoying. What they cannot say is that it echoes another novelist or plows a popular patch of turf. I paid a heavy price to write about life on life's terms. My heroes and heroines are clever and white, disinterested in the general welfare, minority rights, or democracy. They care about themselves.

That's the proper concern of self-respecting individuals in a free society. I recognize that life in America today is unfree and destined to be progressively less autonomous, if you follow the rules. My fictional people don't obey the law. They do whatever is necessary to evade it, which is fairly easy. Government is an illusion, unless you voluntarily obey like sheep. Liberty consists of thinking of and for yourself, without consulting the neighbors.

The first of our Founding Fathers, James Otis, argued that an act of legislation against natural equity was void. He was attacked and beaten senseless by tax collectors, igniting rebellion to colonial governors who enjoyed popular support. Rebels like Otis were called traitors.

Among all the stories told today, none are more dramatic or compelling than white wildcats in selfish pursuit of liberty, the unconquerable thirst for individualism, a natural right. The character of Karen Breyer, a fake name that she adopted to escape an oppressive family who dissed her ambition to be a writer, epitomizes the theme of rebellion.

https://youtu.be/HRGX2FiHOS0

The Answer Man

Q: Is it true that hell plays whiny Neil Young 24 hours a day?
A: Yes, but hell doesn't keep track of time.

Q: What's the most popular attraction in heaven?
A: Billy Graham mudwrestling with Emmeline Pankhurst, two shows a day. Unlike the fallen angel in charge of hell, God keeps time, best three out of four takedowns in 10 minutes. Billy has never won a match and he grumbles about wearing hot pink lycra.

Q: Why is Bruce Springsteen called The Boss?
A: Well, you certainly couldn't call him a vocalist.

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Triumph

I've had intense bouts of writing before. In the 1980s, I wrote screenplays and spent most of the decade directing film and TV, much of it based on scripts that I created or doctored. It was followed by a very long interval of depression and confusion, adjusting to the fact that I was finished in show business, after two A-list flops. I directed a dozen semi-pro projects in the 1990s, but my heart wasn't in it, and I needed a new creative channel. I began to take writing more seriously, something that I could do without cast, crew, or production equipment.

My narrative literature started in 1987, with a growth spurt ten years later that won weekly publication with enough money and prestige to suggest that writing was a golden goose. My intellectual output of 1999-2003 punched a hallmark in history, eclipsed by the 9/11 division of American thought into two rival camps, neocon and left liberal. A handful of libertarians recognized my work, and Wolf DeVoon was grudgingly added as a footnote to the cavalcade of celebrated dunderheads. I stopped writing. Mars Shall Thunder, The Good Walk Alone, First Feature, and Laissez Faire Law were self-published and sold no books.

Family life occupied most of my attention in the next decade, with part time gigs as a news editor, a market analyst, and a financial columnist. A few articles were noticed, especially a white paper on SEC rule revision in 2009 and a good call on ludicrously overvalued Petrobras. My 2013 staff job as a marketing writer ended in disaster, after smithing high profile lies for corner office people in the oil industry. I was defrocked as a professional whore. My book about screenwriting flopped, despite costly promotion. I was a dead duck.

Then a funny thing happened three years ago. I completed construction of a house in rural Missouri. Isolated in a tin barn that served as material shed and workshop, I began to write again, this time in earnest. I rewrote Mars Shall Thunder as an audio drama and attempted to produce it with a Kickstarter project that failed to garner support. Despairing of any further creative progress, I wrote an autobiography titled The Last Book, which I believed it to be -- until Cass McMain and Erik Svehaug urged me to write fiction.

Idleness and isolation made it possible to create signature work that I do not regret, although it offended every conceivable reader in the English speaking world. We do strange things at the end of life, when little else matters except a legacy, something to be remembered for. I painted myself into a corner of my own, unlike any other voice in literary history. The Case Files of Cable & Blount inspired a series of four novels that I still enjoy, but in the past few months I had a breakthrough. Whatever one means by masterwork this was it. Wolf DeVoon freed himself from Chandler and Hammett, found an entirely unique manner of my own.

The title is Partners, recently self-published in paperback, the capstone of my Ozark period, a three year full-time affirmation of literary ambition, writing every day, understanding that my work is unwanted by agents, publishers, book reviewers, and readers. That didn't matter. Kyle and Jim and Karen came to life in a time and place that no one remembers or cares to consider, when the mafia controlled the city of Milwaukee in 1975 and eliminated rivals with car bombs and murderous gun battles. Partners fulfilled a purpose I sought 20 years ago, to achieve personal work of significant value, whether loved, hated, or ignored by others.

Partners is a tragedy, the first time that I ventured to write such a thing, free to speak of it, that we live and lose, no longer obligated to please with an upbeat ending. The outline for Partners was conventional, but something finally clicked, and now I feel satisfied that my work is finally done, no need to try again. I'm not certain what I'll do next, but it won't be a sequel or another novel from scratch. Partners is all that I hoped and labored to do in life.

No more dragons to slay.