RSS
From the Washington Post news section:
James Patterson claims White male writers face ‘another form of racism’
The best-selling novelist, 75, is facing backlash from critics and writers. He apologized Tuesday.
By Timothy Bella
Updated June 14, 2022 at 5:24 p.m.
James Patterson is a former advertising executive who brought big business mass production methods to writing novels. He publishes many books under his brand name each year, usually ghostwritten by little-known novelists working under his executive supervision. His business model has proven vastly successful, and he’s second to J.K. Rowling among authors in wealth, with something like \$800 million.
My view is that Patterson’s not much dragging avid readers away from better books, but is instead expanding the number of book-readers by targeting people who would otherwise be watching TV or staring blankly out the bus window. So, I don’t have anything against Patterson.
As James Patterson reflected on the state of the writing world today, the best-selling thriller novelist with an estimated net worth of roughly \$800 million lamented how one group in particular is having a hard time finding work: White men.
In fact, America’s richest author noted to the Sunday Times how White males — specifically older White males — are experiencing what he described as “another form of racism” when it came to trying to break through as writers in TV, film, theater or publishing.
“What’s that all about? Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes,” Patterson, 75, told the British newspaper. “It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males.”
That’s what everybody has been asking for, isn’t it: fewer white men with good jobs? And now that’s happening in publishing, which is Good. But, James Patterson, the world’s greatest expert on selling books, has now publicly noticed that that’s happening, which is very, very Bad.
Now, Patterson is facing backlash from critics and writers who say the author has blatantly ignored recent data showing how the publishing industry has been and remains “a business that is owned by white men.”
Is it? I went to that link to find quantitative evidence on whether the publishing industry is owned by white men, but all I found was three published black women authors complaining. E.g.,
“I mean, for me this is a spy book, but it’s secretly just an opportunity to talk about a black woman’s feelings for 300 pages,” Wilkinson says.
But I bet that’s not all it is. I bet her spy novel is also an opportunity for her to talk about a black woman’s hair. And then, in the stunning climax, I bet she talks about a black woman’s feelings about her hair.
In a diversity self-audit from Penguin Random House, the publisher found that about 75 percent of the contributors during that period were White. Just 6 percent were Black, while 5 percent were Hispanic, the audit shows. The company also acknowledged that more than 74 percent of its employees were White.
But what percentage are white men? After all, Patterson is talking about white men. Penguin Random House’s report doesn’t reveal that precise number, but it looks like white men are under-represented in their work force relative to their share of the population.
A 2019 survey from children’s publisher Lee and Low Books found that 85 percent of the publishing staffers who acquire and edit books are White people.
But Patterson wasn’t talking about white people, he was talking about white men. Once again, this report doesn’t mention the exact white male percentage, but it let’s slip in passing that “the field is overwhelmingly White women.”
A 2020 report from the New York Times found a similar result across the U.S. publishing industry, with 89 percent of the books written in 2018 being penned by White writers. …
Once again, no breakout of white men.
This almost seems like a pattern.
On Tuesday afternoon, Patterson tweeted an apology, saying: “I absolutely do not believe that racism is practiced against white writers.”
What's the point of being an ultra-rich, best-selling author if you can't say what you think?
— Percy Gryce (@percy_gryce) June 15, 2022
The Washington Post then piles on further evidence of Patterson’s Badness:
… In addition to his comments about White men in publishing, Patterson denounced the decision from his own publisher, Hachette Book Group, to drop Woody Allen’s memoir in 2020 after employees staged a protest of the book due to the long-running allegations of sexual abuse against the famed director. Allen’s memoir, “Apropos of Nothing,” was eventually picked up by Arcade Publishing.
“I hated that,” Patterson said of Allen’s book getting pulled. “He has the right to tell his own story.”
Patterson added, “I’m almost always on the side of free speech.”
Can you imagine the vile gall of James Patterson? He supports free speech, even to the extent of letting Woody Allen publish his memoirs!?!
But much of the attention from Patterson’s interview was on his claim that White men are struggling to find work in publishing. Gina Denny, an associate editor at the publisher TouchPoint Press, noted that when USA Today reported on Patterson’s comments, just nine authors on the newspaper’s list of 150 bestsellers were non-White writers. Three of Patterson’s titles made the list, while just five women of color and four men of color were on the bestseller list. The rest were made up of White men between the ages of 36 and 84, Denny said — and some of the White males on the list have long been dead.
Not All White Authors Are White Men.
No, Gina Denny found that 48 of the 150 bestsellers were by white men and 9 by People of Color, so that leaves 93 by white women like herself, or 62%.
The Washington Post’s own source sums up her count:
White men make up 31% of the U.S. population and, whaddya know, they make up 33% of that list.
Will the Washington Post issue a retraction of its blatant misstatement that “Three of Patterson’s titles made the list, while just five women of color and four men of color were on the bestseller list. The rest were made up of White men between the ages of 36 and 84, Denny said…”?
In truth, white women are almost over-represented by a factor of two. Is that because the publishing industry is “overwhelmingly white women” like Ms. Denny?
Or is that because white women are just so much better writers than others?
Probably it’s mostly because guys are playing video games instead of reading, which then contributes to a spiral where white men aren’t much hired by publishers and white male authors aren’t much considered.
“Dead white men are statistically as likely to be on the USA Today bestseller list as a person of color,” Denny wrote.
What have dead white male bestselling authors George Orwell and Dr. Seuss ever done for literature?
What’s striking is how few white men in their primes are on the bestseller list. Of Denny’s count of 150 best-selling books, only ten are by white men under age 50.
But then, what have white men under the age of 50 ever contributed to literature?
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Mountains are racist too, you know. And the bigger the mountain, the more racist it is.
What, exactly, does “DECOUPLING” mean? Just curious.
For example:
I decoupled with my girlfriend because she was nuts.Replies: @Stan Adams
Why didn’t they stage a protest when Patterson collaborated with a retired politician– twice— with long-running allegations of aggravated rape? (It’s claimed that those two books are the only “co-authored” ones Patterson actually wrote.)
Or is it because white women buy the bulk of the books at the supermarket?
Today I saw a Joan [sic] Collins novel on the rack at the dollar store. Is she still alive!? Yes, at 89, but the book was from 2006.
Her sister Jackie’s first book was condemned by none other than Dame Barbara Cartland. Her two brothers were killed on consecutive days in Flanders in 1940, which might result in a worldview a tad more serious than that of the Collins girls.
Speaking of preventing White men AND women from working, female White writer Lionel Shriver had a couple of parts of the plot of her novel The Motion of the Body Through Space on the forced retirement of the civil engineer (specializing in city lighting) husband and then pretty much the same for the audio-book voice artist wife, both based on AA and wokeness.
It’s amazing that stuff was in her 2020 book, but then she didn’t go anywhere far with this it in the rest of the story. I don’t know if the reason was that it wasn’t really going to help that much for the plot, but she wanted to mischievously put it in, or that it needed to be in there, but she didn’t want to go too far.
She’s a helluva writer and personality, that Lionel Shriver!
https://i.ibb.co/Mg0YmBN/Screenshot-20220104-030508-Daily-Mail-Online.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @International Jew, @epebble, @Bardon Kaldlan, @Bill Jones
Oh come on! They’ve got their own HBM – that’s Historically Black Mountain – Kilimanjaro in Kenya. Affirmative Action rules say that a black climber summiting Kilimanjaro deserves to be recognized with a nicer tent stake lying dead from exposure along the trail than a White climber who has summitted Everest, or even the highest mountain in the world, K-2.
https://selfguidedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/trekking_walking_slovenia_alps_self_guided_tour.jpgLook like klansmen, amirite? I think toofie, corvy, and TD will back me up on this.PS: Where's TD? What have you racists done with TD?Replies: @prosa123, @Bill Jones
What’s missing? Hint: From the shelves. Right – – books. So why do the producers of all commercials do this when they depict the living room or den of a happy, prosperous black family? It is seemingly racist. I guess they want to foreclose the possibility that they might be reading dead white male authors. So instead, the black family is depicted as being avid collectors of vases and small sculptures. And besides, the ivy league course catalogs are all online.
Steve took the bait.
So what if the publishing industry is in fact owned by White men? White men are generally Good. The industry would therefore be in good hands.
Thanks for clearing up the story behind “James Patterson”. How many other airplane fiction authors use pen names? I suspect most do; looking at the names, they all sound like Hollywood actor names.
In an odd failure of big data marketing, my Kindle device plies me (on the lock screen) with books of a sort I never buy — bodice rippers, spy novels, mysteries, and yes lots of James Pattersons.
Thanks, James P. You’re a mensch. Why is it interesting that Pushkin and Tiger Woods are/were somewhat Black!? And why isn’t it interesting that Obama is more than half white?
Just kidding–like everyone else, I don’t really care.
Oh yeah? Need I point out that—alone among the world’s tallest mountains — Kilimanjaro is completely solitary? Not part of any mountain range?
You think that’s just coincidence? Not even. It’s because all the other mountains are white supremacists. Just look at them.
Look like klansmen, amirite? I think toofie, corvy, and TD will back me up on this.
PS: Where’s TD? What have you racists done with TD?
https://i.ibb.co/Mg0YmBN/Screenshot-20220104-030508-Daily-Mail-Online.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @International Jew, @epebble, @Bardon Kaldlan, @Bill Jones
Who will they sue if the mountain kills one of them (and he’s unarmed)?
I hate to say it, but Amazon Publishing puts out more fun for guys to read books than most publishers. More dreck, but more good stuff, too.
But they censored Abigail Shrier, so I wouldn’t get too excited.
Problem is, for most young men, how do you compete with video games?Replies: @Intelligent Dasein
Custom cabinetry with flush doors! Plaid shirt on the keeds, check.. Glass of cabernet, check. Perrier in glasses. San Pellegrino? But where’s the golden retriever?
And IS THAT MAC & CHEESE
SMDH…
I’d say she took the civil engineer’s forced retirement pretty far. The whole book is after all about a nutso obsession he develops to distract himself from the humiliation he suffered. Moreover, the passages describing the incompetent affirmative action hire who torments him are merciless.
And, yeah, Lionel Shriver is a terrific author. I wish Steve had more to say about her.
(Those are their "birth names", too.)
“The Mandibles” talks about hyperinflation and has some mildly anti Hispanic stuff if I remember.Replies: @International Jew, @Bardon Kaldlan
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2019-12.html#07
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2022-01.html#09
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2022-03.html#02At that first link I noted:This has actually just started to happen: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/11/californians-working-from-home-are-moving-to-mexico-amid-inflation.htmlReplies: @International Jew
They don’t care about contributions to literature. They don’t care about making human life better. Their aim is to impose suffering on White people. If the rest of the world suffers as a consequence that is acceptable collateral damage.
Call me naïve, but I sort of had the idea they'd talk about the "white men" who own the publishing industry. J/KReplies: @Dchjk, @anonymous
why would a 75 year old man with 800 million dollars apologize for anything.
enough of these wusses.
But I suspect the available data doesn't actually refute his claims which is why he made this struggle session type tweet. Combined with his age and extreme wealth, this may go down as the most pathetic forced grovelling of all time.
I don't know anything about this guy or his finances but, like most people in his class, I'm sure most of his wealth is highly illiquid. It's not like he has a bunch of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault like Scrooge McDuck. His wealth is tied up in real estate, in bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and hedge funds, which makes him beholden to the financial class, which has shown itself willing in recent times to do the Left's bidding. His assets can be cancelled, seized, frozen, or otherwise subject to indefinite lawfare shenanigans once he gets on the wrong side of the woke mob. Even the government likes to get in on the action, as the case of Trudeau and the truckers shows.
For crying out loud, this is the opportunity these guys live for. They are just waiting for someone with a fat wad of money to say something they can cancel him for.
In the late stages of a secular boom (i.e. today), when "money" has been abstracted and gamed to death, it scarcely exists as cold hard cash anymore, but is synonymous with the activity of the financial class. And this class is growing increasingly hubristic, detached, ignorant, desperate, and reckless as their situation becomes more and more untenable. The ultra-wealthy got to be where they are by playing along with the system, but as the system breaks down I can imagine that many of them find themselves looking over their shoulders and no longer know whether to run with the fox or hunt with the hounds.
I think we are long past the time when the wealthy class either could or would stand up as a socially conservative force. They have long since sold themselves out to the revolution.Replies: @Art Deco
Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when I worked in and around the NYC trade publishing business, straight white guys were getting pretty hard to find. It seemed like 75% of the people in the business were women, mostly white, and the guys were mostly gay. I bet the numbers have grown even more unbalanced in the years since.
And?
What I discover is that many of them are written by a) young women, often Jewish, writing about their travails of finding themselves/love in the Big City (NYC). And their terrible families Who Don't Understand Them. Often Jewish.
Okay, write what you know. So they write semi fictionalized autobiographies about their feelings and nothing very insightful experiences.
Then b) there are the male novelists, also often young, who are also gay and/or Jewish or both. Same thing, finding themselves, overcoming doubters and the Cold Cruel World.
Both of these are what I deem " English lit. grad school" novels. One and done, usually.
I suspect few of these sell well, but publishers must believe that women, gay males and Jews buy most of the modern novels.
The real sellers at least at airports are formula action/crime series, some churned out by the likes of Patterson. Who apologizes for telling some truths, softly. A Bill Clinton bro for sure, Dickhead.
Of course Hillary "co-wrote" some crime mysteries with a female Canadian writer (Louise Penny), whose books all feature chapters upon chapters of old women in Canada babbling about people they know. Eventually some crime is laboriously solved by said blabby crones.
This is what they expect readers to like. No wonder few bother reading anything any more.Replies: @Peter D. Bredon
I know where he got THAT idea from.
The 1960s was infamous for all those goofy women’s novels, like Payton Place and Valley of the Dolls.
So a whole editorial team at a Long Island newspaper made up a plan: Starting from zero, one editor would knock out a chapter, stop, then pass the “manuscript” on to the next editor. And repeat till there’s enough for a novel.
What started as a gag ended up being published as NAKED CAME THE STRANGER by “Penelope Ashe”. It actually made the New York Times bestseller list. Naughty editors. It’s probably one of the newspapers that went bust two minutes after the World Wide Web went wide.
Nobody in the readership even noticed the difference! The only reason they took back the Horoscope guy was because it was too much of a pain to do it; they were worried the story would get out; and back then, the Times was rolling in money anyway.
Around 2005, I lent a mystery novel to a millennial guy who I considered normal – no tattoos, piercings or green hair. I think it was something by Ross Macdonald. He dismissively returned it to me, saying, “people don’t talk like that.”
The irony is that I’ve only ever seen non-whites reading James Patterson books. From time to time I’d see blacks reading him on the subway. You can tell because the paperbacks have “James Patterson” in big letters on their covers. The typical white urbanite subway rider would never allow themselves to be seen in public reading low brow mass market stuff like Patterson. I also remember seeing Patterson’s books advertised on the subway, along with similar writers like David Baldacci.
In one book of his I read, a white teacher says Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" is a song about being black.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Patterson’s business model is to expand book readership at the low end of the market. That strikes me as not a bad thing.
The weird thing to me is that they start out talking about how
Yet end up whining about whose books sell the best.
Call me naïve, but I sort of had the idea they’d talk about the “white men” who own the publishing industry. J/K
Well they’ve certainly written those computer games the young people live to play. They also create lovely tattoos so you can’t say they haven’t made much contribution to art either.
In an odd failure of big data marketing, my Kindle device plies me (on the lock screen) with books of a sort I never buy — bodice rippers, spy novels, mysteries, and yes lots of James Pattersons.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @Anon7
To be clear, James Patterson’s actual birth name is indeed James Patterson. He hires others to write under his name, but he himself doesn’t use a penname.
White male writers are still well represented. However, they tend to write for the screen. Take a look at the writers’ room of most TV shows.
Patterson’s main series “Alex Cross” is about a black detective. Who often is fighting the Forces of White Supremacy.
In one book of his I read, a white teacher says Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is a song about being black.
This is a lot less interesting than the current literary scandal here in Australia, with the novelist John Hughes lifting entire paragraphs from The Great Gatsby among others. I guess if you are going to steal, you may as well steal from the best.
I immediately thought of Borges’ story, “Pierre Menard, Author of ‘Don Quixote’” and sure enough, the plagiarist goes there:
“Borges’ Pierre Menard, three hundred years after the original, wants to re-write Don Quixote, word for word. Jean Rhys wants to retell the story of Jane Eyre. Peter Carey wants to give new life to Charles Dickens. JM Coetzee, Daniel Defoe. It’s a question of degree. I’m probably closer to Pierre Menard when it comes to the great Russian novels of the nineteenth century, but regardless of indebtedness, it’s a great simplification to call this plagiarism.”
Borges’s story about an early 20th Century French poet who rewrites one chapter of Cervantes word for word, but with much different implications for having been written 300 years later, is a sort of satire on literary theory. (Borges’s short stories are hard to describe because there is no single term to describe what he’s doing: they are sort of science-fiction for philosophy majors.)
https://media3.giphy.com/media/FYy1uXJqS5Z5cGPkLD/giphy.gifReplies: @Truth, @Jim Don Bob
In one book of his I read, a white teacher says Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" is a song about being black.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I thought “Fast Car” was about how depressing it is to be a lesbian.
It’s a memorable song, but not a real cheerer-upper.
Are White men being unduly and unfairly displaced from good jobs?
Do your own study. There are Bureau of Labor Statistics historical data for starters, anecdotal evidence, personal observation, etc. Be as cold-blooded as possible. Make adjustments for expanding and contracting industries, traditionally male/female occupations, all that so you can come to as robust a conclusion as possible.
Sometime in the 1990s I started noticing White guys in shit jobs who looked way out of place. I talked to them. They were managerial, technical, and administrative people who’d been dumped. They couldn’t find anything close to their former rate of pay, or even anything in their primary occupation.
We seem to be talking about a couple different things: writers, writers getting signed by publishing houses and people working on the staffs of publishing houses.
Years ago it seemed to me that the glamour fields, and the nonprofits and helping professional too were dominated by men at the top but the lower and mid-level ranks had a lot more women than men. My sense is there are more women at the top now.
The lower and middle ranks just don’t pay enough for men. The upper level jobs often pay a lot more than you might think, compared to the miserable pay at the bottom. All the real money goes to the top.
He’s more into Lionel Tiger. And Robin Fox.
(Those are their “birth names”, too.)
Wake me up when he says “goyim” instead of “white men”. Crux, meet crocks.
I thought “Fast Car” was an advert soundtrack for people who don’t remember Joan Armatrading.
Just in case anyone was looking for the worst spy book ever.
enough of these wusses.Replies: @AndrewR, @Intelligent Dasein
I could respect it if he said “after reviewing the available data, I realize my claims were false and I retract them.”
But I suspect the available data doesn’t actually refute his claims which is why he made this struggle session type tweet. Combined with his age and extreme wealth, this may go down as the most pathetic forced grovelling of all time.
She’s gone un-PC a few times…I remember her attacking the idea of cultural appropriation and saying the point of fiction was anyone should be able to write anything.
“The Mandibles” talks about hyperinflation and has some mildly anti Hispanic stuff if I remember.
And apart from any politics, it's a terrific book all around.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Bill Jones
The Washington Post is capitalizing “white” now?
Oh sure you can find quite a bit on Amazon- I read Delicious Tacos (entertaining but the dude needs an editor), Bad Billy Pratt (a more depressing Delicious Tacos), Bronze Age Mindset (maybe I am not macho enough or not clued into the in jokes but I don’t get why it’s so great…okay, modern society is antimasculine, I agree, how is becoming a pirate going to improve anything? States beat bandits over the long term), and a bunch of other right wing stuff (the book on witches and feminists causing the decline of the west was entertaining even if I didn’t buy the evo psych argument).
But they censored Abigail Shrier, so I wouldn’t get too excited.
Problem is, for most young men, how do you compete with video games?
There is a tacit assumption here that anything that gets people to read is somehow good for them, and that reading pulp is somehow superior to other lighthearted pursuits like playing games. I remember 20 years ago when exactly the same arguments were trotted out in support of JK Rowling. "Well, if gets the kids to finally read something..." was the constant refrain emanating from the editorial section of every newspaper you came across. But now the evidence is in, as if any were ever needed, to show how shortsighted that point of view was. Ms. Rowling did not produce a generation of savants but a bunch of cosplaying Millennials who think they are witches and who never outgrew their Harry Potter obsession.
To think that it would ever have turned out otherwise is to fall victim to the same blank-slatism which I thought was very much not in vogue around here. You aren't going to improve ordinary people by exposing them to literature. You are only going to drag down literature in the process. The lowering of standards to accommodate the unqualified is not a bad thing only when it pertains to Affirmative Action blacks in the university or women in the military. It's just as bad when it admits mediocre white people to the ranks of the learned.Replies: @Curle
……..”almost”?
It means refusing to be a really useful engine. Causing confusion and delay.
Vancouver was for a while. Perhaps not anymore. (Your kilometrage may vary.)
Call me naïve, but I sort of had the idea they'd talk about the "white men" who own the publishing industry. J/KReplies: @Dchjk, @anonymous
Fellow white men?
The 1960s was infamous for all those goofy women's novels, like Payton Place and Valley of the Dolls.
So a whole editorial team at a Long Island newspaper made up a plan: Starting from zero, one editor would knock out a chapter, stop, then pass the "manuscript" on to the next editor. And repeat till there's enough for a novel.
What started as a gag ended up being published as NAKED CAME THE STRANGER by "Penelope Ashe". It actually made the New York Times bestseller list. Naughty editors. It's probably one of the newspapers that went bust two minutes after the World Wide Web went wide.Replies: @Dchjk, @Deckin
Alexander Dumas employed a team of writers, a common practice long before Bob Hope told his first joke.
Yes, the Washington Post sidestepped the movement in the summer of 2020 for everybody else to capitalize Black but not white by capitalizing both. It shows a certain independence of them.
Do they have similar “column of air” styles of singing? I could believe that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pWFKKtvAvak
The same business model of all the vice peddlers, coincidentally.
“The Mandibles” talks about hyperinflation and has some mildly anti Hispanic stuff if I remember.Replies: @International Jew, @Bardon Kaldlan
The Mandibles has a lot of material that explores white replacement. It’s also clearly pro-gun.
And apart from any politics, it’s a terrific book all around.
It seemed to me to get the economic collapse dynamics about right. I foresee a lot of over-entitled over-credentialed and under-educated bints trying to whore themselves out for a can of beans.Thanks to Totally Legitimate Resident Biden, we're going to find out.
It’s striking how few novels are attributed to two or more authors. In contrast, plays and screenplays are often the work of duos. Shakespeare collaborated with Fletcher on three plays and Fletcher went on to write with Beaumont.
And apart from any politics, it's a terrific book all around.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Bill Jones
My wife really liked “The Mandibles.”
I haven’t read it.
My impression is that it’s a soft dystopian sci-fi book like Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins” in which society has merely deteriorated rather than collapsed. That seems more plausible.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
ConclusionNOTE: Do not read Part 5, if you want to read this book. It has spoilers, and this is a novel, remember.Replies: @International Jew, @The Wild Geese Howard
Here’s her best known song…
I should invoke late Harold Bloom’s ghost in a spiritualist seance to send all those riff-raff packing …
Pragmatically, the “expansion of the Canon” has meant the destruction of the Canon, since what is being taught includes by no means the best writers who happen to be women, African, Hispanic, or Asian, but rather the writers who offer little but the resentment they have developed as part of their sense of identity. There is no strangeness and no originality in such resentment; even if there were, they would not suffice to create heirs of the Yahwist and Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, Cervantes and Joyce.
As the formulator of a critical concept I once named “the anxiety of influence,” I have enjoyed the School of Resentment’s repeated insistence that such a notion applies only to Dead White European Males, and not to women and to what we quaintly term
” multiculturalists.” Thus, feminist cheerleaders proclaim that women writers lovingly cooperate with one another as quilt makers, while African-American and Chicano literary activists go even further in asserting their freedom from any anguish of contamination whatsoever: each of them is Adam early in the morning.
…………………………….
Cultural belatedness, now an all-but-universal world condition, has a particular poignance in the United States of America. We are the final inheritors of Western tradition. Education founded upon the Iliad, the Bible, Plato, and Shakespeare remains, in some strained form, our ideal, though the relevance of these cultural monuments to life in our inner cities is inevitably rather remote.
………………………………………………………..
The death of the author, proclaimed by Foucault, Barthes, and many clones after them, is another anticanonical myth, similar to the battle cry of resentment that would dismiss “all of the dead, white European males”-that is to say, for a baker’s dozen, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Milton, Goethe, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Kafka, and Proust. Livelier than you are, whoever you are, these authors were indubitably male, and I suppose “white. ”
James Patterson is a former advertising executive who brought big business mass production methods to writing novels. He publishes many books under his brand name each year, usually ghostwritten by little-known novelists working under his executive supervision. His business model has proven vastly successful, and he’s second to J.K. Rowling among authors in wealth, with something like \$800 million.
He didn’t. The progenitor of the ‘Nancy Drew’ series of juvenile mysteries employed a stable of writers whose work appeared under the pseudonym ‘Carolyn Keene’. The first ‘Nancy Drew’ volume was published in 1930.
But much of the attention from Patterson’s interview was on his claim that White men are struggling to find work in publishing….some of the White males on the list have long been dead.
This helps refute Patterson’s claim rather less than the journalist thinks it does. “Some say White men are losing political power, but look at Charlemagne!”
Indeed. This is characteristic of the Left's 'Year Zero' nihilism. The fact that this work has been loved for a hundred years is nothing. That just means it's "stale".
I wouldn’t call it dystopian or sci-fi at all, Steve. It’s a prepper novel. It’s very detailed, in fact, and definitely from a (NY) city woman’s point of view. (That’s fine, as I think novels are best written when the author writes about what he knows.)
There is not the focus on how to rig up devices and keep society going as a man’s prepper novel would have in it. There is more on the use or non-use of toilet paper than you’d have wanted to know. However, Mrs. Shriver’s take on the economics if very good! She wrote this in ’16 about the years 2029-’47 (there’s that rhyming history thing), and if you read it, you will see that she may have been a little tpo optimistic on the time-line.
For anyone here, please don’t give up during the first 10 pages, as I almost did. I thought “why did John Derbyshire recommend this PC/lefty garbage, but it was just from one characters point of view there.
In the book, first American society deteriorated, then it collapsed (economically).
I’ll put my 6-part, yes 6 part review after the tag:
Introduction
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Conclusion
NOTE: Do not read Part 5, if you want to read this book. It has spoilers, and this is a novel, remember.
I'd only add that the Afterword to the novel is also a treat as Lionel describes how her worldview evolved as she researched and wrote the novel.
Why would any young White man volunteer to defend a system that hates his guts?
And the most HBD pundits can do is make cutesy comments on it and then ask for donations.
Take a look at the websites of literary agents.Around 90 percent explicitly state they are seeking to represent “marginalized “ communities, or some similar Newspeak phrase. Meaning if you’re a white straight male, don’t bother to submit your work. After a bunch of polite rejections I found a publisher without using an agent.
You must read this book, Steve. For your own good, and because I know I’ll enjoy reading your review.
There’s no sci fi there to speak of. A bit of plausible extrapolation on what already existed in 2016, that’s all.
Achmed is right about “prepper novel … from a woman’s point of view”; that’s a pretty funny observation actually. But it’s mostly about love and family. And the brutal disappointments that land on us late boomers in their old age.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
ConclusionNOTE: Do not read Part 5, if you want to read this book. It has spoilers, and this is a novel, remember.Replies: @International Jew, @The Wild Geese Howard
Dude, what’s wrong with the first ten pages? I thought they were great. The disappointments of falling out of the middle class, the unnecessary miseries imposed by stupid green politics, and a jab at global warmism.
Also, about your last reply, yes, the woke-style forced retirement of (dang, forgot the names already) was a reason for the story, but that part about both of them (her with the cultural appropriation reasons that took away her work) being screwed did not get mentioned through the rest of the book but maybe a couple of pages. Those pages, if you can recall, were the couple's discussion on AA and such, and honestly, the conclusion was not very based.
BTW, for any reader of Shriver novels - I've read 3 - the one slightly bad point is that the author writes her story into conversations between characters. I get the idea, and she ain't changing this now, but it's just a little bit unbelievable. That is, even in The Mandibles where the one husband/Dad is even an economics professor (a Keynesian and wrong on about everything, haha!), sorry, but conversations among family would just not be that erudite sounding.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @JimDandy
I don’t have it on me, I.J. but I clearly remember that I was about to return this book to the library 98% (or whatever) unread. If you look at it now, you’ve got the benefit of hindsight, but I’m just warning potential readers. It seemed to me that this book was to have a hard-left anti-white-male slant from the get-go. That was just that one of the narrators’ initial thoughts though. I picked it back up a week later, got through that, and it was great from there. Yes, please read this, Steve!
Also, about your last reply, yes, the woke-style forced retirement of (dang, forgot the names already) was a reason for the story, but that part about both of them (her with the cultural appropriation reasons that took away her work) being screwed did not get mentioned through the rest of the book but maybe a couple of pages. Those pages, if you can recall, were the couple’s discussion on AA and such, and honestly, the conclusion was not very based.
BTW, for any reader of Shriver novels – I’ve read 3 – the one slightly bad point is that the author writes her story into conversations between characters. I get the idea, and she ain’t changing this now, but it’s just a little bit unbelievable. That is, even in The Mandibles where the one husband/Dad is even an economics professor (a Keynesian and wrong on about everything, haha!), sorry, but conversations among family would just not be that erudite sounding.
Dialog is the Achilles heel of novelists. They should contract out all words that are enclosed in double quotation marks to script writers. But I say dispense with the quotation marks all together: Do it the Cormac McCarthy (Celtic much?) and just indent dialog without the quotation clutter between prose passages. It makes for a cleaner, more immersive page.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
Well, I’ve had plenty to say about her:
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2019-11.html#03
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2019-12.html#07
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2022-01.html#09
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2022-03.html#02
At that first link I noted:
This has actually just started to happen: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/11/californians-working-from-home-are-moving-to-mexico-amid-inflation.html
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/imports/If you wanted to really ruin the US, you'd need to do what Venezuela did — let civil disorder get out of hand and confiscate productive assets thus driving commerce and industry underground (or to extinction altogether). Now there's plenty of that too in The Mandibles. So Shriver's imagined world is very much consistent with a catastrophic impoverishment of the US, she just doesn't put the blame in the right place.On my understanding of the economics, the book becomes especially scary. Because while getting cut out of international trade isn't in the cards, the US is very much on the Venezuela track already.Replies: @J.Ross, @Bill Jones
Did he write his own apology?
OT but not really:
https://www.city-journal.org/wokeness-the-highest-stage-of-managerialism
It’s very encouraging to see these ideas propagate beyond internet cranks like us here.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/FYy1uXJqS5Z5cGPkLD/giphy.gifReplies: @Truth, @Jim Don Bob
A late friend of mine was a published author and he told me that, when you deal with a publisher, you inevitably deal with a member of a certain ethnic group who decides if your work gets published.
“It seemed like 75% of the people in the [publishing] business were women, mostly white …”
And?
Also, about your last reply, yes, the woke-style forced retirement of (dang, forgot the names already) was a reason for the story, but that part about both of them (her with the cultural appropriation reasons that took away her work) being screwed did not get mentioned through the rest of the book but maybe a couple of pages. Those pages, if you can recall, were the couple's discussion on AA and such, and honestly, the conclusion was not very based.
BTW, for any reader of Shriver novels - I've read 3 - the one slightly bad point is that the author writes her story into conversations between characters. I get the idea, and she ain't changing this now, but it's just a little bit unbelievable. That is, even in The Mandibles where the one husband/Dad is even an economics professor (a Keynesian and wrong on about everything, haha!), sorry, but conversations among family would just not be that erudite sounding.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @JimDandy
“sorry, but conversations among family would just not be that erudite sounding.”
Dialog is the Achilles heel of novelists. They should contract out all words that are enclosed in double quotation marks to script writers. But I say dispense with the quotation marks all together: Do it the Cormac McCarthy (Celtic much?) and just indent dialog without the quotation clutter between prose passages. It makes for a cleaner, more immersive page.
I am glad for the quote marks, so I don't agree on this point. I read a novel called Our Lady of the Forest (yeah, that goes to my review), and this guy didn't use quote marks. I found that exasperating.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @J.Ross
https://selfguidedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/trekking_walking_slovenia_alps_self_guided_tour.jpgLook like klansmen, amirite? I think toofie, corvy, and TD will back me up on this.PS: Where's TD? What have you racists done with TD?Replies: @prosa123, @Bill Jones
Because Mt. Kilimanjaro is an isolated peak not part of a range, the views from its summit are the most expansive of any mountain in the world.
James Patterson: To make amends for the emotional suffering that I have inflicted on everyone who is not a cishet white man, my next novel will be about a Black transman….who is also a Muslim…and on the spectrum….and who is battling against a secret MAGA-Klan cell in the NYPD….
The struggle against White characters continues:
Aztec Batman
Black Arsene Lupin
Black Dr Who
Black +LGBTQ Tom Swift
If I was 75 and filthy rich , I would never apologize. I’d tell the woke to kiss my ass. On TikTok. In the buff.
But you are 57 and broke, so toe the line, please.Replies: @BB753
Steve your right. Young guys don’t read anymore and are too busy playing video games. There is no future for white male writers.
“Probably it’s mostly because guys are playing video games instead of reading, which then contributes to a spiral where white men aren’t much hired by publishers and white male authors aren’t much considered.”
Speaking of “colonial history,” I see that George Washington U is dropping its longtime Colonials nickname — but Western CT U near me already beat them to the PC punch, replacing the dreaded moniker to become the Wolves, which I suppose are more in favor now than our Founding Fathers.
OT: A tale of two assaults. One reads like a hoax, the other.. well, no so much:
US Air Force sergeant claims she was RAPED by fellow servicemember in viral TikTok – but cops are refusing to prosecute attacker
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10918099/USAF-sergeant-makes-shocking-accusation-RAPE-against-fellow-servicemember-viral-TikTok.html
Liese Dodd: Pregnant Illinois (White) Woman’s Decapitated Head Found in Dumpster after (negro) Ex-Boyfriend Kills Her Ahead of Baby Shower
https://www.ibtimes.sg/liese-dodd-pregnant-illinois-womans-decapitated-head-found-dumpster-after-ex-boyfriend-kills-her-65236
The progenitor of the ‘Nancy Drew’ series of juvenile mysteries employed a stable of writers whose work appeared under the pseudonym ‘Carolyn Keene’. The first ‘Nancy Drew’ volume was published in 1930.
Yeah, right. Next you’re going to tell me ‘Franklin W. Dixon’ didn’t write ‘The Hardy Boys’ ! (In all seriousness the Hardy Boys and “Dixon” preceded Nancy Drew and “Keene” by a few years. The Rover Boys preceded the H.B. by a couple of decades, it seems)
This helps refute Patterson's claim rather less than the journalist thinks it does. "Some say White men are losing political power, but look at Charlemagne!"Replies: @kaganovitch
This helps refute Patterson’s claim rather less than the journalist thinks it does. “Some say White men are losing political power, but look at Charlemagne!”
Indeed. This is characteristic of the Left’s ‘Year Zero’ nihilism. The fact that this work has been loved for a hundred years is nothing. That just means it’s “stale”.
I am not so sure about it. Why would it be better to read anything than, say, thinking about something looking through a bus window? The same goes for smartphone addiction, social media and meaningless texting with the result of communication/psychological deterioration.
If one is in the position of doing nothing, it is better to go introspective than fixing your attention on something trivial and ultimately empty. Of course- most people are just too neurotic to just sit in peace & associate.
https://i.ibb.co/Mg0YmBN/Screenshot-20220104-030508-Daily-Mail-Online.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @International Jew, @epebble, @Bardon Kaldlan, @Bill Jones
Is Everest racist even after Tenzing Norgay steps on it first and every other climber goes up with an Asian Sherpa?
How is the ill-informed and triumphalist blather celebrating the genuine achievement of climbing Mt. Everest any different?
I subbed once at a diverse high school in a diverse English class. They were reading Hamlet … the graphic novel version.
“But what percentage are white men? After all, Patterson is talking about white men.”
But seeing as Patterson claimed that white men were the victims of a kind of racism, I can at least see the logic of saying that the existence of whites in the industry of either sex proves that it cannot be racist, as Patterson claimed.
Of course, Steve could equally then make an argument that an organisation having no white men but plenty of white women is still being racist. But in so doing, you’d end up sounding a lot like you’d invented a white nationalist (or citizenist?) version of ‘intersectionality’ and would Steve want to do that?
That’s right, you were trying to publish your stuff! How’s that going (If it’s not dangerous to say)? I was really hoping to see some young white guys still writing! In particular outside the usual alt-right cliques—that’s a point of view but it’s not the only one out there…
Patterson brings up Alexander Hamilton’s Report On Manufacturesand Paterson Falls.
Burr blasted Hamilton in a duel and Burr is buried in Princeton where Black squirrels scurry about.
https://twitter.com/MysteryGrove/status/1537290411764592640?s=20&t=SID7ihAiJqvj5siRKJ4kUQ
Also, about your last reply, yes, the woke-style forced retirement of (dang, forgot the names already) was a reason for the story, but that part about both of them (her with the cultural appropriation reasons that took away her work) being screwed did not get mentioned through the rest of the book but maybe a couple of pages. Those pages, if you can recall, were the couple's discussion on AA and such, and honestly, the conclusion was not very based.
BTW, for any reader of Shriver novels - I've read 3 - the one slightly bad point is that the author writes her story into conversations between characters. I get the idea, and she ain't changing this now, but it's just a little bit unbelievable. That is, even in The Mandibles where the one husband/Dad is even an economics professor (a Keynesian and wrong on about everything, haha!), sorry, but conversations among family would just not be that erudite sounding.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @JimDandy
I took her handling of those conversations in The Mandibles to be, in part, poking fun at how pseudo intellectuals really talk, but you have a point.
The 1960s was infamous for all those goofy women's novels, like Payton Place and Valley of the Dolls.
So a whole editorial team at a Long Island newspaper made up a plan: Starting from zero, one editor would knock out a chapter, stop, then pass the "manuscript" on to the next editor. And repeat till there's enough for a novel.
What started as a gag ended up being published as NAKED CAME THE STRANGER by "Penelope Ashe". It actually made the New York Times bestseller list. Naughty editors. It's probably one of the newspapers that went bust two minutes after the World Wide Web went wide.Replies: @Dchjk, @Deckin
A long time ago in college my roommate dated the daughter of an editor for the LA Times–like a big one. Anyway, she told the story of how the Horoscope guy got really sick and couldn’t do the page for something like two weeks. So, the editors decided that, rather than go to the hassle of finding another ‘astrologist’ to take over, they would get together every few days, open some wine, and just make it all up and send it in under the regular Horoscope guy’s name.
Nobody in the readership even noticed the difference! The only reason they took back the Horoscope guy was because it was too much of a pain to do it; they were worried the story would get out; and back then, the Times was rolling in money anyway.
enough of these wusses.Replies: @AndrewR, @Intelligent Dasein
Because he has \$800 million, that’s why.
I don’t know anything about this guy or his finances but, like most people in his class, I’m sure most of his wealth is highly illiquid. It’s not like he has a bunch of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault like Scrooge McDuck. His wealth is tied up in real estate, in bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and hedge funds, which makes him beholden to the financial class, which has shown itself willing in recent times to do the Left’s bidding. His assets can be cancelled, seized, frozen, or otherwise subject to indefinite lawfare shenanigans once he gets on the wrong side of the woke mob. Even the government likes to get in on the action, as the case of Trudeau and the truckers shows.
For crying out loud, this is the opportunity these guys live for. They are just waiting for someone with a fat wad of money to say something they can cancel him for.
In the late stages of a secular boom (i.e. today), when “money” has been abstracted and gamed to death, it scarcely exists as cold hard cash anymore, but is synonymous with the activity of the financial class. And this class is growing increasingly hubristic, detached, ignorant, desperate, and reckless as their situation becomes more and more untenable. The ultra-wealthy got to be where they are by playing along with the system, but as the system breaks down I can imagine that many of them find themselves looking over their shoulders and no longer know whether to run with the fox or hunt with the hounds.
I think we are long past the time when the wealthy class either could or would stand up as a socially conservative force. They have long since sold themselves out to the revolution.
The teem 'illiquid' does not mean what you fancy it means. Physical real estate is illiquid. Hedge funds require 53 days advance notice to bail. Bank accounts and brokerage accounts are not illiquid.
I believe you Old Sport.
But you are 57 and broke, so toe the line, please.
That used to be the job of the CIA’s publishing arm, The Readers Digest.
Aztec Batman
https://sm.ign.com/t/ign_nordic/news/h/hbo-max-is/hbo-max-is-getting-an-aztec-mexican-batman-animated-movie_18sy.1200.jpg
Black Arsene Lupin
https://blog.richersounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Lupin.jpg
Black Dr Who
https://telltaletv.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/4975B0B3-19E0-4125-ABA4-BB3EA18682BA.jpeg
Black +LGBTQ Tom Swift
https://staticg.sportskeeda.com/editor/2022/06/f6893-16552257519766-1920.jpgReplies: @Joe S.Walker
Gay black Tom Swift could give a whole new meaning to books like Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon.
But they censored Abigail Shrier, so I wouldn’t get too excited.
Problem is, for most young men, how do you compete with video games?Replies: @Intelligent Dasein
Why would you want to?
There is a tacit assumption here that anything that gets people to read is somehow good for them, and that reading pulp is somehow superior to other lighthearted pursuits like playing games. I remember 20 years ago when exactly the same arguments were trotted out in support of JK Rowling. “Well, if gets the kids to finally read something…” was the constant refrain emanating from the editorial section of every newspaper you came across. But now the evidence is in, as if any were ever needed, to show how shortsighted that point of view was. Ms. Rowling did not produce a generation of savants but a bunch of cosplaying Millennials who think they are witches and who never outgrew their Harry Potter obsession.
To think that it would ever have turned out otherwise is to fall victim to the same blank-slatism which I thought was very much not in vogue around here. You aren’t going to improve ordinary people by exposing them to literature. You are only going to drag down literature in the process. The lowering of standards to accommodate the unqualified is not a bad thing only when it pertains to Affirmative Action blacks in the university or women in the military. It’s just as bad when it admits mediocre white people to the ranks of the learned.
I had the misfortune of encountering a gaggle of these cosplay people on a city street during an cosplay convention held in the city I was visiting. If Harry Potter was an dominant theme among these people it wasn’t apparent to me.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
ConclusionNOTE: Do not read Part 5, if you want to read this book. It has spoilers, and this is a novel, remember.Replies: @International Jew, @The Wild Geese Howard
I had precisely the same initial reaction to The Mandibles, and I am also glad that I returned to the novel and finished it.
I’d only add that the Afterword to the novel is also a treat as Lionel describes how her worldview evolved as she researched and wrote the novel.
Actually it probably isn’t that difficult for a 52-year-old white male to get published if he’s written the kind of book that somebody wants to publish and catches them at the right time. This is probably not a literary first novel, but it could well be the biography of a rock band (especially one not previously done) or a personal memoir of some kind. Or just a good thriller. It’s all about making a connection. If you can’t do that you probably have no chance, whoever you are.
Call me naïve, but I sort of had the idea they'd talk about the "white men" who own the publishing industry. J/KReplies: @Dchjk, @anonymous
Isn’t the fact that the publishing industry has been and remains “a business that is owned by white men” a mitzvah?
And apart from any politics, it's a terrific book all around.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Bill Jones
I liked it a lot too.
It seemed to me to get the economic collapse dynamics about right. I foresee a lot of over-entitled over-credentialed and under-educated bints trying to whore themselves out for a can of beans.
Thanks to Totally Legitimate Resident Biden, we’re going to find out.
It was a few years back that members of the Science Fiction Writers Association (mostly professionals, but in decline) were openly crowing that the Nebulas (a prestigious SF writing award) had no white men listed for the honor. It was pretty typical as SF had been a culture war battleground for quite a while, way back before the woke-splosion of 2012.
Now, mind you there are fewer and fewer writers who make their living exclusively from writing, which includes SFWA members. And the prestige of the Nebulas ain’t what it used to be. I’m not sure which came first, the decline or the woke. I’d say SF book sales started slumping, which meant fewer serious pros coming into the field. The marginal types became dominant, eg people who are posers with nothing to say except look at how oppressed I am, writing pseudo-literary stuff about wereseals, dinosaur love, etc. That in turn makes it less appealing to authors who just want to write. Fewer books with mass appeal are published, causing sales to decline, rinse repeat.
Now, SF writers were always weirdos. But they used to be PROFESSIONAL weirdos.
https://selfguidedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/trekking_walking_slovenia_alps_self_guided_tour.jpgLook like klansmen, amirite? I think toofie, corvy, and TD will back me up on this.PS: Where's TD? What have you racists done with TD?Replies: @prosa123, @Bill Jones
Teeny Dick has been taking Xiaflex to try to get it straightened.
If one is in the position of doing nothing, it is better to go introspective than fixing your attention on something trivial and ultimately empty. Of course- most people are just too neurotic to just sit in peace & associate.Replies: @Tex
From The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler
I don't know anything about this guy or his finances but, like most people in his class, I'm sure most of his wealth is highly illiquid. It's not like he has a bunch of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault like Scrooge McDuck. His wealth is tied up in real estate, in bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and hedge funds, which makes him beholden to the financial class, which has shown itself willing in recent times to do the Left's bidding. His assets can be cancelled, seized, frozen, or otherwise subject to indefinite lawfare shenanigans once he gets on the wrong side of the woke mob. Even the government likes to get in on the action, as the case of Trudeau and the truckers shows.
For crying out loud, this is the opportunity these guys live for. They are just waiting for someone with a fat wad of money to say something they can cancel him for.
In the late stages of a secular boom (i.e. today), when "money" has been abstracted and gamed to death, it scarcely exists as cold hard cash anymore, but is synonymous with the activity of the financial class. And this class is growing increasingly hubristic, detached, ignorant, desperate, and reckless as their situation becomes more and more untenable. The ultra-wealthy got to be where they are by playing along with the system, but as the system breaks down I can imagine that many of them find themselves looking over their shoulders and no longer know whether to run with the fox or hunt with the hounds.
I think we are long past the time when the wealthy class either could or would stand up as a socially conservative force. They have long since sold themselves out to the revolution.Replies: @Art Deco
’m sure most of his wealth is highly illiquid. It’s not like he has a bunch of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault like Scrooge McDuck. His wealth is tied up in real estate, in bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and hedge funds,
The teem ‘illiquid’ does not mean what you fancy it means. Physical real estate is illiquid. Hedge funds require 53 days advance notice to bail. Bank accounts and brokerage accounts are not illiquid.
In an odd failure of big data marketing, my Kindle device plies me (on the lock screen) with books of a sort I never buy — bodice rippers, spy novels, mysteries, and yes lots of James Pattersons.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @Anon7
I’ll never buy another “Patterson” novel. About ten years ago, before I knew the deal, I bought a James Patterson novel in the airport, to read on the plane.
I’m not simply saying that this was the worst novel I’d ever read. It was the outline for a novel. I’ve written nonfiction, and typically you lay out all the chapters (that were in the outline you sold the publisher) and then you fill them in.
Publishers often ask to know how you’re doing; so, you send them your book, incomplete and outlined chapters and all. It’s easy to do with word processors. And that’s what James Patterson sold me, under his famous name.
So fuck that guy, and his publisher, Hachette.
Patterson’s 180 was even faster than Jack del Rio’s recent “mea culpa,” . Or Drew Breeze (when he originally refused to take a knee during the anthem).
Balls seem to be in short supply these days.
Men read male authors much more than female ones; and women have a (weaker) tendency to favor female writers.
With first-person novels, have there been any successful cases of an author adopting the identity of the other sex? It must be a challenge to make the characterization believable.
There was John Cleland’s Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and Ian Fleming’s (dire) The Spy Who Loved Me. But in both cases the girl is little more than a sexual-fantasy projection.
https://greyjournal.net/news/3-men-pretended-to-be-a-female-author-for-a-writing-contest-and-won/
Fleming's choice for illustrator, Trog-- whom the publisher rejected-- turns 98 this coming Tuesday. Wish him a good one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Fawkes
Probably it’s mostly because guys are playing video games instead of reading, which then contributes to a spiral where white men aren’t much hired by publishers and white male authors aren’t much considered.
This is a disappointingly reductive theory. One of the reasons white men don’t read contemporary literary fiction is because why would they read contemporary literary fiction? It’s overwhelmingly woke bullshit.
https://i.ibb.co/Mg0YmBN/Screenshot-20220104-030508-Daily-Mail-Online.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @International Jew, @epebble, @Bardon Kaldlan, @Bill Jones
This just in: Sherpa guide Wu Chang has filed A lawsuit claiming she was held against her will and sexually assaulted by a climber. The as yet unidentified climber claims it was ” consensual.”
It means to end a romantic relationship.
For example:
I decoupled with my girlfriend because she was nuts.
“The Mandibles” talks about hyperinflation and has some mildly anti Hispanic stuff if I remember.Replies: @International Jew, @Bardon Kaldlan
Remember the white lady who wrote a book about mexicans? She was so proud of herself and was all set to be praised and “celebrated” til someone pointed out that she is a gringa!😉
Sure, “Memoirs of a Geisha” by a white man is a good novel. “Mildred Pierce” by James M. Cain. There are dozens of other examples. Yes, it’s harder but a lot of talent has gone into novel writing over the last 300 years, so it’s been done successfully.
Seems like a good way to get caught quickly.
The Sherpas were Honorary Whites.
Interesting. And what do you think of self-publishing through Kindle on Amazon? I don’t know how else certain people will be able to be published in the future.
1) To date, I have never read a James Patterson novel 2) Knew I would never read a JP novel, even a paperback freebie at the library, after he co-authored with Clinton (wonder if they both used ghost writers or shared?) 3) Aren’t all mainstream publishers Ewes? 4) Feel better about grandson’s time playing games but trying to get him started with real fiction starting with Daniel Defoe.
What about those Spanish male authors who not only used a single female name, but did it multiple times as bestsellers?
https://greyjournal.net/news/3-men-pretended-to-be-a-female-author-for-a-writing-contest-and-won/
They did, on both sides, in 1861.
For example:
I decoupled with my girlfriend because she was nuts.Replies: @Stan Adams
“I decoupled with my girlfriend because she decoupled my nuts.”
The worst depiction of a woman I’ve ever come across is that of Mrs Pott in Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All she did was cry throughout her family’s adventure. Eight-year-old twin Jemima showed a lot of spunk, though. The book must hold the record for the highest exclamation-mark-to-sentence ratio. It’s not meant to be read, but read aloud.
Fleming’s choice for illustrator, Trog– whom the publisher rejected– turns 98 this coming Tuesday. Wish him a good one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Fawkes
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2019-12.html#07
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2022-01.html#09
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Diaries/2022-03.html#02At that first link I noted:This has actually just started to happen: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/11/californians-working-from-home-are-moving-to-mexico-amid-inflation.htmlReplies: @International Jew
Thanks for those links!
I loved the book, but the economics part doesn’t quite make sense. Getting cut out of international trade wouldn’t by itself plunge the US into 3rd World status. We’d lose our “gains from trade” sure, but we’re not that open an economy to begin with. Imports are just 13% of our GDP — where places like Ireland or Belgium are near 100%.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/imports/
If you wanted to really ruin the US, you’d need to do what Venezuela did — let civil disorder get out of hand and confiscate productive assets thus driving commerce and industry underground (or to extinction altogether). Now there’s plenty of that too in The Mandibles. So Shriver’s imagined world is very much consistent with a catastrophic impoverishment of the US, she just doesn’t put the blame in the right place.
On my understanding of the economics, the book becomes especially scary. Because while getting cut out of international trade isn’t in the cards, the US is very much on the Venezuela track already.
So ... what Biden has been doing?
The Outsiders is considered a classic of the Young Adult genre. I read it when I was a kid and liked it a lot.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/imports/If you wanted to really ruin the US, you'd need to do what Venezuela did — let civil disorder get out of hand and confiscate productive assets thus driving commerce and industry underground (or to extinction altogether). Now there's plenty of that too in The Mandibles. So Shriver's imagined world is very much consistent with a catastrophic impoverishment of the US, she just doesn't put the blame in the right place.On my understanding of the economics, the book becomes especially scary. Because while getting cut out of international trade isn't in the cards, the US is very much on the Venezuela track already.Replies: @J.Ross, @Bill Jones
If you wanted to really ruin the US, you’d need to do what Venezuela did — let civil disorder get out of hand and confiscate productive assets thus driving commerce and industry underground (or to extinction altogether).
So … what Biden has been doing?
!
If I met such a crew on Everest, I’d be like “Good God Almighty, is there no place on earth I can get away from these people??”
https://i.ibb.co/Mg0YmBN/Screenshot-20220104-030508-Daily-Mail-Online.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @International Jew, @epebble, @Bardon Kaldlan, @Bill Jones
I’d be more impressed if they did it using only black designed fabrics equipment etc.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/imports/If you wanted to really ruin the US, you'd need to do what Venezuela did — let civil disorder get out of hand and confiscate productive assets thus driving commerce and industry underground (or to extinction altogether). Now there's plenty of that too in The Mandibles. So Shriver's imagined world is very much consistent with a catastrophic impoverishment of the US, she just doesn't put the blame in the right place.On my understanding of the economics, the book becomes especially scary. Because while getting cut out of international trade isn't in the cards, the US is very much on the Venezuela track already.Replies: @J.Ross, @Bill Jones
Thanks for the laugh.
If the US was cut out of international trade there would be rioting on a scale never before seen world-wide. The loss of everything that people buy (imports) would not be offset by cheaper paper and cardboard (exports).
We’ll know soon enough.
Now does that sound like a bad thing to you?
This just bugs me. If WaPo is a newspaper of record, it is at rock bottom. Which moron let this get into print?
Well, saying it that way certainly is.
epebble, some Germans of a century ago were scolded for their hyper-nationalist and racialist prickliness, their ping-ponging from racial pride to piteous wallowing in victimization, etc.
How is the ill-informed and triumphalist blather celebrating the genuine achievement of climbing Mt. Everest any different?
Dialog is the Achilles heel of novelists. They should contract out all words that are enclosed in double quotation marks to script writers. But I say dispense with the quotation marks all together: Do it the Cormac McCarthy (Celtic much?) and just indent dialog without the quotation clutter between prose passages. It makes for a cleaner, more immersive page.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
Sorry for the late reply, SBS, as I meant to comment on this. It’s just that, even if you and your husband are NY City/London intellectuals, you’ve still got to think on the conversations you use to illustrate the points – “would they really talk like that?” Yes, maybe script writers could help.
I am glad for the quote marks, so I don’t agree on this point. I read a novel called Our Lady of the Forest (yeah, that goes to my review), and this guy didn’t use quote marks. I found that exasperating.
I am glad for the quote marks, so I don't agree on this point. I read a novel called Our Lady of the Forest (yeah, that goes to my review), and this guy didn't use quote marks. I found that exasperating.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @J.Ross
I wouldn’t recommend William Gaddis’ JR to you then:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_R
https://www.amazon.com/J-R-William-Gaddis/dp/1681374684/Replies: @Cagey Beast
I am glad for the quote marks, so I don't agree on this point. I read a novel called Our Lady of the Forest (yeah, that goes to my review), and this guy didn't use quote marks. I found that exasperating.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @J.Ross
The leftist historical novelist David Peace has the protagonist’s thoughts running constantly with only suggestions or scant summaries of physical action so you end up with hyperventilating run-ons and cinematic timing and whole pages of FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.
Three of Patterson’s titles made the list, while just five women of color and four men of color were on the bestseller list.
Most Boomer and Genx readers aren’t interested in “‘Urban’ fiction, or race grievance Science fiction or memoirs about hair touching Afros. Is there a large market of ethnic readers or like Millenials and GenZ do they spend all day in front of a screen not necessarily reading but watching?
White guys who climb M.E use Himalayan guides.
But you are 57 and broke, so toe the line, please.Replies: @BB753
I’m younger, but broke! Yeah, by the time you no longer have anything to lose, you lose the rebellious spirit.
Reader’s Digest began publication 25 years before the CIA was founded.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/FYy1uXJqS5Z5cGPkLD/giphy.gifReplies: @Truth, @Jim Don Bob
There is a Menards near me. It’s great. It is the Walmart of hardware stores; it’s got everything.
Tom Swift and the Black Hole.
I read JR years ago and thought it brilliant. But it is a challenge to read and looooong.
https://www.amazon.com/J-R-William-Gaddis/dp/1681374684/Replies: @Cagey Beast
Yes, it’s very funny and very WASPy, in the best sense. Audible has an audio version I enjoyed over time and in small doses.
You never heard of an acquisition?
I seldom read novels at all but I often read or skim books reviews of novels.
What I discover is that many of them are written by a) young women, often Jewish, writing about their travails of finding themselves/love in the Big City (NYC). And their terrible families Who Don’t Understand Them. Often Jewish.
Okay, write what you know. So they write semi fictionalized autobiographies about their feelings and nothing very insightful experiences.
Then b) there are the male novelists, also often young, who are also gay and/or Jewish or both. Same thing, finding themselves, overcoming doubters and the Cold Cruel World.
Both of these are what I deem ” English lit. grad school” novels. One and done, usually.
I suspect few of these sell well, but publishers must believe that women, gay males and Jews buy most of the modern novels.
The real sellers at least at airports are formula action/crime series, some churned out by the likes of Patterson. Who apologizes for telling some truths, softly. A Bill Clinton bro for sure, Dickhead.
Of course Hillary “co-wrote” some crime mysteries with a female Canadian writer (Louise Penny), whose books all feature chapters upon chapters of old women in Canada babbling about people they know. Eventually some crime is laboriously solved by said blabby crones.
This is what they expect readers to like. No wonder few bother reading anything any more.
What's different is the Jewish/women/gay thing. In particular, the Jews (of course). Gore Vidal noted over two generations ago that Jews had taken over the fiction game, except for a couple of "OK Goys" like John Updike.
Any member of the white/straight majority is going to get a little tired of reading yet another story of the trials of growing up Jewish in "anti-Semitic" America.
As always, the Jews take advantage of the goy's "Well, fair's fair, let them in and see how they do" and quickly take the whole game over; we're promised "many new perspectives" and what we get is "it used to be all stale pale males and now it's all Jews.women/gays, but mostly Jews".
"Bottom rail on top now, boss" -- ex-slave to ex-massa, in Ken Burns' Civil War.
I started to read
a couple years ago because of its reputation, and although I thought it lived up to the hype, I got distracted by something or other and never finished it. It’s on my list of such books to eventually finish.
But this JR, from that description of it at least, sounds like the sort of parody of modernist shyte that Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis would come up with. “Gaddis later said he did this in order to make the reader a collaborator in the process of creating the characters.” In other words, to save himself the trouble of typing quote marks and indenting. Sorry, Mr. Author, that’s your job. I didn’t pay for your book so as to engage in unpaid copyediting.
Hard pass.
Yes I don't think the juice would be worth the squeeze to try to read it. The audio book worked for me though because the guy reading it acted out the different characters. He deserves an award for pulling it off.
That’s what they want you to think.
What I discover is that many of them are written by a) young women, often Jewish, writing about their travails of finding themselves/love in the Big City (NYC). And their terrible families Who Don't Understand Them. Often Jewish.
Okay, write what you know. So they write semi fictionalized autobiographies about their feelings and nothing very insightful experiences.
Then b) there are the male novelists, also often young, who are also gay and/or Jewish or both. Same thing, finding themselves, overcoming doubters and the Cold Cruel World.
Both of these are what I deem " English lit. grad school" novels. One and done, usually.
I suspect few of these sell well, but publishers must believe that women, gay males and Jews buy most of the modern novels.
The real sellers at least at airports are formula action/crime series, some churned out by the likes of Patterson. Who apologizes for telling some truths, softly. A Bill Clinton bro for sure, Dickhead.
Of course Hillary "co-wrote" some crime mysteries with a female Canadian writer (Louise Penny), whose books all feature chapters upon chapters of old women in Canada babbling about people they know. Eventually some crime is laboriously solved by said blabby crones.
This is what they expect readers to like. No wonder few bother reading anything any more.Replies: @Peter D. Bredon
I suspect you are making a point about today’s fiction in particular, and it’s a true one, but other than the Jewish/woman/gay thing, I suspect that’s largely been always true. That synopsis could apply to Lucky Jim, Brideshead Revisited, The Great Gatsby or even Moby Dick. Perhaps Wilhelm Meister as well. Tom Jones?
What’s different is the Jewish/women/gay thing. In particular, the Jews (of course). Gore Vidal noted over two generations ago that Jews had taken over the fiction game, except for a couple of “OK Goys” like John Updike.
Any member of the white/straight majority is going to get a little tired of reading yet another story of the trials of growing up Jewish in “anti-Semitic” America.
As always, the Jews take advantage of the goy’s “Well, fair’s fair, let them in and see how they do” and quickly take the whole game over; we’re promised “many new perspectives” and what we get is “it used to be all stale pale males and now it’s all Jews.women/gays, but mostly Jews”.
“Bottom rail on top now, boss” — ex-slave to ex-massa, in Ken Burns’ Civil War.
Yes I have. I’ve also heard of fantasy. Subvert the free people by having them read ‘Laughter, the Best Medicine’ in the doctor’s office.
“But this JR, from that description of it at least […] Hard pass”.
Yes I don’t think the juice would be worth the squeeze to try to read it. The audio book worked for me though because the guy reading it acted out the different characters. He deserves an award for pulling it off.
Top eight importers and exporters by cubic feet? Do you realize how meaningless that is, or are you just too lazy to find figures in dollars?
Ok then, let’s imagine Walmart disappeared. Walmart revenues (roughly all on imported goods) account for some 2.5% of US GDP. If we had to produce all that domestically, we’re talking (roughly again) about four million new manufacturing jobs (2.5% of our workforce) *and* next pandemic we’ll be able to make our own damn face masks.
Now does that sound like a bad thing to you?
This is a disappointingly reductive theory. One of the reasons white men don't read contemporary literary fiction is because why would they read contemporary literary fiction? It's overwhelmingly woke bullshit.Replies: @Curle
Reductive but credible. There’s plenty of non-woke fiction from the past they also aren’t reading.
There is a tacit assumption here that anything that gets people to read is somehow good for them, and that reading pulp is somehow superior to other lighthearted pursuits like playing games. I remember 20 years ago when exactly the same arguments were trotted out in support of JK Rowling. "Well, if gets the kids to finally read something..." was the constant refrain emanating from the editorial section of every newspaper you came across. But now the evidence is in, as if any were ever needed, to show how shortsighted that point of view was. Ms. Rowling did not produce a generation of savants but a bunch of cosplaying Millennials who think they are witches and who never outgrew their Harry Potter obsession.
To think that it would ever have turned out otherwise is to fall victim to the same blank-slatism which I thought was very much not in vogue around here. You aren't going to improve ordinary people by exposing them to literature. You are only going to drag down literature in the process. The lowering of standards to accommodate the unqualified is not a bad thing only when it pertains to Affirmative Action blacks in the university or women in the military. It's just as bad when it admits mediocre white people to the ranks of the learned.Replies: @Curle
“Ms. Rowling did not produce a generation of savants but a bunch of cosplaying Millennials”
I had the misfortune of encountering a gaggle of these cosplay people on a city street during an cosplay convention held in the city I was visiting. If Harry Potter was an dominant theme among these people it wasn’t apparent to me.
That’s not really a logical argument, for many reasons. “They” aren’t reading The Sun Also Rises, but Mike Ma makes a living on his self-published novels and Delicious Tacos became a successful short story writer with his indie Sex in the City for hetero guys material. Bronze Age Pervert is doing well, too, with imitators like Raw Egg Nationalist coming up. There is a market that is being deliberately shut out by NY.