The Writing After-Life

I wanted to write my Memoirs, but I got writer's block. So I hired a ghost-writer to write the book for me. The results are invisible, but I do sense an authorial presence. So I'm making presents of non-copies for creative visualizers who enjoy imagining the content of a magical ghostly gift. I think they'll find the prose hauntingly beautiful.

The memories I meant to put into my Memoirs have dissolved into phantoms of forgetfulness anyway, which is just as well because all sorts of unorthodox and embarrassing things happened in my life which I'd rather forget. I needn't tell readers about that -- I don't want to make a spectre of myself.

Finding a ghost-writer is a good way to market shadowy shades of literature -- even fifty shape-shifting shades, perhaps. No unkind book reviewer will find any grammatical faults at all, and the book will waft readers straight into a world of Holiday-From-Reality magic. I imagine already my Memoirs on bookstores' shelves, enticingly hovering in the Fantasy section.

In January, I hired the ghost-writer to write my How to Keep to Ten New Year's Dream-Resolutions. My writing career is really taking off. I'll be mysteriously prolific this year.

Literature-Lib: Looking back at the days of liberated fiction

"Lionized" by the literary establishment during his/her own time, many a once-popular author is now denounced for racism, sexism, transphobia, and general deficiency in "DEI" credentials.

One such is Mordecai Richler, whose novel Barney's Version, lavishly praised upon publication, received Canada's Giller Prize 1997. It was "charged with comic energy and a wicked disregard for any pieties ..." says the blurb on the cover.

Disregard for pieties is still called wicked, but no longer in a complimentary way. "Wrongthought" is no joke; it's even being criminalized.

The hero of the novel (Barney), when falsely accused of variegated personal and professional immoralities, in his own defence responds with his own "version" of events -- and his entertainingly provocative views on culture and politics. 

If he thought the latter were bad back in the 1990s, he'd be horrified at the atmosphere today. Satirical humour was his weapon against political correctness, but his weaponry did nothing to stop the ignorant armies clashing even more on our darkling plain of wokeness. (Matthew Arnold too, writing at the dawn of liberal humanist tradition, would be horrified to see the 21st century's plain, swept with even more "confused alarms of struggle and flight".)

As for the Giller Prize (a prize Richler would never be nominated for now), and the ideology of present juries: how could change happen so quickly in the literary world? Such shrinkage of imagination and narrow-minded condemnation of free thought? How could the imposition of obligatory self-censorship have gone so far so fast? Yesterday's lionized are today's verminized.

A literary critic writing in 2022 objected to Richler opposing the "special pleading" of politically correct groups, and his disagreeing that Western society is unjust toward minorities. Indeed, if he was writing today he'd probably be sued by allies of identity groups who felt triggered, harmed and epistemically violated by his words, although writing today he'd probably never find a publisher at all. Publishers are businesses, and they want to stay in business in a field where personal free expression is now unpopular.

In fact, according to the University of Southern California, we're not even allowed to refer to a "field" in case it brings to mind the fields wherein slaves once worked. Compassionate people may want to save others from hurt, but history will still be history, even if we legislate public ignorance of it.

There were no Anglo-Saxon names among authors on the 2022 Giller prize shortlist, and only one the previous year. Of course, Canada gets more international immigrants every year, but Mordecai Richler might suspect a bit of "special pleading" going on here behind the Giller scenes. Since 1997, when he won the prize, there has been less satirical humour on offer. We live in an era of intellectual straightness, of hearing only self -- an arid environment of cultural grazers who survive on poor soil and poor nutrition, and need much herding.

In an interview on Writers & Company, Eleanor Wachtel noted that Richler had been called "irreverent and smart-ass", and warned that listeners might find the excerpt he was about to read "raunchy". That word seems quaint; today, we'd warn of "toxic masculinity" that might trigger "trauma-spectrum diorder".

Richler himself said he aimed to satirize the absurd while witnessing his own times. If he thought his 20th century times absurd, one can only guess what he'd think about "the times" today. More than a little "out of joint".

Reviews of Barney's Version in 1997 used the words "wonderful, hilarious, gripping, touching and humane". Today they'd more likely accuse him of being "racist, trans-phobic, sexist, stigmatizing and trauma-inducing", and if Richler gave a reading, the de-platformers would be shouting outside and waving placards. 

The Food-For-Thought Bank

– Hello, is this the Submissions Editor?

– Um … who is this? 

– I wondered whether you’d received my submission.

– I wonder how you got this phone number.

– “Research”! I sent my manuscript to you two months ago …?

– Our response time is twelve months.

– Twelve? That’s a year! Don’t tell me: it’s because of the pandemic, supply chains, inflation, Russia, staff shortage, quiet quitting … How am I doing?

– (Sigh ..) What’s your title?

– Haven’t got one, I’m a commoner. I’m not Bipoc, Black, Indigenous, marginalized, gender-variant, or particularly youthful … is that why you haven’t read my submission?

– Of course not, we practice inclusion and equity. And monetization.

– Monetization?

– Yeah, you know: making money. What’s the title of your submission?

– The True Death of History.

– Oh. We don’t deal in Truth here. You can’t monetize Truth, only “truths”.

– Oh?

– All our authors are skillful self-marketing influencers. To have your manuscript accepted, you must have an existing social media audience, and you’ll reflect back to them their own opinions so they’ll share your site with others and the algorithms will give you more hits because you had more hits. They metastasize …

– Huh. Amazing. Maybe The Truly Metastasizing Logarithm would be a catchier title.

– Yes. But it’s not about the book anyway, it’s about the author. What you’re selling is yourself. 

– It’s a self-auction? 

– Yes, on Zoom, Instagram, TikTok … you must perform on them.

– I don’t do much online stuff, I do print stuff. Would the audience see me, or could I have my face blurred out? 

– Of course they must see you. Ideally your performance would include music – and dance is good – and studies have shown that when people cry online their audience grows exponentially. Also, photos of cooking are popular. And a cat or dog is a huge asset, especially if it’s a rescue and when you tell the tale of its rescue, you cry …

– Look, I’m a writer, not a dancer or actor. Don’t you market books? Ideas? Free speech? Why would algorithms like me, what would those platforms get from my audience?

– Advertising revenue, of course, earned by you telling people what they already think. Most don’t read much, they watch dancing. That’s why bookshops go bankrupt, even chains like Chapters need to devote half their floor space to non-book merchandise.

– But not to merchants of thought. I get it.

– No, you don’t. Media influencers too are merchants of thought. They sell people’s group-think back to them, so they feel heard and “see themselves” in the media. 

– So is that the “circular economy”? Nothing wasted, all recycled to consumers wanting same-again assurance that their tribe is the right-thinking one?

– Now you’re getting it! So call me next year with links to your social media sites, which could form the basis for monetization of what you quaintly call your ideas.

– But will my book be in print?

– Print? Who knows?

– I’d be better off self-publishing and setting up a sales table at a community market. 

– Maybe.

– If I don’t sell a book to a publisher or a column to a periodical soon, I’ll be at the Food Bank. Hey, there’s an idea! What if independent authors were to market books at Food Banks? (Some people still put reading right up there with eating.) Maybe the authors could be persuaded to cry as the food recipients walk by with full grocery bags, and they'd get some donations … We could call it the Food-For-Thought Bank. Thanks, Editor, you’ve been really helpful.