Confidential to Anonymous, Or: Even More Dark Secrets of Publishing, Revealed!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
1. Publishing is totally controlled by gay feminists. Mmm hmm. So true. You're a white guy? Writing a thriller, you say? Give up now, Author-friend. Don't even bother. Yesterday we were all like, "Hey "Steve," we just got this email from some dude named Dan B. Patterson-Grisham? He's, like, tired of his agent? And wants you to rep him?" and "Steve" was all like, "Is it feminist? Is it gay? No? THEN GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN OFFICE, AND DON'T MAKE ME TELL YOU TWICE."
2. The entire publishing industry--nay! make that the entire free world!--is this VERY SECOND HURTLING TOWARD GOMORRAH. Hurtling, author-friends! Hurtling! As opposed to the Fine Days of Yore, when Mankind upheld such Lofty Artistic Ideals as slavery, public executions, burning people at the stake, and lynching, and wrote Great Timeless Art composed of extensive gay/incest jokes (Shakespeare, Marlowe), extensive lists of ladies slept with (H. Miller), extensive wildly commercial quasi-communist diatribes about the plight of the working class (Dickens), or extensive homoerotic bestiality narratives (Melville). Books now? TOTAL CRAP. Junot Diaz? Wells Tower? Tom Spanbauer? Joseph O'Neill? Edward P. Jones? POPULIST CLAPTRAP. And don't even get us STARTED on the books written by WOMEN. UGH. Women! Hate 'em! EVERYONE knows that WOMEN only get published because of AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
Oh man, we are going to get so much shit for that Melville comment. Y'all read some Freud, and you'll be in our corner.
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Anybody who has read Billy Budd can't complain too much about your Melville comment.
As for the rest -- I'm glad I don't work for Steve. ;-)
Was this... uhh... special commentary... inspired by a comment you didn't publish on yesterday's topic?
Hopefully this isn't the product of hate mail queries or just a trend to the comments you've discovered among your author-friends.
You'll have to admit, though, that no one today hides raunchy humor like Shakespeare does. Sometimes, it's only when you see one of his plays that you "get" what he was saying and then you feel a little sophomoric for laughing so hard. Plus, his stuff made it by the censors as far as I know. I don't think I saw any Shakespeare on the banned book lists.
You forgot Alexander Dumas, though. The Count of Monte Cristo has an impressive amount of debauchery. There is even this entire strange drug-induced hallucination scene. It's cut in some of the editions, but it WAS published.
Not to mention inserting one's arm up to the elbow in Mr. Bloom's vulva.
I believe vulva was the word used...
I try to be more eloquent than this usually, but today, I succumb: LOL
Dear Wendy, no, it was inspired by the totally deranged comment thread on a post Nathan Bransford put up yesterday (which, we might add, the indomitable Mr. Bransford handled with considerably more diplomacy and grace than we would have. Obviously.). We almost never have to delete comments; we seem to have frightened away most of the people who might displease us. Oddly enough.
Also, the history of censorship in Shakespeare's time makes for some fascinating reading (gay jokes: totally cool. Political jokes: Not so much).
Maybe if it had been called Moby Tom...
And the really funny thing is that I'm sure Anonymous left that conversation thinking "Man, I really looked good and showed them all up". As opposed to, you know, looking like an idiot.
It did keep me awake at work, though.
I have to ask as I gasp for air over my muffled laughter, did Steve really say that?
I come here for the irony, I stay for the LOLZ!
Oh hey... I even commented on that thread and then left before the anon fireworks. Wow... what a twat. His/her logic made my head hurt.
It's too bad because Nathan just brought up whether to close comments to anonymous replies a month or so ago and decided to leave it open. It figures some idiot would wander in and ruin it for everyone.
How can you claim it's censorship when you post insulting things on someone else's personal blog and they delete it? I'm impressed Nathan let as much through as he did. Actually, I'm surprised Nathan has as much time as he does to deal with a busy blog and everything else. I'm convinced he's actually a fleet of clones. It's the only reasonable answer.
I'm kind of bummed I missed the deranged thread Nathan had to delete. (He is indeed gracious as well as a blog-god.) So somebody said you've gotta be a gay feminist to get published? I guess that explains the popularity of Ann Coulter's books. Her content must be meant to be read as satire (as I've often suspected)--and she probably only got published because she's secretly having a thing with Colleen Lindsay?
Bahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa.... oh man... my non-feminist, non-gay, non-thriller ass totally needed that laugh. :)
Dear Rejectionist,
I am a white, heterosexual man who went to a nice little private high school, and a nice little private college, and have been dating the same girl for two years with no infidelities or other crazy, sinful acts to my name. I am a homebody and I enjoy not being in a pit of despair and rage my entire life. Does my description tacitly deny me any sort of "lit-cred"? If I want to be published should I get a sex-change and get melanin injections? Your thoughts on the subject would be very helpful!
AHAHAHA. I can't believe (oh, wait, yes I can) that it was based on a real comment war over at Nathan's place. People are fun :).
Also, the point about books being too raunchy now-a-days always makes me laugh and point to Chaucer. Seriously, could there be any more sex and fart jokes in the Canterbury tales? I really don't think so.
By the way, Chaucer rules.
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