What kind of world is it where Nicholas Sparks compares himself to Aeschylus and instead of everyone rolling on the floor laughing their fucking heads off he gets bestsellers and movie deals? Instead of being condemned as a shameless pandering hack he becomes a role model for aspiring writers and the cynosure for literary agents and publishers! And am I the only one who can see where this will lead?

See Spot.

See Spot run.
See Spot lift his leg.

See Spot pee on the rug.

OUT damned Spot!

See Jane.

See Jane meet Dick.

See Sally meet Harry.

See Dick and Jane and Harry and Sally have a foursome.

It used to be that the artists (not all of them but a few of them at least) were like bold explorers of new undiscovered worlds. But now the worlds are strip malls and the writers are the next franchise waiting to move in next to Jiffy Lube^®. In theory being a writer is one of the most egalitarian of artistic pursuits. All you need is a pen and some paper (and being literate helps but is not required by today’s publishing industry). So one would think that with all these writers out there writing away we’d see all this amazingly different stuff emanating from all these different creative minds bursting with fresh ideas and new perspectives… NOT! Everyone and their brother are writing like… well, everyone and their brother trying to be the next Nick Sparks or Dan Brown. FML! I want to be surprised! I want to be outraged! I want to fall in love again! And not with the slick-packaged plastic love object designed by the in-house marketing department. I read somewhere that Francis Ford Coppola thought about changing the title of Apocalypse Now because he thought people wouldn’t know what Apocalypse meant! But he was the ARTIST for Christ sake! Call it whatever you want and let the public pick up on it! The job of the artist is to do their thing and NOT worry about the fucking public and the job of the fucking public is to WANT to be inspired by the artists. But now it’s just one big factory that produces sleeping pills in the form of books and movies and paintings so the masses can sleep more soundly and undisturbed! Don’t fret precious I’m here. Step away from the window, go back to sleep…

AN OPEN LETTER TO PUBLISHERS & LITERARY AGENTS...

Your place in the world is of no consequence. Spending your time and energy waiting to discover the next Dan Brown or Nicholas Sparks you add nothing to the world but distraction. You do not add to its wonder nor do you help us to see its beauty, but rather you put your cynical stamp on everything you do and everything you touch (along with the price tags that you so value). You do not inspire nor do you awaken anyone from their sleep. In fact, the product of your labors only goes to help the masses sleep more soundly. This, I’m afraid, is your legacy, and in the process you may have made a fortune but you also have reduced the world to balance sheets and dollar signs. You have done nothing to show the world that you were here beyond the corporate boardroom, that you were a unique individual, capable of inspiring others and discovering beauty. You are nothing, and the only thing you leave behind is an inheritance, which I’m guessing your children are already anxious to get their hands on.

CHECK OUT MY NEW GROUPS ON FACEBOOK!

1. PUBLISHING TODAY (GOODBYE FREE SPEECH!)
....(An impassioned rant against the abyss called the publishing industry)

2. THERESA PARK IS THE GREATEST LITERARY AGENT EVER!
....(A Swiftian broadside at my nemesis Nicholas Sparks!)

3. nTELLAkee
....(My alternative writer's group)

4. INCEPTION SUCKS!
....(re: the recent horrible movie)

MANIFUCKINGFESTO

I’d like to talk about what’s happening to writers, and consequently what we’ve come to view as art. With the multi-national conglomerates taking over the publishing industry their over-riding, one might say all-consuming all-driving all-motivating ethos has become a virus which has infected everyone it touches. That corporations are about making money is nothing new, but now they have restructured art itself until it’s become an objective money-making enterprise intractably governed by the bottom-line; an unchanging, immutable “round hole” into which all the “square pegs” must be reshaped in order to fit. We’ve abandoned the Muse in favor of a kind of Capitalist Socialist Realism where the artists have adopted the role of the state/corporation, measuring their “art” by how it will sell, and adjusting it accordingly to fit the prevailing guidelines of commerce. The best most vital most dangerous most life-affirming life-changing art out there now is that which is being made in spite of this omnipresent mindset, and is consequently ignored to the point of invisibility. We are engendering and supporting a generation of “Capitalist-Socialist-Realist suck-ups to the man” in the name of “art” while simultaneously giving birth to, and ignoring once again, a generation of Van Goghs who labor in obscurity, monetary oppression, and constant rejection because their art is defiantly rejecting the status quo mentality. The struggle of the artist today, specifically the writer, has become especially perilous. The paramount challenge is no longer to be a good writer, nor is it to be published and recognized. Rather, it is to avoid the self-censoring and thought control dictated by the bottom-line driven corporate publishing conglomerates, for the sole purpose of getting published and maintaining a livelihood and a career. “What’s selling?” is the question today’s writer asks himself, and he promptly answers, “So that’s what I’ll write.” And the cost is true creativity, originality, and art itself as it’s redefined; as it becomes nothing more than Socialist Realism as in the old Soviet Union, with the artists and writers censoring themselves. And where is the truth of the artist’s vision, its uniqueness, its voice, if it is merely an echo of the officially-sanctioned and acceptable “truth and vision” allowed by corporate publishing? As T.S. Eliot once said, “The artist is the only genuine and profound revolutionist.” I pray that there are still some of us out there who believe this.
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INTERVIEW

So how would you define this?
This what?
This novel.
Why must it be defined?
You know how people are.
And how’s that?
They like things to be defined, spelled out…
Spoonfed?
Now you’re being…
What, cynical?
Some might say that.
But not you…
I’m a journalist, I…
You’re unbiased.
Well, yes, I… I try to be fair and balanced.
(laughs) So why don’t you define it then?
But isn’t that one of the things you rail against?
What?
People who are unqualified to judge passing judgment?
More like passing gas...
Would you define that as a “cheap shot”?
(laughs) Mea culpa.
So if you had to offer a definition…
I already did.
I didn’t catch it.
See what I mean!
(nonplused)
All right, how ‘bout this… an “involuted-nouveau-roman-postmodern-fabulated-anti-meta-novel”.
Say that three times fast!
But it’s ridiculous, I mean…
What?
It’s like jazz, what jazz is supposed to be. A mode of expression that’s wide-open, unlimited… before Kenny G and a million “Autumn Leaves” copy bands got a hold of it! It’s the same with the novel.
Before Stephen King and the mega-bestseller got a hold of it.
Well, yeah.
So you’ve called it a “manifesto”, a “declaration”…
Do you know Coltrane’s “Meditations”album?
John Coltrane? Um, no, I…
What they tried to do in that… (shakes head) they wanted to take music to a place where music-as-we-know-it didn’t exist. (pauses) But that’s where it exists most fully, do you understand?
I think so. It’s like a Zen thing.
I want to write a novel in which all other novels are possible. Where there’s nothing to limit you.
Except the definitions.
(laughs) Exactly!
Or the marketplace.
Well, yes, there’s always that...
So you want a literary “free-for-all”, is that it?
Freedom with responsibility.
That sounds good, but is it possible?
What do you mean?
I mean, it can so easily become artistic anarchy, like that painting of the crucifix smeared with human feces. Or that artist who put his own shit in a Mason jar and exhibited it as art.
Doo-Doo as opposed to Dada…
(laughs) So this brings us back to how we define art…
More definitions...
Otherwise we’ll have everyone shitting in Mason jars and calling themselves artists!
We already have that! (pauses) It’s a… (pause)
Conundrum?
Yes.
But you discussed this at length in Blood of the Sun, the question of internalized standards and authenticity. And if we no longer have this, then…
What? We need the “art police”?
Well, if there are no more internal standards then they must be external, right? Otherwise…
But there must be something more than just extremes.
Extremes?
Like Finnegans Wake and Doprah’s Book Club…
But wouldn’t you say this book of yours was more on the Finnegans Wake side than that of Doprah’s Book Club?
I’m saying why can’t a single novel contain elements of both? And everything in-between? If a novel is about life then by definition it’s about everything, or it could be. So why do we try to limit it?
Through definitions…
Yes, and money’s another definition.
So we…
Throw away the lights! The definitions!
What’s that?
Wallace Stevens… And say of what you see in the dark that it is this or that it is that, but do not use the rotted names…
That’s nice.
(laughs) Nice, yeah. I mean, it’s not like these ideas are brand new…
Ideas?
About expanding the novel, exploding form and style, abandoning conventions.
Literary conventions…
Yes.
You just don’t like any definitions, do you?
Coltrane didn’t like the word jazz, but that’s the section where you find his albums. I mean, think of Interstellar Space…
Interstellar Space?
It’s a later album of his. It’s just him and this drummer, him improvising to free rhythm. No chords, no keys, no tonal center. It was taking music to that other level, where the definitions no longer apply.
Yeah, but can you dance to it?
(laughs)
So why do we always seem to take the easy way out, I mean...
Ya gotta put food on the table, right? I mean, did you ever apply for a grant? Talk about when paradigms collide!
What do you mean?
The nexus where the artist and the non-artist meet! The impenetrable morass, the swamp, the labyrinth.
So it’s convoluted?
(laughs) The thing is, that the rich for some reason want to align themselves with what they think of as art and artists, to validate their lives or something: to give it meaning beyond money. I don’t know. I mean, who can understand the rich, right? (laughs) Maybe it’s just a tax write-off. (smiles) But the problem is, that instead of them learning the language of the artist they force the artist to speak their language. I mean, here’s an example… If I admire a painting it might inspire me to paint myself, right? To become a painter and see if I had what it took. So I’d go out and buy a set of paints and brushes, canvases, an easel maybe. You know, the works. And then I’d see what I could do, which of course implies a long hard process of honing one's craft until it becomes art, until the art and the craft are linked, until they play off of each other. Not to mention the soul-searching required in order to get to that deep place where art lives. I mean, we’re talking about a life’s work here, being an artist.
Or a writer… or a musician…
I mean, any creative artist. But the rich, what do they do? They like a painting by Van Gogh, right, so do they buy the paint set and learn how to paint themselves, to seek what the artist sought? No, they buy the painting for 50 million and hide it in a safe in their mansion. And meanwhile, the Van Goghs out there can barely make rent, and when they try to apply for a grant they decide that it’s easier to cut off one of their ears!
(smiles) But I notice you have both of your ears.
Latex foam rubber.
So what do you think is the foremost problem that we face today?
Self-deadening our senses.
What do you think of the Internet?
Infinity and Nothingness.
(laughs) So how do you want to be known?
What did they say… Know thyself? That’s how I want to be known.
So how do you want to be remembered?
Do you think Van Gogh gives a shit that his paintings sell for 50 million now? I mean, when you’re dead you’re dead. (laughs) You don’t need to eat anymore. You’re eaten.
So who do you like better, the dead or the living?
I like the reality of the dead.
And the reality of the living?
I’m still trying to figure that out.


--excerpt from the novel "angrynastyhostile", by Kevin Postupack

I HEART DOPRAH!

He couldn’t help but notice that things started to turn for him as soon as he no longer gave a shit. Writing novels being a solitary venture, it’s not unusual to feel that it’s you against the World. After all, there’re all those literary agencies and publishers and magazines and they’re all run by really smart people who are extremely knowledgeable and well-read and well-educated and very-important-close-personal-friends-of Doprah and Henry Kissinger, and then there’s just you-little-you-little-unpublished-you, but then once you get published it’s even worse because then you’re no longer a potential-hot-commodity-with-unrealized-earning-potential you’re the guy-whose-first-book-sold-how-many-copies? That’s not very many. And that story this past summer in new york mag (what a rag) do all magazines these days aspire to be like PEOPLE™ (it seems so) the world went down hill when US NEWS & WORLD REPORT started accepting ads and what’s next the BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS? And the conceit of this particular article was that publishing these days is more cutthroat than ever what with the conglomeration of the world into one big corporation reflected of course in publishing my pet peeve where random house-knopf-scribners are all owned by some Japanese conglomerate (and renamed BOTTOM RINE PRESS™) or else by some German consortium of high-powered businessman who’ve abandoned aryan racial purity for lots and lots of moolah but isn’t this taking the aryan ideal to its logical extreme just substitute money for race and why not I mean that’s one god we all worship (at least we damn well better or we’re fucked) and if I say I’m better than you because I’m part of the master race and you’re chaff then that pisses you off and you might eventually get your allies together and D-Day my NAZI ass but if I’m filthy-fuckin-rich then you say WOW! because that’s what we’re here for isn’t it to make money (and lots of it) our objective measure of success its platinum bar so to speak ourbankaccountportfoliohousecarboatplane summerhomewife (in that order) and you gotta give ‘em credit they’ve taken a business that’s subjective by definition (remember art, does that ring a bell?) and made it objective, which means of course that if ya got a Doprah’s Clubhouse bestseller then you’re-the-shit in like flint, and did ya ever watch her Doprah that is when she has yer average-middle-america-housewife on the show with some terrible problems she wants to share with 30 million others and she Doprah will be merciless! Get over yourself, girl, and get on with your life! (APPLAUSE! The “Doprah nod” en masse) and then when she’s through with ‘em she calls in Herman Goerring Dr. Phil to finish ‘em off and he lays into these poor dysfunctional bastards on national tv showing the entire civilized world how fucked up they are You gotta get over yourself, girl, and get on with your life! (tough love my ass, Bully! yet applause Dr. Phil bestseller-huge-advance-whopping-fees-big-bucks-for-lectures-seminars-workshops-consulting and is Dr. Phil a real doctor or does he just play one on tv?) But then when Saint Doprah has her friends on her celebrity buddies watch her genuflect-kiss-ass-suck-up treat ‘em like royalty-and-the-beautiful-people-they-are and it don’t matter if they be dysfunctional as hell, but she’s not really doing this what she’s really doing is shamelessly worshipping the god money on national tv with her rich parishioner pals like that plastic-blonde-Barbie-clone-money-makeover-bitch who shows us why it’s our fault we’re not millionaires like her and Doprah and in a way they’re kinda like the Bodhisattva after he achieved enlightenment he left nirvana right to help the rest of humanity get enlightened too and isn’t that Doprah’s sacred mission as well to help the rest of us poor-middle-america-dysfunctional-codependent-mortgage-paying-motherfuckers to break out of our financial samsara? You be poor it’s ya own damn fault, bitch! I mean, all ya gotta do is buy that blonde white bitch’s book a’ight? And why you wit him when he beat you? You gotta say Get yer ass outta my house, muthafucka, and don’t you come back! (APPLAUSE) Ain’t ya got no self-respect girl? Ya gotta get over yourself, girlfriend, and get on with yer life! (APPLAUSE) And when we return from a commercial break we’ll all remember our spirit! (heartfelt smile filled with warmth for all humanity) And I almost forgot, I’ll let y’all know what book to be readin’ for next month’s Doprah’s Book Club™ (and a million writers out there hold their breath)

TODAY'S PUBLISHING INDUSTRY IS BEING RUN BY NAZI BASTARDS WHO WANT TO ABOLISH FREE SPEECH!

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QUESTION: So how can we understand what PUBLISHING TODAY has become?

ANSWER: Imagine the PUBLISHING INDUSTRY TODAY as akin to NAZI GERMANY from the years 1933 to 1944, and then open your eyes to today’s BOTTOM-LINE-DRIVEN CORPORATE-CONGLOMERATES goose-stepping across the bestseller lists… Then imagine if you will, that the books that are allowed to be published are all by avowed loyal National Socialists and Vichy collaborators who use their malleable skills and Chameleon-like allegiances to write only about topics acceptable to the Reich: such as books by celebrities, celebrity politicians, celebrity chefs, celebrity prostitutes and porn stars, celebrity criminals, celebrity sports figures, and celebrity rich people. And then there are the mystery thrillers, crime thrillers, and sex thrillers! And then of course, there are the Hallowed Books, the ones accepted by the Reichminister of Propaganda herself, Oprah Winfrey, but we can only speak of those in a whisper. (You never know who’s listening!)

QUESTION: But what about LITERATURE?

ANSWER: LITERATURE?

QUESTION: Yes! Books that actually have something to say...

ANSWER: I’m not sure I like your tone. So these books by all of our loyal authors, are they not good enough for you?

QUESTION: Yes, but…I’m talking about REAL LITERATURE…

ANSWER: ……

QUESTION: Writing that says something! Something important! That might even dare to question the Reich itself!

ANSWER: Ahhh, you mean “Jüdische Bücher”! Jewish Books!

QUESTION: Jewish books?

ANSWER: Ja, so you are one of them… I suspected as much!

QUESTION: What?!

At that the Reich’s representative pressed a button on his desk, and moments later four SS men came in and took this particular annoying writer away. “But, I’m not even Jewish!” he said, as the SS men led him out the door.