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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by R.L. Hall, editor of SouthLit
"The South Shall Rise Again!"
There’s a definition attributed to Albert Einstein that goes like this:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.”
To me, insanity is represented by the submission process to the New
York Publishing Machine. A few years back, I gave an address at the
AWA (Arkansas Writers Conference) about the difference in quality
between traditionally published books and self-published ones. I read
excerpts from some of them and asked the audience to let me know
what they thought of them. Almost all the self-published ones were
appreciated. The traditionally-published from the New York houses
were not.
And it didn’t have anything to do with who published them.
For instance, I took one beautifully produced book from a high-tone
house and read several paragraphs and closed the pages. I asked the
audience:
“What did that say? Can anyone interpret what was read?”
Not a single person in that room spoke up. There was not even a
suggestion as to what it might mean.
That, my friends, is a perfect example of the coffee-table quality of
books that are being churned out by the New York houses; elitist,
nonsensical, unimaginative, non-entertaining, and for the most part,
perverse or anti-American.
It’s like, you say something controversial and wait for the checks to
start rolling in…and I don’t think that’s much of a reach. I mean,
when Hollywood madams or Presidential interns are raking in the
money for their tell-all books, and you are sitting on the next Great
American Novel with a collection of rejection slips in your closet
from floor to ceiling, wouldn’t you think someone would ‘get it’ in
New York?
Next, there is the habit of the publishing houses to put all their chips
on the bestseller authors (whose next work may or may not be crap!)
and to totally neglect the rest of their considerable stable of writer-
wannabees. These bestsellers are the Southern ‘country-club’ writers
and poets.
What are the ‘country-clubbers,’ you might ask? They are the chosen
few Southern authors and poets who have been picked out for
success by the big publishers—tokens. They have been invited to the
dance, much as women (and later) blacks were in the South some
years ago to the country clubs, when those private clubs were being
threatened with bad publicity for not having them in their ranks of
private memberships.
And here is another rub for the average writer; no ‘country-clubber’
is going to ever admit to anyone that they didn’t make all their
money by not having the most talent in the world. I mean, can you
see one of the select Fellowship of Southern Writers—some of whom
are fossilized relics that meet in Sewanee, Tennessee every few
years—standing up and telling folks, “Hey, I’m just the luckiest
person in the world for being touted like I am!” I don’t think so. But,
you know that the last relevant thought most of them ever had was
during the previous Ice Age.
Don’t get me wrong! They were responsible for some fine works in
the past. But that was the past. Besides, they are just people, not
superstars. Even Babe Ruth only had a lifetime batting average
of .342!
Give me a break. You would think by the way they are being
promoted, that they were God’s gift to literature! And so do the rest
of their ilk: Ditto, the literary agents that push them…ditto, the
editors who dote on them…ditto, the publishers who suck off their
past glories, as if that would resurrect their publishing houses
prestige…and ditto, the literary quarterlies who go on and on writing
about them ad nauseum and boring the ever-loving snot out of the
rest of us.
All right, I realize that the quarterlies and the so-called ‘literary
types’ would have to explore terra incognita (that is, unexplored
territory) and actually have to crack open a few contemporary texts
and ask around about good writers these days. Yet, I’m doing it right
now—and it isn’t so hard. But, if I can do it, they can do it.
I mean, how many times do we have to hear about from the tabloids
and the bubble-gum media about John Grisham’s latest endeavor?
Will he ever write anything significant or different than another
tedious legal conundrum?
Wait a minute! He tried once, with that loathsome Christmas book of
his; Skipping Christmas. No, wait! Then he followed up with that
excremental novel, A Painted House, about his childhood in
Arkansas.
Now, that’s what I call en-ter-tain-ment!
Meanwhile, great authors are going unnoticed, poets are ignored, and
the reading public is subjected to turn-off literature from
conglomerates that insult their intelligence, their sensibilities and
their tastes.
So, why am I telling you all this?
I do not want you to continue to delude yourself into thinking that
there is a level playing field out there. I started SouthLit with the
intention of showing off work to the public that has, up until now,
been intentionally kept in the dark about the potential and talent of
Contemporary Southern Literature, and not pandering to the
‘country-clubbers’ or the literati. The public is unknowing because
the truth about what is out there is being deliberately hidden by the
monolithic media.
And to my fellow Southern writers: don’t quit writing and tell
yourself, “What’s the use?” That is not my desire. You get plenty of
that from the no-nothings at literary agencies and publishing houses.
No! I want you to keep that voice, that tone, that attitude. I don’t
want to see it convoluted and contorted to fit the package that the big
publishers think it should fit. Be yourself, be creative, be unique.
Hell, if you can’t give us your true voice, I don’t want to hear from
you in the first place. Agenda-driven claptrap is what is wrong with
the watered-down trash that passes for literature today already.
There’s enough of it out there. Heck, there’s too much—who are we
kidding?
Would you believe that I actually had the cohones to tell that to an
American representative (called an American President—I guess to
differentiate himself from the German President) of one of the largest
German holding companies of a publishing group in this country?
And get this…I told him while he was considering a manuscript of
mine that I wanted published! After all, truth is truth.
One final word.
I have heard it said that the regional printing houses in the South—I
don’t call them publishing houses, because that would flatter them—
are putting out more and more Southern literature of fine quality.
To an extent, this is true. But, I’m also having exploitation reported
to me daily from writers about these regional publishers. I have dealt
with them myself, and have had some favorable results and some
unfavorable.
I can tell you that they are too insular. When I contact them about an
author or a style of writing, or ask them their opinion of literary
topics, they are, for the most part, totally ignorant of the advances in
Southern writing. That’s because they have set themselves up too
highly as arbiters of writing and not first passed the test as simply
readers and enjoyers of fine art.
Also, they are too many business people and not enough
connoisseurs of the writing profession on their staffs.
From my correspondence with writers and poets, I can tell you that
the vast majority of regional houses have little or no prestige, no
markets, no influence, and limited resources, so that their help in
developing or exhibiting local writers is extremely marginalized.
Also, they do not write proper rejection letters or respond to writer’s
concerns or problems—in short, they act much as the established
houses up North have the habit of doing.
Yet, they are not established houses—neither are they up North.
Modes of conduct followed by the failed system of elitists up North
should not be formed or emulated by the regional houses in the
South. That path leads to failure, for the Southern writer is too
independent, and—as the title of the latest issue of SouthLit informs
us—too much of a ‘Rugged Individualist’ to take that type of
treatment at the hands of those who are less informed than he or she.
And so, there you have it. I trust that the next time you read your pre-
printed rejection letter or hear disparaging remarks from an agent or
editor, that you will be consoled by these words, or even…come
back to refresh yourself with the consolation they offer.
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R.L. Hall is the editor of www.SouthLit.com
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