A Hack of a Different Stripe
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on May 14, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized
I always dreamed of being like Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele. Of writing novels devoid of character or intelligence or truth. Of multiple marriages that the tabloids could gloss over. Of a hack career that had nothing to do with my color, but everything to do with my narcissism and my execrable prose. I would be the center of attention! It would all be about me, me, ME!
I dreamed of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Maybe I, too, would sell over 400 to 500 million novels. Nay, two billion novels! I’d sell novels the same way that Atari once put out twelve million cartridges of Pac-Man with only ten million Atari 2600 units in circulation. There’d be more novels than readers! And all of them would have “Great” in the title. If there was one thing I was good for, it was writing novels with the word “Great” in the title. I’d even write a novel called The Great Gatsby so that the racist author F. Scott Fitzgerald would be forgotten. Maybe we could hold a book burning and incinerate all Caucasian scum.
If they wouldn’t buy my books or respect my delusions of grandeur, well, I could always play the race card without bothering to include an indispensible party. Never mind the other authors who had seen their work thrive for the very reasons that I would sue over.
I’d hide behind a pseudonym and recruit a bunch of rabid dittoheads to shout “Injustice!” at the top of their lungs without any of them bothering to investigate the claims.
For I am an American. And like many Americans, I am prone to litigious hysteria.
Anybody who disagreed with me or who questioned my claims would be declared a racist. Who knew that a white guy like George Bush would give me such inspiration? And the scum Ed Champion would at long last be revealed to be the Grand Wizard we all know him to be, together with that craven white supremacist Lynne Scanlon.
Sometimes, it’s good to be living the dream.
I’m very pleased to share that the matter has now been resolved to my financial and narcissistic satisfaction through an agreement, the terms of which can never be discussed. The details of my claims can never be completely checked out. Yes, other African-Americans will continue to see their work marginalized. And even though they may have more legitimate claims, cemented upon hard paths of contracts and documents memorializing conversations and developments, their important fight has now received a setback thanks to my solipsistic pursuits.
Who really needs to consider the bigger picture? I knew all along that Penguin would settle this suit privately so that they could get rid of it. I knew all along that my claims would never be verified. And I knew that my followers would carry on drinking the Kool-Aid.
Only in America can you have a dream sooooooooo bright; as bright as the sun itself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m blowing the first installment of the settlement money on a two week vacation to Maui, where I will begin work on my next novel, The Great Prevaricator.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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I’d suggest you include this fabulous piece in one of your GREAT novels, Ed, except it falls a long way from your self-professed arena of LCD and law suits.
Ha! I didn’t realize that anybody had really listened to the excerpt!
I’m still laughing.
Signed,
Wicked Witch of Publishing