The novel. The internet. Combine the two, and there is a chance for a kind of democratic revolution, a chance to be read, to be judged on quality and connecting with the reader, to bring forth a greater variety of issues placed before the reading public outside of the established tastes and boundaries.

The published book risks becoming an animal of the market economy rather than an organic creation. The book is crafted for sales, thought of only in such terms. But a book can be deeper than that, deeper than what that appeal offers by way of history and how-to; in its origin, it must be so. Natural growth is stifled by attention to what is already selling, the Stephen Kings, the Danielle Steeles, etc.. There are course good and worthy writers, the tirelessly productive and wonderful Joyce Carol Oates, but is there a great marginal benefit to each new piece given all that's out there? How much benefit is there to the space given some 'critic's' shallow self-advancing careerist note about the latest work of recognized writer X, as such notes quite typically ignore the most crucial and obvious faults and issues and sad realities of modern times, whereas instead a good simple healthy moral light could be shined in favor of good things out of good honest people? The surfaces of everything literary are so littered, the original source literary objects, shining in their own simple human beauty, so hard to see beneath. And yet, why pick on the literary people, the least of all our problems, if not our saviors?

Maybe one just writes one book, an All Quiet on the Western Front, let’s say, and that one book captures something, be it a democratic ideal, a subtle critique of sacred cows. Lincoln is boiled down for most to the two speeches on the walls of his memorial, and the two go a long way for covering what he had to say, great, solitary, away from frivolous nonsense, written under a realization that there is a time to write something, not much time left to do so.

As everyone, agents, editors, publishing houses, is pressed in a direction by, and pressed into service for, the market, unable to absorb the broad originality and range of written work, the great breadth of the democratic, the Shakespearean, the inclusive, perhaps a time comes when independence must be declared from the present publishing world's function as government and powers that be.

What can one do, but break out of the lonesome cycle, declare one’s own inherent goodness and reality. Reject those whose judgment over you was that you were a bad student, a bad future writer.


The novel is written out of freedom and spirit. It is wild and democratic, representing people as they are. It may offend some people and certain private sensibilities. But it is also a gentle act, an act of compassion broader than for just one individual or institution. It is an act of risk. It asks for little in return, but simply to be read, judgment quietly suspended. Its call is to the imagination, to that beyond the ways we normally think, are asked to think. It must be given to the world freely and without shame, out of compassion for unheard voices, far from being a selfish act.

To follow through with an act that began long ago, not as a risk to take for something granted in the way of reward, but as thought, as careful consideration of education, years of toil at other things, letting the writing mature slowly, the events of life maturing the writer, and then finally the writer has real reasons to write, quite beyond technical virtuosity or aim for the reward of being published, but for his work to see the light.