My Kind of Reading and Writing

"Dan C" <youmustbejoking DeleteThis @Ian.invalid> wrote in message
news:mvvs23p5a8pdi0om7t8mivcuf2vseptrjp@fe04.news.easynews.com...

> I actually printed out one of your detective stories and read it.
>
> It sucked.

On the assumption that it was my *Private Eyes* here being referred
to, just for fun, I went back, after many a month to read, at so much
of an objective distance as time might afford now, over the first two
chapters of that, which would be about all someone other than a
complete fan or fool would actually be silly enough to expend paper
and precious ink to print (while anyone characterized by a half-pint
of good sense would simply have downloaded it to their BlackBerry, or
a cheap hundred buck pda of whatever brand) and I am now prepared to
go down on record to declare as follows . . .

If you are, by ill chance, just some sci-fi reading born-yesterday wet-
behind-the-hairless-ear brat who has never read the first word of real
writers like John Fante, James M. Cain, Henry Roth or Nathanael West,
then, in that case, when you pick up your printed sheet to find a
piece of period art deco eye candy like this, written to swing with a
big band score you won't have the first thing in your head to draw
upon for a notion of what you're looking at, or what your mind's ear
is hearing. And you will say . . .

> It sucked.

Of course! And just as it would be for any fan of Lefty Frizell or
Fifty Cent who by some mischance of cosmic practical jokery, one night
woke up to find himself sitting in a box at the Grand Opera. And what
would that hillbilly or street punk have to say about La Traviata,
but . . .

> It sucked.

Thank you for the compliment, Punk. I am not serving swill for swine,
here! I am not pandering to that majority horde of tasteless,
clueless patrons of the super-market paper-back fiction bins whose
taste in books is about identical to their penchant for shake n' bake
cooking and a can of Chef Boyardee "ravioli". Those kind of people
could all fall off the edge of the world tomorrow, and I would not
lose so much as one possible fan for the sort of finely marinated
fillet mignon fiction in an art deco silver service I am cooking up
here, you schtupping tasteless horde, you.

When it comes to my approach to a reading audience, it could not be
better expressed than by this . . .

"The true conflict is not between the characters in a novel, but
between author and reader. In the long run, however, it is only the
author's private satisfaction that counts." V. Nabokov

But I would soften that to the extent of saying that along with the
author's private satisfaction comes also that of his hundreds of
thousands (but certainly less than a million) astute, literate,
dedicated readers who find the private satisfaction of such an author
to be ever so precisely their own.
--

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