The Story of Why We Live in a World of Prequels, Sequels, Reboots. Spinoffs and Meaningful Gut-Wrenching Personal Reflux
Pink slime. Beige slime. Roy G. Biv slime. No matter what goes into the handcranked sausage machine responsible for this generation’s crop of literary and creative agents; they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.
They’re all looking for dystopian underserved courageous unique mind-bending captivating timely existential timeless flawless breathtaking slabs of fromage du frottage. (I know nothing of French but a quick web search will reward you with a fairly explicit mental image. Bon apetit!)
What the hell happened to movies or television shows or (God forbid) books to absorb in a frenzy of delight and escape? When you didn’t feel the need to use hand sanitizer on your eyes and memory afterward?
As my saintly elder sibling reminded me after each trauma: Everyone Has Something.
I almost remember the psychic bitchslap phrase having been used as a title for some book.
Yeah, so it’s true. And you don’t want my Stuff and I don’t want Yours but that doesn’t mean we’re in a contest for Most Miserable Existence. We deal with things as we can or we die. There’s nothing wrong with a few bouts of depression here and there, a bit of schizophrenia on the side and maybe a cold buffet of Crappy Luck and Worse Choices. Grab the pickle fork and fish around the bottle until you get bored or you’ve had enough pickles. Spoiler: we’re going to die regardless of how we get there.
Back to agents. Literary agents. Do they have training? Uh, no. Do they read? Uh, not really. Most of them give the first page of manuscripts a cursory glance but then there are the established ones who have assistants to get the paper cuts for them. The Devil Used Arial 11.
Take a look at agents’ Wish Lists. When you’re finished, just replace it with the following statement:
Heterosexual Caucasian White Males Need Not Apply. It’s Not Your Turn Anymore.
Hemingway is dead. Wodehouse, Lardner and Perelman forgotten.
The reading list for a graduate Creative Writing course in Contemporary Literature at a groundcover university (meaning never reaching the standards of an Ivy) was stacked with writers the rancid male instructor had either slept with or was friends with someone they’d slept with. The 17 required purchases of their books added to their Amazon double-digit totals.
The Underserved Voices in Print included the Erotic Finger Poundings of High Schoolers. Every page a scratch and sniff parade of conquests not worth the stiff cotton they were built on. Stories of ex-spouses served up as Neo Pilgrim Feasts by Yankee descendants of the boys from Deliverance.
You shore got a purty mouth with yer dingus stuck in it instead of a apple.
The authoress whose book was hailed as a sparkling new literary invention with its fantastical lack of punctuation. The authoress had no problem admitting to the class that she was just too lazy to get spacing and punctuation right. Giggle giggle giggle.
The Mittel European paying homage to his auntie by casting her as a psychotic dominatrix famous for swilling cognac, shooting bears in the head and fornicating with her psychiatrists in uncomfortable corners. Fifty Milligrams of Dreck und Dross.
How do these enrich our lives? Is it your idea of fun? Of escapism? Something you’d like to share with the kids? You in the front row, put your hand down. If you’ve been reading any of those books we don’t want to think about where it’s been.
Here’s a story for you.
Once upon a time there was an adroit young hermaphrodite named Cloud. Cloud belonged to a tribe that believed pronouns were either profound or profane. So no pronouns.
Cloud and his ilk kept their feelings tightly constrained. I guess you could say they were bottled ilk.
Cloud was an intellectual, always floating new ideas like keeping clothes cleaner by getting outside of them. The zippers gave too much trouble for the trend to catch on. Although one trend was so caught that it required minor surgery and forever resembled a short length of H0 gauge railroad track.
Bluntedhedgehog 