Oates and Bureaucracy

HERE COME THE REGULATORS

I found it interesting but not surprising to see esteemed establishment novelist Joyce Carol Oates come out strongly in favor of so-called Net Neutrality. She well represents the mindset of the system writer.

What’s a system writer? One who’s operated inside established bureaucracies since university days. In a sense Oates—like so many established authors—has never left the university. (She teaches there now, at Princeton.) These are writers who operate within the present system. Trained in the proper modes at college. If they’re “good” enough they move on to publication at one of the publishing giants. They write within the system as beribboned pets. Given plenty of treats to be compensated for having no control over their art. At all times they are inferior, within the pyramid of publishing, to the publishers, agents, editors; corporate execs and marketing experts, who decide what the final product will look like and how it will be presented. The writer is merely along for the ride.

It’s a stress-free environment, full of security, BECAUSE the writer has abdicated final responsibility and say over the artwork.

The alternative to this is the Do It Yourself writer—who controls every aspect of the process. Including what the publication will look like and how it will be marketed. It’s a tough path—but it allows said writer to maintain integrity.

For the DIY writer, Amazon is merely a necessary vehicle for distribution of the art. Before ebooks came around I published and sold my own zines. I know that the success of much-scorned Amazon is likely temporary. There were vehicles available for the DIY writer before Amazon. There will be vehicles available after it. (We at NEW POP LIT are in the early stages of creating one.) The world is in constant flux and change.

How does this apply to “Net Neutrality”? The system writer is never herself directly subject to regulation. That’s out of her domain. Remain obedient; crank out proper product—properly politically correct—and such issues are handled by the big guys.

Anyone who’s faced government regulators up close is not so complacent. Those who know what it’s like to deal with a gigantic government bureaucracy.

I did so for a portion of the 1990’s, when I worked as a middleman at the Detroit-Canada border; conduit between shippers bringing goods into the country, and the Customs officials whose job it is to ensure that all rules are properly followed. I eventually obtained a Customshouse Brokers license after taking a five-hour exam ensuring I well knew those regulations.

The problem with government bureaucracy as I witnessed it is that it never stops growing. Expanding. Multiplying. More laws passed. More federal regulations designed to enforce those laws added. Every year, the book of regs (CFR) kept getting thicker. The amount of rules one was required to be familiar with always increasing. You try to keep up—to present all paperwork properly—but eventually your mind feels about to explode.

The NAFTA act was sold as “free trade”—yet an entire volume of regulations was added to regulate this “free” trade. I left the business in 1999. I can only imagine what things are like now.

Net Neutrality, by classifying the Internet as a public utility, allows federal regulators in the form of the FCC to put a giant foot into the door of the Internet, all in the name of “freedom.” (See Orwell: Slavery is Freedom.) The Internet of course is enormous. How many bureaucrats will now need to be hired to police it? How many volumes of regulations added to clarify this action or that action? It’s the path toward bureaucratic nightmare.

The saying goes, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Yes, the largest service providers might do this and might do that. I’d prefer a self-policing situation.

Not to worry. Our officially-designated intellectuals—Joyce Carol Oates only one of them—have decided within their carefully-controlled bubble world that all is okay. They’ve never operated outside an institution—are likely more comfortable within one. House cats for whom the system takes care of every need. Well fed and pampered—and naturally scornful of alley cats outside the well-built house, running free and wild on the streets.

The only good news is that the house of publishing at least is in a state of decay, and may at any time collapse.

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Has any American novelist dared to credibly write about THE story of latter-day American civilization: the rise of gigantic bureaucracy? The only one I can think of is James Gould Cozzens, who handled the subject in his World War II novel Guard of Honor. Cozzens was a defender of American Empire. His novel is a picture of its very creation. As much as he defends the growing military complex, he shows at the same time its built-in corruptions, incompetence, and inefficiencies. Afflictions part of any bureaucracy—including the publishing/literary system of today.

Would that we had such novelists now willing to look with unflinching eyes at the hives within which so many of us live and work—the bureaucratic beasts.