THE QUESTION is whether fiction-- our literature-- will ever change, or stay stuck in a rut like a car in a ditch, in the mud, tires no longer even spinning-- our literary mandarins press the accelerator but nothing happens, maybe it's broken. Or their foot presses too gently.
Literature isn't moving. It's marginalized. Trapped behind walls. The elite still attend parties-- in Brooklyn, mostly-- while going through the motions of being important, but they all sound tired. It's all been done. Their book education in a stuffy house, too large, with stuffy, usually absent parents. Big armchairs to hide in, resting on plush burgundy carpeting, with heavy green drapes covering windows to keep the world outside. So they can hide. They've been hiding their entire lives-- still are, frankly-- with books full of long corridors they can hide within. Intellectual-- the facade of intellectualism anyway-- not exciting. Don't give them anything exciting, or emotional, or political-- they've been conditioned to ignore anything of relevance in this chaotic society-- that which SHOULD be addressed by these writers and their acolytes.
Instead they're lost on a Virginia Woolf island searching for an elusive lighthouse. They're not moving, and they're not leaving.
Which leaves us: what?
It leaves opportunity for change.
A tumultuous new year requires all-new ideas.
(Among my new is a new novella, The Loud Boys, available at Kindle, Kobo and Nook Books.
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