The Worst Novel Ever?

REVIEWING A REVIEW

Ever see the satirical movie about the art business, “Untitled”? Toward the end of that film, an “artist” appears whose “art” consists of pencil scribblings on sticky notes. When someone interviews him about his work, he’s so intellectually feeble he can respond only with vague mutterings; gurgling his words like a two year old.

I thought of this character when reading a review at L.A. Review of Books by one Tiffany Gilbert of the latest novel by alt-lit icon Blake Butler, 300,000,000.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/god-bend

This single review shows everything wrong with the established literary game and the New York-based book business. The novel is about a man’s quest to kill everyone in the entire country. Ambitious, one could call it, I guess. It’s apparently written in standard postmodern style. Think David Foster Wallace. Only more so. The idea that Harper Perennial would invest a large sum of scarce funds into publishing and promoting this kind of work is, on the surface, incomprehensible.

The people at Harper Perennial (won’t be “perennial” for long!) need to ask themselves: What business are they in? Answer: Selling books! How do they presume to market a novel which is deliberately hostile to the reader? Tiffany Gilbert: “—Butler usually destroys understanding, favoring emotion and instinct over narrative.”

Who needs narrative?!

“Butler remains elusive, creating linguistic puzzles that we must sink into rather than solve.”

Linguistic puzzles! Haven’t we seen that before? from Nabokov, Pynchon, Foster-Wallace et.al.; from all the postmodern academy darlings praised by academy types who love “sink”ing into such shit because they apparently have nothing better to do? Justifies their standing in front of classrooms of the naive and gullible.

Tiffany Gilbert says that we as readers are “often demanding that our narratives conform to conventional rules of sense making.” (Sense making? Who wants sense making?) “Butler defies those expectations.”

Tiffany Gilbert is gushing about Blake Butler’s work, signifying his literary importance. Butler provides more than enough convoluted mish-mash for a Tiffany Gilbert to rationalize about.

Would I be surprised to learn that Tiffany Gilbert has a Phd from somewhere, and works as a university professor? Not at all. You have to be trained to buy into (or “sink into”) a compendium of nonsense. It doesn’t come naturally.

“Unlike many contemporary writers,” Tiffany Gilbert assures us, “Butler does not dabble in darkness. He is ensconced in it.”

(Great. That’s all we need from today’s art. More darkness!)

“Butler’s novel subsumes Bolano’s concerns with death, vilification, and secrecy and multiplies them tenfold.”

There’s a larger point to be made about the new generation of approved writers—their white guilt and self-hatred; their pessimism; their disbelief in God, themselves, anything and everything. Warped, miseducated creatures; casualties of a broken educational system and a twisted, hate-filled philosophy. That’s a point for another essay!

From the start the alt lit writers weren’t literary artists, but con artists. They carried a postmodern philosophy which says there is no truth, nothing means anything and it’s futile to try to know anything. A novel like 300,000,000 is the logical result. The alt lit writers have made no effort to learn the difficult essentials of writing a competent, readable novel. (It takes talent to be readable.) To learn literary tools like structure and form; pace, clarity and plot. The artful weaving of narrative threads (there’s that darn word “narrative” again!) to build interest, suspense, and momentum. The drawing of believable characters.

Why should alt lit authors bother with such quaint notions, when a Harper Perennial will publish their vomitry regardless?

The related question is: Why is Blake Butler shoving so many novels through the crumbling Big Five publishing system? Possibly because he suspects the Big Five’s days are numbered. Or because he realizes a con game can go on for only so long.

There are only so many over-trained professors out there looking for something to laud.

“—at one point, he sucks the eyes out of a miscarried fetus after killing its mother.”

Golly gosh! Isn’t that wonderful?

Did I mention the novel’s about a serial killer?

Think of the sad mindset of those individuals who’d actually care to read this novel. Or would read it. If there are in fact very many of them, this civilization’s in trouble.

The postmodern prose style—not the subject—will be most offputting to general readers.

“Philistine!” a Tiffany Gilbert might say to anyone expecting that a novel make sense.

Anyway, who cares today—in the “intellectual” crowd—about the market?

But a novel is not only subject to the market, it’s subject to aesthetic rules. Rules which conform not to academy dictates, but to the hidden rules of nature and the universe. General rules appreciated by all, except for confused well-brainwashed alt litsters, or professors like Gilbert, who seem to believe there are no aesthetic rules. If nonsense is acceptable, nonsense is not only possible, but probable.

May as well have the proverbial 100 monkeys then pounding on keyboards to see what occurs. The outcome might be better than Blake Butler’s 300,000,000.

******************

Are there alternatives to Big Five nonsense? Yes! It comes from the DIY ebook crowd, and from New Literary Media outlets like www.newpoplit.com.

(Be sure to read, at New Pop Lit’s Opinion page, my essays on another alt lit figure, Tao Lin.)

Bankrupt Literary Philosophy

THE IDEAS UNDERPINNING THE ALT LIT MOVEMENT

OR, THE DEATH OF POSTMODERNISM?

Here’s a slightly edited transcript of a discussion I engaged in on a HTML Giant post from July 5, 2011. The post was “POP: A Polemic on a Contemporary Language-Based ‘Objectivity.’ “ It was written by postmodern writer Mike Kitchell:

http://htmlgiant.com/word-spaces/pop-a-polemic-on-a-contemporary-language-based-objectivity/

Kitchell’s essay generated 233 comments. Mine came toward the end of them. I went on there originally because I didn’t think Alt Lit had much to do with “pop” writing. It wasn’t populist, wasn’t readable, wasn’t fun. As you’ll see if you read this excerpt from the discussion, we went on to other matters—including the philosophical ideas bolstering Tao Lin and the other members of the short-lived(?) Alt Lit phenomenon.

***********************

(Me)

When I read all this term-paper intellectualizing about something-- pop-- which isn't intellectual but instead pure and emotional and instinctive, I'm reminded of a scene in the classic Elvis movie "Jailhouse Rock."

Elvis Presley of course was one of the early embodiments of American pop culture. His movies became a pop genre unto themselves.

In the flick Elvis (previously seen smashing a guitar) is dragged to a party by his manager. Elvis gets into a discussion with a stuffy prof who, upon hearing he's a musician, proceeds with a long-winded pseudo-intellectual analysis of contemporary jazz. Elvis stares at her for a moment then drawls, "Lady, I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

This was in the early days of rock n' roll which, like the punk version twenty years after, was a rejection of artistic pretentiousness. (See 70's Pink Floyd.) It embraced instead the natural and the organic.

Tao Lin is a pure hustler, and in that sense he's akin to the Colonel Parkers of early rock. But there's nothing remotely punk or genuine about him, absolutely nothing counter to the status quo. I know this well, as I remember his attacks on what was a rebellious, DIY, punk-style lit group from last decade, the Underground Literary Alliance.

Does anyone here know-- or care-- what real pop writing looks like?

(Broah CCro)

Your anecdote about Elvis exposes that, yes, you don't know what anyone is talking about. "Pop which isn't intellectual" only notes the origination and/or intentionality of that which is created. As to its interpretation (which, regardless of my disagreements with Kitchell, we are in agreement), hermeneutic work involves a dialectic with both the text and the reader that is less narrowly defined than assuming the authorial intent to be supreme.

You hate monger academia and theory ("term-paper intellectuallizing" and "are supposed to know because our professors have told us") and yet later consider Tao's relation to late 19th and 20th century Continental philosophy. And while contradicting yourself, you assume a causal relation between postmodernism and "the most inhuman crimes and wars in all of human history." Furthermore, you attack Kitchell's reference to Robbe-Grillet on the grounds of it not being related to American identity/works. So by being hypocritical, rantish, anti-intellectualizing, and tangential, you've fully embodied the Glenn Beck of the literati. Keep up the Ayn Rand references on your blog and maybe some tea baggers will buy your pop.

(Me)

Say what?

Lady, I don't know what you're talking about.

Criticizing the academy isn't "hate monger"ing it.
I'm anti-intellectualizing, sure. But I'm for sense and intelligence. As I've pointed out, the standards of the academy of late have embraced nonsense and anti-intelligence.

It's a documented fact that many of the creators of postmodernism were either card-carrying Nazis (Heiddegger) or collaborationists (Paul DeMan). It's also impossible to read Nietzsche without seeing some stark parallels to "Triumph of the Will" and such. I assume nothing about postmodernism. The links are there in black and white.

I was using the example to analyze the thinking of Tao Lin, whose own words speak
for themselves. I wasn't discussing there the idea of pop per se. I know that Tao isn't beyond appropriating any idea, without crediting the source, if it serves his own end.

I can't comment on Glenn Beck, as I've never watched his television show. From what I've heard about him, he's yet one more con artist himself. I guess he makes an easy label for you to use. Is that all you can come up with? Go to it.

Re Ayn Rand. She espoused a philosophy of selfishness. The lone artist etc. I understand the appeal, though I strongly disagree with much of it. My entire history speaks against her mindset. The ULA espoused a cooperative mode of operating.

What I won't do, however, is compromise my integrity to the extent of insisting she wasn't a significant American novelist. For me, truth is the highest value.

The difference between Ayn Rand and today's nonsensical postmodernists is that she was living, more or less, in the real world. She knew that you have to know up from down in order to build a house. In Tao Lin's philosophy, in his own words, one can't know anything. He's got the egoistic will part of Ayn Rand down pat but has thrown out the reality ("A is A") part.

(Broah CCro)

You repeatedly are vague about the term postmodernism in your posts. You misrepresent the history of the term and its philosophical ties by relating its creation to Heidegger (one "d") and DeMan. Whereas you could point to Heidegger's later works in relation to destruktion as having ties with what many of the French writers would later popularize, it is inaccurate to call him a "creator." Also, Paul DeMan is a stretch as his works are overwhelmed by the popularity of Derrida (who aligns the two references and seems to be one of the main figureheads you won't note). However, mentioning Derrida who wrote several texts on the Jewish plight (and who is much more appropriately noted as one of the "creators" of postmodernism) would not allow you to make your skewed point as to the evils of the movement. Furthermore, Heidegger's biography notes that as he was writing for the Nazi party, he quickly conceded his role when he began to realize their unethical intentions were in stark contrast to his philosophy of "Being-alongside-others with care." If truth is the highest value, I suggest you read more.

Even if your argument was valid (both in the sense that these two could even be considered in the top ten main fore thinkers of postmodernism and that their Nazi ties were so tightly knit), it still assumes that the work is less valuable as its originators have unethical ties. This is your greatest fallacy aside from your ignorance of these topics as you assume that a work is less worth consideration if its ideological system has unethical practices.

Your traditionalist ties to the superiority of the Enlightenment and supposedly greater American writers misinform your views on what postmodernism means/can refer to. You want to discredit this supposed academy (which you still haven't defined) for its over-intellectualizing yet are unable to draw a distinction as to where your own ignorance should end and education should begin. Please articulate just how knowledgeable us as readers should be before we begin to stare to closely into Nietzsche's darkness.

(Me)

Here's a definition of sorts about what is and always was a jumble of ideas, from historian Eric Hobsbawm from his book The Age of Extremes:

"All 'postmodernisms' had in common an essential scepticism about the existence of an objective reality, and/or the possibility of arriving at an agreed understanding of it by rational means. All tended to a radical relativism. All, therefore, challenged the essence of a world that rested on the opposite assumptions, namely the world transformed by science and the technology based upon it, and the ideology of progress which reflected it."

Both Kitchell in his original post, and Tao Lin in the quotes I posted of his, dismiss or even mock the notion of objectivity. In this sense, they're postmodernists in the broad sense that Hobsbawm uses the word.

To further push Hobsbawm's point: It's one thing to dismiss objective reality in parlor-game philosophizing ("hermeneutics") akin to debating the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin. I kind of doubt that you or Kitchell or Tao dismiss objectivity when out in the real world. I'm fairly certain you don't often cross against a red ("red") light into the middle of traffic, into what may-or-may-not be real automobiles. You don't walk UP the stairs when you wish to go DOWN to the street, or put your shoes on your head instead of your feet. Why, then, do you dismiss objectivity when it comes to literature and writing?

As for the supposed superiority of the Enlightenment, Hobsbawm's massive work allows me to attempt to further connect the dots about a few of the other things I said, which I admit may seem like a stretch.

In a long section about the past century's endless nihilistic wars, Hobsbawm stresses that the Allies, both the Anglo-American liberal democracies on one hand, and the Soviets on the other, were united by what he calls "the shared values and aspirations of the Enlightenment." Both so-different parties saw themselves as products of the Age of Reason, heirs to that legacy. They united against a society which plunged itself into pure madness, whose leaders embraced UNreason and scorned the Enlightenment in favor of notions of blood, irrationality, and will; ideas which can be found in Nietzsche again and again. Even the uber-Conservative himself, Winston Churchill, was alarmed enough by what he expressly viewed as a unique threat-- a retreat from the values of civilization into barbarism.

How does this apply to literature?

For most of the history of American literature there was a similar consensus between Left and Right about what literature was, what made literature great, the "great American novel" and so forth. And so we see that two great American novels, The Octopus by Norris and Atlas Shrugged by Rand, share aesthetic assumptions and values while coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Neither author believes that the writer can know nothing about this world. Instead they seek to express very large themes embracing all of America, using interwoven narrative threads that lay themselves out like a chess game on a chess board, exemplars of intelligence.

You throw this away for-- what? The mentality of a housecat?

As I've said, it leads not only to jargon-filled writing, it's an artistic dead end.
*****************
On one point Tao Lin is right-- that's in seeing "pop" as an aesthetic path, a way to revive the literary art. But to take that path writers will need to knock hermeneutic nonsense out of their heads, to be able to speak, as writers once spoke, with clarity, intelligence, and sense.

(deadgod)

Hermeneutics is not an 'anti-objectivity', but rather, takes seriously subjectivity and intersubjectivity as modes of or paths to - or constitutive of - "truth".

Gadamer takes up the philosophical conversation of Aristotle, Hegel, and the rest of the tradition of philosophical investigation that's before him, and does so with a seriousness not a bit less humane - and readable - for its intellectual strength and meticulous scholarship.

Anyone interested in a presentation of actual relations between hermeneutical perspectives and postmodern ones would be well-advised to read the Gadamer/Derrida book and see first-hand a vivid example of the contrasts between these diverse philosophical approaches.

(Broah CCro) (to me)

Your understanding of postmodernism follows from, by your own post, a secondary source. The only philosopher you've noted to have actually read is Neitzsche which you erroneously assume is a postmodernist (which even considering someone a proto-postmodernism seems fallible if they were before the linguistic turn). Any comments regarding actually discussing postmodernism and its relation to hermeneutics (a field of study) is deemed as parlor tricks. How an entire field of study with numerous, divergent opinions can be a parlor trick or nonsense is anybody's guess. Please inform yourself of the topics you want to rave about.

(Me)

But Heidegger makes little sense even to philosophy professors! There's strong debate taking place about Heidegger within the academy about what he was talking about, and how much he was or wasn't a Nazi. The prof at
www.n4bz.org/gsr10/gsr1004.htm
for instance argues that Heidegger was a Nazi through and through.
Nearly all sources present Martin Heidegger as the father of postmodernism.
These same sources give Nietzsche as a major influence on Heidegger's ideas, if not the chief influence.
Eric Hobsbawm, from whom I took my definition, is a writer of rare clarity and intelligence. NO ONE has written with more thoroughness about Twentieth Century thought than he has, as you'd understand if you read his Age of Extremes.
The world and what we make of the world is a reflection of our thought.
Clarity of writing is a reflection of clarity of thought. It's that very clarity which is missing from too many writers now-- and it was certainly missing from the work of Martin Heidegger, likely the past century's #1 intellectual con-artist. He even conned his way out of any punishment after the end of the Second World War. The guy could rationalize anything. He was the ultimate bullshit artist-- puts others of the breed like Robbe-Grillet and Tao Lin to shame.

(Me)

p.s. Broah's post shows the way he's bought the Right/Left binary way of thought which the mass media-- and the educational system-- pushes everyone toward.
Things are a little more complicated.
For instance, in the Cold War context of the time, Robbe-Grillet's ideas were reactionary. They were anti-populist and anti-activist. They were a retreat from involvement in the world. In this sense they were in line with the attitude espoused by William Styron in the Paris Review when he came out against "axe-grinders." In 1950's Europe the Paris Review and Encounter magazine, both backed by CIA  money, were promoting a nonpopulist style of literature as an alternative to what might be called anything smacking of social realism or socially active literature. The same battle was happening within American literature, of course.
This isn't to say Robbe-Grillet was on the "Right." But-- our artistic work is the product of our thought, the foundation of the underlying belief system. The progress of a culture and its art can be tied to the underlying belief system. Is it an accident that the Enlightenment created the greatest works of art and architecture the world has ever seen?
ideas matter.
Many of the ideas being pushed today, in places like the academy, are an intellectual and artistic dead end. You limit yourselves as writers if you fail to recognize this.

*********************
Convoluted thought is everywhere, but there are points about this thread, this discussion, to be made.
A couple are about M. Kitchell himself.
Beneath the self-referential nature of his post, ("I suppose," "I feel like," "What I'd like to," "I am invested," "I almost feel like," et.al.) is the underlying mindset. Kitchell and Tao Lin have superficial disagreements but are in fact ideological soulmates.
The incoherence of Kitchell's post is a reflection of the incoherence of his thought. It's not his fault. His situation is likely shared by most of the readers of this blog.
Everything is conditional. Kitchell can't say anything for sure. Anything he says comes with provisos. Sure, he "disagrees" with "Tao" about "language," but what's "language," something having to do with "words," whatever "words" are. "Tao" is pushing "objectivity," but as we all know or rather are supposed to know our professors have told us there is no "objectivity," and can be none. Or rather, there "is" "no" "objectivity," we can't really know or ultimately say anything, can we? "Know," "say," etc.
Why does Kitchell reference Robbe-Grillet? Why would any American writer reference Robbe-Grillet? R-G and his feckless ideas have nothing to do with the history of American letters, the American character, or the American voice. With the path writers like Kitchell are on or should be on. Robbe-Grillet is taught in the university because his ideas are quirky, and so absurd that for bored profs they're interesting. Kitchell, like so many eager students, has swallowed him whole.
What can we say about Robbe-Grillet?
Yes, I know we can't really say-- or know-- anything about anything, but if hypothetically we lived in an alternate universe where not everything was relative and conditional, where people had sense, then what would we say about a writer like Robbe-Grillet?
(We should put "writer" in quotes in this instance, because scarcely being a "writer" is the R-G appeal, at least for the easily gulled.)
We would say that Robbe-Grillet was a bigger con artist than Tao Lin. Could we say, he was a quack? ("Quack.")
What was Robbe-Grillet peddling? Do you know?
He was selling the ideology of stupidity.
Can anyone dispute this?
Robbe-Grillet wished the writer to empty the mind and so regress himself as a writer as to become the equivalent of a house cat. Like an observant house cat, to merely notice and record, with no thought or judgment brought into the equation.
The great historical analysis, assessment of human society, and theological musings of a Tolstoy-- or even a Frank Norris-- aren't allowed in. That, truly, for Robbe-Grillet, is ("is") another literary universe.
A universe where literature is relevant and important.

(lagsolo)

tao lin may in fact be a hustler yes but then again so was allen ginsberg / will the world ever be rid of hustlers? i doubt it

poor elvis & all the movies they made him do

i will take a look at yr blog

(Me)

Now for some further comments on Tao Lin himself. Such comments are for you unfamiliar, uncomfortable to read. Just remember that many people in this society-- possibly even yourself-- are Eloi to whom strong opinion, disagreement, and emotion are new experiences.
A revealing discussion about Tao Lin is the infamous one he had several years ago with Whitney Pastorek. It's still to be found at Tao's "hehehehehehehehe" blog, which might be better named "mememememememememe."
Tao describes how he uses "concrete language," "without emotion." Very Robbe-Grillet-like. He means, without opinion, judgement, humanity.
Here are some interesting quotes from Tao:

************************************

(The quotes are the same given yesterday on this blog’s previous post.)

The Shaky Empire

WHILE AT ONE TIME the McSweeney’s Gang was an important development in a stagnant literary scene, today the band of clubsters, cronyistas, fellow travelers and hangers-on is sustained by bluff, reputation, and bullying. Though their books, whether published by the Big Six or by McSweeney’s, still receive lavish media attention, their actual impact on the general public has become minimal.

Little girls in Minnesota who self-publish indie ebooks outsell the lot of them.

When you examine the evil empire up close there’s not a lot there.

What are their ideas?

Rehashed postmodernism; pose more than substance. Their overhyped intellectuals, Jonathan Lethem and Ben Marcus, are impressive only on paper. Given a fawning establishment literary world fueled by timidity, their sophistry is seldom challenged. It’s noteworthy that both much-awarded figures are defeatist about their own literary ideology. (See the link to a post about a Jonathan Lethem essay at the left side of this screen.)

Either would be slaughtered in a debate about literature with someone like myself. What’s more, they know it. Not that such debate would ever take place. Sustained by protective nursemaids behind protective barriers, what Lethem and Marcus lack even more than real intellect is intellectual courage.

What of the Emperor himself, Mr. Eggers?

Lately he’s been a one-trick pony, playing the role of Great White Father, savior to the Third World. His latest book, more of the same, is a dud.

The entire McSweeney’s/Believer ouevre, in fact, is growing visibly tired. Cutesy hipster posturing with trademark narcissistic posing by the usual bourgie grandees or their knockoffs, for whom the stunning currents of economic change and devastation the last four years have been no more than a mild puff of wind. They view the hectic tragic world from above, aristocrats in a crumbling castle with walls smelling of mold. In the near distance a tidal wave of readable, low-cost ebooks approaches. Not wishing to see the new wave, they sip more hipster wine or designer beer and move to the other side of the fortress. 

Where's Jonathan Lethem?

NO RESPONSE FROM BELIEVER WRITER

I'm still waiting for a response to my takedown of Jonathan Lethem's October Believer essay. I sent The Believer people part of it, along with a link.
http://kingwenclas.blogspot.com/p/jonathan-lethem-and-postmodernism.html

Will they-- or Jonathan Lethem himself-- explain and defend their ideas and writing? Anyone?

About Jonathan Lethem and Postmodernism

Jonathan Lethem's "Postmodernism as Liberty Valance: Notes on an Execution" in the October issue of The Believer is bad writing backed by a ridiculous argument.

Lethem's objective isn't to write a clear and compelling essay. It's to present a facade of intellectualism, combined with trademark McSweeney's-style cutesiness added to show that, hey, he's one of us.

Behind his clog of words, Lethem has two points. He doesn't try to prove the points. They're assumed. The herd he writes for accepts the points on face value. The essay is affirmation. "Hallelujahs" in a praise-pomo church service. The purpose of the essay is showing off.

Lethem's two points:

1.) Literary postmodernism is under continual assault.

2.) Postmodernism is like the film character Liberty Valance.

***********************************
POINT ONE: Because literary postmodernism isn't under real attack, Lethem doesn't need to construct a real argument. His essay is a victory dance over pretend opponents. The idea is to make the unquestioning readership feel good: Rome replaying its wars with Carthage decades after the fact. A ritualistic dance.

Lethem writes,

"My version allegorizes the holding at bay, for the special province of literary fiction, of contemporary experience in all its dismaying or exhilarating particulars, as well as a weird, persistent denial of a terrific number of artistic strategies for illuminating that experience. The avoidance, that's to say, of any forthright address of what's called postmodernity, and what's lost in avoiding it (a sacrifice I see as at best pointless, an empty rehearsal of anxieties, and at worst hugely detrimental to fiction)."

What is he talking about?

Jonathan Lethem says of postmodernism:

"--the word is often used as finger-pointing to a really vast number of things that might be seen as threatening to canonical culture."

Really? By who?

Today, postmodernism IS canonical culture. The French critics Lethem defends in his essay are celebrated by the academy. They're part of the canon.

Lethem talks of the "collapsing of high and low cultural preserves--."

This sure isn't happening in Lethem's world! He's safely in the "high" end, along with metafiction, antinarrative, intertextuality, unreliable narration, "surrealism or magical realism or hysterical realism," irony, and the rest of the postmodern jumble. The academy does have values, of a sort. The intellectual jumble Lethem describes is its highest value.

The items Lethem lists and defends are now part of "high" culture. They've been around for fifty years. There's nothing threatening to "the literary community" about them. Go onto trendy lit-sites like HTML Giant and you see that these ideas and strategies ARE the literary community.

(To read this post in its entirety, click on http://kingwenclas.blogspot.com/p/jonathan-lethem-and-postmodernism.html )

Good vs. Evil

AGAINST POSTMODERNISM

Crime City USA, my newest e-book, doesn't follow postmodernist theory. It believes in retro concepts of good and evil, right and wrong-- and depicts those concepts through character and plot. The chief villain, Fake Face, could be a metaphor for the duplicitous thinking and corrupt behavior which rules the established literary world today.

Art is truth.

Have you read Crime City USA?