MY FIRST POETRY CHAPBOOK, NIGHT JOURNEYS, OUT NOW!
“I will survive if you leave me/but without me you will surely die.”
Viktor Dyk, Czech poet
Part 1: Update
Some time after I announced my farewell, a re-posting of an old post I’d planned to dig up for the summer self-published itself. Caught up in the next formative stage of life as I was - not the least being my own wedding - I’d forgotten to take it down.
I felt a lot like the protagonist in that vanilla, best-sellery movie from back in the day, Under The Tuscan Sun. For those unfamiliar, it’s a film adaptation of one of those good old, “an American buys a villa in Tuscany and does good old American stuff in the stereotypical Old World” kind of stories. One of the last of its kind, come to think of it: where did they go? Perhaps the Amanda Knox story put an end to the romance behind that kind of story…
In the beginning of the movie, the protagonist - a middle-aged American woman with the personality of a used couch that doesn’t realize it’s used - is chatting with the old Italian husband and wife who own the villa. The husband strongly leans toward not selling it to her for reasons I forget. (Her renovation plans if I recall; of course Americans always know better about renovating other people’s traditional architecture)
But just as the husband is about to say goodbye after a seemingly conclusive “no thank you,” a pigeon flies above them and shits on the protagonist. While she stands there looking stupid, awkward and covered with guano, the Italian wife engages in a “Mamma Mia!” incantation of some kind meant to pass as quaint, beautiful but superstitious Italian culture to the American cinemagoer who is detached, enlightened and above such things, even if they’re cute and tickle our insides like cinnamon butter. The husband then smiles, changes his mind and sells her the villa since it is a good omen and he is a good husband. (Though to be fair, keeping the old Italian couple involved in the story as parental figures for the brave, Tuscan-villa-owning American woman was a good plot choice)
I see the post I forgot to cancel as functioning in much the same way as the aforementioned Florentine guano. While I apologize for not engaging in a Polish, Irish or Croatian equivalent of the “Mamma Mia!” ritual and denying your insides the cinnamon butter sustenance needed to remind you of your enlightened detachment from the worldly world (so removed and above Christian thinking indeed!) I decided to turn my Substack farewell into a Substack hiatus instead.
What that means is: I’ll post a few things sporadically in a more detached manner befitting the nobly detached American intellectual unfazed by history and culture. (Detached when it comes to my activity; I’ll let you decide of my actual writing feels that way) These sporadic posts will not adhere to any timeline; when they’re ready, they’re ready. If I go back to my regular posting schedule it’ll be sometime in January 2025, though a part of me is leaning toward making this the new norm. Especially as I can no longer write full-time, at least for now. (This happened right after my farewell by pure coincidence) This also means I have to cancel the book club plans I mentioned before. Sucks, but it is what it is.
Funny thing is: once I stopped, my subscriptions, followers on notes and even a recommendation from another Substack increased; my activity reverting back to a kind of minimum wage default despite zero activity on the part of yours truly. (And to anyone reading this from Notes; please subscribe to my actual newsletter, I’m not in it for social media) The Substack algorithms, it seems, are easy to please. (At least for now)
Of course it wasn’t just Tuscan guano that influenced my decision: I’ve chatted with a few people in private since then. It seems more people want me to stay than I anticipated. That’s on me. Another coincidence: reading blog posts elsewhere, I encountered a few comments where people say something along the lines of “by the way, love your blog! I know you only get a few comments, but your blog is having more of an impact than it might look to you.” As mentioned, the experience of having a mouthpiece is new to me. (Check the bio in the back of my poetry chapbook, Night Journeys, and you’ll see what I mean) Perhaps instead of giving up on the writing, I should give up on anything that gives me a false image of the influence I may or may not be having.
So I will experiment. I’m not fully fond of this experiment, since it means disabling comments until January 2025. For someone outspoken against censorship, I understand how that looks. But my past critiques of this (though seldom on Timeless directly) didn’t factor dopamine into the equation. And is it censorship if people can tell me what they think directly? (I know most of you with more than a passing interest know how to get in touch with me) Or if someone can react to my post on their own Substack, which would have the exact same effect as a comment and even greater success at bringing awareness? In any case, this will be temporary. As will the disabling of likes and anything else that makes me think of Timeless as something other than a digital facsimile of the literary journal experience. (To make it fair, I will also reduce my own commenting to a minimum)
(And by the way, this is not in any way a refutation of the other points I made in my farewell post.)
That leaves three loose ends to tie up with this post:
The criticism I’ve received that I don’t share the fundaments of my worldview enough.
The criticism that I don’t take part in a collective effort to rise on Substack and save literature with everyone else.
An old criticism I received before about my disagreeability stoking division in America.
For now: thank you, everyone, for your kind words of support. It has not gone unnoticed; nor has it gone unappreciated. My “return,” if you can call it that, is as much for you as it is for me.
Part 2: My Worldview In A Graven Nutshell
I will start with perhaps the most important view a writer of my sort should share: I believe in nuance and trust in it. But not to the degree that some literati do, where they use the existence of nuance to avoid hard discussions with the increasingly fallacious claim: “it’s complicated.” An easy way to opt out of almost every argument.
On the contrary, I believe most complex things can be simplified. This is also true of certain explanations of faith, though I increasingly have my doubts about the benefits of faith dialogue translated into rationalism. But that’s a complex post requiring its own analysis.
In short: I am a lot of things, but not a simpleton. It would require volumes to summarize my worldview. It is not easy to do since I’ve been cultivating it for a long time, harvesting its fruits from many different soils. Not all of which are indigenous to North America. Californians especially are primed for this: think of those in the postwar years who could make a point by comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls, Miles Davis, Carl Jung, The Buddha and Timothy Leary in a single sentence. I love that kind of thing, and it is the cornerstone of my intellect.
I am not an ideologue nor am I provincial, though I have a few tribalistic biases like everyone and I suppose some can interpret my desire for the return of the “countryside intellectual” as a case for provincialism. (Again, a point for a future post) To be anti-ideology is not, by default, the opposite ideological stance though I understand how some bad faith ideologues want to believe that; I certainly don’t miss that either/or dimension of American thinking. In fact: much as I try to stand for love as a Californian, I think I hate the either/or mentality at this point. (There are many reasons I left America, none of them have a two-thirds majority)
I do not fall comfortably onto any one side of the spectrum: while the left and their Democrat party have drawn my ire by declaring war against everything I cherish in this world (while I’ve done nothing to them) I’d agree with a few principles once the dust settled, though not the solutions. For instance: I don’t trust corporations. I’m all for a cleaner and healthier environment. (Though ecological thinking is traditionally the preserve of culture, not politics) And while I have my doubts as to their efficacy in the digital age, I have no issue with the existence and health of trade unions.
In a lot of respects I remain a Berkeley, CA kid like any other. But one who has filled a few gaps after actually discovering what conservatives stand for. What I call my liberation from the condition of “normalization via intellectual suffocation.” Or: the intellectual starvation of alternate views to the point that even hearing them is a deep, emotional offense to the conditioned mind.
For instance: people in my hometown are so successfully starved of conservative views that - like the denizens of Plato’s cave - even hearing a few words conservatives prefer - not to mention an entire viewpoint - emotionally compromises its victims to the point where they genuinely suffer when hearing these other views. (Plato’s cave dwellers no doubt using mockery to hide the pain of their own ignorance) People have noted how in the recent VP debate, Tim Walz looked at some points like he was going to cry; the feeling I mention is virtually identical to the emotional turmoil this left-wing politician suffered onstage.
This is how people in my hometown are brought up. And it explains, in part, the stubborn unwillingness of those kinds of Democrats to give even the tiniest millimeter to “the enemy” on even the most harmless topics.
Where I come from, the education system made a concerted effort to make sure someone like me had no idea what conservatives actually believe, except to understand that they must be evil. The only patriotic education I had had to do with Martin Luther King Jr. - fine, of course, but he’s not the start and end of all American patriotic sentiment. And apart from a few superficial things like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, it was most important that we learned what evil slave owners the Founding Fathers were, and convince ourselves they had no redeemable traits. (A classic case of intellectual suffocation)
This is why I defend conservatives a lot, even though I have my own share of complaints (namely their abandonment of culture and their mockery of those who are interested in other cultures): it’s bogus, it’s conceited urban elitism; it’s snobby asshole behavior and defending them in this context is the right thing to do for any genuine humanist.
Another reason I defend conservatives out of necessity is due to the vile reductionism through which American society has reduced such basic elements of human existence - devotion to faith, the family, even things like eating meat - into “right-wing talking points.” This is as historically abnormal as it is absurd. Not everyone has to start a family. But any side that willfully distances itself from supporting a safe family culture is in the wrong and - from my observation - usually does this for selfish reasons that have nothing to do with the greater well-being of society. (While these same assholes will call me selfish for defending individualism) It’s the same as being anti-shelter or anti-food and is much, much greater and more serious than party affiliation. On a podcast I was listening to the other day, someone proposed that anyone who has three or more kids should be tax-exempt. Not gonna lie, I like the sound of that.
Elsewhere, I have mentioned that I am a traditionalist. I already explained in a previous post how that term is associated with the notorious philosopher Julius Evola but is, in fact, a neutral descriptor applying to people all across the spectrum of belief. It can be someone like a trad Catholic going to mass with a gnarly-as-hell Knights Templar tattoo on their forearm; but it can also be a feminist who listens to folk songs written by and/or about women over the centuries. We come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and for some reason the mainstream perceives it as a threat; I’ve recently been running into books telling people “what is traditionalism” and using the Evola association to automatically poison the well. Alas, I guess that’s just part of the package.
Sometimes people have called me narrow-minded because I am immovable on a topic or two. But that’s because I sometimes do my homework too well or stumble upon a truth of some sort that has not actually been debunked, but ignored in the hope that no one notices. To quote G.K. Chesterton: “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” Whatever else people think of me, I think I’ve been successful at shutting in a few key solids. Which is good: it stabilizes a person’s worldview.
An example is abortion: those who like abortions have no argument on the face of the earth to prove that abortion isn’t murder, except by changing the language and other similar deceptions. But the certainty of the baby’s death is an undisputable fact. (Which is why the whole “when does life start” debate is a waste of time)
Usually it’s their inability to disprove my stance that’s at fault, but for those unable to make a dent it’s infinitely easier to resort to psychologisms and ad hominems to try and salvage a win of some sort than actually consider reality. Of course, wink wink, it’s my fault because I’m an evil right-winger or something. (You and I can have that nice and sunny conversation if you know what the hell you mean when you say “far-right.”)
It is even more challenging when trying to balance one’s literary needs - being an author for potentially every reader - while trying to go into the greatest threats to the art of literature today, a good number of which can’t be discussed without venturing into partisan language. And almost all of which come from the same side of the spectrum to which most book readers tend to adhere: leftists. An audience I have no choice but to cater to if I want to be successful in the traditional sense; and the one who at the same time believes I have “had my day” and celebrates me becoming a minority. (Though globally, “my people” are already a minority) It’s a very pernicious and delicate path to tread.
The only ways out are if 1) American conservatives reclaim an interest in the culture they abandoned so long ago; 2) the aforementioned demographic breaks free of their nano worldview while abandoning their pointless and ultimately narcissistic adversarial attitude toward things like the writer’s mythos and Western civilization; or 3) I expand my audience to include Europeans, which is not impossible and not intimidating but very difficult and dependent upon a series of highly heterodox strategies that also include obtaining fluency in other languages a la Samuel Beckett. Who, while not quite Dostoyevsky, was a genius of his own sort. (Gender relates to this too; I am writing a post about it, one that will be ready soon I hope!)
That’s not to say I’m fool enough to think I won’t be categorized by the public. A recent experience has shown that everyone who hasn’t heard of me has already made up their mind what to think of me in advance. They’ve also made up their minds about you. And you. And you as well. In other words: guilty until proven innocent. Much like a psychopath deeming that society “deserves” his or her torments without ever once asking themselves if it’s them in the wrong.
Again: one can’t help it if the public believes this. But I don’t tolerate this “guilty until proven innocent” attitude from friends; doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other. With a few exceptions (like accounting for the maintenance of free speech) I am a consequentialist. If someone believes White people have had their day, then they believe I have also had my day and have no business being my friend because I don’t believe FOR ONE INSTANT that any of you, no matter your background, have had your day. If someone believes men are inherently rapists (as many Millennial feminists believe) then they believe I am an inherent rapist; all I can say is that if they’re single and alone when they’re older, I won’t shed any tears. If someone believes that Catholics are evil dogmatists who want to burn heretics, witches and Huguenots, thrust everyone into the Dark Ages and institute autocracy politically…well, you get the idea. Ideas have consequences. And those who believe otherwise don’t know history. Nor are they prepared for what will happen once Francis Fukyama’s “end of history” condition fully deteriorates, as it currently is. (He was wrong factually speaking, of course, but correct when it came to diagnosing a societal condition)
The world often comes to me and tries to convince me that everything’s political. I not only push back - since that is a Marxist sentiment - but push back with a counter-position I don’t like all that much but deem to be more accurate irrespective of my feelings: everything is personal. That doesn’t mean we should be unendingly offended; I am also a pachydermist who believes in the good old teaching of sticks and stones. Rather, I am calling out the failure of a society pretending to be more detached than it actually is. Back in the old Soviet Union, a “Kulak” could claim to be so detached from Stalin’s narrative of “Kulak greed” that it made their asses bleed. Did it actually make them detached in the eyes of the NKVD? It certainly did not! Such a position was utterly delusional back then; and it’s utterly delusional today.
I understand the world is complicated and nuanced. But not all stances, positions and emotional reactions stem from nuanced positions. Often - and this was one of Inception’s important messages - it’s something very simple; for instance, the classic scenario where someone of a particular demographic wrongs a person, and the victim begins to believe that all people of that demographic are like that. Indeed, much of the deranged Trump hatred that has subsumed previously intellectually autonomous individuals often comes from people who have known a narcissist they couldn’t stand, after which they psychologically conflate Trump with said narcissist; again, it’s not political but personal. Their aversion to the narcissist they once knew is stronger than the un-sentimental fact that people were better off economically under Trump than Biden. (Which is also true, whether you like it or not) Even conservatives now laugh at commentator Ben Shapiro’s once-trendy statement, “facts don’t care about your feelings;” not because it’s wrong per se. But because society disagrees with it and believes the opposite is true; “feelings don’t care about your facts.”
To be a consequentialist means you don’t let people have their cake and eat it too. And in the end, it’s good for them because it helps them discover where their thinking has been lazy over the years. If they’re actually interested in cultivating their intellect, that is, and not grandstanding or virtue signaling for petty, personal reasons. To be a consequentialist is to do everyone you know and interact with a favor. We no longer live in times where we can delegate from on high the gift of knowledge to “someone else” or to “Googling it.” People are so imprisoned in echo chambers that when you’re disagreeable, all of us need the cojones (including those whom AC/DC referred to in the song “She’s Got Balls”) to tell others in the echo chamber important things they need to hear. They don’t have to be moralists, or provocateurs, or anything like that. Just do those you care about a favor and don’t let them become intellectually lobotomized. If they’re good people, they’ll thank you later.
So far: apart from abortion, an objective fact or two about controversial presidents and what’s left of my Berkeley, CA inheritance, I don’t think I’ve shared all that much that is partisan or touchy. Which is the point. Apart from a few stories meant for niches I like, I want to be an author to everyone; if possible. To do that, I have to maintain a certain mystery about my views. I’ve read a lot of author biographies, and already I’ve done a lot of personal damage to my reputation by being as honest about what I believe as I have. (Which is why I intend to forsake all political commentary on American affairs after this election)
I’ve already tested that considerably by sharing two views I don’t view as partisan, though many consider them to be “evil conservatism:” my Roman Catholic faith (nicely balanced, I think, between trad and the “Church of the Nice”) and my mostly uncompromising anti-Communist stance. (Which, let us not forget, is completely synonymous with humanism and the possession of a moral compass) Perhaps I should have also said more about how I hate fascism here and there: but that’s something I’ve always taken for granted for the same reason anti-Communism should be taken for granted. The Nazis wanted to exterminate my people, the Poles. I don’t need Americans to lecture me on how to feel about Nazis when American “experts” have dismissed Poland’s story and experience for decades while memory-holing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because “that Joe Stalin, he’s a good guy.” We’re still waiting for a “thank you” for saving more Jews than everyone else during the war and putting our entire families at risk. But I won’t hold my breath. It’s not only Germans who view Polish people (and other Slavs) as the untermensch, apparently.
Where literature is concerned, I despise the concept of the “target audience.” (Unless it’s genre fiction where the concept makes sense) Sometimes when I’ve told people I know I’ve written a novel, they’ve asked me: “am I its target audience?”
When I hear that, I want to slap myself. Firstly, I shouldn’t need to tell you what your target audience is: you should know that since you’re the reader in question here. But second: it is symptomatic of the heavy categorization and compartmentalization plaguing the art of literature today. This is in large part why I have chosen to give a lot of my books away for free: it is the only way to overcome these barriers along with the extra “encryption” that is the financial barrier.
There is one way to share more of the fundaments of my worldview without enclosing Timeless in a compartmentalized bubble. True, I might have already done that to a degree: but this hiatus will allow a bit of breathing room to rectify that a tad bit, rethink my language approach to anti-communism, etc. So here’s what I’ll do. I will begin work on my first book-length essays soon. They will address various core building blocks of my worldview in greater detail. Here are a few in the works right now:
Democracy: Mechanism or Messianism?
Witold Gombrowicz & The Infantilization of the West
Hagiography: The “Science” of Good People
[Essay on culture that I think is original so I won’t share the title here]
I can’t say that topics like hagiography and Witold Gombrowicz are the first to come to mind as major fundaments for some people. But trust me: they are. And you’ll all find it truly worth your time and (I hope) intellectually stimulating. I certainly plan to outdo myself with these.
Additionally, anyone who really wants to know where I stand on any one issue is most welcome to message me and request an essay on any topic under the sun. Seriously, I’ll do it! I don’t think it’s an insult if anyone calls me the next G.K. Chesterton since he too wrote about anything he had an opinion on. I might have to refuse if I just don’t know enough or it’s way too far out of my field; but as long as I reply in my own way, I’ll take on such requests about most things under the sun and anything humanities related. They’re allowed to be about other countries. And they’re allowed to be controversial requests as well.
I think that’s everything. Now for complaint number two.
Part 3: Individualism Vs. Collectivism
As far as individualism vs. collectivism is concerned, I try to aspire toward the balance many in the Roman Catholic church advise.
In general, I think most wise people have learned that balance is the best, both for people and society. I think this is the case as well: in order to live free, generate creativity and leave our mark on society, we need individualism; but in order to have communities - without which we have no society in which to be free in the first place - we need a bit of collectivism. Like cholesterol, today’s world suggests there is “good collectivism” and “bad collectivism.” The former is a local, loving community on the smaller scale; that has been obliterated in the West today. The latter is brainless, Marxist-style collectivism administered by the State. Or - to use a Star Trek reference - akin to the Borg.
Too much of either individualism or collectivism isn’t healthy, though if I was forced to choose between the two I’d choose individualism every time; the creativity needed to get out of serious societal quagmires would, at least, still exist in conditions favorable to individualism. Whereas collectivism is more often than not the enemy of creativity. A good number of societies out there underperform creatively because of an imbalance in favor of the collective; Islamic countries are textbook candidates in this respect. We also see this in Communist societies, including those in the former Eastern bloc that saw an unusual, exceptional creativity among the dissidents; had Communist Czechoslovakia endured for another decade or two, I believe that beautiful Czech creativity informing their work would have died. Already, the young Czech generations in the 80s did not have the same caliber of imagination as Vaclav Havel, Vladimir Holan or Bohumil Hrabal’s generations.
I consider the saints to be a good example of this, especially now that many modern saints (like Edith Stein, Josephine Bakhita and Maximilian Kolbe) have been canonized, while the case is currently being considered for none other than Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. There are a few samey elements, of course, like great piety. But so many of them were also very different people. St. George was very different from St. Mother Teresa. There were hermits who lived alone, and public preachers who lived social, arguably “collectivist” lives. It’s what’s beautiful about the saints. There are few better portraits of humanity at its best.
In my actual life, however, I have lived a lot more like an individualist than a collectivist. I won’t go into that since it’s personal. But that has been my life. I do not fit into communities with ease and very much fit the solitary scholar profile; if I was a prominent character in one of the great video game campaigns, I’d be Deckard Cain from the Diablo series. I do my own thing and accept all consequences; the freedom that is its upside, and the increased difficulty of back-scratching that is its downside. (Another reason I chose to never bother with New York City)
A few of you have implicitly (and explicitly) written about “being more engaged” on Substack and that kind of thing. Unless something else was meant, I interpret this as “pay more attention to my Substack so as to boost the metrics; then, together, we’ll become big fish.” (Because algorithms that prioritize some over others don’t exist, I suppose)
My answer: I sympathize with the sentiment and want nothing more than for all of us to be at the Ted Gioia/Sherman Alexie level. But it’s not that simple.
First: the Internet is not a meritocracy, at least not as we see it in the real world. Substack is no exception. The Internet is an algorithm-ridden hierarchy that requires self-censorship and (often) adherence to Woke ideology. Many who fit those criteria lose their exceptionality as they try to please the censors. It is a meritocracy in the way the Chinese Communist Party is a meritocracy.
Second: individual effort is clearly the solution if
is any indication. Michael Mohr brought his Substack up to check mark level largely due to his own effort as well as presenting an accessible persona to his readers. While I’m sorry to see he lost the checkmark, the fact remains: if rising together collectively really was the answer, we’d all be like Mohr and have similar numbers and check marks to go with them. But we don’t. We’re all different and have different levels of appeal. And that’s fine if we’re true to ourselves as writers; again, why blame ourselves for what the algorithms are doing?Third: along with literary Substacks I like to read Substacks related to the culture wars and geopolitics. But I write about literature and not every geopolitico is into literature. Should I expect that they read my posts for the sake of equality even though they’re not interested? I think either people are interested in certain topics and perspectives or they’re not. And I can’t change that about other people, at least not in this compartmentalized environment.
The only real solution to this is widespread societal change that enables all of us to have additional free time to explore other areas of interest. That, or do whatever is in one’s power individually to gain that extra time. (Something I’ve often done to read more) Otherwise there’s no point complaining about that if we also choose to accept the status quo.
Fourth: this is personal, but I just don’t enjoy reading fiction on screens. So if your output is mostly fiction and you don’t see five shiny stars next to my name in the metrics, it’s not personal. I read books, and only really enjoy reading nonfiction on screens. For Substack reviews, I’ve always gotten a physical copy to review. This isn’t a bad thing: if your book is for sale, that means I’ll probably buy it. (Though free sample copies are always welcome!) And if people decide that, for equality’s sake, they won’t read anything fictional I post here on Timeless, then so be it.
And fifth: not to sound mean or accusative or anything, but are you sure that need for collective validation isn’t just that: validation? Influenced by the same digital metrics and dopamine milkers that have frustrated me in recent times? We’re all human: just because we use Homo Deus fallacies all the time to lament our lack of perfection doesn’t mean we’re actually Homo Deus. I get that with the decline of readers, in some ways readers and writers have only each other to rely on. I absolutely get that: I’m a literatus in the real world.
But let’s cut to the chase: that’s a defense mechanism, not a basic norm of a healthy literary environment. The fact of the matter is: I don’t need Salman Rushdie to do anything else for me apart from writing good novels. It would be nice if he read my books, gave me a blurb to use and put in a good word in public, or if he signed my copies of Midnight’s Children and Haroun and the Sea of Stories if he’s ever in town. But beyond the optional all he needs to do is keep being Salman Rushdie. If we don’t do the same for other aspiring authors, do we really want them to be successful authors? Or do we want them to only be members of an ill-defined but obedient collective relevant only to itself? Not everyone likes the collective-created music of Amon Düül II, though you’re welcome to listen to them below and prove me wrong.
I don’t want to be in the way of other people’s success. And others have helped me, so I want to give back in return: that’s a big reason why I started my Substack reviews. It is my way of giving back, something I knew I could do to be generous with something genuinely of interest to other Substackers while going about it in my own way. And I know a few people here have books but haven’t yet contacted me to arrange a review. (Including a review of one’s serialization, which I can do; I just have to print each chapter out, and that’s fine)
My cost is minimal: either a paid subscription or a review of one of my novels. That was the other reason I started these Substack reviews: to test the waters of this collective need. Surely, those who want my complete attention oriented at their Substack have no issue whatsoever with giving just that in return?
Until recently, none of those who have generally laid this case at my feet have asked me to review their book. How about we do that first? Then we can talk about other shared successes. All I need is a bit of reading time if your book is long. But I’ll get to it. And if what you’ve read about Calm Before an Earthquake or The Taco Psychosis really doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I invite you to wait for my next novel, Tale of a Muse that Fought an AI. Its target audience is simple: “the denizens of globalization.” That, last I checked, includes every one of you.
But if that’s not enough, then what I’ll do is consider some guest posts. Something that ideally relates to the themes of this Substack; but if it’s just about literature in general that’s fine. I already did a guest post with
before, and I think that was well received. Maybe I should do more? Message me in private and we’ll talk about it. Don’t be shy.Speaking of that, my review of
’s excellent novel A Hong Kong Story will come out next week. Stay tuned!Part 3: Am I Divisive?
This response isn’t related to my Substack “farewell.” But since it’s election season, I figured it’s as good a time as any to get this old criticism off my chest.
In a past comment on a fellow Substacker’s post, I took an alternate stance in relation to a certain work of literature and disagreed with an interpretation that was grounded in race, gender and a cultural misunderstanding of Old World institutions. In response, I was asked if I wasn’t furthering more division by my stance. I didn’t get around to responding first due to time, and then due to…well, time gone under the bridge. (And sadly, I’m at a stage of life where I have very little time and have to fight to still keep reading)
The issue here was not facts, or right or wrong: but whether I was stoking division and threatening progressive utopian values. That was the real crime.
While this was one exchange, my observations of the Democrat state of mind - the political allegiance of most literati due to the American conservatives’ boneheaded decision to wage war on culture back in the day - incline me to believe that my differences of opinion are either 1) not taken seriously and regarded in a manner akin to inclement weather, a storm cloud that darkens all our blissful sunshine and Kamala-generated beams of joy; 2) regarded as quaint because the “era of discourse” is over and the Dems are always right; or 3) both. And since Dems are always right, it must mean that people like me who criticize them are 100% wrong by default. Poor, poor pitiful me.
There is a reason for this. As
of the Lotus Eaters explains in a lot fewer words than I can (with both the intellectual legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We in mind):If not exposed to mis- and dis-information peddled by “divisive” populists like Trump, Democrats presume everyone will come to the same progressive conclusion. They believe themselves to be in possession of the means of making policies in everyone's rational self-interest, based on a presumption of universal human sameness. Populism is the art of returning contentious issues back to the realm of public discussion. Populists are therefore slowing down the rate at which policies which benefit everyone will be enacted. They are casting a kind of spell over the voting public, making them believe they are different and divided. For democracy to prevail, populists must be censored, banned, and persecuted.
Tomlinson took the words right out of my mouth. Those who accuse me of divisiveness tend to be those who match this description of groupthink participants who see everything else except sameness as a threat. They might think of themselves as leftists, liberals or even centrists. It doesn’t matter. In this case, centrists and liberals are merely milder versions of the same thing. One might even call it the new antidisestablishmentarianism but with a twist; “people who are against the people who are against the progressive utopia of sameness.”
At the moment, I feel no greater affinity to any other author (poets not included) than Yevgeny Zamyatin. Like Zamyatin - a true believer in freedom despite his younger Bolshevik years - I tremble at the possibility of OneState. While believers in the progressive utopia tremble at the thought that I do not submit to their Borg-like dictum of “resistance is futile.” I couldn’t explain this to the individual in question precisely because all these layers of complexity are hard to communicate without a lot of context that, at times, risks appearing too personal when it’s not, strictly speaking.
As the first literary anti-communist dissident and author of the first genuine dystopian novel, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s authority on this matter can be surpassed by few. Though once a Bolshevik and alienated after the October Revolution, his belief in the basic human need for revolution (and not necessarily the bloody kind) stayed with him. Few authors have summarized the role of the literary artist so succinctly as he did when he once said:
“True literature can only exist where it is created, not by conscientious and loyal officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics.”
That’s what’s craziest about the literati who throw this claim at me. Whether they see this in themselves or not, they want the conditions that unquestionably created the art they presumably cherish to be liquidated. Why? Because the progressive dogma of sameness dictates that we all must be the same; that matters more to them than the health and wellbeing of the art of literature.
Almost all of today’s writers - bestsellers, indie authors, doesn’t matter - do not fit Zamyatin’s profile. They are progressive utopians who do absolutely nothing to rock the boat and are, in essence, no different from the socialist realist authors of the past. (Even a few of them were more individualistic and iconoclastic than today’s conformists) Nothing to challenge the new, rigid ideology currently constraining our society. And nothing to dream beyond the tired dictates of Rousseau’s disciples. Some leftists think they’re edgy because they define their purported edginess by 20th-century metrics: sex, drugs, rock & roll, dead horses. (I like to think my novel, Calm Before an Earthquake, approached those topics from an unorthodox angle) But we don’t live in the 20th century any longer. There is nothing edgy, risky or heretical about today’s leftism. Just as there is nothing individually edgy about today’s Borg-like authors.
The next time you hear me say something disagreeable and find the desire to question my allegiance to the progressive utopia welling inside you, suppress it for a moment and ask yourself the following question: “am I an antidisestablishmentarianist? Do I really have a problem with this person’s different point of view if I care about truth? And if I have a problem, does it mean I don’t care about truth? And why am I not more bothered by this gross shortcoming?”
But for everyone else who dirties themselves with supposedly anti-democratic pluralism, I’m happy to exchange ideas with you until kingdom come. Let’s hope that moment isn’t as close as either Zygmunt Krasinski or Ronald Reagan believed it to be.