It's the e-Mail, Stupid

We Have a Slight Problem
I’m no Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie but I think I’ve solved this one. It wasn’t the butler. It was the e-mail that done it. I’ll explain.
If you haven’t read or heard about it, there’s been another literary tragedy. No, Stephen King was not attacked by another rabid SUV. Nor is there a sequel to The Da Vinci Code. What happened is that someone by the name of Margaret Seltzer, a white young woman from Sherman Oaks, California, convinced a good portion of the literary establishment of sophisticated New York City that she was a half white, half Native American who was raised by a black foster family in South Central Los Angeles.
Such was the squalor and deprivation to which this waif was subjected that she ended up being a member of a gang. To earn money she was reduced to running drugs for the Bloods. I bet those brothers are majorly pissed that this cheeky wench has taken liberties with their good name. And she wasn’t even cutting them in on the book deal nor were they getting any leg out of it. Dickens must be chuckling in the beyond.
Under the pseudonym of Margaret B. Jones, this enterprising young scribe wrote a memoir aptly called Love and Consequences. According to the NY Times: “Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published “Love and Consequences,” is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer’s book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Ore., where she currently lives.” Can you imagine the number of e-mails that went back and forth between the duped parties during the time that the author finished her book and when this story broke? Beaucoup, is my guess.
My understanding is that the initial run of the memoir was 19,000 copies. I’m sure some of them will turn up on e-Bay for considerable dollars. By the way, the author was busted when her sister saw an article with her photo in a newspaper, called up and said that it was all highly elaborate fiction. Whoa! Talk about sibling rivalry. Now that’s a story worth reading about. No Brontes these girls.

It's Happened Before
This is not the first time a hoax has been perpetrated on the publishing world. On Sunday the Times published a few of these fiascos going back to the Civil War. In 1863 a white historian, Richard Hildreth, wrote a slave narrative penned by someone named Archy Moore. This should not be confused with The Confessions of Nat Turner, by the late William Styron, a fine novelist who was white but was writing about a rebellious slave. Styron received some criticism because a white shouldn’t be writing about blacks. Nonsense, an artist may write about whatever he pleases. Was Gaugin to be hounded because he painted Polynesian women? Styron was not hiding anything.
More recently, there was a confession by the memoirist of a touching holocaust tale titled, Misha: A Mémoir of the Holocaust Years, published in 1997. This was amazing because in it, Misha DeFonseca, the author, details how she survived the holocaust. She even had to kill a German soldier in self defense and get this--she had to live with wolves. I bet Stephen King was wondering why he didn’t think of that. Well, he tried with Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer. Recently, the author, whose name is not Misha DeFonseca, revealed that she was born a Belgian Catholic by the name of Monique De Wael.
I was surprised that the Times didn’t list two of my favorites: The Education of Little Tree, published by Delacorte in 1976. This was written by Forrest Carter, a pseudonym for Asa Earl Carter, a former Klansman. This was a coming-of-age tale about a Cherokee. What’s with people and the Indians? They steal their land, kill their buffalo to make designer coats, herd them into reservations, make funny movies about them, and want to steal their identities.
And of course, being a Latino, here’s my all time favorite. Published in 1983 by the Penguin Group: Famous All Over Town, by Danny Santiago, was supposedly the first Chicano novel. It is a coming of age story about a young innocent growing up in East L.A. Horse fecals. The dude’s name was Dan James, an old black-listed, witch hunt era, Hollywood screen writer. The book even won a literary prize. Anyway, both books are still selling on Amazon.com and in bookstores after all this time.

What Did the Woman do Wrong
Why not allow Ms. Seltzer’s tome the same courtesy? Excellent question. The answer is simple. Carter and James wrote novels under pseudonyms. That’s acceptable. Seltzer wrote a memoir, presently a more respected literary form since the author is supposedly telling the truth. Time was it that the memoir was left for someone to write at the end of a long and distinguished career, a sort of an addendum for academics to pore over and compare to the historical record of the person. Today, any unusual experience that can bring a reader vicarious sociological insight is acceptable. If it’s going to sell, go for it.
You see, the American novel has fallen into disrepute. The tradition of the novel as a way of uncovering injustice is no longer important except to a few intellectual purists and art lovers like us. No more Germinal or Grapes of Wrath. The truth is now left to people who lived through certain experiences and readers can “trust.” Today fiction is no longer the way to amplify societal ills and make the world see things differently. Today fiction is the purview of the fantastic and fanciful. Fiction today belongs to the world of witches, werewolves, super ecclesiastic detectives, and underwater defenders of freedom and democracy. That often these novels contain simplistic, inferior and banal writing that can be made into films and improved on by the myriad of crafts involved in movie making is a commercial fact and cannot be avoided in a society where success and even quality is measured in sales.
Directors, screen writers, actors, cinematographers, set designers, art and lighting directors all bring their talent to the task. Quite often a novel that is poorly written is made into a passable two hour entertainment. I’m not being fair? You say people have a right to entertainment? Honestly, you have to start doing a little thinking. If the United States were anymore entertained it would be comatose. So called genre novels breed compliance. Keep producing the stuff and watch the country turn into more of a capitalist dictatorship.

The eMail Problem
Anyway, here’s the thing. This Margaret Seltzer/Love and Consequences hoax was three, maybe four years in the making. I’m not going to name the agent or the editor, nor am I going to quote from the glowing reviews by critics. My concern is why this happened. By the way, the editor excused it all by saying, the author, Margaret Seltzer, was naïve. I don’t think so. If anyone is to be tagged with being naïve it should be a whole lot of folks. Agent, editor, publisher, critics and the people who now run publishing: public relations and marketing.
And why did this happen? It was the e-mail, stupid. That’s right. I bet none of these people ever looked into Peggy Seltzer’s eyes and asked some very pertinent questions. I’ve even heard that in the book she had a pretty telling tattoo that has now turned out to be bogus as well. An insistent line of curiosity could have provided some bona fides on this detail but no one asked to see the body art. Hey, girls can go into the ladies room and show tattoos. Why not, Ms. Agent? Why not, Ms. Editor? Why not, Ms. Critic. You see a female conspiracy? A coven? Rampant Feminism?
I don’t think so. It’s more serious than that. What you see is rampant dopiness.
I would love to find out the number of e-mails that went back and forth between the parties: author to agent, agent to publisher, editor to publisher, publisher to marketing, marketing to public relations, marketing to sales people, sales people to bookstores, public relations to critics and the responses. I have no idea, but I’m willing to bet hundreds of impersonal e-mails are at the bottom of this fiasco. I can see the whole progression of niceness with folks typing away, probably using emoticons and cute abbreviations like ur, ne1, and tx, in contrast to face to face meetings between the parties, particularly the author and the ones responsible for producing the book. In a way it’s hard for me to blame Margaret Seltzer for wishing to get ahead in the world of publishing today.
Couple the perfidy in today's society with the ever-growing atmosphere of not calling people on their games because you’ll be thought of as paranoid or not a team player and you have created further opportunities for a hoax to be perpetrated on the society. Mix in the fear of hurting the feelings of us benighted fuzzy-wuzzy people of Crayola and add to the mendacity of our world.
Dude, if the guy is obviously black and he tells you he’s a Norwegian Lapp, go with it. Maybe it’s true that he was engaged to a reindeer. I think Americans would jump at reading that kind of cross cultural love story. I don’t think Nicholas Spark is going to touch that one.
I suggest we have a prize for giving fuzzy-wuzzies a pass and not having standards of excellence that apply to everyone regardless of color, creed, or ethnicity. Let’s call it THE JAYSON BLAIR PENDEJO PRIZE and award it to the person who gives a pass to Crayolas because of some misguided affirmative action notion. By the way, to Ricans pendejo means fool even though it also has pubic connotations.

Other Causes for the Malaise
I could go on and on finding reasons for what’s happening to this society to permit such hoaxes. Here are a few. Have you noticed how a lot of advertising is about fooling others to get ahead? Workers deceiving their bosses, children lying to parents, couples lying to each other. Of course Bush lying to everyone, but that’s not a commercial. What about the reality shows? Contestants deceiving one another in order to get ahead and being rewarded for their cunning and lying. What about the competition in sports? I know. Sports are supposed to build character. At $25 million a year most of us would develop into quite a character? Year round, dog eat dog madness to establish supremacy. You have to ask yourself the question. What are sports really about at the professional level? Healthy, sweaty competition or a conditioning system to get you used to the rat race?

Margaret Seltzer Advocacy
I didn’t think I could feel sympathy for Margaret Seltzer but I do. Here’s a young woman with a fine imagination who has written a remarkable work of fiction, obviously worthy of publication. She saw clearly that there is a glut of novels and that most novels that deal with the plight of the downtrodden are dismissed as either preaching sociology or something deserving of a thirty second sound byte on CNN. Bottom line: She was going to be dismissed as just another white chick writer.
Why not take her shot at a memoir? Obviously, she was correct in her assessment of publishing today. It’s sad. It’s a shame and hypocritical not to publish her book. I say, let her write a preface and an apology. People do that all the time. It wasn't like she caused the death of almost 4,000 U.S. service men and women, nearly 30,000 U.S. casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqui dead, and over 3 trillion dollars in wasted dollars. Ooops! No weapons of mass destruction. Sorry. Dick and I misunderstood.
They screw up, say they’re sorry and CNN goes on spinning more bullshit. Why not give Sister Seltzer a break? Have a heart. She may have more novels in her. Maybe she’ll really tell us what it’s really like in white America these days. I bet it's not different than what Ricans have to go through except that they don't have salsa. Anyway, I don’t think it’s anything like the sitcoms.

The Solution
Here's the thing. I can’t believe how a place like New York City, famous for having bullshit detectors, has been taken over by halfwits. Give me a break. Here’s a suggestion for every publishing CEO in the United States. Hire yourself a couple of paranoids from one of our ghettos. You know, one of those: “I don’t even trust my motha” fellas. Just tell your executive paranoid the synopsis of the book and hip them to some background on the author. If the EP shakes his or her head and calls you a chump, send someone out to meet with the author. Hire some starving recent graduate from a School of Journalism with pretensions of being an investigative reporter and let him ferret out these literary vandals. Remember John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire? The editor would leave the manuscript on his desk. If the cleaning lady took it home to finish reading it, he knew he had a page turner. Well, this would be similar. Come on, you have luncheons to go to, marketing campaigns to plan, book fairs to attend. Don’t get caught with your pants down again. Go ahead and hire a paranoid.

Parting Shots
And oh, why is a memoir preferable to a well-written novel? Good question and one you have to ask the marketing department. I’ll go into that another time. But I am convinced that the expediency of e-mail and the lack of face to face contact with people are making this society even dopier. Good, well-written, idea novels that magnify the problems of society are important to the intellectual health of a people. Marketing has decided that the literary novel is another “genre.” Give me a break. Publishing people please do something smart before the suits take over completely and we become robots.
By the way, hats off to Hollywood for making films from real literary works in “No Country for Old Men,” and “There Will be Blood.”
Assignment: Find out from which literary novels the two films were adapted and read them.
Have a nice day unless you’ve made other plans.