The journey.

Dear Reader:

Yesterday while browsing on the internet I came across an article "Literary Guerrillas Take Barnes & Noble." It sounded intriguing so I read it. It was about a group of book people in New York City who felt the need to invade a Barnes & Noble bookstore to protest their corporate policies toward books and writers. They called themselves Mischief and Mayhem.

I found it of interest because in a way they were doing what I'd planned to do when I begin my U.S. tour next year. What they are protesting is the fact that Barnes & Noble stores freeze out the small publishers in favor of the big book publishers even if the quality of their books is inferior to those from the small presses. As one of the group said, "Books shouldn't be like Starbucks." You can read the whole article if you chose to. What I'd planned to do is when I visit a town or city with a Barnes & Noble is distribute a 100 or so copies of a flyer at their front door asking why customers won't be able to buy my book there. It's a way to protest the fact Barnes & Noble won't carry books from a small publisher such as mine unless we sell through a middle man or what is called a jobber and of course they want a slice of the pie.

It's the same reason I object to so-called literary agents: they want a slice of the pie they didn't create and in fact aren't literary agents because as a rule they know next to nothing about literature. They are nothing but pimps. If I grew tomatoes or sold them to the public I'd have to have them inspected by a food inspector from the government. That's because of the health issue. But I sell books and own the intellectual rights to them because I created them and unless I live in a totalitarian state I object to having an inspector giving me his stamp of approval before I can sell them as if they carried a danger to the public and at the same time taking a piece of the profit. That's a kind of racketeering such as someone offering protection for your car while you are shopping.

I don't consider my company or any of my books as part of a guerrilla movement as the dictionary defines that as a mutineer. At the top of the story I inserted an Orwell quote, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." In Wilson's Exile, a Czech woman suggests to Wilson he is a revolutionary and he protests he isn't because he hasn't the courage to be one. But in fact he is because he is trying to tell the truth about life. So if I can define myself I would not protest the title of a revolutionary because in my collected essays The Age of Incompetence that is the primary purpose: to expose lies.

But I concede so far I do not deserve the title for I have been too tepid and mild because when one looks over the American landscape today one see the whole system has been overtaken with what Orwell would call gangsters. They have reversed Robin Hood's methods of taking from the rich to give to the poor and have mugged the poor to give to the rich. I worry each day by the time I actually get out on the road the decisive battles will already have been fought and all I will witness is the wreckage and waste of a once thriving democracy from coast to coast.

Yesterday was another battle lost: the Congress voted to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years which means that the country will go into the red another $900 billion. It is like driving one more nail in the coffin. It's as if no one is sane anymore. For if tax cuts were the key to creating jobs then this country would be swimming in jobs since 2002.

Roger

P.S. This morning there was a thick frost covering the windshield of my car. Winter is alive here. But outside the sun is shinning brightly as if it was a summer day.

Roger

Saturday, Dec. 18. 2010
We had four inches of snow last night.