I rarely write anymore. At all. I was a prodigious blogger and journal keeper. I did it daily to remind myself of the day past, issues of import and as a way of connecting with the larger world. Covid came and with that my time was my own, truly my own and I wrote with the intent of publishing, then the bubble burst. I have described the Covid experience of that cocoon being akin to the Seattle World’s Fair and their Bubbleator form of transport is what it has been like to transition back into the post Covid world. Irony that the time frame was 10 months, the same time it takes to gestate and give birth. But to some that Pregnancy seemed much too long and for others it was definitely a premature one. Regardless of how one views Covid, we are not recovering from any of it in any sane way.
There is Politics and these next five months will make the Covid Quarantine period (irony as that lasted barely 5 months) seem quaint. How do I know the exact time periods? Well I documented the time we were finally told to quarantine which was March 13, 2020 and when I finally started to attend events in September of that year and when vaccines became available in 2021 for widespread use, but were already available for some by December 2020. And once I finished my sequence in March 2021 I was ready for take off and landing. I began to travel and did not contract Covid myself until 2022 in irony of all places Washington DC. I even know where I contracted it, the African American Museum, crowded and unmasked and over three hours there. With that 72 hours later and I knew. I did all the right things then and have since only continued flu shots and have moved on with the endless discussion on the subject as much as possible. I recall working in the schools and the idiocy surrounding the disease from inception to today and there is nothing gained from recalling any of it. I still have some masks as I realize that they can be handy if you are sick, otherwise it is a waste of time. Seeing playgoers on Thursday night sitting behind me at Stereophonic ( which will win Tony award for Best Play) made me feel sad for them. As I said then, and as I say today, STAY HOME. And that is not just Covid it is about being so infirmed that you cannot move with enough ease it may be time to find a new way of finding pleasure in the arts. The walkers, the canes, the mobility devices in which to navigate and make it all challenging for everyone. And no folks I am not being Ageist, I am 65 and know that one day I have to pack it in, so live in the now. I do think that many Museums are now addressing that with numerous online options and other ways to partake in the viewing of art. There was an attempt at livestreaming and that has passed but many still are filming productions and frankly those need to be sold as one would tickets and still generate support, especially for productions that struggle to gain an audience. Lempicka might have been one to try out and enable a better recoup of costs. But we are not there yet when it comes to Broadway and it is a loss for all.
It was Broadway that was the first to open doors, with masks and then later vax cards. The Metropolitan Opera did the same and it is why I am forever grateful that they continued on despite it all. I never enjoyed anything more and yet now I find myself tired of them both. But that may be just because as I joke, I go to the opening of an envelope, so with that I am pulling back. This is not my support as that comes in other ways, but in attendance. I have to go to what brings joy. So as I see the Season ticket offers come in, I pick less and wait for the spontaneous joy it comes if I decide to go to a show within a time frame that is less than a year away.
As I have found myself contemplating another move and more change I have decided this time to plan longer and decide over time. With that I am divesting myself of stuff that is junk, selling clothes that do not fit or suit, getting the right furniture that will work and last, and even purging books. I have set up a little library in my buildings’ amenity lounge. The first one set up on a window sill was removed as it was “unsightly” but I transplanted that to an empty cupboard, put a sign up and add books as I go. I am seeing some additions to it so others may be discovering this and using that resource and with that I urge others to try ways to share reading and books as they are still essential at any time of the year. Books are treasures in which to find, so find some and share them.
But as for publishing it is again a field awash with its own issues. The major houses have tried to merge and consolidate. Some are dissolving their imprints and laying off individuals brought in to address inequity in publishing. And with the larger issues of DEI being questioned in the corporate world, this is no different. What that means for Writers of a unique voice should mean nothing or everything. What it also means is that many will not be heard at all and that is all our losses. With that in mind I do again look to Broadway as an example. The “lesson” plays and musicals have closed. The pre theater announcement of it being on “stolen land” has stopped and the hysteria of diverse casting for just the point of it with no point other than that has seemingly ended. Talent matters and sometimes that is all that matters. Stereophonic is about the band Fleetwood Mac (allegedly) and had to cast those who talent mattered and with that they found a cast who are all new faces and voices; however, when can you go to a Play about music there is one caveat, there also had to be music. It was amazing. To see that over the debacle Here Lies Love was refreshing. Take note, David Byrne. Irony his cast album is in fact famous singers singing the tunes from the “musical” Even his cast he disbanded. Money clearly matters when it comes to any production.
The other best play I saw this season was Appropriate. (is that an oxymoron?) That it had a first run off Broadway a few years ago and was like many closed without notice or making news. Even Sondheim had that and now after death his most infamous flop, Merrily We Roll Along, rolled in with great success and acclaim. So there you go fame lives on as does talent. Thankfully that it too was given a second life, the cast and direction were fresh and the voices on that stage brought the same words to life and to light about an ugly subject – Racism. And in death it too lives on. Funny that the Playwright is Gay, is Black and yet is given nowhere near the attention as the Authors of Strange Loop or Slave Play where both of those men are the same. The difference is that frankly nowhere near as talented as Brandon-Jacob Jenkins has demonstrated. Perhaps that lack of attention and lights will be rectified on Sunday as I so hope to hear more from that voice in the future.
With that I am going to see Cabaret a new production of an old theme and work as is Tommy, both I go with the idea they will be at least “different”, not original but different. As with that I also saw the adaptation of Enemy of the People with Jeremy Strong of Succession and Michael Imperoli of the Sopranos and it was well done and more importantly well acted on a subject and matter that is very contemporary. I truly loved it for that once again Strong shows what a risk taker he is and he deserves all the respect an actor deserves for that. Like or hate him he is something to see on stage. As for Michael Imperoli my mad crush remains intact.
I think we all want to be heard and it may explain the rising violence, the protests and the rising angst of many often showing in signs of mental health crisis. Suicides are rising and let’s not discuss addictions that often are ways of self-medicating. Coming out of that Bubble and Cocoon is a struggle when you have no mirror in which to model how to adapt, integrate and assimilate. I don’t see this changing for a long long time. And perhaps that is why I don’t write, I have nothing more to say. Well about this subject, but there are always others that matter more.
I just finished watching the film, American Fiction, based on an actual book called Erasure by Percival Everett. The book was published in 2001 and was about the publishing industry and how it responds to the publication and criticism of African-American literature. This was 20 years PRIOR to the discovery of books on the subject that includes White Privilege, How to be an Anti Racist and other tomes about Black Lives Matter, Wokeness and other popular culture issues that dominate today’s discussion about not just Race but Gender and Sexuality in literature. The movie takes that same book and places it in Boston over D.C which I found interesting given Boston’s own issues regarding race but that aside the tone and thought is faithful to the book’s protagonist who suffers from a current malaise. Be that middle age, be that his job of teaching a new age type of student (aka woke) or simply isolation, family crisis and of course being a Writer. I got that I really did. All of it and I connected to Monk’s isolation and frustration. It is why I quit writing, I had no interest in self publishing and taking on all that it entails, both financially and emotionally. You can write a book, it can be a good one, an okay one or a bad one and few to no people actually read or will tell you which it is, all of above or none of them. It is what a reader thinks it is.
The movie does a great job of putting that into perspective, that all writing is judged on what a perceived audience will read and in turn what they buy. I often turn to David Sedaris as my role model, as he wrote numerous stories and books and while many of them sell well, he has a well established audience which is why they continue to publish his work. To be honest that are largely now rehashes of older works or revised stories and essays from other works, such as the New Yorker. But his real business is touring and from that making money as being an entertaining talker and reader of said works. His past contemporary Truman Capote would have loved that had he been a more aggressive writer and less bitch. But that is where the money is – public speaking and engagements. We are down few talk shows but Truman Capote is one of many who used that platform to keep one’s name in the press despite no longer actually writing anything of value. His feuds with Swans not withstanding, the one with Gore Vidal was by far more entertaining as it took place on that same circuit. Gossip always sells.
So when I read this heavy duty discussion piece in the Washington Post about the movie American Fiction, I thought once again this is overthink in the same way many did regarding the Barbie movie, equally entertaining and well made but it too was just about a Doll – a toy. The other issues regarding the Patriarchy was an aside but it is pointedly about what sells and marketing matters so Mattel really was the winner in that race to the Oscars. And regardless over the issues of Women in film, this film made over a Billion. As did other films about women, one Black, one White… Beyonce and Taylor Swift’s movies on their tour but their actual tours did as well. They truly are their own GDP. Cheers! Girl Power.
In that discussion in the Post I was surprised, not surprised, how none of the writers/commentators seemed to have read the book, elude to the book or the actual writer of said book that led to the film. It took over 20 years for that to happen and on that point it also shows that perhaps stories about Black people do not get the same play? But then again Oprah produced the Color Purple (a version from which she once actually starred in). This was one based on the Broadway Musical, which was well received but poorly attended – like Mean Girls and it too was the same. Is that a Race or Gender issue or just a poor movie one? With that, the Obama’s have a production company with one film actually nominated for an Oscar – American Factory. Who knew? They won it by the way. Did you see it?
I have an expression that I love – Bought the Book, Seen the Movie, the Play, the Movie about the Play then finally READ the book. A the circle of life has it now has become regarding books. And that is the point of American Fiction as Monk struggles to find a place in the industry that has defined and in turn segregated the Black voice into one that does not defy stereotypes but in fact encourages it. I think the discussion between him and the other writer, a Black Woman of Privilege, regarding her voices and language in her book are in fact such ones she knows. She dismisses that as she investigated and interviewed those whom she portrays in her book as legitimate. My first thought was if this was an exchange about a White Writer and a Black Writer how would that work? It wouldn’t. See several books that were “canceled” because the Writer was not of color writing about those who were.
And with that the way the publishing industry and film industry were portrayed in the movie aka the White folks were largely one dimensional and patronizing, I did in fact NOT see that as a race issue (well the discussion about the book awards was in fact just that and that too is another point about excellence), but in fact a fairly accurate portrayal of those types who dominate the field. They are just that and why many find themselves hitting walls versus a trampoline in which to bounce back and rise to do more or better or find a way up and off the endless bounce. I have not once yet had tangible critical help on any work I have submitted over the years and with that lack of information I can do absolutely fuck all nothing. So I don’t. I have submitted the same work usually a year later, with little to no changes except names and places and submitted to the same contests or agents with again nothing. Not even “Hey I read this before, got anything else?” So you know that the original reader has moved on or simply has poor memory or the new one is just doing their job. Whatever that is.
American Fiction is a great movie, great cast and a great story about a Writer and the frustrations of trying to meet the demands of being a Writer, A Teacher, A Son, a Boyfriend or just being in a time that demands much of all of those roles with little or no feedback on what those roles demand and need of you in which to succeed.
The pleasure of having someone read you a book or a poem is often placed in the memory banks of a loved one sharing that with you to calm you, restore you, put you to sleep or simply to share joy. Reading aloud is a gift and Audible has been a source where a book read aloud by either the Author or a selected Actor to recite the story adds a new level to sharing a book.
That said we are moving to the new way books are to be shared, by an algorithim. The same thing that alters your social media feed, your email and search engines to tell you what you want even if you did not know you wanted it.
When I read this editorial today in the New York Times about how Books are not being “Spotified” I was not surprised. I had just read of another local newspaper being sold to the Vulture Capitalist firm that has systemically destroyed newspapers across the country and with that communities suffer. In my comment about why I believe it is happening, is yes money and revenue and tthe failure of those in positions of financial security to preserve the concept of free press, see Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post as an example, there is another reality; people refusing to pay for it and in turn read. And the local tear sheet was not just news, it was local advertising, classified sections and of course local information about the community. and few care about local news. So why bother producing fact based journalism, investigations and even feel good news about a local community when an aggregate based search can compile all that into a single source via social media? And we all know how reliable that is. We have become an affirmation age vs an information one.
Tik Tok has managed to get some books in hands of readers and in turn awakened many to classics, both new and old, but in turn we have the other half who would prefer them burned than to be read by anyone or a need to edit, revise or place trigger warnings on books that may upset, provoke or distress a reader. No one is safe anymore to simply feel and learn how to deal with said feelings, be they from reading or from well living.
So with this new twist in books, from banning to burning we have an AI sourcing our reading materials. No need for those pesky Librarians or Teachers forcing us to read things that make us have a Trigger Warning, we can safely read the books we want by the Writers we want to read. Why learn or expose ourselves to new things, how annoying. And given I had just finished this editorial in the LA Times (a paper that has been sorta saved but is still out there trying to fight the good fight) about the Closing of the Teenage Mind, it seems fait accompli.
Remember What Spotify Did to the Music Industry? Books Are Next.
Dec. 13, 2023
By Kim Scott The New York Times Opinion
Spotify may have made it easier than ever for us to listen to an enormous trove of music, but it extracted so much money in doing so that it impoverished musicians. Now the company is turning its attention to books with a new offering. It will do the same thing to writers, whose audiobooks Spotify has begun streaming in a new and more damaging way.
We’ve read this story before. Tech platforms and their algorithms have a tendency to reward high-performing creators — the more users they get, the more likely they are to attract more. In Spotify’s case, that meant that in 2020, 90 percent of the royalties it paid out went to the top 0.8 percent of artists, according to an analysis by Rolling Stone.
That leaves a vast majority — including many within even that small group — struggling to earn a living. The promise of the business strategy laid out in the book “The Long Tail” was that a slew of niche content creators would prosper on the internet. That has proved illusory for most of them. It’s a winner-takes-all game; too often the tech platforms aggregating the content and the blockbusters win it all, starving a large majority of creators. The result is a gradual deterioration of our culture, our understanding of ourselves and our collective memories.
This is why regulation is so crucial. Before writing books, I worked at Google, leading three large sales and operations teams, and before that I was a senior policy adviser at the Federal Communications Commission. What I learned is that today’s tech platforms are different from the kind of monopolies of an earlier era that inspired our regulatory framework. Their networks can have powerful positive or negative impacts. We don’t want to regulate away the value they can create, but the damage they can cause is devastating. We need a regulatory framework that can distinguish between them.
To explain why content creators continue to lose at the hands of distributors and platforms, it’s helpful to understand the three mutually reinforcing networks that characterize most tech platforms.
A successful tech content aggregation platform has three networks: content creators, users and advertisers. Many networks have so-called positive externalities, which effectively mean that growth builds more growth and usability. A telephone network that allowed you to call only half your friends would be far less than half as valuable as one that allowed you to call all your friends.
The network effects of a platform are more complicated because each component reinforces the others. The more content, the more users; the more users, the more content. Once the platform has enough content to get enough users, then it can also get advertisers. If the platform shares advertisers’ money with the content creators, more content gets created, which attracts more users, which attracts more advertisers, and so on. If the ads are relevant, nonintrusive, and do not invade one’s privacy, that is good for users, because the advertisers are paying for the content. It is also good for content creators, because more users will interact with content they don’t have to pay for. It can be a virtuous cycle.
However, when the platform extracts too much and shares too little, it harms the rest of the ecosystem. Once a tech platform has a critical mass of users, it can start squeezing content creators. Most people can’t afford to work for free, so they quit creating. How, then, does the tech platform continue to grow? Often by sending users to lower-quality content that is free or almost free to produce. For example, songs seemingly created by A.I. are apparently being uploaded to Spotify and recommended to listeners. And of course, the platform may simply serve irrelevant, intrusive, privacy-invading ads or even sell their users’ data.
Let’s recall what Spotify did to the music industry. Streaming royalties are a pittance compared with à la carte sales — the pricing model changed a decade ago to Spotify’s monthly fee (currently $10.99) for access to millions of songs from around $10 for a downloaded album, $13 for a compact disc and $24 for a vinyl record. As a result, many would-be musicians cannot afford to pursue their art. That is why, as of 2022, the market for new music has been shrinking; the growth in the market is coming from old songs.
On Nov. 8, Spotify started its audiobook program in the United States in an attempt to replace its à la carte audiobook sales system. Under this new offering, Spotify premium subscribers get 15 hours of audiobooks a month for no additional cost. The company is already wooing publishers and authors with promises of new readers, much as it promised the music industry an expanded audience.
But the largest demographic group of its premium subscribers is the same as those who already listen to a lot of audiobooks (18-to-24-year-olds, followed by 25-to-34-year-olds). Inevitably some in this group will transition from paying for audiobooks to listening to a portion of those audiobooks as part of their existing Spotify subscription.
Even assuming Spotify attracts some net new readers, those gains will be offset by another company invention: While Spotify struck different deals with different publishing houses, in general, authors will be paid in full only if users finish the book. If someone listens to only a portion of the book, the author gets paid only for the amount of time the person listened. Given that many books are sold but never finished, many authors are likely to make significantly less under this model.
Spotify is also likely to put a thumb on the scale of which audiobooks find an audience. It is, seemingly, pushing people to old, out-of-copyright books like, bizarrely, works of Karl Marx. Or it’s pushing content from blockbuster artists with whom it has a relationship. Some listeners told me they were being pushed to the new Britney Spears autobiography, regardless of whether they were likely to be interested in Britney Spears. The middle class of book creators looks set to be even more squeezed, and revenue seems likely to be even more concentrated in the top 1 percent of authors.
Furthermore, the complexity of auditing Spotify’s reporting on who listened to how much of what and how that translates to royalties sounds like a fresh hell for writers and publishers alike.
The publishing industry has already been squeezed by the rise of Amazon and a broader industry consolidation that has narrowed success to a smaller field of winners, but the business has remained relatively intact because even Amazon still prices books by the title. If the industry moves to a Spotify pricing model for audiobooks on other platforms — like Audible — that, combined with the company algorithm, will damage publishers and authors. Authors: We can act collectively. I asked my publisher not to include my books in this new offering and encourage you to do the same. My publisher honored my request.
Spotify could take the long view, and not abuse its market power to extract more from the already paltry payments to writers. After all, it is in Spotify’s long-term interest to keep the quality of music and books high. However, if I were chief executive of Spotify, I too would be a lot more fixated on the company’s growth and profitability than enriching musicians and writers. Expecting anything different is not realistic. As for consumers — trying to pressure them to boycott a dominant service because of systemic problems is probably the least effective solution.
A tech platform should not be allowed to use its market power to steadily decrease payments to content creators, to sell user data and to price-gouge advertisers. Those are problems that go beyond Spotify. Amazon, Facebook, Google, TikTok, X and other tech platforms pose the same risks as well. Regulators should create rules that can distinguish between the positive and negative impacts these platforms create.
In the best of times it’s hard to make a living as a writer or a musician. The best of times these are not. Now more than ever, we need new music and ideas to remind us of our shared humanity. We need to feed — not starve — our artists.
The failure of America to care for the elderly is well documented and while we scream out for diversity, inclusion and acceptance, the one we lack is that of the Elderly. The number one and two’s of the GOP screed is the elimination of Social Security and Medicaid, the two single safety nets for Americans over 65 that continually face a perilous slide into elimination as American’s age in place or some other place where they face another perilous slide into poverty and abuse. Yes folks the concept of aging gracefully is another myth to place alongside the one of Meritocracy and Equality in the ever changing beliefs in American myths.
With that I have to laugh that the Presidential election is between two men well into their dotage, with Biden at 81 the oldest President and Candidate in history with Trump at age 77 considered the more “spry” of the two with less of the supposed infirm baggage that Biden is carrying. What.ever.
I have several articles from the New York Times that has been discussing the overall failures and cost of long term disability insurance to overall care and care giving for those in need who are working class and must be in dire poverty in which to qualify for any assistance via the Government programs designed to assist that were also much like those private policies well paid into via payroll taxes and we have since found were insufficient to meet demand. Just try to get SSDI and you will find yourself mired in a labyrinth of denials and boondoggles that make it near impossible in which to be eligible.
And while you try to remain home and reduce costs and in turn try to hire and maintain a standard of care, those in the business of providing care are often underpaid and poorly trained in which to do so. And with that we have another layer of issues that with our aging population need to be addressed. Hate those Migrants, well they may be necessary to wipe the shit from your ass sooner versus later. Starting with child care to elder care they are the ones willing to do the work. And it is not pretty. Add to this the reality of housing and the cost of living even those who are willing and able are finding it impossible to do the job and live themselves. We fuck anyone not rich in this country and we fuck them hard.
Rosalyn Carter died shortly after entering hospice care where her husband President Carter still resides as he slides further into dementia but event that too is another miasma of pain regarding affordability and access when it comes to this type of care as we have little understanding of that and what defines palliative care. And we are a country well behind many other countries with regards to providing dignified care for the aging.
And with that the caregivers aka the corporations and venture capitalists that have decided this is another investment have failed to make them an investment in caring for the sick and aged and with that have established patterns of neglect, abuse and fraud. And we pay for it all.
There is a lot to digest here when it comes to this subject and we fail to discuss it and what better an opportunity than two OLD WHITE MEN who have deep pockets and reserves into which to age gracefully versus the rest of America. Oh wait, Biden did. There are MANY single individuals without family and without a reservoir of funds that will be of course sucked dry as they age, be in place or in some type of elder housing. And even that too falls into the public funded ones that have hideous reputations or those where the check need to clear before you are even admitted. Or is that permitted to reside? And what about those whose rights are removed and in turn forced into a Home? Yes that 5150 Guardianship is not just Britney bitch.
I cannot stress enough how afraid I am as I age and with that worry about what it means to get old in a country that sees me as not invaluable but a siphon of resources so they will make sure they take all mine in which to compensate. I am aging angrily. But then again I am also a Woman and with that my value is already at zero. Funny how I fight to be left alone and ignored, it seems counter intuitive but sadly it is. I truly want nothing to do with anyone. It is just too much to see so much failure from one who did not believe in such and denial is not a becoming state in any state.
For many getting published is akin to winning the lottery as so few are. The average income for professional writers and authors stands at $73K and some change. The recent WGA strike showed the disparity between what the high end income generators earn, around 161K; note the lowest and the one most earn is around $39K with some change. And with that almost all Writers are considered self employed which means they are responsible for their own health insurance, any contributions to a retirement fund and any costs associated with their work. Which is why many Writers hold second gigs and the story below demonstrates that with those demands the demand and need to write often don’t co-exist well. And within that story is a second one that often is ignore – age. There is also a link to another writer whose first book was published at age 60 and now is been made into an Apple TV series, which I am sure was again another issue that many don’t understand when it comes to a Writer and their work being filmed. Michael Lewis may explain that better than most with that regard and how deals are made, broken and with that what the Writer’s Lottery is about.
It is why I now just write for myself. I cannot take any more abuse, rejection and frustration. I am not sure I can take even the most constructive of criticism as a life filled with it, I am done with it. But I enjoy it to a point and I will continue to blog when I feel it matters. So in other words, don’t quit your day job.
When a Book Deal Feels Like ‘Winning the Middle-Age Lottery’
Dann McDorman, the executive producer of “The Beat With Ari Melber,” gave up writing fiction in his 20s. Now, he’s publishing his first novel at age 47.
By Elizabeth A. Harris | The New York Times | Arts | Oct 24, 2023
For a few hours every morning, Dann McDorman sits on his windowed front porch in Brooklyn, a steaming cup of coffee by his side, a computer on his lap and maybe a space heater by his feet if it’s cold. There he sits, for an hour or two, writing novels.
And then he goes to work at Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan, where he is the executive producer of one of MSNBC’s most successful news shows, “The Beat With Ari Melber.”
McDorman’s life has taken an unexpected turn in middle age. Decades after he tucked away dreams of becoming an author, diving into a busy family life and a career in journalism, he tried two years ago to write a novel. It worked: A publisher bought it. And now, his first book, “West Heart Kill,” will be published this week. McDorman has since finished a draft of his second novel and started on a third.
“I never expected this,” he said, awed by his good fortune. “I’m playing with house money.”
While many novelists are published for the first time in midlife or later, McDorman’s experience is unusual because he doesn’t have years’ worth of manuscripts living in a drawer, said his editor, Jennifer Barth, an executive editor at Knopf. Bonnie Garmus, for example, published her outrageously successful novel “Lessons in Chemistry” when she was in her 60s, and while it was her first published work, she had nearly 100 rejections on a previous manuscript, which she was told — again and again — was too long.
McDorman, 47, dreamed of becoming a novelist as a young man. When he was starting out in journalism in his 20s, he tried to carve out a couple hours every day to write, working around the schedule of his terrible graveyard shifts. If he had to get to work at 1 a.m., he’d wake up at 10 p.m. and write for a couple of hours. Or he’d finish work at 4 p.m., take a nap and write. But it never went anywhere, and without ever really making a decision about it, he slowly gave fiction writing up.
Then in the summer of 2021, he jotted down some jacket copy for a mystery novel — a detective stares at a wall of plaques marking the tenure of presidents at an old money hunting club, and wonders why one of the plaques is missing. McDorman showed his wife what he’d written, and she encouraged him to give it a try. So off he went. He finished a first draft in six months.
“I never read a word of it,” his wife, Caroline Smith, said of his writing over the years. “Nothing until this book.”
“West Heart Kill” follows a group of people over a Fourth of July weekend in 1976 at a compound of 7,000 acres shared by a group of wealthy families in upstate New York. There is a detective and there are bodies, but from the beginning, the mystery breaks with convention as McDorman dissects the genre while simultaneously enacting it. (“Not all mysteries begin with the protagonist,” McDorman writes on the first page, “but this one does.”) McDorman said he set out to write a traditional mystery, but “it immediately went off the rails.”
His publisher, Knopf, has taken a significant bet on “West Heart Kill,” a debut novel by an untested author, with a first printing of 150,000 copies. Most books are lucky to sell 10,000 copies.
“There are some people who are offended that he hasn’t played by the rules,” Barth said. “Some readers hate that he’s broken the fourth wall or that he dares to take on these tropes and analyze them in a way that might be different. And that’s what I love about it. It’s anarchic and a little irreverent and he makes it his own.”
While he has not been honing his fiction skills for long, McDorman has been writing and editing for more than 20 years as a journalist, and doing it on deadline. That environment taught him that he couldn’t be precious about his routine, and he certainly couldn’t wait for the fairy of writerly inspiration to land on his shoulder.
“When I was younger, I thought every sentence had to be engraved on a stone tablet by the finger of God,” he said. “But no, you just go. Go, go, go, go, go.”
Barth said that his job and his experience in journalism also gives him a different view of the publishing side of the process.
“It does put things in perspective,” she said. “When you’re working on the type of news he is and you don’t get something you were hoping for — well, you know it’s not a war.”
At “The Beat With Ari Melber,” McDorman runs a team of about 15 journalists and, along with Melber, decides what stories to cover and how to approach them. He manages the live control room and lives at the mercy of the news, which has no regard for sleep schedules or weekends. He also makes grim decisions about where to freeze videos of a shooting or whether to include brutal images of war.
In his fiction, McDorman said, he dives into esoteric worlds and creates little fantasies where no real person gets hurt.
“The waking life and the dream life have nothing to do with each other,” McDorman said.
His colleagues have been very supportive, he said, but some have also been a bit mystified. Indeed, when he first starting telling co-workers he’d sold a novel, he felt “a little goofy” and shy about it.
“You don’t necessarily want your dentist to be a song and dance man,” he said. “Now, lots of people know, but I kept it under wraps for a while.”
None of this success was a given. McDorman’s father didn’t finish high school, enlisting in the Army instead. He was 20 when McDorman was born and his mother was 26. His father struggled with alcoholism, and McDorman was the first person on his father’s side of the family to attend college.
“For someone working in cable news for so long, he’s not nearly as cynical or hard bitten as you’d expect,” said Susie Banikarim, a longtime friend who co-hosts a podcast called “In Retrospect.” “He maintains a worldview that’s optimistic, partially because he has beaten so many odds himself. Even if he didn’t have this wildly successful turn of events, what he’s accomplished with his life given where he came from is really remarkable.”
When McDorman started telling friends about his book deal, which Banikarim described as “winning the middle-age lottery,” he noticed a curious reaction: Many of his friends started to cry — they would cry, then he would cry and they’d cry together. It happened a few times, he said, frequently enough that he started to wonder why.
“I think it’s because at this stage in our lives, this kind of thing doesn’t happen,” he said. “Your life is kind of set, you know. Everyone has jobs, they’ve got kids, they’re trying to figure out college or high school,” he continued. “There are a lot of closed doors, or at least it feels that way. So when something like this happens, it’s a reminder that maybe there are more doors open than you might think.”
I have said many times that writing is a solo profession with an audience of one. Some may get published, some may self publish (which includes Blogs and other Newsletters) and some may write as hobby and hope that more will come of it; regardless, FEW make real money and have real success.
In today’s market there are many obstacles and with that the largest is finding an Agent and then in turn a Publisher who will accept the manuscript. And that is when the real work begins, no, not the writing but all the rest that accompanies this project. And with that a book may find an audience and that is a double edged sword that have found Author’s canceled before they ever began. The push to write in an authentic voice in today’s view means you have a very small voice in which to make loud. It is stupid and defies any concept of imagination, creativity and of course connection. You should never write blind as in that you don’t write about what you don’t know in which to challenge legitimacy of the subject but you should be able to write characters and stories that have many other voices that you have heard and want to expand upon. It is a responsibility and duty to ensure that authenticity of a voice and that is where Beta readers can lend a hand if not a voice to ensure that; however, it is not to censure. To not permit one in which to try to add character, tone, and variety for a Writer is essential, and anyone attempting to do so is to say the least I believe professional jealousy. Good writers write and they do so with intent and obligation. Do I need to be an Opera Singer to write about a Mystery that takes place at an Opera? No. But I do need to familiarize myself with Opera, the language and the stage behind the profession in which to allow authenticity and accuracy. Then allow the reader to make the connection and in turn always challenge writers to do better, but again it does not mean abusing and demeaning them for them pushing boundaries. We need more of that, not less.
I had never heard of this project and here he is just across the river and again proving my point that no Author can write without another job to make the ends meet and the pencils there in which to press to the page. This is the real business of writing, the side hustle.
The side hustle that keeps a literary author’s career afloat
Tony Tulathimutte’s writing workshop, Crit, reels in eminent guest speakers and helps launch the careers of new authors
Isabel Slone The Guardian Wed 31 May 2023.00
The list of past guest speakers at Crit, the writing workshop that author Tony Tulathimutte runs out of his Brooklyn apartment, reads like a veritable who’s who of 21st-century literary greats. Jonathan Franzen, Hua Hsu and Carmen Maria Machado have all popped by as guests at the eight-week course. And while Tulathimutte describes himself as “literally just some guy” on his website, he’s won an O Henry award, and former students like Beth Morgan and Rax King have gone on to earn lucrative book deals and win highly prestigious prizes.
Tulathimutte, 39, founded Crit in 2017 after winning the Whiting award for his first novel, Private Citizens. While he had previously taught courses at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Massachusetts, and led workshops for indie companies like Sackett Street Writers, these gigs came and went. Running his own school seemed like a more sustainable way to make a living while maintaining his career as an author (Tulathimutte announced the sale of his second novel, Rejection, earlier this year). According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, writers and authors earn on average $69,510 a year, while an alarming Authors Guild survey showed that its members drew a median income of $6,080 in 2017, down 42% from 2009. “I figured if I could get enough applications coming in, running my own class would be more stable [than waiting for invitations],” Tulathimutte said.
Crit accepts nine students per session. They meet twice a week (Wednesdays and Fridays) over the course of two months. Spots cost $800, netting Tulathimutte approximately $30,000 per year. He supplements his income by accepting freelance writing assignments and visiting faculty positions. He is currently a thesis adviser at Brooklyn College.
In the six years since Crit’s inception, Tulathimutte has managed to build not just a successful side hustle, but a thriving community of writers. He hosts book swaps, parties, even a dedicated Slack channel where alumni can chitchat, form casual writing groups and perhaps land a connection to the agent or editor who will launch their career.
What was the impetus for founding Crit?
I just thought I could design the class I would have wanted to take. Most MFA programs function more like book clubs or discussion groups, where people are reading your work and giving feedback. I try to do formal pedagogy in the class, so I came up with 16 lectures breaking down different aspects of craft and process, such as “What is plot?” or “What is dialogue?” Students find the career-oriented class especially of interest because [practical matters] very often get neglected in the academy. It’s the last class of the course and it goes on indefinitely. My record is 11 hours and 45 minutes.
Why is it important for you to teach practical skills like money management?
Most working writers I know slap together a bunch of different sources of income. On the side I take visiting faculty gigs, pitch articles, freelance as a novel editor and writing consultant, and shoot author photos. Plus, there’s the very occasional windfall from book-related things like speaking engagements and selling foreign rights or film and TV options. I teach students how to cobble together different income streams to create something workable. Usually I talk about whatever grants, fellowships, residencies, contests, funded MFAs and other things I think are worth applying for, but I’ve also talked about Roth IRAs, eligible tax deductions from writing income, speakers bureaus, negotiating freelance rates, loan forgiveness programs and so on.
Does it feel harder to make a living as a writer now than it did in the past?
It’s definitely harder now, with so many media companies and publication venues folding and ever fewer places to publish book-related content. But if it was ever easy, I missed it. I’m pretty sure wages have not kept up with inflation since the 70s.
Crit students have landed 12 book deals to date. What about your classes gives them a competitive edge?
I don’t claim to be some kind of kingmaker, I just try to run as good of a writing workshop as I can
Tony Tulathimutte
I think that a lot of my students would have succeeded just fine eventually. I could point to some writers and say, “I introduced them to their agent,” to others, “I made X and Y notes on their manuscript,” but who knows if that increased or decreased their selling prospects. I don’t claim to be some kind of kingmaker, I just try to run as good of a writing workshop as I can.
Do you have plans to scale?
I have a friend who says all writing workshops are pyramid schemes. That’s why I’ve been steadfastly refusing to grow. I do not ever want to run the kind of writing workshop where I’m skimming off the top of somebody’s labor. I’ve had offers from people who wanted to teach a poetry class or a nonfiction class, but that would mean more unpaid labor for me, which doesn’t really make sense.skip past newsletter promotion
Instead, I’m growing the company in a completely different way, which is by encouraging my students to form groups and keep on meeting without me. Even if they don’t find a match in the group they attend Crit with, very often they’re able to find their way into a different writing group in the Slack channel I maintain or through the parties I throw. It’s not going to improve the business’s bottom line, but teaching writing is this really personal thing.
What kind of challenges have you faced nurturing the business over time?
It’s not any one particular thing, it’s just having to do everything yourself – marketing, recruiting, designing the curriculum, teaching, writing feedback and recommendations, holding meetings, booking guests, throwing events, keeping the books, editing query letters and fielding random requests for advice. Starting an LLC seemed complicated but I just hired a service to handle it for me for about a thousand bucks.
How have you managed to get the word out?
In the beginning, my only marketing strategy was to ask a couple of my more famous friends, like Jenny Zhang [and] Carmen Maria Machado, to retweet me. The slight bump in visibility was enough to get a handful of people signing up for the first few classes. After the first year, the balance shifted to 50/50 Twitter and word of mouth. Now it’s almost entirely word of mouth.
How do you manage to convince people like Jonathan Franzen to visit your class?
I email them. That’s it! Two-thirds of the guests are friends of mine or someone I would run into at a party. Jonathan Franzen was a massive get, obviously. He asked me to moderate one of his book launch events for Crossroads in 2021 and after the event I asked if he’d like to guest and he said yes. I just figure there’s no harm in asking and if I get a no, there’s nothing wrong with that.
One of the things you teach is ending writer’s block. What are your strategies?
You think I’m going to give that away free to the Guardian? You’ll have to sign up for the course.
I read an odd review about the movie, Woman Talking, and with that it compared it to the movie, Top Gun as the type of escapist film we should enjoy and appreciate for what they offer. Huh? I adored Top Gun and it was nostalgia that led me to see that film and to Val Kilmer acknowledged was something I was thrilled to see. But was it a great movie? I loved it and I loved Everything Anywhere as well. The end of that. But, I again go back to one of my favorite Actors who commented on Twitter about the film Women Talking with regards to failing to address Women of Color and their stories. I felt deep anger when I read that and then deep shame as he is an incredibly ignorant man who had no idea about the background or history of this story.
While the book which the film is based is Fiction it is truly what defines Creative Non Fiction as it was a real group of Mennonite Women in Bolivia where they lived and underwent this systemic abuse from where the Author took the story. She was a former Mennonite as well. Do you need to read that book in which to see the film? No but it is always interesting to see what a Director or Writer does to adapt an existing work, and this is not an exception and Ms. Polley did also win an Oscar for that work. But does this mean without that knowledge or history in place I assume you may believe it is the ultimate escapism as in the genre of Horror as who would really live like that? They do. The story is below. And do you need to be a Woman to understand it? A Mennonite? A Cult Member or formerly one? A Religious person? A Person of Color? Or just a Human Being? Everything everywhere is not always about you. Watch and learn. I don’t think Top Gun taught me anything about the Military but I can still just be entertained and sometimes I need to be informed.
The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia
For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night.
by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky
December 22, 2013, Vice
For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other explanation. No way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night. No way of explaining how another went to sleep clothed, only to wake up naked and covered by dirty fingerprints all over her body. No way to understand how another could dream of a man forcing himself onto her in a field—and then wake up the next morning with grass in her hair.
For Sara Guenter, the mystery was the rope. She would sometimes wake up in her bed with small pieces of it tied tightly to her wrists or ankles, the skin beneath an aching blue. Earlier this year, I visited Sara at her home, simple concrete painted to look like brick, in Manitoba Colony, Bolivia. Mennonites are similar to the Amish in their rejection of modernity and technology, and Manitoba Colony, like all ultraconservative Mennonite communities, is a collective attempt to retreat as far as possible from the nonbelieving world. A slight breeze of soy and sorghum came off the nearby fields as Sara told me how, in addition to the eerie rope, on those mornings after she’d been raped she would also wake to stained sheets, thunderous headaches, and paralyzing lethargy.
Her two daughters, 17 and 18 years old, squatted silently along a wall behind her and shot me fierce blue-eyed stares. The evil had penetrated the household, Sara said. Five years ago, her daughters also began waking up with dirty sheets and complaints of pain “down below.”
The family tried locking the door; some nights, Sara did everything she could to keep herself awake. On a few occasions, a loyal Bolivian worker from the neighboring city of Santa Cruz would stay the night to stand guard. But inevitably, when their one-story home—set back and isolated from the dirt road—was not being watched, the rapes continued. (Manitobans aren’t connected to the power grid, so at night the community is submerged in total darkness.) “It happened so many times, I lost count,” Sara said in her native Low German, the only language she speaks, like most women in the community.
In the beginning, the family had no idea that they weren’t the only ones being attacked, and so they kept it to themselves. Then Sara started telling her sisters. When rumors spread, “no one believed her,” said Peter Fehr, Sara’s neighbor at the time of the incidents. “We thought she was making it up to hide an affair.” The family’s pleas for help to the council of church ministers, the group of men who govern the 2,500-member colony, were fruitless—even as the tales multiplied. Throughout the community, people were waking to the same telltale morning signs: ripped pajamas, blood and semen on the bed, head-thumping stupor. Some women remembered brief moments of terror: For an instant they would wake to a man or men on top of them but couldn’t summon the strength to yell or fight back. Then, fade to black.
Some called it “wild female imagination.” Others said it was a plague from God. “We only knew that something strange was happening in the night,” Abraham Wall Enns, Manitoba Colony’s civic leader at the time, said. “But we didn’t know who was doing it, so how could we stop it?”
No one knew what to do, and so no one did anything at all. After a while, Sara just accepted those nights as a horrific fact of life. On the following mornings, her family would rise despite the head pain, strip the beds, and get on with their days.
Then, one night in June 2009, two men were caught trying to enter a neighbor’s home. The two ratted out a few friends, and, falling like a house of cards, a group of nine Manitoba men, ages 19 to 43, eventually confessed that they had been raping Colony families since 2005. To incapacitate their victims and any possible witnesses, the men used a spray created by a veterinarian from a neighboring Mennonite community that he had adapted from a chemical used to anesthetize cows. According to their initial confessions (which they later recanted), the rapists admitted to—sometimes in groups, sometimes alone—hiding outside bedroom windows at night, spraying the substance through the screens to drug entire families, and then crawling inside.
But it wasn’t until their trial, which took place almost two years later, in 2011, that the full scope of their crimes came to light. The transcripts read like a horror movie script: Victims ranged in age from three to 65 (the youngest had a broken hymen, purportedly from finger penetration). The girls and women were married, single, residents, visitors, the mentally infirm. Though it’s never discussed and was not part of the legal case, residents privately told me that men and boys were raped, too.
In August 2011, the veterinarian who’d supplied the anesthetic spray was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and the rapists were each sentenced to 25 years (five years shy of Bolivia’s maximum penalty). Officially, there were 130 victims—at least one person from more than half of all Manitoba Colony households. But not all those raped were included in the legal case, and it’s believed the true number of victims is much, much higher.
In the wake of the crimes, women were not offered therapy or counseling. There was little attempt to dig deeper into the incidents beyond the confessions. And in the years since the men were nabbed, there has never been a colony-wide discussion about the events. Rather, a code of silence descended following the guilty verdict.
“That’s all behind us now,” Civic Leader Wall told me on my recent trip there. “We’d rather forget than have it be at the forefront of our minds.” Aside from interactions with the occasional visiting journalist, no one talks about it anymore.
But over the course of a nine-month investigation, including an 11-day stay in Manitoba, I discovered that the crimes are far from over. In addition to lingering psychological trauma, there’s evidence of widespread and ongoing sexual abuse, including rampant molestation and incest. There’s also evidence that—despite the fact that the initial perpetrators are in jail—the rapes by drugging continue tohappen.
The demons, it turns out, are still out there.
For a closer look at the ongoing scandal in Manitoba Colony, check out our documentary,The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia.
At first glance, life for Manitoba’s residents seems an idyllic existence, enviable by new-age off-the-gridders: Families live off the land, solar panels light homes, and windmills power potable water wells. When one family suffers a death, the rest take turns cooking meals for the grieving. The richer families subsidize schoolhouse maintenance and teachers’ salaries. Mornings begin with homemade bread, marmalade, and milk still warm from the cows outside. At dusk, children play tag in the yard as their parents sway in rockers and watch the sunset.
Not all Mennonites live in sheltered worlds. There are 1.7 million of them in 83 different countries. From community to community, their relationships to the modern world vary considerably. Some eschew modernity entirely; others live in insular worlds but allow cars, TVs, cell phones, and varied dress. Many live among, and are virtually indistinguishable from, the rest of society
The religion was formed as an offshoot of the Protestant Reformation in 1520s Europe, by a Catholic priest named Menno Simons. Church leaders lashed out against Simons’s encouragement of adult baptism, pacifism, and his belief that only by leading a simple life could one get to heaven. Threatened by the new doctrine, the Protestant and Catholic churches began persecuting his followers throughout Central and Western Europe. Most Mennonites—as Simons’s followers came to be known—refused to fight because of their vow of nonviolence, and so they fled to Russia where they were given settlements to live unbothered by the rest of society.
But by the 1870s, persecution began in Russia, too, so the group next sought refuge in Canada, welcomed by a government in need of pioneer settlers. On arrival, many Mennonites began adopting modern dress, language, and other aspects of contemporary life. A small group, however, continued to believe that they would only be allowed into heaven if they lived in the ways of their forefathers, and they were appalled to see their fellow followers so easily seduced by the new world. This group, known as the “Old Colonists,” abandoned Canada in the 1920s, in part because the government demanded school lessons be taught in English, and hinted at standardizing a country-wide curriculum. (Even today, Old Colony schooling is taught in German, is strictly Bible-based, and ends at 13 for boys and 12 for girls.)
The Old Colonists migrated to Paraguay and Mexico, where there was ample farmland, little technology, and most importantly, promises by the respective national governments to let them live as they wished. But in the 1960s, when Mexico introduced its own educational reform that threatened to limit Mennonite autonomy, another migration began. Old Colonies subsequently sprouted up in more remote parts of the Americas, with a heavy concentration in Bolivia and Belize.
Today, there are about 350,000 Old Colonists worldwide, and Bolivia is home to more than 60,000 of them. Manitoba Colony, which was formed in 1991, looks like a relic of the old world dropped in the middle of the new: a pale-skinned, blue-eyed island of order amid the sea of chaos that is South America’s most impoverished and indigenous country. The colony thrives economically off its members’ supreme work ethic, ample fertile fields, and collective milk factory.
Manitoba has emerged as the ultimate safe haven for Old Colony true believers. Other colonies in Bolivia have loosened their codes, but Manitobans fervently reject cars, and all of their tractors have steel tires, as owning any mechanized vehicle with rubber tires is seen as a cardinal sin because it enables easy contact with the outside world. Men are forbidden from growing facial hair and don denim overalls except in church, where they wear slacks. Girls and women wear identically tied intricate braids, and you’d be hard pressed to find a dress with a length or sleeve that varies more than a few millimeters from the preordained design. For Manitoba residents, these aren’t arbitrary rules: They form the one path to salvation and colonists obey because, they believe, their souls depend on it.
As all Old Colonists desire, Manitoba has been left to its own devices. Except in the case of murder, the Bolivian government does not obligate community leaders to report any crime. Police have virtually no jurisdiction inside the community, nor do state or municipal authorities. The colonists maintain law and order through a de facto government of nine ministers and a ruling bishop, all of whom are elected for life. Beyond being mandated by the Bolivian government to ensure that all residents have a state identity card, Manitoba functions almost as its own sovereign nation.
I covered the Manitoba rape trial in 2011 for Time. Haunted ever since my first visits to the Colony, I wanted to know how the victims were faring. I also wondered if the heinous crimes perpetrated on its residents were an anomaly, or if they had exposed deeper cracks in the community. Is it possible that the insular world of the Old Colonies, rather than fostering peaceful coexistence unmoored by the trappings of modern society, is perhaps fomenting its own demise? I was compelled to go back and find out.
I arrived late on a moonlit Friday night in January. I was greeted by the warm smiles of Abraham and Margarita Wall Enns who were standing on the porch of their small home, set back from the road by a manicured and tree-lined driveway. Though notoriously reclusive, Old Colonists are kind to outsiders who don’t seem to threaten their way of life, and that’s how I’d arrived there: I had met Abraham, a freckled, six-foot-tall leader in the community, in 2011, and he said that I should stay with him and his family if I ever came back. Now I was here, hoping to see Old Colony life up close while interviewing residents about the rapes and their aftermath.
Inside the spotless house, Margarita showed me to my bedroom, next to the two other rooms in which her nine children were already sleeping. “We had this installed for security,” she said, grabbing a three-inch-thick steel door at the bottom of the stairs. There had apparently been some robberies (blamed on Bolivians) recently. “Sleep well,” she told me before bolting shut the door that separated me and her family from the rest of the world.
The next morning, I rose before dawn with the rest of the household. On any given day, the two eldest daughters—Liz, 22, and Gertrude, 18—spend the majority of their time washing dishes and clothes, preparing meals, milking the cows, and keeping a spotless home. I did my best not to screw up as I helped with the chores. I was exhausted by lunchtime.
Housework is outside the domain of Abraham and the six Wall boys; it’s possible they’ll go through their entire lives without ever clearing their own plates. They work the fields, but since this was the farming off-season, the older ones assembled tractor equipment their father imports from China, while the youngest pair climbed the barn posts and played with pet parakeets. Abraham allows the boys to kick around a soccer ball and practice Spanish by reading the occasional newspaper delivered weekly from Santa Cruz; however, any other organized activity, be it competitive sport, dance, or music, could jeopardize their eternal salvation and is strictly forbidden.
The Walls told me that luckily no one within their family fell victim to the rapists, but like everyone else in the community they knew all about it. One day, Liz agreed to accompany me on my interviews with rape victims in the community. A curious and quick young woman who learned Spanish from the family’s Bolivian cook, she was happy for an excuse to get out of the house and socialize.
We set out in a horse-drawn buggy along dirt roads. During the ride, Liz told me about her memories during the time of the scandal. As far as she knows, the perpetrators never entered her home. When I asked her if she was ever scared, she said no. “I didn’t believe it,” she told me. “So I only got scared once they confessed. Then it became real.”
When I asked Liz whether she thought the rapes could have been stopped earlier if these women had been taken seriously, she just wrinkled her eyebrows. Hadn’t the Colony given the rapists liberty to attack for four years, in part, because people had blamed the crimes on “wild female imagination”? She didn’t reply but seemed lost in thought as she steered us along the dirt road.
We pulled into the pebbled courtyard of a large house, and I went inside for an interview while Liz waited outside in the buggy. In a dark living room, I spoke with Helena Martens, a middle-aged mother of 11 children, and her husband. She sat on a couch and they kept the window shades drawn as we talked about what had happened to her nearly five years ago.
Sometime in 2008, Helena told me, she had heard a hissing sound as she settled into bed. She smelled a strange odor too, but after her husband made sure the gas canister in the kitchen wasn’t leaking, they fell asleep. She vividly recalls waking up in the middle of the night to “a man on top of me and others in the room, but I couldn’t raise my arms in defense.” She quickly slipped back into a dead sleep and then the next morning her head throbbed and her sheets were soiled.
The rapists attacked her several more times over the next few years. Helena suffered from various medical complications during this period, including an operation related to her uterus. (Sex and reproductive health is such a taboo for conservative Mennonites that most women are never taught the correct names for intimate body parts, which inhibited certain descriptions of what took place during the attacks and in their aftermath.) One morning she woke in such pain that “I thought I was going to die,” she said.
Helena, like the other rape victims in Manitoba, was never offered the chance to speak with a professional therapist, even though she said she would if given the opportunity. “Why would they need counseling if they weren’t even awake when it happened?” Manitoba Colony Bishop Johan Neurdorf, the community’s highest authority, had told a visitor back in 2009 after the perpetrators were caught.
Other victims I interviewed—those who awoke during the rapes, as well as those with no memory of the night—said that they would also have liked to speak with a therapist about their experiences but that doing so would be nearly impossible because there are no Low German–speaking sexual-trauma recovery experts in Bolivia.
All of the women I spoke with were unaware that the greater Mennonite world, particularly progressive groups in Canada and the US, had offered to send Low German counselors to Manitoba. Of course, this meant that they also had no clue that it was the men in the colony who had rejected these offers. After centuries of tension with their less-traditional brethren, Old Colonist leadership regularly block any attempts at direct contact with their members initiated by these groups. They saw the offer for psychological support from afar as yet another thinly veiled attempt to encourage the abandonment of their old ways.
The leadership’s refusal likely had other underlying reasons, too, such as not wanting these women’s emotional trauma to stir things up or draw too much attention to the community. I had already been told that a woman’s role in an Old Colony was to obey and submit to her husband’s command. A local minister explained to me that girls are schooled a year less than boys because females have no need to learn math or bookkeeping, which is taught during the extra boys-only term. Women can neither be ministers nor vote to elect them. They also can’t legally represent themselves, as the rape case made painfully apparent. Even the plaintiffs in the trial were five men—a selected group of victims’ husbands or fathers—rather than the women themselves.
But while it was tempting to accept the black-and-white gender roles in Manitoba, my visit also revealed shades of gray. I saw men and women share decision-making in their homes. At extended family gatherings on Sundays, the women-only kitchens felt full with big personalities and loud laughter, while men sat solemnly outside discussing the drought. And I spent long afternoons with confident and engaged young women such as Liz and her friends, who, like their peers anywhere, see each other when they can to vent about the annoying things their parents do and get updates on who broke whose heart last week.
When it came to the rapes, these times of strong female bonding—and the safe space provided by such a segregated daily routine—offered comfort. Victims told me they leaned on their sisters or cousins, especially as they tried to adjust back to regular life in the wake of the trial.
Those under the age of 18 named in the lawsuit were brought in for psychological assessment as mandated by Bolivian law, and court documents note that every one of these young girls showed signs of posttraumatic stress and was recommended for long-term counseling—but not one has received any form of therapy since their evaluations. Unlike adult women who found at least some solace with their sisters or cousins, many young girls may not have even had a chance to speak with anyone about their experiences after their government-mandated assessments.
In Helena’s living room, she told me how her daughter was also raped, but the two have never spoken about it, and the girl, now 18, doesn’t even know that her mom is also a rape survivor. In Old Colonies, rapes bring shame upon the victim; survivors are stained, and throughout the community other parents of the youngest victims told me that it was all better left unspoken.
“She was too young” to talk about it, the father of another victim, who was 11 when she was raped, told me. He and his wife never explained to the girl why she woke with pain one morning, bleeding so much she had to be taken to the hospital. She was whisked through subsequent medical visits with nurses who didn’t speak her language and was never once told that she had been raped. “It was better she just not know,” her father said.
All the victims I interviewed said the rapes crossed their minds almost daily. In addition to confiding in friends, they have coped by falling back on faith. Helena, for example—though her clutched arms and pained swaying seemed to belie it—told me she’d found peace and insisted, “I have forgiven the men who raped me.”
She wasn’t alone. I heard the same thing from victims, parents, sisters, brothers. Some even said that if the convicted rapists would only admit their crimes—as they did initially—and ask penance from God, the colony would request that the judge dismiss their sentences.
I was perplexed. How could there be unanimous acceptance of such flagrant and premeditated crimes?
It wasn’t until I spoke with Minister Juan Fehr, dressed as all ministers in the community do, entirely in black with high black boots, that I understood. “God chooses His people with tests of fire,” he told me. “In order to go to heaven you must forgive those who have wronged you.” The minister said that he trusts that most of the victims came to forgiveness on their own. But if one woman didn’t want to forgive, he said, she would have been visited by Bishop Neurdorf, Manitoba’s highest authority, and “he would have simply explained to her that if she didn’t forgive, then God wouldn’t forgive her.”
One of the youngest victims to speak with prosecutors was as young as 11 during the time of the rapes. Most of the victims have had almost no psychological counseling and, according to experts, are probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Manitoba’s leaders encourage residents to forgive incest, too. It’s a lesson that Agnes Klassen learned in a painful way. On a muggy Tuesday, the mother of two met me outside her two-room house off a highway in eastern Bolivia, approximately 40 miles from her former home in Manitoba Colony that she left in 2009. She wore her hair in a ponytail and was sweating in jeans and a T-shirt.
I wasn’t there to talk with her about the rapes, but once inside her house, the subject inevitably came up. “One morning I woke up with headaches and there was dirt in our bed,” she said, referring to when she lived in Manitoba, as if remembering an item she had left off a shopping list. She had never thought much about that morning since and wasn’t included in the lawsuit because she saw no reason to come forward after the perpetrators were nabbed.
Instead, I had come to talk to Agnes about other painful parts of her past—namely incest—the origins of which aren’t even clear. “They kind of mesh together,” she said of her earliest childhood memories, which include being fondled by several of her eight older brothers. “I don’t know when [the incest] started.”
One of 15 children, growing up in the Old Colony of Riva Palacios (her family moved to neighboring Manitoba Colony when she was eight), Agnes said the abuse would happen in the barn, in the fields, or in the siblings’ shared bedroom. She didn’t realize it was inappropriate behavior until the age of ten, when she was given a stern beating after her father found her brother fondling her. “My mother could never find the words to tell me that I was being wronged or that it was not my fault,” she recalled.
After that, the molestation continued but Agnes was too scared to go to anyone for help. When she was 13 and one of her brothers tried to rape her, Agnes warily notified her mom. She wasn’t beaten this time, and for a while her mom did her best to keep the two apart. But the brother eventually found her alone and raped her.
The sibling assaults became increasingly commonplace, but there was nowhere for Agnes to turn. Old Colonies have no police force. Ministers deal with wrongdoing directly but because youth are not technically members of the church until they are baptized (often in their early 20s), bad behavior is handled inside the home.
Seeking help outside the colony would have never entered Agnes’s mind: From her first day on earth, she, like all Old Colony children, was taught that the outside world holds evil. And even if someone managed to reach out, there is virtually no way for a child or woman to contact or communicate with the surrounding non–Low German world.
“I just learned to live with it,” Agnes said haltingly. She apologized for her stops and starts, for her tears. It was the first time she had ever fully told her story. She said the incest stopped when boys began courting Agnes, and she filed it away in her mind as a thing of the past.
But when she got married, moved into her own house in Manitoba, and gave birth to two daughters, family members began molesting her children during visits. “It was starting to happen to them, too,” she told me, her eyes following the movements of her two young platinum-blond girls darting past the windows as they played outside. One day, her eldest daughter, not yet four at the time, told Agnes that the girls’ grandpa had asked her to put her hands down his pants. Agnes said that her father never molested her or her sisters, but that he allegedly routinely abused his grandchildren until Agnes fled Manitoba with her daughters (and still allegedly abuses her nieces, who remain in the Colony). Another day, she caught her nephew fondling her youngest daughter. “It happens all the time,” she said. “It’s not just my family.”
Indeed, for a long time now there has been a muffled yet heated discussion in the international Mennonite community about whether Old Colonies have a rampant incest problem. Some defend the Old Colonists, insisting that sexual abuse happens everywhere and that its occurrence in places like Manitoba only proves that any society, no matter how upright, is susceptible to social ills.
But others, like Erna Friessen, a Canadian-Mennonite woman who introduced me to Agnes, insist, “The scope of sexual violence within Old Colonies is really huge.” Erna and her husband helped found Casa Mariposa (Butterfly House), a shelter for abused Old Colony women and girls. Located near the town of Pailon in the heart of Bolivian Old Colony territory, they have a continuous influx of Low German–speaking missionaries ready to help, but the number of women who have made it there are few. Aside from the challenges of making women aware of this space and convincing them that it’s in their best interest to seek help, Erna told me that “coming to Casa Mariposa often means leaving their families and the only world they’ve ever known.”
While Erna admits that exact figures are impossible to calculate due to the insular nature of these communities, she is adamant that rates of sexual abuse are higher in the Old Colonies than in the US, for example, where one in four women will be sexually abused before the age of 18. Erna’s whole life has been among these groups—she was born on a Mennonite Colony in Paraguay, raised in Canada, and has spent the past eight years in Bolivia. Of all the Old Colony women she has met over the years, she says, “more have been victims of abuse than not.” She considers the Colonies “a breeding ground for sexual abuse,” in part because most Old Colony women grow up believing they must accept it. “The first step is always to get them to recognize that they have been wronged. It happened to them, it happened to their mom and their grandmother, so they’ve always been told [to] just deal with it.”
Others who work on the issue of abuse in the Old Colonies are hesitant to pinpoint incidence rates, but say that the way abuse is experienced within an Old Colony makes it a more acute problem than in other places in the world. “These girls or women have no way out,” said Eve Isaak, a mental health clinician and addictions and bereavement counselor who caters to Old Colony Mennonite communities in Canada, US, Bolivia, and Mexico. “In any other society, by elementary school a child knows that if they are being abused they can, at least in theory, go to the police or a teacher or some other authority. But who can these girls go to?”
Though it wasn’t by design, Old Colony churches have become the de facto state. “Old Colonists’ migration can be understood not just as a movement away from society’s ills, but also toward countries that allow the Colonists to live as they choose,” said Helmut Isaak, Eve’s husband who is a pastor and Anabaptist history and theology professor at CEMTA, a seminary in Asuncion, Paraguay. He explains that before Old Colonists migrate to a new country, they send delegations to negotiate terms with the governments to allow them virtual autonomy, particularly in the area of religious law enforcement.
In fact, the serial rapes stand as one of the only times that a Bolivian Old Colony has sought outside intervention regarding an internal matter. Manitoba residents told me that they handed the gang over to the cops in 2009 because victims’ husbands and fathers were so enraged, it’s likely the accused would have been lynched. (One man who was believed to be involved and caught on a neighboring colony, was lynched and later died from his wounds.)
The Old Colony leaders I spoke with denied that their communities have an ongoing sexual abuse problem and insisted that incidents are dealt with internally when they arise. “[Incest] almost never happens here,” Minister Jacob Fehr told me one evening as we chatted on his porch at dusk. He said that in his 19 years as a minister, Manitoba had only one case of incestuous rape (father to daughter). Another minister denied that even this episode had happened.
“They forgive a ton of gross stuff that happens in families all the time,” said Abraham Peters, father of the youngest convicted rapist, Abraham Peters Dyck, who is currently in Palmasola Prison, just outside Santa Cruz. “Brothers with sisters, fathers with daughters.” He told me that he believes his son and the entire gang were framed to cover up widespread incest in Manitoba Colony. Abraham senior still lives in Manitoba; he considered leaving in the period immediately following his son’s arrest because of hostility from the rest of the community. But uprooting his family of 12 proved too difficult, so he stayed put and says that over the years and despite his perspective on his son’s incarceration, he has been accepted back into the fold of Colony life.
Agnes thinks the two crimes are flipsides of the same coin. “The rapes, the abuse, it’s all intertwined,” she said. “What made the rapes different is that they didn’t come from within the family and that’s why the Ministers took the actions they did.”
Of course, leaders do attempt to correct bad behavior. Take the case of Agnes’s father: At some point, his fondling of his granddaughters was called out by church leaders. As procedure dictates, he went before the ministers and bishop, who asked him to confess. He did, and was “excommunicated,” or temporarily expelled from the church for a week, after which he was offered a chance to return based on a promise that he would never do it again.
“Of course it continued after that,” Agnes said of her father. “He just learned to hide it better.” She told me she doesn’t have faith “in anyone who after one week says they have turned their life around,” before adding, “I have no faith in a system that permits that.”
Younger perpetrators have it even easier; according to Agnes, the brother who raped her admitted his sins when he was baptized and was immediately expunged in the eyes of God. He now lives in the neighboring Old Colony, Riva Palacios, with young daughters of his own.
Once an abuser has been excommunicated and readmitted, church leadership assumes the matter has been put to rest. If an abuser flagrantly continues his behavior and refuses to repent, he is once again excommunicated and this time permanently shunned. Leaders instruct the rest of the colony to isolate the family; the general store will refuse to sell to anyone in the household, kids will be banned from school. Eventually the family has no choice but to leave. This, of course, also means that the victims leave with their abusers.
Yet it wasn’t sexual abuse that finally prompted Agnes and her family to abandon Manitoba, which they did in 2009. Instead, her husband had bought a motorcycle, after which he was excommunicated and the family shunned. When the couple’s toddler drowned to death in a cow trough, the community leaders wouldn’t even let her husband attend his own son’s funeral. That’s when they left Manitoba for good. In the end, driving a motorcycle was apparently a larger affront to the Colony’s leadership than anything Agnes, her daughters, or the rest of the women in the community had suffered.
Keeping a colony like Manitoba together is getting harder and harder in modern times. Agnes and her family aren’t the only ones who’ve fled. In fact, the nearby city of Santa Cruz is populated by Mennonite families who have become fed up with the Old Colony way of life—and the situation may be reaching a crisis point.
“We no longer want to be a part of this,” a young father named Johan Weiber told me one day when I visited him at his home in Manitoba. Johan and his family were one of 13 others still living in the colony but who had officially left the Old Colony’s church. For months, they’d been saying they wanted to leave—they even owned vehicles—but Manitoba Colony leaders refused to compensate them for the land they wanted to abandon. Now, instead, they’d decided to build their own dissident church inside Manitoba.
“We are [leaving the Old Colony church and starting our own] because we have read the truth,” Johan said. By “truth,” he meant the Bible. “They tell us not to read the Bible because if we do, we realize things like, in no place does it say a women’s hair has to be braided like that,” he told me, leaning on his white pickup truck as his ponytailed daughter played in the yard.
Curious about the specifics of religious instruction at Manitoba, one Sunday I attended a service at one of the colony’s three nondescript brick churches. I soon realized that the solemn 90-minute ceremony is not a priority. Heads of households might go two or three times a month, but many go even less frequently.
For children, the core school curriculum is based on selected Bible readings, but aside from a silent 20-second prayer before and after meals, there is no specified time or requirement for prayer or Bible studies in the adult Old Colony world.
“Many [people have] lost their biblical literacy,” said Helmut Isaak, the Mennonite historian. He explained that over time, as Mennonites stopped having to constantly defend their faith against persecutors, other more practical concerns took precedent. “In order to survive, they needed to spend their time working.”
This has created a crucial power disparity: The small cadre of church leaders have became the sole interpreters of the Bible on Old Colonies, and because the Bible is seen as the law, leaders use this control over the scripture to instill order and obedience.
Ministers deny this charge: “We encourage all our members to know what is written in the holy book,” Minister Jacob Fehr told me one evening. But residents admit in quiet that Bible-study classes are discouraged and Bibles are written in High German, a language that most adults barely remember after their limited schooling, while Low German versions are sometimes banned. On some Old Colonies, members face excommunication for delving too deeply into the scripture.
This is why Johan Weiber was such a threatening presence—he terrified the leadership and community at large. He also reminded them of the troubled past of the Old Colonies. “This is exactly what happened in Mexico and that’s why we came [to Bolivia],” said Peter Knelsen, a 60-year-old Manitoba resident who arrived from Mexico as a teenager with his parents. It wasn’t just the Mexican government that was threatening Old Colonies with reform, but also an evangelical movement from within that sought to “change our way of life,” said Peter, who explained that in his colony in Mexico dissenters tried to build their own church, too.
For more than 40 years, Bolivian Old Colonists had escaped such an internal rift. But with Johan Weiber’s attempt to build his own church—he also wanted land in Manitoba on which to farm and build his own independent school—Peter and others spoke of an impending “apocalypse.” Tensions nearly exploded in June, after my visit, when Johan’s group actually broke ground on their church. Soon after construction commenced, over 100 Manitoba men descended on the site and took it apart, piece-by-piece. “I think it’s going to be really hard to maintain the colony intact,” Peter told me.
If this rift continues to widen and the crisis comes to a head, Manitobans already know what to do. Centuries ago, the original Mennonites in Europe, faced with persecution, had a choice: fight or flight. Given their vow of pacifism, they fled—and they have been doing so ever since.
Manitoba leaders say they hope it doesn’t come to that. In part, this is probably because Bolivia is one of the last countries left that will let them live on their own terms. So for now, Minister Jacob Fehr says he prays. “We just want [Weiber’s group] to leave the colony,” he said. “We just want to be left alone.”
On my last day in Manitoba, I got a shock.
“You know that it’s still happening, right?” a woman said to me, as we drank ice water alongside her home. There were no men around. I hoped something was lost in translation, but my Low German translator assured me it wasn’t. “The rapes with the spray—they are still going on,” she said.
I peppered her with questions: Had it happened to her? Did she know who was doing it? Did everyone know it was going on?
No, she said, they hadn’t returned to her house, but to a cousin’s—recently. She said she had a good guess about who was doing it but wouldn’t give me any names. And she believed that, yes, most people in Manitoba Colony knew that the imprisonment of the original rapists hadn’t put an end to the serial crimes.
As if in a strange time warp, after dozens of interviews with people telling me everything was fine now, I didn’t know if this was gossip, rumor, lies, or—worse—the truth. I spent the rest of the day frantically trying to get confirmation. I revisited many families who I had previously interviewed, and the majority admitted, a bit sheepishly, that yes, they had heard the rumors and that, yes, they assumed they were probably true.
“It’s definitely not as frequent,” said one young man later that day whose wife had been raped during the first series of incidents before 2009. “[The rapists] are being much more careful than before, but it still goes on.” He told me he had his suspicions about the perpetrators’ identities as well, but didn’t want to give any more details.
On a subsequent reporting trip by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky, the photographer for this article, five people went on record—including three Manitobans as well as a local prosecutor and a journalist—and confirmed that they had heard the rapes are continuing.
Those I spoke with said they have no way to stop the alleged attacks. There is still no police force in the area, and there never will be any proactive element or investigatory force that can look into accusations of crimes. Anyone is free in the colonies to report somebody else to the Ministers, but crimes are addressed on the honor system: If a perpetrator is not ready to admit his sins, the question is whether the victim or accuser will be believed… and women in Manitoba already know how that goes.
The only defense, residents told me, is to install better locks or bars on the windows, or big steel doors like the one I slept behind each night during my trip. “We can’t put in streetlights or video cameras,” the husband of a victim of the rapes told me—two technologies not allowed. For it to stop, they believe they must, as before, catch someone in the act. “So we will just have to wait,” he said.
That last day, before leaving Manitoba, I returned to visit Sara, the woman who woke up with rope around her wrists nearly five years ago. She said she’d also heard the rumors of ongoing rapes, and breathed a heavy sigh. She and her family had moved to a new house after the gang of nine was captured in 2009. The old house held too many demon-filled memories. She said she felt badly if others were now living her past horrors, but she didn’t know what could be done. After all, her time on earth, like that of all her fellow Mennonites, was meant for suffering. Before I left, she offered what she considered words of solace: “Maybe this is God’s plan.
In an effort to cancel culture as in Literature, History, Art, Music and any expression of diverse thought or ideas comes the concept of AI and ChatGPT, where you can create a world of your own making or that of the Computer. Kevin Roose in the New York Times tried Microsoft’s Open AI and to say the exchange is creepy is insufficient. But for likely man men she is a dream come true. And the Washington Post also tried the service and they felt it was much like many of those who post on the comment page – angry. I can see this working out well.
The issues about where I see writing going with the advances of this ChatGPT concerns me. It is still highly structured and with that a quality Reader/Editor/Publisher can see the technical aspects of it easily but with that most people are not that skilled and it will become the new method in which to construct newsletters and faux blogs that will be perceived as legitimate in both fact and source. Again we have a massive problem distinguishing fact from opinion and with that I have complained that most of the Washington Post is now in fact much like Fox, Opinion based new disguised as fact. The argument over the concept of journalism as objective has been raised of late and the idea of it being actually debated as something worth relinquishing concerns me as more and more Billionaires like Bezos who owns the Post turning it into his personal form of propaganda. The LA Times has had a struggle to survive with their changes but I am reading it without a past history so I find the paper very readable. Does it cover local news as well as it once did? Likely no as the Post has cut much of that staff as well. Eliminating the weekly magazine that included local art reviews and other more social news. We have of course Tik Tok, hot mess. Facebook equally so and Twitter certainly will or has due to Musk.
This week as the Tech layoffs continue what has been largely the Fact Checking sides of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have been decimated and with a skeleton crew of one to two left, what was largely already a mess of confusion is now largely non-existent. As we move into election season, the war in the Ukraine and of course more disasters such as Turkey and Syria, Afghanistan and the rest of the world and political upheavals this will not be handled well at all by those who rely on these sites as sources of both communication and information. And it is expected to get worse.
But what about actual books, magazines, online journals and those that still remain in print? Will they soon fall the way of the dust bin? I have no clue as more close and or are consolidated there is another one coming round the pike. Gawker’s reinvention found it closing down again by choice as it simply failed to have the heat as it once did. We are seeing changes in Vice and others as they move forward into a new landscape that seems to rely less on actual boots on the ground. So writing as a profession is deeply in trouble. And on that note let’s talk about dead Authors. Already living ones are finding books being removed off of reading lists and out of Libraries. And there are those of the past being pushed aside for the language and tone of the books by those who feel that the use of language and issues of Race are no longer relevant. And here comes Roald Dahl facing a new editor, social mores.
I wrote about Dahl and his relationship with his wife with regards to a book that is coming out, so I was not surprised that someone decided to re-examine his work on the revelation about his own Misogyny, etc. He is not the first nor the last. The concept of books being used as a political football is not new and the McCarthy Hearings targeted much of the same, ask Dalton Trumbo about that.
I cannot wait to read ChatAI’s biography!
Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive
Augustus Gloop now ‘enormous’ instead of ‘fat’, Mrs Twit no longer ‘ugly’ and Oompa Loompas are gender neutral
Hayden Vernon Sat 18 Feb 2023 The Guardian
Roald Dahl’s children’s books are being rewritten to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher Puffin.
Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.
Edits have been made to descriptions of characters’ physical appearances. The word “fat” has been cut from every new edition of relevant books, while the word “ugly” has also been culled, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now described as “enormous”. In The Twits, Mrs Twit is no longer “ugly and beastly” but just “beastly”.
Hundreds of changes were made to the original text – and some passages not written by Dahl have been added. But the Roald Dahl Story Company said “it’s not unusual to review the language” during a new print run and any changes were “small and carefully considered”.
In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
In previous editions of James and the Giant Peach, the Centipede sings: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.”
Both verses have been removed, and in their place are the rhymes: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.”
References to “female” characters have disappeared. Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a “most formidable female”, is now a “most formidable woman”.
Gender-neutral terms have been added in places – where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas were “small men”, they are now “small people”. The Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach have become Cloud-People.
Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company made the changes in conjunction with Inclusive Minds, which its spokesperson describes as “a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature”.
Alexandra Strick, a co-founder of Inclusive Minds, said they “aim to ensure authentic representation, by working closely with the book world and with those who have lived experience of any facet of diversity”.
A notice from the publisher sits at the bottom of the copyright page of the latest editions of Dahl’s books: “The wonderful words of Roald Dahl can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to the most marvellous characters. This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.”
A spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Story Company said: “When publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details including a book’s cover and page layout. Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text. Any changes made have been small and carefully considered.”
I did the free write the other day with Gotham’s Writers and the prompts were “What the world needs now” and a “Charming Villain”; well I think as I took the prompt and tuned off. I had other things to do and it was a nice afternoon and I did not feel like writing at that point. What writer has not felt that same pull in another direction?
I had my draft of the other piece completed in the time allowed and was later planning to return to mash them together as I like to do. There is something that the world needs now is a Charming Villain. But that would be who? And why is it a male archetype that seems to fit that definition? Writers are almost always men when it comes to that description it seems. And without even thinking I can go down a barrel list of men, like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Ernest Hemingway among those who I feel fit a style and type of writer who was always cutting the edges not off of sammies, well Truman might, but were not afraid to write the truth and speak about the pain of being. Ah the pain of being. I just finished Dirtbag, Massachusetts, by Issac Fitzgerald. Less a memoir and more a compilation of essays about his aging in place. And he fits the type as I suspect in real life he would call himself a charming villain as he wrote about in insatiable need to be polite at all costs and when complimented on it he resisted responding, “Thanks it was beaten into me.”
He ends the book reflections on growing up poor and tossed between dueling parents in their own pursuit of pain that is a common theme among Memoirs. Let’s face it we can thank Mary Karr and The Liars Club for setting that as the precedent for how stories of one’s families must be told. The concept of Creative Nonfiction has been the trend for years, the personal essay another and Fitzgerald combines those techniques quite well in the book. It is exactly almost the same word count and depth that Mary did so well in her book years ago. That it is a White Male who is of course Catholic, from perhaps the state that most residents are often called Massholes doesn’t hurt and the poverty to privilege is not lost. I did love the detour to San Francisco, the Biker years and the sideline into pornography that led him back finally to the East Coast after reconnecting with family thanks to a climb to the top of Kilimanjaro. Seriously Lee Gutkind closed Creative Nonfiction when I have a book right here that is a perfect prototype of it. He alludes to drinking, drugs and even White Supremacy has a guest appearance. What Barbershops does he go to? A lot is packed into under 250 pages.
But how, exactly, is the truth in nonfiction determined? How much of what is being told should be true? And who is the final arbiter of truth . . . ? The line between fiction and nonfiction is often debated, but is there a single dividing point or an all-encompassing truth a writer is supposed to tell?—LEE GUTKIND
It is why I decided to switch to fiction. There is a market and with that a lot more work entailed than basically writing and editing my journals. From those stories there is the ability to exaggerate, merge characters. places and condense a story into the whole. We all have stories to tell but maybe our personal ones are not that interesting and yet we all feel and think they are. And yes there is always a mix of good and bad in all memoirs, and when I review the Facebook Author/Writers groups, they usually fall into three camps – Fantasy/Romance/Memoir. I have not actually seen anyone trying to write the next To Kill a Mockingbird, a writer who wrote one book and never picked up a pen again; 50 years later it is a story still worth reading. If I could write that I would. But I am not that writer. What kind of writer? Non fiction that much is clear, but in fact I am an opinion writer. I may have been a great Journalist as I like to dig into a story and find facts and know truths but there is a place there for objectivity and with that could I be so? And I realized yes that is exactly who I am, I see both sides and that is because I am a Libra and always seeking balance. So I can enjoy a book like Dirtbag but see through it as largely bullshit compressed into a story about a man who lived life. Had some bad times, some good times and even better ones but seriously at one point he seemed to pack a lot in a short period, was a Bartender/Bouncer at a Biker bar in San Francisco, then was working overseas for a religious organization in Thailand and then was into the porn arena. Somewhere in there became a Writer. All of this packed into 250 pages? Are you fucking kidding me? I am a dodger and drifter but I can actually point to times in my life where I was for years in one place at one time. And how the fuck do you just go climb Kilimanjaro with your sister and 70 y/o former alcoholic abusive dad; How much does that cost? And why? Were you a family who once loved to hike? It appears that his sister was raised by another woman not his Mother as daddy had a dick problem. And there is another half brother in there as well. All while again rabble rousing as a punk, then going to an elite boarding school. And this was before hitting 18. There is a lot packed into this missive. Why was it published? I suspect as a story of a White Man who may or may not have a drinking problem and been in porn? Unclear as to what the point or purpose is, as he is not a lush or recovered drunk, he is Irish and they like the booze, but otherwise I have no clue. Why it was a best seller? Well it had a lot of shit packed into it and it did have a good review or two. He writes well and is quite reflective; however, the last biography book I read by a White Man was Angela’s Ashes. Go figure. That was a bigger book. And it covered less time frame but that was then this is now. We like our stories shorter I guess. Did I mention that the Proud Boys are in this? Again word count matters folks and this may also be why as it costs less to produce. So the advice here is edit down but cram as much in as possible.
And then this weekend I read two articles regarding writers. The first was NY Times Magazine interview with Walter Mosley, a great Black author who is known primarily for The Devil in the Blue Dress. But he is a much more accomplished writer and has written in many genres. I would say his contemporary is Colson Whitehead who after writing The Underground Railroad was told to write more “like that” when he wanted to branch into other genres. This is what we do to writers, write the same book just different. I have written about the contretemps over American Dirt and that was cancel culture on overdrive. Writers want to write what the feel and hear in their head and the readers who find them will read them with their voices in their head and either like it or not and it may or may not decide if they will do so again. Will I read another book by Issac Fitzgerald? Probably as long as it is not a biography as he is a good writer and frankly an easy read. Mosley claims Americans are getting dumber. I agree. In that interview he makes comments about Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth that I loved and agreed. I feel that way about Joan Didion . Her essays and books were to me always curated “cool” and I not cool, could never identify nor aspire to. Sorry I cannot relate to any of it. And that is what we want to do as writers, find readers who connect even when we are not perfect and not cool. That is our audience and we are as diverse as they are.
The next article I read was about Literary Unions. The book, Lives of Wives, is being released, ironically on Valentines Day, about writers and the interesting successful women they married. The most fascinating story was the one about Roald Dahl who wrote the famous Matlida that continues to live on in film and musicals and film of the musical. Or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a book which is actually quite violent in both tone and nature which was the kind of books Dahl really wanted to write but was not as successful. The irony that the same figure who composed this was an Anti Semite, Misogynist and a Brute is not just irony but in this time of the world would be cancelled. Hypocrisy not lost again, look to Didion who was a conservative often believed to be a liberal. Again coolness masks a myriad of truths. The woman voted for Goldwater! And writers are supposed to be truthful, so read those essays again and see the criticism of those not like her. Which brings me to Dahl. That he, this prodigious writer of Children’s books, was in real life was an abusive boor is surprising as we have an image of those “type” of writers. But what the new book reveals is a truth that during his marriage to the great actress Patricia Neal he was abusive and mistreated her while recovering from a stroke. Now her autobiography praises him but again why would she not? There is always a dichotomy when it comes to telling the truth. It will always be multi sided and so hence the idea of creative non fiction. We can never know what truly happens between any couple in an intimate relationship and with that this book discusses many other marriages of Writers to Women who were famous in their own right and in turn abused or demoralized them; There is no mention of some of the more infamous characters of the day such as Arthur Miller with Marilyn Monroe or Claire Bloom who was married to Phillip Roth, another angry misogynist. Claire did not spare him in her Biography and in true Roth form he chose fiction to debase and degrade her. It is the standard writers room of pain and with that be it fiction or non, we color the story for our audience but also to save face and ultimately sell books. But the writers club room is full of many women, and men, who after years of failed romances and personal struggles killed themselves while leaving many of us searching their living works for clues. They include Virginia Woof, Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Charlotte Perkins Gilman among others. There are many writers rooms of one’s own covered in yellow wallpaper that is for sure.
As readers we will always disagree and have our own take on a work of a writer and what that work means to us. Die hards of Roth I recall last year were in arms when a new work was withdrawn due to the Author’s own issues regarding sexual abuse. My first thought, “It takes one to know one.” I do find fandom to be a disturbing element to all things as it seems to lead to abuse, violence and aggression. That one does not like something you do means NOTHING. Move on and let it go. I often equate this with Swifties whose irate hysteria over Ticketmaster led to Congressional hearings. Any concert goes has known for years about their fees and charges. Ask Eddie Vedder about that one.
I can always spot an angry white man. They are usually of means or not. They are white. They are Straight, they are Gay, they are Conservative, they are Liberal. They are Religious, they are Atheists. They are Professional or they are Blue Collar. They are angry, they are white. And with that they bring that into their relationships both personal and professional. That anger is tied to the past, to the present and to the future. They never had enough, never have enough, worry that it will be taken from them in the future. They are angry and they are never wrong. And when they disagree with you, you are WRONG. It is exhausting to hear that you are wrong and to be belittled for you being you.
If there is one theme I found in Dirtbag was that he when he was told he was wrong he made efforts to fix it, make it right and then once that was accomplished, he lost interest and he moved on. The bars he worked at, the porn studio, the weird religious group he joined, he wanted to make wrong things right. I identified with that same compulsion, as once I was told I was wrong, I never stayed long after I made my efforts to change the perception or I just simply left. Not sure if it was a compulsion to change any of it but when you come from dysfunction you always feel the need to fix things and for years I was as “fixer.” So I too found a connection to him and that is the mark of a good writer. I understood why he did not want children and why he cannot forgive his Parents. I have done neither. Forgiveness is an overrated concept and one he or anyone does not have to bestow. The reality is that concept comes from Religion and once free of religion it frees you of it. It does not excuse bad behavior and the need to apologize but as Issac discusses in his book he is “chronically polite” that it is a detriment. I get it. I really do. I model the respect and dignity that is how I wish to be treated and if ignored I move quickly on but for years I took it. I processed it and from the pandemic it is when I came up with my “no compromises” and since I have no need to carry on, I just simply move forward and onward. Perk of aging and finally realizing fixing things does no one any good.
Perhaps we all need to be a charming villain and give the world what it needs right now, less of you. Hold back the best of yourself and find out what fills your soul and your needs. Ask not for forgiveness but acceptance.
Yesterday I came from a meeting of my new Accountant whom I hired to do my taxes. For years I had the same CPA, he got sick and with that dropped the ball. I then realized I needed to find one who was a woman and with that through another long line of Financial Service Advisors I hired her friend from another firm in Seattle. They dumped me in a very sad email that was both rude and frankly impersonal, so it left me in the lurch to find someone. Numerous emails to varying individuals locally finally led me to a place in Manhattan. They were only one of the two that called back so beggars cannot be choosers and yesterday I went with the Taxes of the past, my current records and what I thought would be a brief but productive meeting. Brief yes, productive I have no clue as I walked out of there feeling like “dirt” and with that came home to run for an hour to calm down. Again, as I have been writing of late, I am very hyper aware of how people speak to me and the manner in which they do so. I want as few as encounters like the one yesterday and with that even fewer in the future. But with that I realized that it is one I have had numerous times with Accountants, largely over my true love, writing and why I don’t make any money from it. They constantly level the same threat that the IRS looks as smalls businesses that don’t generate income as hobbies and will of course audit me. I have been audited, nothing came of it. I made no money had no excessive losses kept well detailed records so let’s talk about Trump and his. Oh wait the IRS admits they don’t have enough experienced on staff to conduct complex audits and in turn Attorney’s and Accountants run rings around them. So I will wait to see if this audit happens. As my response was “okay” which told him nothing affirmative or negative as then he answered all the questions he asked me regardless of what he asked me. It was an exercise in tolerating my own distress. He had received the same taxes I dragged with me not looking through them to prep for the meeting, then pulled out my copy and went through it asking the same version of the same questions, finding the answer in the taxes and then in my current folder, which he went through pulling our random documents and then asking me about if I had the info, while HOLDING THEM IN HIS HAND. I could not tell if he was eccentric, neurotic or stupid. The biggest question and the catch was his comment about me paying him more than the quote and then asking for a deposit. It was $200 bucks. I paid my last Accountant $3,300.
As I wrote in the last blog post, I should have known this was about him and not him doing my taxes but him not getting involved with a client who might have complex taxes, have more forms to do and in turn he make more, but about him just not doing the extra work. In fact I had a call a week prior by an Associate to ensure I understood that they billed hourly and did I get that rate, $175/hr and was I fine with it. Yes, I was. The call was about money, in fact he did not know that I had an appointment in a week, but then again few do. They have in their office literally a garbage can in which a sign says, leave tax info here into which to dump it. I knew then this was a factory. From the plastic hanging everywhere, to slots to slip your card through to the receptionist, to the mask signs everywhere, I knew this was a firm of archetypes and stereotypes that a few years ago would have amused me, today no so much. I have always prided myself on having detailed records, a spread sheet, all the receipts/documents you need and then some. With that I brought two years of taxes that little have changed except losses and gains, my businesses expenses associated with my work as a writer and occasionally Teaching. But as he rifled through the according folders, he again berated me as I said REPEATEDLY that any info about my investments were to go to my Financial Team whose info I had printed out clearly marked and labeled. And as we parted after insulting me again , “Well you have to give them permission or they won’t disclose.” Again I pointed out, “You go all my Tax Info from the Accountant and this should not be different, and again you will get that and as they are on the West Coast it will be by the end of day here and before theirs you will know that I took care of it.” Then he laughed as he said to his Receptionist once again as he had already asked me at his desk about about the firm that had “fired” me, he said he wished they could fire some of theirs. Again I said, “I don’t know. I sent you their email about why they were letting my account go, it was not anything about me that I am aware of, my Accountant had a new baby and the pandemic with hiring issues may have been a factor or that I live in another State which may also be a factor, but feel free to contact them as again they have the release and you can find out more.” Again is this man just a raging asshole, a fucking moron or simply not funny.
I HATED THIS MAN. It was a realization that for years I actually believed I had to like a person I do business with, and with that this may be the beginning that it is better that I don’t as I can expect less. But do I believe he will do my taxes? Yes. And they will be fine and I will still hate him but I believe that the dog you know and frankly going through this again is not on my to do list. I may change my mind but for now it is fine.
But it was during the meeting about the same argument that I have about writing is one that I simply cannot fathom why this one is so hard. There is no money in it. I used to freelance and make pocket change and now with Upwork and the push to use AI I see very little opportunity in pursuing that field any further. I decided to write a book or two and even possibly taking up podcasting which sounds more my speed, but I expect no money in either. Once I began to understand the cost risk benefit to self publishing I decided not just one blog but two may be best and I will be careful on how I outlay expenses and costs in which to do so. To self publish you must spend serious cash, true costs depending on type and word length can cost upwards of 10K and that means publishing it yourself, marketing it yourself and doing it all on your own. If you hire someone the costs rise accordingly and in turn to sell a book that has to be at a price point that is usually not enough to generate profits. That comes from selling THOUSANDS of books and few do.
Below is the story of how the cancel culture worked in not only destroying a Writers worth but the commotion behind it may have led to readers not being able to read the book as they were told something that may be a matter of opinion. It also had an affect on other writers and their own fears about their writing and associations with this “canceled” Author.
For writers this is the truth about the industry. They have a type or genre that they push, they care little about the voice of the writer but the ability to sell books that enable them to maybe have a book that isn’t of type but enables a new voice to be heard. That happens even less so now. It is why I struggle with the idolizing of former dead writer as voices of their time. Well their time is over, Joan Didion, Phillip Roth and others who seem to be the only source of work that matters. Really? Why? I am all for reading works of long dead and gone but the idolizing, the endless romanticizing of them bores the shit out of me. But this woman is alive and well and she wrote a good book, she deserves to write more. Will she too have to self publish and go the route of many whom write endlessly on Facebook or Instagram of their frustrations and desires to be read? I know an accountant who can help her with the financials of it. He is a piece of dirt.
The Long Shadow of ‘American Dirt’
Jan. 26, 2023
Credit…Carolina Moscoso
By Pamela Paul
Opinion Columnist The New York Times
Three years ago this month, the novel “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins landed in bookstores on a tsunami of enthusiasm. “Extraordinary,” Stephen King wrote in a prepublication blurb. “Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment,” raved Julia Alvarez. “This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas,” Sandra Cisneros proclaimed. “This is the international story of our times. Masterful.”
The book’s momentum was nonstop. Riding on starred prepublication reviews from the trades, the book, a fast-paced road novel about a Mexican bookseller and her son trying to cross the border to escape a murderous drug cartel, was named an Indie Next List Pick by independent bookstores. Then came the rapturous reviews. “A thrilling adrenaline rush — and insights into the Latin American migrant experience,” raved The Washington Post. Cummins “proves that fiction can be a vehicle for expanding our empathy,” said Time magazine. Finally, the golden ticket: Oprah selected “American Dirt” for her book club. “I was opened, I was shook up, it woke me up,” Winfrey said.
It all fell apart with stunning speed. Following a blistering online campaign against the author and others involved in the book over who gets to write what, and in response to threats of violence against both author and booksellers, Cummins’s publisher, Flatiron Books, canceled her book tour. Cummins’s motives and reputation were smeared; the novel, eviscerated. “We are saddened that a work of fiction that was well intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor,” Flatiron’s president said in a statement.
Looking back now, it’s clear that the “American Dirt” debacle of January 2020 was a harbinger, the moment when the publishing world lost its confidence and ceded moral authority to the worst impulses of its detractors. In the years since, publishers have become wary of what is now thought of as Another American Dirt Situation, which is to say, a book that puts its author and publishing house in the line of fire. This fear now hangs over every step of a fraught process with questions over who can write what, who should blurb and who can edit permeating what feels like a minefield. Books that would once have been greenlit are now passed over; sensitivity readers are employed on a regular basis; self-censorship is rampant.
A creative industry that used to thrive on risk-taking now shies away from it. And it all stemmed from a single writer posting a discursive and furious takedown of “American Dirt” and its author on a minor blog. Whether out of conviction or cowardice, others quickly jumped on board and a social media rampage ensued, widening into the broader media. In the face of the outcry, the literary world largely folded.
“It was a witch hunt. Villagers lit their torches,” recalled the novelist and bookseller Ann Patchett, whose Nashville home Cummins stayed in after her publisher told her the tour was over. The two were up all night crying. “The fall that she took, in my kitchen, from being at the top of the world to just being smashed and in danger — it was heartbreaking.”
How did the literary world let it happen?
From the moment Cummins’s agent sent “American Dirt” out to potential publishers, it looked like a winner. The manuscript led to a bidding war among nine publishing imprints, resulting in a game-changing, seven-figure deal for its author. In the run-up to publication, as the editor of The New York Times Book Review, I asked attendees at Book Expo, then the most significant annual publishing conference, which upcoming book they were most excited about. The answer was as unanimous as I’ve ever heard: “American Dirt.” Publishers, editors, booksellers, librarians were all wildly enthusiastic: “American Dirt” wasn’t only a gripping novel — it brought attention to one of the most vexing and heartbreaking issues of our time, the border crisis. This, its champions believed, was one of those rare books that could both enthrall readers and change minds.
But in December 2019, a month before the novel’s release, Myriam Gurba, a Latina writer whose memoir, “Mean,” had been published a couple of years earlier by a small press, posted a piece that Ms. magazine had commissioned as a review of “American Dirt,” and then killed. In her blog post and accompanying review, Gurba characterized the novel as “fake-assed social justice literature,” “toxic heteroromanticism” and “sludge.” It wasn’t just that Gurba despised the book. She insisted that the author had no right to write it.
A central charge was that Cummins, who identifies as white and Latina but is not an immigrant or of Mexican heritage, wasn’t qualified to write an authentic novel about Latin American characters. Another writer soon asserted in an op-ed that the “clumsy, ill-conceived” rollout of Cummins’s novel was proof that American publishing was “broken.” The hype from the publisher, which marketed the book as “one of the most important books for our times,” was viewed as particularly damning. Echoing a number of writers and activists, the op-ed writer said it was incumbent upon Mexican Americans and their “collaborators” to resist the “ever-grinding wheels of the hit-making machine,” charging it was “unethical” to allow Oprah’s Book Club to wield such power. More than 100 writers put their names to a letter scolding Oprah for her choice.
Never mind that for years, Oprah had championed a diverse range of authors and been a huge booster of the book world. Or that a publisher will use whatever it can, whether wild hyperbole about a book’s merits or a marathon of reliable blurbers, to make a novel work given the unpredictable vicissitudes of public taste.
But an influential swath of the literary world clearly felt galvanized by the charges.
In one of those online firestorms the world has come to recognize and occasionally regret, activists, writers, self-appointed allies and Twitter gunslingers competed to show who was more affronted by the crime of the novel’s success. “American Dirt” was essentially held responsible for every instance in which another Latino writer’s book got passed over, poorly reviewed or remaindered.
As the story gained traction, the target kept moving. According to her critics, it was the author’s fault for not doing better research, for not writing a more literary novel, for writing a “white savior story,” for inaccurately reflecting aspects of Mexican culture, for resorting to negative stereotypes. It was the florist’s fault for repurposing the barbed wire motif on the book’s cover as part of the arrangements at a launch dinner. It was the publisher’s fault for mounting a “perfectly orchestrated mega-budget campaign” on behalf of a white, one-quarter Puerto Rican author rather than for other, more marginalized Latino voices. The blurbs for “American Dirt” were too laudatory. The advance was too big. There were accusations of cultural appropriation, a nebulous and expansive concept whose adherents will parse from homage, appreciation or cultural exchange according to rules known only to them.
What should have been done instead? Should the publisher have pushed back on the blurbers, asking them to tone down their praise? Should Cummins have balked at the advance, saying it was too much money, given some back? Would anyone have gotten this upset had Cummins received $50,000 and a few tepid notes of praise from writer friends?
Many of Cummins’s fans went silent, too scared to mount any kind of public defense. In conversations at the time, a number of novelists — from all backgrounds and ethnicities — told me privately they were afraid the rage would come for them, for earlier novels they’d written in which they’d imagined other people’s lives, other people’s voices. For future novels they wanted to write that dared traverse the newly reinforced DMZ lines of race, ethnicity, gender and genre. (Even now, three years later, many of Cummins’s early champions I contacted were wary of going on the record for fear of poking the bear; many people in the publishing world would speak to me only off the record. Macmillan, the imprint’s house, did not respond to a request for comment.)
And so, the accusations went largely uncontested. Macmillan submitted to a round of self-flagellating town halls with its staff. Cummins lay low, having become something of a pariah among her professional peers. Since publication, I have been told, not a single author in America has asked her to blurb a book.
Some calls for change that came out of the firestorm were well founded — in particular, the call to diversify a largely white and well-heeled industry. Publishing, an exciting but demanding and notoriously low-paying job, isn’t for everyone. But it should certainly be open to and populated by people of all backgrounds and tastes. Black editors interested in foreign policy and science fiction, Latino editors interested in emerging conservative voices or horror, graduates from small colleges in the South interested in Nordic literature in translation. People from all walks of life who are open to all kinds of stories from all kinds of authors can bring a breadth of ideas to a creative industry.
Yet in their assertion that the publisher somehow “made” this book succeed in ways they wouldn’t for another Latino author, the novel’s critics misunderstood several fundamentals about how publishing works. First, it is a business, and one in which most novels fail. If publishing were as monolithic and all-knowing as many critics seemed to presume, publishers would make every novel succeed. If all it took was throwing marketing muscle behind a novel and soliciting every over-the-top blurb possible, then publishing wouldn’t be such a low-margin business. When a book proposal comes along that generates huge excitement and the prospect of success, naturally publishers will jump on it, spend the money they need to win the contract and do everything they can to recoup their investment. For most authors, a six- or seven-figure advance is a shocking windfall; most books typically do not earn back the advance in sales. Publishing is full of authors and editors who believe in their books, only to be disappointed.
Many critics of “American Dirt” also made cynical assumptions about the author. In their view, Jeanine Cummins set out to profit off the tragedy of the border crisis. Tellingly, most didn’t consider that Cummins might have had any motivation beyond money.
Think about what could have been.
The response from other Latino writers and the larger literary world could have been yes to this book and to this author, who made an effort to explore lives other than her own, as well as, yes to a memoir by a Honduran migrant, for example, and yes to a reported border narrative by a Texan journalist and yes to a collection by a Mexican American poet. A single book, whether perfect or flawed — and negative reviews are entirely fair game — cannot be expected to represent an entire people, regardless of how it is written or marketed. Instead of shutting down this particular author in the name of a larger cause — its own form of injustice — the response from fellow Latino writers could have been more generous.
The outcry among its detractors was so thunderous, it was hard to see at the time that the response to “American Dirt” wasn’t entirely grim. There was no significant outcry outside the American literary world’s cloistered purview. And significantly, the novel was translated into 37 languages, selling well over three million copies worldwide.
The novelist, filmmaker and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams”) says that in Mexico, the novel was read and appreciated. “As a Mexican born and raised, I didn’t feel the least uncomfortable with what Jeanine did,” Arriaga told me. “I think it’s completely valid to write whatever you want on whatever subject you want. Even if she exaggerated the narco aspect, that’s the privilege of an artist.” When Arriaga discusses the novel with book clubs in Mexico, he says, nobody raises the concept of cultural appropriation.
A few Latino writers stood up publicly in Cummins’s defense. “The author is getting a lot of crap for stuff she is not responsible for,” Sandra Cisneros said in a contentious public radio segment largely devoted to other people calling Cummins out. “If you don’t like the story, OK, that’s what she wrote and that’s her story,” Cisneros continued, urging people to “read this book with an open heart. If you don’t like it, put it down.”
Readers, the people for whom books are actually written, were otherwise largely ignored in the debate. But it turned out that many readers kept an open mind, with little patience for the mine-not-yours tussles that animated Twitter and its amplifiers. Here in America, the novel debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for 36 weeks. That’s the power of a book that resonates.
But if the proposal for “American Dirt” landed on desks today, it wouldn’t get published.
“In the past two or three years, there’s a lot of commentary about the publishing industry being increasingly eager to appease potential cancelers, to not get into trouble to begin with, to become fearful and conformist,” says Bernard Schweizer, a professor emeritus of English at Long Island University who is founding a small publishing company, Heresy Press, with his wife, Liang, to take on the kind of riskier work that now gets passed over. According to Schweizer, the publisher will look for work “that lies between the narrow ideological, nonaesthetic interests presently flourishing on both the left and the right” and “won’t blink at alleged acts of cultural appropriation.” As he told me: “The point is not to offend but to publish stories that are unfettered and freewheeling, maybe nonconformist in one way or another. Somebody may be offended or not, but that’s the kind of risk we want to take.”
For some aspiring writers, the mood remains pessimistic. “My take is the only take and the one everyone knows to be true but only admits in private: the literary world only accepts work that aligns with the progressive/woke point of view of rich coastal liberals,” the Latino writer Alex Perez said in an interview with Hobart magazine last fall. “This explains why everything reads and sounds the same, from major publishing houses to vanity zines with a readership of 15.” Shortly after publication of Perez’s interview, Hobart’s staff of editors quit and Perez was widely mocked on social media. Elizabeth Ellen, Hobart’s editor and the person who conducted the interview, posted a letter from the editor advocating for an atmosphere “in which fear is not the basis of creation, nor the undercurrent of discussion.”
History has shown that no matter how much critics, politicians and activists may try, you cannot prevent people from enjoying a novel. This is something the book world, faced with ongoing threats of book banning, should know better than anyone else.
“We can be appalled that people are saying, ‘You can’t teach those books. You can’t have Jacqueline Woodson in a school library.’ But you can’t stand up for Jeanine Cummins?” Ann Patchett said. “It just goes both ways. People who are not reading the book themselves are telling us what we can and cannot read? Maybe they’re not pulling a book from a classroom, but they’re still shaming people so heavily. The whole thing makes me angry, and it breaks my heart.”
Much remains broken in its wake. Jeanine Cummins may have made money, but at a great emotional, social and reputational cost. She wrote a book filled with empathy. The literary world showed her none.
Off the Rack Publishing 