Sometimes I participate in an exercise of futility. Presently I am surfing the immense amount of data on the Holocaust which is beyond anyone’s grasp. In a few weeks I will be making an announcement about the second edition of The i Tetralogy. I’ve waited five years to do that, having spotted errors within the book — typos, awkward terms, et al. I’ve also decided to change the cover which had an array of swastikas on it, being told it is jarring for some. Yes, for some. Not for me. A part of me is impish, Peck’s bad boy. I like to rub it in your face. I have capitulated to Jane’s wishes and to Jordan’s requests. He has redesigned the front and back covers. Additionally I dropped the introduction and replaced that with quotations from reviews that I have received over the years. And while that is going on I am trying to write an announcement that will attract readers. In that conext I am trying to reach out to reference librarians, acquisition librarians, professors of Jewish studies, Holocaust associations and organizations, museums, secondary teachers, Holocaust centers and any and all that might find my book of merit. I am tediously going through such internet directories such as “Jewish Studies at Universities,” searching for the e-mail addresses of individuals who might have an interest in my historical novel.
If you know someone personally who might want to receive this flyer, comment. Or if you have an idea or two about what internet group I might pursue for potential readers, comment as well. I have a few old edition copies at hand. Yours for the asking. I also donate books to libraries, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum just requested a copy from me. I get a real kick out of knowing the book is in major libraries. Is there a library you can suggest?
So a part of a morning each day is spent searching out names and then recording them into a database. At present I have about 425 names of reviewers, friends, bloggers, professors, groups and librarians I will forward the announcement to. I realize that in a mailing of about 1,000 you are lucky to get 5 to 10 nibbles. So I feel a sense of futility in all this, but I persist quixotically. I look at my book as a long range life effort on my part. The book is an extension of my gut — and soul. It has real merit and deserves reading. However, I am lost in the sewer of marketing which I find just annoying to participate in. I placate or ease myself by realizing what would I have been without having invested years in writing the books I do. I would be frustratingly less.
When you can’t get your book read or sold, what do you do? You write another one. For writing a book is not selling the book, although that is sweet fun. I write to know and to learn; I write to expel person demons, to expose inner knots, I write not to offer resolutions or to experience redemption. I saddle my horse to explore the outer limits. I savor if not crave a reader’s comments more than the royalty it might bring me. I enjoy being totally unAmerican about publishing. I have already impacted upon close ones with what I have written — lucky me. I have the autodidact’s arrogance about me, for I have learned to write as best as I can in the way a young adult used to learn how to fix a carburetor — practice. I refuse to listen to all the old saws about how to be a writer, what to do as a writer as I find that death. I find it puckish to reject the conventional wisdom even if it has merit to it. I like being self-taught although I fully realize that I have gaps in my skills because of that.
Again I am perplexed and riddled by futility because very few read Holocaust novels, we’d rather not know. I understand that and that is exactly why I wrote the book. I wrote the book to deal with resistance. I had no hope of breaking through that. A good therapist does not launch an attack upon a client’s resistance; in fact, he joins it. Human beings can’t handle frontal assaults. The Holocaust is a frontal assault because on many profound levels it destroys, devastates and destructs any if not most of the conditioned responses we have as human beings and as a species. Who wants to read that we are demented and diminished as a species?
Who wanted to read about evolution? Who wanted to know about the unconscious mind? We are too busy “living” to contemplate that. There are the thinkers, the doers and the putzes. The putzes rule.
So I slog through the directories in the hope that a large mailing might turn the trick, that one soul might order the book or ask about it. And most likely nothing will occur except my solitary effort at “pushing” the book. Well it is the struggle, is it not? I have another recourse, but it would be hard for me to adapt to. I can give up writing, “enjoy” my retirement years free of thinking, feeling, writing books; I could ride my bike a little more; I watch the tires lose their air as I pass it every day in the garage. I could go to the local casino and lose more at the slots. I just don’t know what I would do with all this “time” on my hands. I could play golf, I could amble through each day until I stroke out. I could deny, I could rationalize, I could slough off daily events. I think I could do all these things if I put my mind to it. But putting your mind to it is not exactly what one does if one chooses not to live. I choose to live and that is another ballgame, for it involves writing, being, feeling, thinking. I am my own self-pest. Are you free of pests and live an American life? If so, go to another blog as my musings are not for you.
Jane just read this blog while I was proofing it. She said I was a”dichotomy.” Jordan is working on a possible film called “Dichotomy/Lobotomy” about the daily grind we all know at the workplace. I choose dichotomy.
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