Hi Paul. This is a subset of my email to you in case anyone else is interested or wants to throw tomatoes.
The exclusion by publishers of white males (especially if we're outside that DC-Boston corridor) is a subset of the discrimination being widely practiced throughout Western culture.
White males were in charge for a long time, but I think it's safe to say the decisions made back then were generally not motivated by hatred or ill-will toward women. Granted, there was often indifference toward the interests of colored races, but those men were doing the best they could with the understanding they had at the time.
The current retaliation against men in particular and whites in general is happening in a time when people are supposedly more enlightened. But despite all the modern advantages the new elites are not only practicing discrimination in the other direction but are motivated by hatred. Arguably, what they're doing now is less excusable.
It says something very discouraging about human nature. We're clearly not on a path to a better society. Weath and power corrupt. The people now in power--including those white males who went to ivy league schools and work in the govt--are in an elitist oligarchy designed to exploit the rest of us.
Recognizing this problem is the first step. I guess for the next step we should turn to "Rules for Radicals" (e.g., ridiculing them at every opportunity).
Gregor, Is there a happy medium for the arts in the future? Hmmm. Remember how they used to label gay fiction as 'gay fiction,' and it had it's own rack in the bookstore. Now they fold it in to the 'literary fiction' sphere. This bothers me as on a few occasions I started reading something, thinking it was normative, and came upon some kind of gay interlude or whatnot.
Maybe the 'happy medium' in publishing will be a 'separate but equal' splace for art/music/books by people like me, that appeal to people like me. Call it 'Whites Man Fiction,' whatever. At least I'd have a shot at a slice of the readership pie.
Hi Paul. This is a subset of my email to you in case anyone else is interested or wants to throw tomatoes.
The exclusion by publishers of white males (especially if we're outside that DC-Boston corridor) is a subset of the discrimination being widely practiced throughout Western culture.
White males were in charge for a long time, but I think it's safe to say the decisions made back then were generally not motivated by hatred or ill-will toward women. Granted, there was often indifference toward the interests of colored races, but those men were doing the best they could with the understanding they had at the time.
The current retaliation against men in particular and whites in general is happening in a time when people are supposedly more enlightened. But despite all the modern advantages the new elites are not only practicing discrimination in the other direction but are motivated by hatred. Arguably, what they're doing now is less excusable.
It says something very discouraging about human nature. We're clearly not on a path to a better society. Weath and power corrupt. The people now in power--including those white males who went to ivy league schools and work in the govt--are in an elitist oligarchy designed to exploit the rest of us.
Recognizing this problem is the first step. I guess for the next step we should turn to "Rules for Radicals" (e.g., ridiculing them at every opportunity).
Gregor, Is there a happy medium for the arts in the future? Hmmm. Remember how they used to label gay fiction as 'gay fiction,' and it had it's own rack in the bookstore. Now they fold it in to the 'literary fiction' sphere. This bothers me as on a few occasions I started reading something, thinking it was normative, and came upon some kind of gay interlude or whatnot.
Maybe the 'happy medium' in publishing will be a 'separate but equal' splace for art/music/books by people like me, that appeal to people like me. Call it 'Whites Man Fiction,' whatever. At least I'd have a shot at a slice of the readership pie.
Ha! If they set aside space for white men they'll be back where they started (Steinbeck, Michener, Nabokov, Dickens, et al.).