New Art

It’s unrealistic for anyone to demand or expect that I write the revolutionary new literary work. I came late to the field. The first real writing I produced was for a union newsletter. A couple years after that, when working for a commodity trader, I put out an investment newsletter. Only after that failed did I examine the literary game, becoming a small-time player at it by accident.

What I brought to the table was a new perspective on the art. I’d charted—by hand—hundreds of commodity moves. I’d gained some sense of how cycles operate, and of when a commodity—or art—was up too high, and when one was down. I saw literature as stagnant. Today it’s even more stagnant. It remains in need of a rebound.

I said at the outset that I was a precursor. A wannabe promoter looking for writers to promote. I was a voice in the wilderness—a ranting crazy person, which is how I appeared of late I’m sure to some of the HTML folks. I sought what I called a “Zeen Elvis.” My own goal was to be a Sam Phillips or Berry Gordy Jr. or Brian Epstein or Andrew Loog Oldham.

Look—the art isn’t good enough. It has to be different. Solipsism, or convoluted postmodernism, or narrow realism, or shitty surrealism—none of that goes anyplace from a marketing standpoint. What’s needed is a James Patterson with more skill, more intelligence, and more emotion. (I haven’t read Patterson, so I’m guessing at his kind of work.)

I know this: the writer today who can create new literary art—striking pop—will be the biggest American writer ever. That I’m sure of. I’d think that’d be enough incentive to abandon your old modes of thought.