THERE ARE MANY REASONS why a bestselling novel never begins with some introductory remarks by its editor(ess). As someone who has literally worked her way up from the actual basement of a publishinghouse to become an editoress of such books I should (and believe me I do!) know them all—not the least of which is the ABSOLUTELY UNBREAKABLE RULE against interposing one's editorial self between a reader and the author whose "torrid tale of unbridled passion" she is itching to read. The last thing some sexstarved housewife wants to find when she rips off its plain brown wrapper and frantically opens the covers of her newest gothic romance is another woman threatening to triangulate the literary loveaffair she's expecting to have between just herself and the literary mastermind who wrote it.1 This is especially true when that "other woman" enjoys the advantage of having a "working relationship" with the "evil genius" through whose lecherous mentality even the sleepiest of beauties can be made to fantasize an imaginary fling with a fictionalized Prince Charming.
Not that I blame the average housewife for thinking my collaboration with the author of Morons Awake! was indeed filled with the kind of orgasmic expectations, epiphanal ecstasy, artistic thrills and intellectual stimulation so desperately lacking in her own "humdrum" existence. After all, when I began this career of mine on the bottommost rung of the publishing ladder didn't my own "maidenly bosom" throb with the hope of some day discovering a new James Joyce or D. H. Lawrence to whom I could play Sylvia Beach or Anaïs Nin? For what other reason would someone with my academic qualifications2 and matrimonial prospects3 have spent all those precious days of her early womanhood buried in the bowels of a Manhattan skyscraper searching through endless haystacks of unsolicited manuscripts if not to find that golden needle by which my "martyred sexlife" would be miraculously vindicated? But forgive me, dear reader, I digress! The simple point I should be making to you is this: Since Morons Awake! is not an average bestselling novel—and I am anything but an ordinary editoress —the normal rules pertaining to introductory remarks don't apply to your reading of this particular book.
My principal reason for exempting
Morons Awake! from the Absolutely Unbreakable Rule against editorial
introductions arose from my serious misgivings over what I thought to be
its author's potentially fatal "cartbeforethehorse" mistake of beginning
(with the exception of its very first sentence) his "novelized manifesto"
in a way that was far more manifestolike than novelistic. As an amateur,
of course, the author took a moral position on what, in my carefully
considered professional opinion, was strictly a practical
issue.
"If," I told him, "art was ever to become sociopolitically
efficacious (as he believed it could) certain aesthetic concessions have
to be made in getting your message across to a mass audience."
He responded by telling me he was adamantly opposed to deceiving
his readers ("more than was minimally necessary") into thinking the revolutionary
document he had written for them was just "another runofthemill blockbuster."
According to him: "Given half a chance to do so, the average American housewife
is quite capable of comprehending—and even enjoying—a genuine
literary masterpiece." While his gender egalitarianism in this regard was
to some extent gratifying, my own faith in the basic intelligence of the
women who opiated themselves on the mental mush I
helped4 to publish wasn't quite so blind as his.
Despite my fervent pleas to the contrary he insisted his "Great Moronic WakeupCall" be published in its present form.
As a result of which, before she knows it, the unsuspecting reader of Morons Awake! finds herself plunging headlong into a whirlpool of intellectual, philosophical and "psychosexual" concepts.5 Left with nothing but my limited editorial leverage6 there was little else I could do but devise some circumspect way of warning you to: Read Book Two before reading Book One. At least until you've managed to get your "literary" feet wet. And in a nutshell, dear reader, that is why I've gone out on such a long editorial limb to pen these introductory remarks for your benefit alone on the pitfalls of reading Morons Awake!
Which (reading Book Two before Book Onewise) you are now perfectly free to do, rather than read this any further.
*****
HAVING OFFERED you my
2¢ worth of "wisdom" on that principal topic, however, there are
a few other minor matters some of you might find helpful (and not altogether
uninteresting) before you start your "swimming lesson." The first of
these concerns the author's extensive (mis?)use of
footnotes.7 For those who (foolishly) ignore my caveat and begin
their reading of Morons Awake! with Book One this "fine print fetish"
of his will impale them on the horns of an immediate (and all but insoluble)
dilemma. Why is this so? Because, dear reader, (excluding its first sentence)
Chapter 1 of Book One consists of nothing more nor less than the world's
longest footnote!|
This, of course, puts the poor reader in the awkward
position of: (a) Rejecting the author's advice about not having to
read his footnotes in order to thoroughly enjoy the more superficial aspects
of the "multilayered masterwork" he has written; or (b) Turning forthwith
to Chapter 2 after having read only the first sentence of Chapter
1!
But, since Chapter 1 sets the stage (as it should)
for everything that follows, its reading couldn't be more crucial
for those housewives seeking to fully finalize the orgasmic expectations
aroused in them by all those "rumors" they've heard about the "aphrodisiac
effect produced by a thoughtprovoking book like Morons Awake!"
Hence before she can so much as catch her breath the reader must make
a fatal decision concerning her future relationship with the man in whose
literary hands she has put all of her "adulterous"
hopes.8 While the author "modestly" claims his footnotes "shouldn't
be taken all that seriously," by incessantly teasing us about their
"clandestine," "furtive," "intimate" and "prurient" nature it seems obvious
his real purpose is to arouse our curiosity to a point where we will slyly
peek at them from beneath our (demurely) lowered eyelids. Not that
by today's standards most of them can be considered obscene—or even
more than mildly indecent. As he himself describes them: "From a
pornographic point of view they are hardly the stuff that would make
a modern schoolgirl blush." And maybe he's right. But, of course, Morons
Awake! wasn't written for schoolgirls. And, intellectuallyspeaking
, his footnotes can (and most certainly do) produce in an adult female that
potent "aphrodisiac effect" about which the more astute (and less discreet)
readers of Morons Awake! have been known to gossip.
Well then, as she stands on the very threshold of reading a book that, unlike all those she has previously purchased, promises to actually plunge her into an adulterous relationship with the man who wrote it, exactly how does an ordinary American housewife solve Morons Awake!'s "footnote problem?" Perhaps the best way to deal with that question is by briefly9 telling you the story of how I myself grappled with it as an editoress. For those of you who simply can't wait any longer to see if Morons Awake! is indeed "the reading experience of a lifetime" some critics are hailing it to be; or suspect these "Introductory Remarks" of mine are in fact part of a "brainwashing blitzkrieg" launched in fact by its author—this is the point in my Introductory Remarks at which we part company.
For the more adventurous reader who is willing (if not eager!) to prolong the "expectational agony" she customarily endures before the curtains rise on a Karl Sternheim play or Richard Strauss opera10 let's begin our story where (contrary to what the author of Morons Awake! might think) all good stories are supposed to begin—at the very beginning.
* * * * *
TO JAYNE PLAYNE11 there was nothing extraordinary about the way that fatal Wednesday morning began. As she had been doing every day for the 5 years since receiving her doctorate in English literature from Harvard, Jayne arrived at her broomclosetsize office (which she somewhat affectionately referred to as "her salt mine") in the basement of a midtown Manhattan publishinghouse shortly before 10 a.m. By that time Leo Bloom, the 90oddyearold mail "boy" had already wheeled in the 6 or 7 trolleys filled with several hundred thick manila envelopes containing the unsolicited manuscripts of first time novelists which, as a "Publisher's Reader," she was required to scan her way through in the next 8 hours.
While reading through hundreds of novellength manuscripts in a mere eight hours might seem like a daunting (if not physically impossible) task, to a professional like Jayne it was "all in a day's work." After 5 years of "slaving away" in her "salt mine" she had mastered all the tricks of the Publisher's Reader trade. These included eliminating many of the manuscripts she was supposed to spend at least 10 minutes reading simply because their titles alone indicated they were written by wouldbe novelists who obviously didn't have a literary bone in their entire bodies. Others were summarily rejected by her because the "female" pseudonyms chosen by their male authors were so blatantly fake as to preclude them from having the minimal guile needed for writing anything even approximating the kind of artistic rubbish from which a bestselling gothic romance is made. For the 50 or 60 manuscripts surviving Jayne Playne's merciless scrutiny of their covers, the next hurdle on the way to their author's fame and fortune was the crucial "First Sentence Test."
Having stacked the manuscripts whose
covers had survived the previous title and pseudonym tests on her desk, Jayne
would liesurely fill her coffee cup, put on a pair of rimless reading glasses,
light a cigarette and seat herself in the antique upholstered swivel chair
she had purchased with her first pay check from a dealer who claimed it once
belonged to the editor credited with "discovering" Herman Melville. Once
she was quite comfortable Jayne began what had become over time the somewhat
ritualized routine of saying a silent prayer before slowly opening the covers
of each manuscript and reading its initial sentence.
During the early ("idealistic") period of her career, when
she could reasonably hope to find a couple of publishable books in the course
of a single working day—and at least one possibly genuine literary
masterpiece every fortnight or so, this ritualistic exercise consumed a good
10 or 15 seconds. But after failing for 5 long years to read a first sentence
remotely indicating she might be on the verge of discovering another Herman
Melville, J. D. Salinger or even Norman Mailer, Jayne's
prefirstsentencereadingroutine became more and more perfunctory—until
it was barely discernible; except for the slight trembling (or twitching)
of her lips. And, by this particular Wednesday morning, her 10 or 15 second
"pregant pause" had been reduced to such an
evanescentG hiatus it was all but unmeasurable.
So it was that on what would turn out to be this Most
Monumental of Wednesday mornings Jayne Playne approached her first sentence
test task in a manner the casual observer would no doubt describe as being
"more or less typically coldblooded, given what is commonly understood to
be the hardhearteded nature of the book publishing business." Not that
such a "common understanding" includes all the arcane criteria by which a
professional Publisher's Reader like Jayne Playne meticulously scrutinizes
the initial sentence of an unsolicited manuscript. And, since it's unlikely
your own knowledge of the publishing business extends to the esoterica involved
with evaluating the commercial prospects of a gothic novel's opening salvo,
before you can fully appreciate the
epiphanyG Jayne Playne is about to undergo it is necessary to discuss
in some detail the technical aspects of the test she will apply
to the manuscripts now piled on her desk.
Generally speaking12 any author aspiring to bestsellerdom must construct the first sentence of his unsolicited manuscript in such a way that it meets all (or at the very minimum 8) of the 10 "Commandments" contained in the following Words of Publishing Wisdom,13 to wit:
The First Sentence of a Bestselling Novel Must:
I Resolve any doubts a woman might
have about the prurient contents of the book whose purchase she is
contemplating;
II Establish the author's credibility as a man who can effectively
deceive the reader into believing her fornicational fantasies will be addressed
by a novelist who knows the average housewife's definition of "complete sexual
fulfillment" is somewhat more mental than physical;
III Produce an intimate rapport between the author and his reader
that can only be construed by her as one in which she is the exclusive predatory
object of his intellectual lust;
IV Place the heroine in a compromising situation (some version of
the "Lady Godiva" scenario is strongly recommended) with which the average
exhibitionisticallyinclined female can easily identify;
V Make it abundantly plain the plot will be yet another variation
on the "Sleeping Beauty" motif—whereby the reader need only lie passively
on her fourposter waiting to be awakened by the chivalrous (but sufficiently
"Frenchified") kiss of an impassioned Prince Charming;
VI Arouse the reader's curiosity about the degree to which the author
will go in keeping his implied promise to stretch the limits of her orgasmic
expectations to their very breaking point before climaxing them on the final
page of his novel;
VII Indicate (at least subliminally) that by simply reading this novel
an ordinary American housewife will actually raise her sociocultural IQ to
a level approximating that of those supersophisticated femmes fatales about
whose rapturous literary loveaffairs (liaisons Platoniques) she can only
daydream;
VIII Set the stage for what the reader can realistically hope will
develop into a prolonged act of psychosexual foreplay scripted with a theatrical
virtuosity that promises to leave her suspended in a state of artistic
bliss;
IX Leave the customer with no choice but to purchase a book whose
browsing alone cannot completely solve the mystery in which its enigmatic
onset seems to be partially
veiled.14
X Finally (and from a publisher's point of view by no means
least importantly) the author's prurient objective must be concealed by the
trappings of some "morally redemptive" purpose in such a way that even the
most prudish judge and/or jury can find "at least a scintilla of subject
matter that can be construed as having some sociocultural
significance."15
Accordingly, the prudent pornographer should
include at least one righteous note when composing that orgiastic fanfare
by which he announces the onset of his Roman
(à
clefG) circus. The way most bestselling authors escape prosecution
is by suggesting America's collective literary IQ will be substantially raised
if millions of ordinary housewives can be seduced into reading their way
through a genuine artistic masterpiece he has disguised as just another trashy
gothic novel. Regardless of how "simpleminded" this technique might seem,
it requires the utmost artistic dexterity. At all costs an author must avoid
putting his reader in a position where she can only choose between
her insatiable appetite for cultural junkfood and any book that preaches
the selfrewarding virtue of literary erudition. No one appreciates more
than we in the publishing business how pervasively the streak of
AntiIntellectualism (or IgnoranceIsBlissism) has been weaving its sinister
way through America's sociocultural tapestry since (at least) July 4, 1776.
So; as if an unpublished author didn't have enough psychosexual, legal and
grammatical problems to contend with when writing the first sentence of his
novel there are political factors he can only ignore at the peril of being
rejected on national security grounds! And, while these Words Of Publishing
Wisdom might make you sadder for what they say about the apparent impossibility
of passing my First Sentence Test, at least you now know what has to be done
before your own phallocentric dreams of psychosexual supremacy have a prayer
of ever coming true.
GIVEN THE HIGH STANDARDS of Jayne's "Ten Commandments" it wasn't surprising that, after 5 years on the job, only seven unsolicited manuscripts managed to pass her First Sentence Test. And of those she did recommend for "further consideration" just one made it all the way to Number 20 on the Publisher's Weekly 20 Bestselling Books of Romantic Fiction List! As for discovering some unknown author whose first novel even came close to resembling those of Herman Melville, J. D. Salinger or Norman Mailer her record was even more dismal. At such a depressing rate of success (or lack thereof) it seemed all too possible Jayne wouldn't be the only brighteyedandbushytailed First Reader who, after dreaming for 30 or 40 years of finding her "publishing needle in a haystack," awoke to the starkly naked truth that she had wasted her youth for what had always been a hopelessly lost cause. And indeed, the 5 years she had so far spent slaving away in the over heated gloom of her basement salt mine had already taken a heavy toll on what was once her slimbutnot entirely boyish sexappeal.16 By that particular Wednesday morning, in fact, she looked positively gaunt an offputting effect that wasn't helped by the rather cadaverous complexion she had acquired as a result of her subterranean modus vivendi.G Neither did her chainsmoking do much to compensate for the lack of sunshine and fresh air.
Nevertheless, while her morale was certainly not what it had been when she began her career (and despite the infernal heat emanating from the boilers adjacent to her office) the flame of cultural evangelicalism still flickered in Jayne's (sagging) bosom. Even the first dozen manuscripts she was forced to reject on that Wednesday—all of whose beginning sentences were spectacularly wretched17 failed to dampen her midmorning zeal.
And then it happened!
Before even opening the cover of
that thirteenth manuscript Jayne had a hunch something special, if not earth
shaking, was about to unfold. It was all extremely ephemeral but she thought
she could feel a change in the atmosphere as if an Alpine zephyr had mysteriously
made its ventilating way into the airless depths of her private little hellhole.
And, were her ears deceiving her or did she in fact hear what sounded like
those celestial chords Charles Ives used to imbue the pianissimo passages
of his symphonic works with that "ethereal quality?" About the trembling
of her shoulders and the hormonal rivulets coursing their
orgiasticG way through her loins there could be no doubt. They were the
real thing! If at this very moment she wasn't truly standing on the absolute
edge of plunging headlong into the abyss of her most ardent desires it was
a delusion that couldn't have been more convincing. Or rapturous!
Actually there were several remarkable qualities exhibited by this
particular manuscript which had briefly captured Jayne's attention when she
first glanced at it during her preliminary screening. Its title—Morons
Awake!—could hardly be ignored for its singular disregard for the
commercial considerations associated with judging a book by its
cover.18 Despite their belief in the blissfulness of ignorance
how many redblooded American AntiIntellectualists have the courage to admit
that, socioculturallyspeaking, they are dyedinthewool Morons?
The author's choice of pseudonym—Mordecai Goldberg—was
also noteworthy. Not only for its chauvinistic machismo but for the chutzpah
with which it raised the specter of JewishIntellectuality.
Bestsellerdomwise this was a lethal combination that seemed calculated to
antagonize that segment (GOP/DAR/WASPs) of the boobuying public without whose
adulation no trashy novelist's pen name could ever become a household word
no matter how feminized (ie., Miriam Goldberg) it was.
And there was the manuscript's sheer size! A full 12 inches
thick it approached the dimensions of a Manhattan telephone directory! Of
such monumentality were its bulk and weight Jayne needed both her hands to
shift it from the incoming mail trolley to the pile of manuscripts on her
desk waiting to have their first sentences scrutinzed. In real time
these preliminary phenomena all transpired in no more than 20, or at the
most, 30 seconds. But given the suspensefilled state of her epiphanal
expectations to Jayne that halfminute seemed like an eternity. And while
she desperately yearned to linger as long as she possibly could on the cusp
of her curiosity she also realized the moment had come when she had to open
the manuscript's green, doorlike, cover and see what awaited her on the other
side of its mysterious threshold. Taking a deep drag on a freshlylit coffinnail
(to punctuate the hazardous nature of what she was about to do) Jayne gripped
the cover between her thumb and forefinger and slowly turned
it.19
What she found, of course, was only
the title page. To which, ordinarily she would pay scant attention in her
haste to judge the merits of the sentence appearing on the top of the next
page. But as Jayne quickly learned—like everything else about Morons
Awake!—even its title page was anything but ordinary! Once again
it seemed as if its author was hellbent on violating every rule women use
in judging the books they purchase by their
covers!20 Not only did the author revert to the quaint 18thcentury
custom of embellishing his title with a lengthy parenthetic statement elaborating
on his "Grand Literary Design;" that design itself was so outrageously flamboyant
it quite literally took Jayne's breath away! "How dare he do this to me!"
she exclaimed to herself. There she was—desperately wanting to turn
what should have been a more or less meaningless page and proceed to the
next one, on which would be written that single DoOrDie sentence; and yet
she was prevented from doing so by an author who seemed determined to begin
their novelized loveaffair with a painful (and utterly bewildering) slap
to his poor heroine's
face!21
What was she to do? It was intolerable! Modern
novelists simply don't bother their readers with prefaces, introductory remarks,
preambles, prologues and overtures! After all, how many gothic romance junkies
have the patience (or brains) to become entangled in the convoluted
syntaxG of a pagelong title? "Good God, Goldberg," Jayne muttered
aloud to her ghostly antagonist, "you're supposed to be writing
fiction for Christ's sake, not some fire and brimstone sermon
on the Decline & Fall Of The Bloody Human Race!"
Notwithstanding the intensity of her rage, frustration,
scorn, shame, anger, humiliation, hatred, revulsion, animosity and contempt,
Jayne's emotional state wasn't entirely unmixed with a few wayward feelings
of curiosity, admiration, amusement, rapture, awe and even bliss! While in
her professional capacity she wanted to simply brush off this literary Pearl
Harbor and proceed to the next page where the really decisive battle would
be fought over the publishability of Morons Awake!, as a woman she
felt compelled to answer this act of
misogynisticG infamy with one of feminine defiance. No matter how long it
took she would read and reread the title page until she understood exactly
what its author had in his devious mind when he wrote the confounded
thing! She was like a moth fatally attracted to a flame. And yet, unlike
a moth, she knew perfectly well the dangers of what she was doing (as does
the wallflower who, while eavesdropping on a cocktail party conversation
in which some strange man seems to be expounding the most outrageously obscene
ideas, moves nearer to him in the hope of having her worst suspicions about
his predatory intentions—that she will do exactly what he is making
her do—confirmed beyond the shadow of an auditory doubt.)
"Oh," Jayne thought, as if she were herself the heroine
of a trashy gothic novel, "what decent, blonde, blue eyed
ShiksaG is so savvy to the tricks of their villainy she can outwit
those JewishIntellectual makeout artists who habitually smoothtalk their
way into a frustrated hausfrau's pantyhose at the prurient dropping
of a conversational hat?"
After pondering the title page of Morons Awake!
for more than two hours she was certain about at least one thing: Mordecai
Goldberg (if that was in fact his real name) was either one of the world's
greatest literary masterminds or one of its most monumental madmen! Jayne
had no trouble imagining how Queen Isabella must have reacted when, after
financing his "shortcut to India" proposition by pawning her crown jewels,
she was informed the "brilliant" Columbus had managed to miscalculate the
distance between Lisbon and Calcutta by a matter of some 8,000 miles! By
"accidentally" discovering America, of course, Columbus was doing God's work.
And, after her reading of his unorthodox title page, Jayne concluded the
author of Morons Awake! was going to need all the help he could get
from the same celestial source!
Despite her serious reservations about the title page,
however, Jayne was forced to admit the hour she spent mulling it over had
made her even more curious to see what she would find on the following page.
So, if the title page accomplished nothing else, by prolonging the "agony"
of her suspense over whether or not Morons Awake! would pass the First
Sentence Test it had in fact served a purpose the average bookshop browser
might find (at least marginally) useful in provoking her curiosity about
the kind of author who thought he could entice her into buying his "manifesto
in the form of a bestselling novel" in such a provocative manner.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Jayne asked herself, had her expectations been raised to such lofty heights by the title page of Morons Awake! that no first sentence of any novel could possibly consummate them? After all, by stating in no uncertain terms Morons Awake! was: "A MANIFESTO TO REVERSE THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION Written In The Form Of A Novel-length Answer To The Burning Question Of Whether Jack F. Klutz Lived & Died As A Martyr For The Cause Of Human Mediocrity Or Was Simply An Exception To The Rule That All Men Are Created Equal," the author had set himself a task no previous writer ever dared to dream, let alone attempt.22 If Morons Awake! even came close to fulfilling the prophecy of its title page it would be a book like no other book that had been written since the bible.23
But Jayne took the author's title
page with a large grain of salt. His claim that any manifesto—even
one skillfully disguised as a bestselling novel—could actually alter
the course of history had to be construed as either: (a) The wishful
thinking of a literary novice; (b) The grandiose delusion of a messianic
madman, or; (c) a carefully calculated selfpromotional advertising ploy.
Nevertheless Jayne was not unimpressed. Even the suggestion that an
evangelical manifesto masquerading as just another trashy gothic novel might
somehow reverse the decline of Western Civilization was the kind of sensational
stuff from which the publicity campaign for a bestseller might indeed be
made. Was it any less reasonable to believe millions of ordinary housewives
could be swindled into reading the Great American Novel/Manifesto by insulting
their intelligence than it is to accept the fact they were so easily duped
into marrying men whose cranial shortcomings made it obvious they could never
fully satisfy a woman's psychosexual cravings?
Glancing at her watch Jayne was astonished to see how
much time she had spent speculating on such questions when all of them could
be answered by simply turning to the next page! Yet for some strange—or
perverse—reason she seemed to relish every moment of the "guessing game"
she was playing with Morons Awake!'s enigmatic author. No. Her mind
was made up. She refused to abandon her ruminations on the title page until
she had analyzed every single clue it might contain about the first sentence
she would read on the following page when she finally turned to it. Perhaps,
she mused, this was her way of delaying what was almost certain to be that
cruelest of outrageous fortunes when her hopes of discovering the Great American
Novelist were dashed by what would turn out to be just another failed attempt
by some rankly untalented amateur at writing his way from the rags of obscurity
to the fame and fortune of bestsellerdom. And yet; who was she fooling but
herself by postponing the inevitable? Did she really have any doubts that
Morons Awake! wouldn't pass her First Sentence Test? There was no
mystery about the title page. All of the "clues" it contained added
up to only one conclusion: Its "Jewish
Intellectual"24 author was a pompous bore whose delusions of messianic
grandeur would presently be confirmed by what she read on the very next page.
In any event, whoever this "Mordecai Goldberg" might turn out to be, he certainly
wasn't that "Prince Charming" every average American housewife dreams will
ventilate her stale lovelife with a breath of fresh adulterous air.
Or was he? If she were being completely honest with herself
Jayne would have to admit she wasn't entirely turned off by "the sadomasochistic
methodology by which the author was enticing his female readers into the
tangled novelistic web of his psycho sexual depravity." But, while a woman
of her sophistication might find such acts of literary perversion amusing
(or even mildly
erotogenicG) the same could not be said about those millions of "cultural
Neanderthals" whose "primitive taste for the trashiest kind of reading material"
she made a career of simulating in her capacity as a First Reader. As a matter
of fact Jayne's entire vocational raison
d'etreG was predicated on the distinction she was
able to make between the "high brow" books she chose to read at home and
the "low brow" variety that satisfied the ordinary woman's appetite for literary
fluff. Accordingly, although she might be captivated by a gothic novel whose
first sentence reads more like Karl Marx than Barbara Cartland, one could
hardly expect a common housewife to purchase a book that begins with "Let
the ruling classes tremble at a Communist
revolution,"25 or "We hold these truths to be
selfevident"26 or "Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals
provoke and irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution
is an extraordinary
instance."27 Or so Jayne had been taught to believe was the conventional
wisdom regarding "mass man's incurable
ignorance."28
But what if, Jayne supposed for the sake of the
argument she was having with herself, Morons Awake! actually
did succeed in shattering the mythic mindset of American housewifery
about the bliss of its brainlessness? Wouldn't the personal consequences
for her of such a revolution in female reading habits be nothing short of
apocalyptic? Overnight the expertise she spent the best years of her life
acquiring as a surrogate bookstore browser would become obsolete. Assuming
Morons Awake! was in fact a novelized manifesto of worldsaving proportions
which also satisfied the craving millions of average American women secretly
have to be intellectually stimulated one could just as easily assume those
same women would be capable of judging for themselves what constitutes the
first sentence of a book they consider worth buying.
Moreover, Jayne reasoned, wouldn't the literary eclecticism
(if not outright anarchy) resulting from such a revolution in America's reading
habits make the very definition of a "blockbusting bestseller" extremely
problematical? She reminded herself of what Mao Tse-tung had said about
"letting one hundred flowers blossom." Once the seeds of sexualful fillment
through culture had been sown in the fertile minds of America's female
proletariatG by a book like Morons Awake! all the old publishing
rules would have to be completely rewritten. After such a "revolt of the
(literary) masses" the bestseller lists in the future might change on an
hourly basis and contain such esoteric titles as Resistance, Rebellion
and Death (Camus), La Maison de Rendezvous (Robbe-Grillet), The
History of Florence (Machiavelli), Reflections on the Revolution in
France (Burke), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Freud) and
Justine; or, The Evils of Virtue (Sade). Which, however, meant
that for all practical purposes professional Publisher's Readers like her
were doomed to become relics of what would no doubt be remembered as "that
darkest of all Dark Ages preceding the Second (Americanized) Rebirth of Western
Civilization." If her discovery of the Great American Wakeup Call did
in fact become the literary find of the millennium, careerwise its "blessings"
could turn out to be decidedly mixed. Nevertheless, based on what little
information she had been able to glean from the title page of Morons Awake!
about its hero's
martyrdom,29 Jayne resolved that she would willingly— nay,
eagerly!—sacrifice herself for the same noble cause (with the
proviso that her reading of the entire manuscript would validate its author's
selfproclaimed
messiahship).30
Intro Part 2 Return to Index
Footnotes
1 The statistical evidence on this matter clearly indicates the vast majority of those who read these trashy gothic novels aren't fooled by the female pseudonyms behind which their male authors (try to) hide themselves. [Note: return to main text from all footnotes by using Back Arrow]
2 BLitt (Vassar), MLit (Yale), LittD (Harvard).
3 I was voted by my highschool class as "The girl most likely to succeed in wedding the man of her dreams."
4 Compromising one's ideals is the name of the game even (or especially) when one is dedicated to elevating the cultural standards of a declining society. While I hate admitting the bolsheviks might have been right when revolutionary push comes to counterrevolutionary shove maybe the end really does justify the means.
5 "Which, in the final analysis," according to him, "is the only way to really teach someone how to swim their way through the deepest and darkest intellectual waters."
6 All of my "femme fatale" attempts to "charm" him into submission failed miserably.
7 A dreadfully bad habit which, as you're discovering, I myself have acquired as a result of editing this bloody book of his!
8 A situation not unlike that faced by a woman when the mysterious stranger sitting next to her at a single's bar strikes up a conversation laced with psychosexual buzzwords like "climactic," "ideological," "seminal" and "artistic"—words whose otherwise "innocent" meanings can, under such predatory circumstances, only be construed as propositional in nature. I don't know about you, dear reader, but when a perfectly strange man starts talking to me about "the decline of Western Civilization," "the orgasmic bliss of erudition" and "the art of conversation as an indispensable technique of sexual fore play" all sorts of female alarmbells start ringing. After all, it isn't every day (or night) that a lovelorn housewife (or career woman) meets a man who can express himself with words of more than 4 letters—even when his intentions aren't dishonorable! Nevertheless, while a woman might be sorely tempted to prolong such a rare event (by motives that could conceivably be more sociological than sexual) by doing so she runs the very real risk of encouraging some intellectual pervert to think she is willing to become at least a passive partner in his "conversational crimes." On the other hand if you brush him off with a verbal slap in the face ("I'm wise to your linguistic tricks, creep!") you might be alienating the one and only man you will ever meet who can put his finger on all those secret buttons every woman wants so desperately to have pushed.
9 A fulllength treatment of which, since it has all the ingredients of a blockbusting bestseller, I plan to write some day when all the emotional dust from my involvement with the editing and publication of Morons Awake! has settled.
10 Or while she ponders her first visit to a "bistro" reputedly frequented by bestselling novelists who specialize in seducing average American housewives as the grist for their literary mills.
11 Believe it or not my real name. But more about this incredible fact later.
12 Although each book publishing company establishes its own set of "First Sentence Standards," according to the 12 April 1991 issue of Publisher's Weekly nearly all of these socalled "proprietary editorial principles" conform to an industrywide consensus about what it takes, firstsentencewise, for a novel to make the bestseller list that has remained more or less constant since Gutenberg printed his Bible.
13 A document of Jayne's own devising she stapled to the inside covers of rejected manuscripts whose authors she felt had shown some signs of promise; and might find this distillation of all the blood, sweat & tears she had expended in the bookpublishing cause edifying. G
14
In this regard the amateurish author must
avoid the fatal mistake of prematurely revealing the outcome of his novel
in the very first sentence. While this might seem like the most farfetched
of pitfalls, believe me, there are gothic romance junkies who have turned
the casual browsing of such formulaic fiction into an art form—by which
they can occasionally predict an author's Grand Literary Design in its entirety
from as little as the initial word of his beginning sentence. Accordingly,
like any predatory conversationalist worth his salt, the wouldbe bestselling
author must keep a few seductive tricks up his literary sleeve. And under
no circumstances should a novelist reveal his obscene purposes in such a
first sentence state of fullyfrontalized prurience that nothing about
them is left to his poor reader's imagination.
Unfortunately, making your way safely through this kind
of "semantic minefield" demands a knowledge of abnormal female pyschology
which, by definition, most failed romance novelists simply don't have. If
they did, of course, these Publishing Wisdom Words of mine would constitute
nothing more than preaching to the converted—a futile exercise someone
already suffering from what seems like the monumental meaninglessness of
her career as a Publisher's Reader would consider worthy of contemplation.
The core problem with writing (and reading) a bestselling gothic novel is,
of course, the prurient nature of all literature. In the final analysis,
aren't the loftiest of love stories (Daphnis & Chloe, Romeo &
Juliet, Tristan und Isolde) only artistic pretexts by which the author
and his reader can engage in an affaire d'imaginaire between a
pathological voyeur and an incurable exhibitionist?
"But," you will (or should) ask, "how can a woman who
admits her own sexlife consists of 'sitting in a salt mine searching for
romantic needles among an endless haystack of unsolicited manuscripts' possibly
evaluate the prurient effect a novel's first sentence will have on an average
American housewife?" To which I will respond that: By asking such an impertinent
question you have inadvertently put your finger on the crux of the matter!
Which is this: Martyring one's own marital prospects to bring a ray of romantic
sunshine into the even gloomier love lives of the already married members
of her gender is the very reason for a publishinghouse reader's being! Hence
it is, that while I sit in my "salt mine" wearing the scruffy (usually just
a halter top & shorts) attire suitable for such solitary (and hellishly
hot!) working conditions, before scrutinizing the first sentence of each
and every manuscript I mentally slip myself into the diaphonous negligee
and curl up on the couch of an imaginary "average American housewife" as
she opens the cover of what she dreams, hopes and prays will be the literary
solution to her Sleeping Beauty problem.
So, whether you like it or not—time prevents me
from discussing the masochistic proclivities of men who write exclusively
for a female readership—it is I (or a woman very much like me) who
adjudicates your first sentence claim to bestselling fame. And, since even
the most exalted art forms are, in the last analysis, nothing more than
popularity contests, it is only another fact of our democratic culture that
your literary fate should be held in the hands of a woman whose expertise
(LittD from Harvard) consists of pretending she is just another runofthemill
downinthedumps, spirituallyallbutbankrupt,
averageAmericanhousewife.
15 See People v. Hearthrob Publishing, United States v. Fantasy Fiction Press and Commonwealth of Mass. v. Dirty Books, Inc., for the most recent jurisprudence on the fine legal line drawn betweeen "authors of reasonably harmless romantic rubbish who exploit an otherwise decent married woman's (sometimes understandable) craving for soft core sleaze and those literary vultures who feed their psychopathic lust on the emotional carrion of America's 'downtrodden' housewifery."
16 For some centuries the Playne women who were all born more or less equally attractive if not irresistably beautiful—suffered from a tendency toward dowdiness by the time they reached early middleage. In Jayne's case this family trait was no doubt accelerated by the Spartan conditions in which she worked. The "curse of premature spinsterhood" also explains why Jayne's otherwise caring parents encumbered her with a name they thought would serve as a "cruel reminder" of her fate should she linger too long on the prenuptial vine. As the Reverend Josiah Playne wrote to Thomas Wyne in a fish-or-cut-bait letter dated June 4th, 1628 concerning Wyne's procrastinational courtship of Playne's oldest daughter, Hester: "Unlyke the laydies who bear your moste felicytous nayme, sir, the Playne womenfolke seem not to improve theyre lookes with age. Accordyngly I uge thee to expedyte thy wedynge plans with my daughtre or set her free to make whatever matrimonial haye she can whylste the sun of her secks appyle is still shyning."
17 One "author" had the audacity to begin his novel by describing its principal female character as "a woman who was wasting her life in the bowels of a Manhattan publishinghouse dreaming that one day she would discover the Great American Romance Novel in the daily haystack of manuscripts through which she was paid the wages of a slave to read." Little did this poor fool realize just how wise a veteran like Jayne was to this hackneyed ploy used by congenitally untalented writers to ingratiate themselves by making the Publisher's Reader of their otherwise unpublishable manuscripts into the heroine of the bestselling novel they were trying to "seduce" her into recommending for publication!
18 Jayne was also struck by the way the author had inscribed both his title and his pseudonym with an italic handwriting that demonstrated considerable skill. This archaic practice is considered by virtually all publishinghouse readers as either: (a) The surest sign of an author's rank amateurism, or; (b) Even worse, his naive attempt to influence the woman in whose "ladylike" hands the fate of his "masterpiece" is held by courting her with his nostalgic display of chivalric penmanship. In this case, her professional cynicism notwithstanding, Jayne found herself so "smitten" with the "personal effect" this particular handwriting produced on her she actually pictured its author's masculine fingers holding one of those manifestly phallic Mont Blanc fountain pens as he skillfully inked his way into her consciousness.
19 As an expert in the art of foreplay slowly removes the lingerie of a woman whose dreams of feminine fulfillment he will only consummate after she has been repeatedly brought to the very brink of her most ardent orgasmic expectations.
20 In addition to a book's title and its author's pseudonym, the term "cover" can (and usually does) encompass such other sales inducements as a lurid pictorial rendering of its steamiest "love" scene, warnings about the ADULTS ONLY nature of its subject matter, critical raves over the thrills a reader can expect to get from the "Artistic way in which what might otherwise be the standard Sleeping Beauty plot of a trashy female sex novel unfolds" and a selfserving blurb or two from the publisher proclaiming "Every American woman's First Amendment Right (and patriotic duty!) to read a book that expands the frontiers of her psychosexual freedom." Since the publication of Morons Awake! and the influence its blockbusting sales has had on other writers with bestselling aspirations, a novel's title page now also falls within the rubric of what is technically known as a book's "cover."
21 Halfway through her reading of the title page Jayne's left hand involuntarily flew to her cheek, as if she'd actually been slapped. The stinging sensation she felt there didn't completely fade until her fourth reading at which time it felt to her rather more like a blush than the aftereffect of a slap.
22 With the possible exception of Albert Camus. But even Camus, genius that he was, drew an aesthetic distinction between "my novels, plays and other works which are overtly philosophical in their nature." See his Limitations On The Power Of Even The Most Popular Art Forms To Influence The Mass Mind.
23 And, we should remember, the Bible was not only written collectively but at a time when every book was an automatic bestseller.
24 Jayne was still convinced "Mordecai Goldberg" was in fact a pseudonym chosen by the author to add yet another prurient nusical note to the overture of his miscegenational opus. While it might seem as if the aversion most WASPS say they have toward both Jews and intellectuals would make the choice of such an inflammatory pen name suicidal, as a result of Jayne's (albeit limited) social contacts with the females who move in such bigoted social circles she had come to think their protestations about "the predatory sexual proclivities of brainy kikes" were suspiciously overzealous.
25 The Communist Manifesto. (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
26 Declaration of Independence. (Thomas Jefferson)
27 The Rightsof Man. (Tom Paine)
28 Throughout her education at Vassar, Yale and Harvard Jayne had been indoctrinated by the writings of such misanthropic bogeymen as Thorstein Veblen, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Marshal McCluhan on "the deluge of cultural mediocrity which inevitably flows from the political ethos of democratic egalitarianism."
29 Jayne had already decided that, in the unlikely event Morons Awake! passed the First Sentence Test and went on to be seriously considered for publication, she would insist its author change both his pseudonym and the handle of his hero. In her opinion "Mordecai Goldberg" and "Jack F. Klutz" were names which "didn't exactly vibrate with the musical resonance normally associated with the princely protagonist (and his behindtheliteraryscenes alter ego) of a bestselling gothic novel."
30 Try as she might, there was no other way for Jayne to explain the manifest streak of megalomania weaving its messianic way through the evangelical tapestry of his title page.
Glossary
evanescent adjective Vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor. See synonyms at TRANSIENT.
epiphany noun[ME epiphanie, fr. MF, fr. LL epiphania, fr. LGk, pl., prob. alter. of Gk epiphaneia appearance, manifestation, fr. epiphainein to manifest, fr. epi- + phainein to show ¦ more at FANCY](14c) 1 cap : January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ 2 : an appearance or manifestation esp. of a divine being 3 a(1) : a usu. sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usu. simple and striking (3) : an illuminating discovery b : a revealing scene or moment
roman à clef noun [F, lit., novel with a key](1893) : a novel in which real persons or actual events figure under disguise
modus vivendi noun, [NL, manner of living](ca. 1879) 1 : a feasible arrangement or practical compromise; esp : one that bypasses difficulties 2 : a manner of living : a way of life
orgiastic adjective Of, relating to, or characteristic of an orgy. [Greek orgiastikos, from orgiastes, celebrant of orgies, from orgiazein, to celebrate orgies, from orgia, orgies. See ORGY.] - orgiast noun - orgiastically adverb
syntax noun [F or LL; F syntaxe, fr. LL syntaxis, fr. Gk, fr. syntassein to arrange together, fr. syn- + tassein to arrange](1574) 1 a : the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses) b : the part of grammar dealing with this 2 : a connected or orderly system : harmonious arrangement of parts or elements 3 : syntactics esp. as dealing with the formal properties of languages or calculi
misogyny noun [Gk misogynia, fr. misein to hate + gyn- woman ¦ more at QUEEN](ca. 1656) : a hatred of women ¦ misogynic adj ¦ misogynist n or adj ¦ misogynistic adj
shiksa or shikse noun [Yiddish shikse, fem. of sheygets non-Jewish boy, fr. Heb sheqeà blemish, abomination](1892) 1 : a non-Jewish girl or woman ¦ often used disparagingly 2 : a Jewish girl or woman who does not observe Jewish precepts ¦ used esp. by Orthodox Jews
erotogenic adj (ca. 1909) : EROGENOUS erogenous adj 1 : producing sexual excitement or libidinal gratification when stimulated : sexually sensitive 2 : of, relating to, or arousing sexual feelings
raison d'être noun [F](1864) : reason or justification for existence
proletariat noun [F prolétariat, fr. L proletarius](1853) 1 : the lowest social or economic class of a community 2 : the laboring class; esp : the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live
edify -fying [ME, fr. MF edifier, fr. LL & L; LL aedificare to instruct or improve spiritually, fr. L, to erect a house, fr. aedes temple, house; akin to OE ¢d funeral pyre, L aestas summer](14c) 1 archaic a : BUILD b : ESTABLISH 2 : to instruct and improve esp. in moral and religious knowledge : UPLIFT; also : ENLIGHTEN 2, INFORM. Return to text