"I'm writing a book about writing called WRITING.
"That's short
for writing, work, and family.
"My hero is called Heap.
"Irascible `Razz' Heap, compare Incredible Hulk.
"Heap is a senior
fellow at the prestigious left-wing think-tank in Point and Shoot, Florida, the Point
and Shoot Institute (PSI).
"He writes white papers.
"A
white paper is a short essay on economics, politics, the arts."
"I
know what a white paper is," Pyle's audient said.
"Good,"
Pyle said. "Businesses write commercial white papers. That's a white paper
that presents only the good side and glosses over the bad side."
"I
know what a commercial white paper is," Pyle's audient said.
"Good,"
Pyle said.
He stopped to think.
"I write about my conditions
of production," he said. "I think a book should be about a writer's conditions
of production.
"Where did the writer get the money to live on while
he wrote his book, and how did he know who to send it to, when he was done?
"It's not that to get an agent you have to have a track record, and to get published
you have to have an agent.
"It's worse than that.
"It's
that if you were anybody they would have heard of you and if they haven't heard of
you, you aren't anybody. So fuck you. You're nobody.
"Now, if you
write about that, you sound negative and pessimistic. That's a turn-off. Nobody
wants to hear about that. Even if it's true. It's too dark.
"So I
started calling what I wrote, or what my hero wrote, black papers.
"Wouldn't
you like to know what John Kennedy Toole thought of book publishers?
"Of
course, his suicide speaks eloquently to that. He was in despair. Because
of the way publishers treated him.
"Or Barbara Pym."
Pyle
looked at his audient.
Yes, his audient knew who Barbara Pym was.
"To me, the way publishers treated Barbara Pym killed her just as surely as
the bottle killed Jack Kerouac.
"And publishers killed Jack Kerouac.
The bottle was only the efficient cause. Not the reason.
"The reason
was publishers."
Pyle's audient nodded in agreement.
God damn
their murdering eyes.