Obsessive.
Here is my new passion.
I knew immediately upon seeing it online that this book had to be my Staff Recommendation for December. Because December is holy and Jesus wants you to be happy. I don't think he cares much about the means to that end as long as it doesn't involve child rape or gay marriage. Surely the mere clenching of one's anus can't be offensive to any deity worth His salt. Just think how many people I could save from the Nobody-Loves-Me holiday depressions with just a simple recommendation!
The only conceivable problem with this plan was that this surely brilliant work is published by a company called iUniverse. The first words on iUniverse's site pretty much say it all: "There's no need to waste years hoping that someone will publish your book. iUniverse makes it possible for you to become a published author today." All that's missing is an exclamation point and prominent placement in the back of a comic book. A quick browse of the iUniverse website reveals it (along with the similar Xlibris) to be perfectly suited to the internet age, embodying exactly the sort of "anyone can do it" ethos that ruined popular music forever in the late 70s and that blogs like this one, in tandem with publishers like iUniverse, threaten to do to the already debased world of modern letters1. The supposedly egalitarian2 nature of the Internet leads to retarded thinking like this, thinking that says we need to lower the bar for entry into the publishing world at the exact moment in history when there are more people with English degrees than ever before3. This may be great for iUniverse's business; it's only a short step from the le rédacteur, il est moi spirit responsible for the existence (and, not coincidentally, failure) of most blogs to the desire to circumvent the old-fashioned publishing process used by losers like Joyce and Pynchon, and look how many goddamned bloggers there are.
So iUniverse sucks, basically. If you needed a clearer sign that iUniverse's roster consists solely of writers that absolutely nobody wants to read, ever, I direct you to the inconvenient fact that threatened to stymie my beautiful, terrible plan to improve the lives of as many as ten people this December: all of iUniverse's books are Print on Demand, meaning, of course, that iUniverse doesn't print a copy of any given book unless someone orders it. There are no copies sitting in warehouses to be rush-delivered to your local Waldenbooks, and there are no copies sitting on their shelves because Print on Demand books are non-returnable and bookstores do not order copies of non-returnable books unless, you guessed it, somebody requests a copy, and usually pays in advance for it. Hello fortune and fame, lucky iUniverse author!
So normally, recommending Print on Demand books is not allowed, for the obvious reason that if the buying public foolishly chooses not to heed my recommendation, the store is stuck with the books4. In this case, however, the store manager agreed with me that How to Good-Bye Depression is obviously a work of genius, and deserves to sit on the Staff Recommendations shelf alongside Dogshit Novel that All of College Kid's Friends Like, Momentarily Hip "Graphic Novel" That Will Be Thumbed Through Briefly Before Being Placed Back on the Shelf, Awful Pandering Book on Eastern Philosophy/Religion, and Completely Worthless Novel Written by Thirtysomething Author Whose Audience is Dumb Enough to Find Any Depth in His Sophomoric Ramblings on Big Topics Such as Death and Love and The Holocaust. I believe, in my heart, that the ten copies of How to Good-Bye Depression will sell, and I will be vindicated, but if they don't, and I'm not, it won't bother me at all. That said, if you happen to see the book on the Staff Recommendations shelf at a large bookstore in Manhattan, give it a look, won't you?
Next time: Jonathan Safran Foer and the dumbest sentence I've ever read. Also: Gay haiku.
1 The difference between the two situations, of course, being that people still listen to music, while nobody reads anymore.
2 No el bloggo for you, Julio!
3 Present company included, natch.
4 This is the only thing that's kept me from recommending the utterly perfect (and inexplicably Print on Demand) Snake 'n' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, a book that in a sane world would be required reading for all American schoolchildren.
I knew immediately upon seeing it online that this book had to be my Staff Recommendation for December. Because December is holy and Jesus wants you to be happy. I don't think he cares much about the means to that end as long as it doesn't involve child rape or gay marriage. Surely the mere clenching of one's anus can't be offensive to any deity worth His salt. Just think how many people I could save from the Nobody-Loves-Me holiday depressions with just a simple recommendation!
The only conceivable problem with this plan was that this surely brilliant work is published by a company called iUniverse. The first words on iUniverse's site pretty much say it all: "There's no need to waste years hoping that someone will publish your book. iUniverse makes it possible for you to become a published author today." All that's missing is an exclamation point and prominent placement in the back of a comic book. A quick browse of the iUniverse website reveals it (along with the similar Xlibris) to be perfectly suited to the internet age, embodying exactly the sort of "anyone can do it" ethos that ruined popular music forever in the late 70s and that blogs like this one, in tandem with publishers like iUniverse, threaten to do to the already debased world of modern letters1. The supposedly egalitarian2 nature of the Internet leads to retarded thinking like this, thinking that says we need to lower the bar for entry into the publishing world at the exact moment in history when there are more people with English degrees than ever before3. This may be great for iUniverse's business; it's only a short step from the le rédacteur, il est moi spirit responsible for the existence (and, not coincidentally, failure) of most blogs to the desire to circumvent the old-fashioned publishing process used by losers like Joyce and Pynchon, and look how many goddamned bloggers there are.
So iUniverse sucks, basically. If you needed a clearer sign that iUniverse's roster consists solely of writers that absolutely nobody wants to read, ever, I direct you to the inconvenient fact that threatened to stymie my beautiful, terrible plan to improve the lives of as many as ten people this December: all of iUniverse's books are Print on Demand, meaning, of course, that iUniverse doesn't print a copy of any given book unless someone orders it. There are no copies sitting in warehouses to be rush-delivered to your local Waldenbooks, and there are no copies sitting on their shelves because Print on Demand books are non-returnable and bookstores do not order copies of non-returnable books unless, you guessed it, somebody requests a copy, and usually pays in advance for it. Hello fortune and fame, lucky iUniverse author!
So normally, recommending Print on Demand books is not allowed, for the obvious reason that if the buying public foolishly chooses not to heed my recommendation, the store is stuck with the books4. In this case, however, the store manager agreed with me that How to Good-Bye Depression is obviously a work of genius, and deserves to sit on the Staff Recommendations shelf alongside Dogshit Novel that All of College Kid's Friends Like, Momentarily Hip "Graphic Novel" That Will Be Thumbed Through Briefly Before Being Placed Back on the Shelf, Awful Pandering Book on Eastern Philosophy/Religion, and Completely Worthless Novel Written by Thirtysomething Author Whose Audience is Dumb Enough to Find Any Depth in His Sophomoric Ramblings on Big Topics Such as Death and Love and The Holocaust. I believe, in my heart, that the ten copies of How to Good-Bye Depression will sell, and I will be vindicated, but if they don't, and I'm not, it won't bother me at all. That said, if you happen to see the book on the Staff Recommendations shelf at a large bookstore in Manhattan, give it a look, won't you?
Next time: Jonathan Safran Foer and the dumbest sentence I've ever read. Also: Gay haiku.
1 The difference between the two situations, of course, being that people still listen to music, while nobody reads anymore.
2 No el bloggo for you, Julio!
3 Present company included, natch.
4 This is the only thing that's kept me from recommending the utterly perfect (and inexplicably Print on Demand) Snake 'n' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, a book that in a sane world would be required reading for all American schoolchildren.
posted by Dktr. Blasphemy at 10:15 PM
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