There you sit, sipping your breakfast tea and listening to Bach cantatas as your loyal terrier curls at your feet. There you sit, in a stale room with moldering wallpaper and a ticking clock and a portrait on the wall of Percy Shelley: his eyes are forlorn and he stares hard, hard, HARD at a rock, as if by staring at this rock he will turn it into something interesting, like a sexy lady or a sexy man.

He will not turn this rock into a fuckable property by the power of his stare, and you will not change the direction of literature (down) with your story, in dialect, about Grandma Lupe's Barber Shop and all of its colorful characters. Do you even have a Grandma Lupe? Have you even visited a barber shop, since your hair began to fall out of your head in finger-length tufts as a result of the sheer size and density of your bullshit thoughts?

We are calling you out, Fiction Writers. We are opening the windows in the attic. We are seeing what is up there, and if it can't be sold, we are throwing it away. We are going to turn the attic into a game room. We are going to turn the attic into a place with a pool table and constant dancing. We are calling you out, so you'd better get your shit together and see if your shit can dance.

Why?

Because OUR shit can dance. And we are done pretending that dancing doesn't matter, when it comes to you, your shit, and the fiction you are peddling.

No more polite snickers behind cat-eye glasses at something mild. No more nervous authenticity checks to yourself with your pensive face all screwed up in the mirror and your belt tightened around your belly in a mock-turtleneck. We are talking FICTION, people. Gut-laughs, thrown chairs, knife fights, body-blows, dirty faces, ugly braces, bare chests, bold lies, and bear baiting: that is the future of literature.

Literature is for the villains of the world. The salty dogs. If you have not looked at death lately and had a handshake, then you should take up knitting, and leave fiction to those who are about to die. Knitting is getting big nowadays. People are reclaiming it as an exciting social thing. You want to knit? Go ahead. No one is going to make fun of you.

Here is a website, knitters, just for you:

http://www.learntoknit.com

Learn up. Get ready to have really amazing conversations about knitting with like-minded assholes who don't like to read books front to back anymore, but just like to get the idea and chat about it with pals.

While you are knitting, we will be writing stories that make people grab their eyeballs and squeeze them into gross-ass jelly. We will be writing stories that make people lock themselves in their house forever, or burn their house down and never go back. We will be at the circus, and you will be at the yarn store.

You can join us. Or you can squat, confused, a traditional writer, in the middle of the road, and wait until we get to you. You can wait until we call you out PERSONALLY. While you are squatting, bouncing from one foot to the other, you can knit yourself a rainbow hat that will hide your future head scars.

BECAUSE WE WILL GET TO YOU. Oh, how we plot and think! Oh, how much time we have to find you all!

It's so HARD to be a writer. People just watch TV and read COMIC BOOKS and play VIDEO GAMES. OPRAH ruins everything. NO ONE cares about poetry anymore. Even COLLEGE STUDENTS do not understand my subtle IRONIES and conflicts. How can we compete? How can we be relevant? We can't. Gads, how we can't. So we will write nothing for no one, and complain ALL THE DAMN TIME.

That was you, Fiction Writers. But it doesn't have to be. We are calling you out. What have you got?


Posted by miracle on Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:43:51 -0500 -- permanent link