All Worded Up

I can read readin' and I can read writin' but I can't read writin' that's written rather rotten.
– Burt Sugar

I had a cousin who was an avid science fiction buff, back in that mythical time before George Lucas gifted us with the "Star Wars" culture, and true sci-fi addicts found their main fix not at the movies, but in the nebulous universe of trade paperbacks.

His pulp library covered a whole wall in his home – a fortress barricade of those 4"x6" tomes – Asimov and Clarke and Pohl, and hundreds of lesser-known authors of that past era. You find them now in used book stores. Open one and glide your fingers across the coarse, woody surface of those yellowing pages, turning to dust in the 21st century sunlight. Their time will not pass again.

The feeling from that wall of dog-earred volumes, was that a considerable chunk of someone's life had been spent reading. That Richard Matheson wasn't just pecking away on that soon-obsolete typewriter just to see his own words in a stylish font – much like thousands of bloggers (guilty as charged) do in this cyber-age of ours.

When I stroll through Borders – the French brothel of major bookstore chains – the paperbacks just don't give me any "feeling." The air I find in modern booksellers, is that the product gives off a foreboding pheromone.

When I browse through a book anymore, I sense that writers don't write for readers – they write to placate themselves, to secure some kind of symbolic ownership of a topic – to establish a documented expertise, that they can claim later on for a speaking fee.

Yeah, maybe I'd do it too, but not always.

A time ago I was approached by an aspiring author, to create illustrations for his still unpublished book. His idea was that my illustrations would help the book "turn the corner" in the hunt for a publishing deal. I wondered, and I think I actually asked him politely, that if the text was lacking, how would drawings based on those inadequate words improve them?

The more I over-analyzed it, the more it seemed like a whirling dervish of negativity. The guy was basically, indirectly, admitting his work is substandard, in the assumtion that the readers to whom he intends to peddle his underbaked drivel are gullible simps who'll never question its alleged integrity – if it's illustrated. He's hoping they'll see the pretty pictures, and think they've actually read something. In short, he didn't write a book to be read – he wrote a book to be bought.

He wasn't after a reputation as an author, good or bad. He wanted his fifteen minutes of fame on the talkshow circuit. And of course, lots and lots of money – enough to keep him from having to get a real job, until his next bigass idea for another ripoff.

Must be nice work if you can get it.

Unfortunately today's bookstores are ripe with these "authors" who aren't necessarily sating any cosmic urge to write and be read, but who've wrangled a book deal in a quest to finance a third home and a bigger SUV.

And in that bald pursuit of wealth, they're perfectly willing to undermine your perceptions (much like certain politicians I could name), and even empty the pockets of certain readers with disturbed, under-researched content. "The Secret," anyone?

As for the fans of this pabulum, the same people who gobble up these lukewarm distillations would probably be outraged if they discovered their cigs and lattés were somehow as deluded. "The Shack" ought to have a half-moon carved in the door – what you'll find inside amounts to as much.

Maybe it's always been that way, and I am vainly clutching the naiveté of my youth out of spite.

Sure, I think Writers have the right to make a living from their words, if their words are worthy of that reward.

But like the legal definition of abuse, judgment hinges on effect, not intent. That's why a hardbound book called "Bad Things" with only 50 pages, and a single incomplete sentence – in large type – per page (#5. Head lice.), can ask a $20 cover price, and make a million dollars for some non-writer.

The talent is in coddling network connections, rather than words on a page. I often refer to these books as "the big junkpile."

Also appropriate is my word, "copromage." The worship of shit.

That same author who wanted his book illustrated, posed a little question to me, to shore up his intellectual veneer: "You know the difference between a writer and an author," he asked?

A Writer writes for someone else who selects the topic and takes the credit – an Author works for himself, and writes about topics of his own choosing. Okay...

I had a comeback for him: A writer gets paid, usually because he's proven he writes well – while anyone with a pen or a keyboard can call themselves an author, whether they make a dime or not. (And "blogging" didn't even exist yet. O, what an asshole was I!)

That didn't improve my chances of getting hired by this guy, but by the time he began power-quoting himself, my mind was made up that I didn't want his partnership anyway. I went on being an arrogant prick with empty pockets. He probably got a book deal somewhere, and bought a Lexus. I don't remember his name anymore.

But it isn't only books and writers that have changed. Readers have changed too. I marvel at the new age of endless digital text, and those who sit in coffeeshops and stare at column-less waves of words on computer screens. It's a trancelike intensity that I admit I just don't get. I wonder how their inner circuitry processes all that data – if indeed they are "processing" anything. Gen-Wikipedia has added wider access and a deeper saturation point to our information age, but not necessarily improved accuracy.

And books themselves have strayed away from readability, in favor of attractive packaging and faux-prestige.

When I was in school, nearly everything eventually went to paperback – usually had 100+ pages, that cost 50¢ or 75¢... $1.50 by my senior year. Even a nerdy kid like me could acquire a personal library. Mine was never a fortress wall, but rather a box in the closet. And a paperback meant that you could read it in bed without it breaking your nose if you dozed off.

Even comic books operated on a higher literary plane during my kidhood. At least I recall it that way. My mother's constant reprimands against ruining my mind with "that garbage," was countered by my grandmother's tempered, "at least he's reading!"

Green Lantern may have been a poorly developed fantasy character with an overly dramatic costume and laughable motivation, but he spoke in complete sentences.

You could learn to read with comics, back in the day. It was natural to graduate from comics to more substantial reading, like novels – because it eventually dawned on us that comics were using up space with pictures, that could just as easily be occupied by MORE story! I say this, even though that very same artwork inspired my own desire to draw and illustrate – as much as the "all-word" books I graduated to gave me the desire to write.

Today's comics are previews for a video game – or toy – or movie – or, you name it. They don't inspire, they sell. "Tie-ins" the industry calls them.

They have adopted the "manga" philosophy, which I interpret as feeding the eyes candy, while letting the brain starve. The style favors simplified yet preponderant illustrations, and as few words as possible. Some are barely strings of spelled-out grunts.

This is basically a high-tech retreat to the age of cave drawings. And usually these books feature characters who have no basis in reality, other than having two arms and two legs – most times.

What a potent poison for a young mind in the formative stages. To matter in life, one must possess:
1. The visual appeal of the limpid-eyed nymph who lip-synced the opening song at the Beijing Olympics.
2. A martial-arts prowess somewhere at or above a Bruce Lee.
3. A badass wardrobe and a punk mane that holds it shape even in battle.
4. Futuristic toylike-but-lethal weaponry.
5. Most importantly, an indwelling mystical demon (don't leave the house without one) that grants you diety-like powers, in case items 1 thru 4 aren't enough to insure you a nice day.

Aren't there counseling groups for kids battling these very dysfunctional, narcissistic conceptions of reality? I mean the reality that kicks in, ready or not, when you wake up – not the reality that depends on a game control and a wild thumb technique.

Yeah, I read my share of Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Mad, Cracked, Creepy, et al., but just one ugly leap off the top of a playground slide, with a sheet around my neck, was enough to clue me in that the Man of Steel was just entertainment. The Fantastic Four never sent me into epileptic seizures.

Oh yeah, when I was a kid, comic books were 12¢ or 15¢. Ones with 100 pages, reprinting issues I may have missed, were a whopping 50¢.

Today in most bookstores, I need a $20 bill for a 70-page shelf-hog that will never be in paperback, can be read in 10 minutes thanks to 24-point size text, and claims to be the answer to life, the universe and everything. And I know it must be good because so many movers and shakers have endorsed it – 20 of those 70 pages are taken up by excerpts of their glowing reviews. This is reading?

No, it's bookselling, and that's... the secret.