Writing in the Shadow of Doom…
by rsbakker
Feeling even more of a Lunatic in the Wilderness today. I figured I would lay this latest twist out so you can see just how frustrating and capricious this business is. I’m used to bad breaks: My first meetings to discuss the sale of The Darkness That Comes Before were cancelled because of 9/11. The second because of the SARS outbreak. And the financial crisis happened pretty much the instant Chris Weitz found someone willing to invest in the pilot for a cable serialization of The Prince of Nothing. I’ve managed to persevere, nonetheless.
As you know, I’ve been bumming because of the absolute absence of any reviews for Disciple of the Dog. To be blunt, this quite simply means the book is doomed, at least here in Canada. In an effort to deny me any targets for my blamethrower, my agent just contacted me with Penguin’s review-copy mailing list. Apparently all these places received copies: The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Ottawa Citizen, The Winnepeg Free Press, The Edmonton Journal, The Calgary Herald, The Montreal Gazette, The Vancouver Sun, The Chronicle Herald, The Time’s Colonist, The Walrus, and over thirty other different media outlets, including websites.
Now, I appreciate that it’s a numbers game, but when I think of all those review editors and producers each looking at the book, then placing it on the freebee pile with a shrug–all of them!–I realize that I am ruly truly writing in the shadow of doom. There’s a reason why midlist authors seem to linger for only so long before disappearing altogether: the madness of modern media driven culture is that you’re not deemed important unless you are deemed important.
Obviously my name didn’t ring any bells, which is to say, even though all these folks are the gatekeepers of the Canadian writing scene, they know absolutely nothing about me. Now I can understand this happening in a place like America. Whenever my friends or family start lampooning Americans for knowing so little about Canada I always remind them just how monstrously big the USA is: Americans can’t even keep up with what’s going on in their own country, let alone follow events in a country with a smaller economy than California. The media mountain is so much steeper and taller in the US.
But media in Canada are, like, way small, man. Like knolls in a farmer’s field. You would think that out of all those outlets, at least one would wonder whether I was, you know, at least kind of interesting. I guess not.
Compare this situation with the Canada Council for Arts grant application I filled out a couple years ago (on the advice of Rob Sawyer). For years now, I’ve joked about how the vast bulk of ‘Canadian Literature’ can be described as ‘extended meditations on the quotidian minutae of post-colonial, prairie/urban, gay/straight, Canadian life.’ I literally used this as a recipe for pitching a novel, and lo and behold, without so much as a call or a how-do-you-do? I received a cheque for $20,000 in the mail a few months later (and so Light, Time, and Gravity was born).
So, on the one hand, I pitch the status quo on a lark, and I get rewarded with a bunch of taxpayer dough. On the other, I actually do something different, actually try something critical and original, and I’m pretty much ignored, especially by those who make the most noise about being critical and original.
Go figure.
The pigeonhole has no bottom, believe you me. I used to be so naive as to think I could climb out, but now I’m starting to think that it swallows everyone in the end. I wonder about all the other cranks and crackpots out there, about all the other sparks that have been snuffed by relentless inattention. It’s no accident that eulogies are so filled with cliches.
After all, it’s neurophysiology that I’m up against more than any passing cultural bigotry. The brain pigeonholes everything it encounters to better lower its caloric load, to economize. We sort far more than we ponder. Novelty, when we encounter it, is either confused for something old and stupid or comes across as errant noise. Things were this way long before corporations and capital.
So I find myself wondering what I should do. Maybe I should just resign myself to my fate, numb the pain, mellow those revenge fantasies. Become a fatalist.
But then there’s nothing like bitterness to keep that fire scorching your belly. And there’s nothing I fear more than becoming old and complacent. Only the well-groomed don’t have chips on their shoulders.
Three Pound Brain 
They would have recognized the name if the ‘R.’ had not been omitted from the cover. I’m only half-joking.
Also, there was an article in Science today which deals with the neuroanatomical basis of the differences between individuals in their capacity to introspect about the correctness of their solution to a problem.
A journalist friend of mine suggested that you try sending to weeklies i nstead of dailies. They’re willing to review more things, though their distribution is smaller.
If they can’t hear you in the stands, you have to streak the field.
I’d suggest taping a copy of Disciple of the Dog, fig leaf style, over your man-bits before setting out.
In solidarity with Jorge, I am also only half-joking.
Well, if it’s any consolation Scott I’ve noticed that Chapters/Indigo chain stores here in Edmonton have at least been giving Disciple a decent showing… though its always in the mystery or general fic section of course; pretty distant from where the more casual PoN or even Neuropath fans are likely to spot it.
what I miss from working in media is getting free books from publishers but I did my obligation by doing a fair review
Popularity requires appeal to the masses, and as the masses tend to be mentally incompetent by most standards popularity doesn’t mean shit.
Fast food will always outsell fine cuisine: It’s cheap, easy, and requires nothing from the eater. Fine cuisine is expensive, requires time, and thought for appreciation of the aroma, the artistry of the dishes, how the layers of flavors and textures are interwoven ingeniously.
99.99% of people will have eaten at McDonalds, while a mere fraction of a percent will have dined at a restaurant like El Bulli. But whereas that 99.99% will answer “oh yeah, McDonalds is alright,” that fraction of a percent will say how El Bulli was an EPIPHANY.
Cheesy food analogies aside: Better to psychologically pierce a few readers to the marrow than to simply brush the skin of a hundred thousand. I have friends who are writers who look up to you as a role model. Not Tolstoy, not Tolkein, nor Shakespeare, but YOU.
I myself had thought I’d sampled every flavor that literature had to offer, until I read Prince of Nothing. Your work wasn’t simply taste; it redefined my palette itself. While authors that provide light amusement will always outsell you, who gives a shit? Their novels are simply a two minute handjob from a herpes-infested whore, whereas yours provide many readers with a once-in-a-life-time relationship.
Fuck mediocrity, with Bakker it’s sublimity that is on the menu.
damn, i would’ve watched a cable serialization
You need to gin up more controversy with your books. Dan Brown sold a mediocre-but-page-turning bestseller by saying that Jesus was mortal and married, and the conservative wing of the Catholic Church was out to get anyone saying so. The implications of Neuroscience are pretty bizarre and frightening, but too cerebral for most potential readers.
Or you could write a horror novel. You do have a gift for writing some fucked-up, gut-wrenching scenes.
More seriously, I’m wondering if it’s a genre disconnect. You have a least a decent number of fans, but most of them are Prince of Nothing fans who might not cross over into the thriller genre. I myself checked out Neuropath only because I was already a fan of your fantasy, and that wasn’t until long after the book had come out.
Without that, you just don’t have much of a fan-base to spread the word-of-mouth around, and it doesn’t sound like the publisher is willing to go all-out on a promoting campaign (the way they do with some books, like what they did with The Passage).
That sucks. The American publisher won’t drop you because of this, will they?
So I find myself wondering what I should do.
Paint sunflowers?
I bet that sucked for that artist…
I think Brett’s got an idea, but I bet the idea Jesus was married had more impact than the idea he was mortal – tugging at those social connections with the ‘controversy’. Even the idea of mortality is a bit cerebral.
Really man, you know your a ninja, a subversive. That books gunna get it’s sarin laced ideas out to a bunch of folk. Which part of you is complaining? The part that wants food and shelter – stuff the $20,000 check in it’s mouth! The other part? Your gunna hit some targets! In terms of reaching an audience your supposed poverty is to many of us luxury! Cue some sort of pythonesque sketch about getting up in the morning, killing ourselves, walking ten miles with no legs then writing stuff no one will ever print…and we liked it!
Good luck, your doing (my) well!
Dude, chill on the fatalism. I’m not in the writing scene, so you know better than I can if the time scale covered and lack of attention. But I’m sure (for reasons that are no doubt unsubstantiated and in no way empirically grounded) that White-Luck will do better. For what it is worth, I think ‘Disciple is totally awesome. In fact, I am now going back to reading it.
Rub our noses in it that you’ve got it, will you… 🙂
Well, since you *asked.* Only because I happened to be in the UK (none of my Aussie friends have it yet, I can hear the baying for my blood from here!). I won’t spoil it for you though—gloating is enough 😀
My only question is would you rather have me drive to Montreal and buy a copy, or wait until November and pick it up here, in Vermont?
I, too, would watch a cable version of PoN. Though, if it was on SyFy, maybe not.
Well, your publisher should have sent out review copies to some book bloggers, you’d certainly get some reviews then and I’m sorry but all these people review copies were sent out to are absolutely the wrong kind of people to send out books from Scott Bakker to. Does your publisher even know what it is that you write?
Scott,
I’m reading “Disciple” right now and I’m planning to blog about it for Tor.com when I’m finished. I’m interested in conducting an oh-so-short interview with you about science in your work. Do you happen to have any personal bandwidth for that? Twenty minutes tops if we do it over the phone, otherwise I’m happy to shoot you questions via email. And you can review your quotes prior to publication. ~rl rlamb(at)howstuffworks.com