Armando Simón“Something’s going on and the bad guys are winning. The moral foundation of civilization is being undermined, not by politics but by the culture.” — Taki
“I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won’t publish me, the bookshops won’t carry my books, the critics won’t write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.” — Anais Nin
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, has it made a noise? If a book is published, but is never printed, is it a book? If a stage play is written, but is never produced, is it a stage play?
Recently, Lou Aguilar (a fellow Cuban, I recently found out) wrote about his experience of having his novel rejected because the publishers found the conservative plot and dialogue to be anathema (the same is true with conservative films, which I have repeatedly begged conservatives to support them by going to theaters). Such “literary abortionists,” as Taki so succinctly put it, are commonplace.
I have had the same problem, except my work has not gone past the barrier of the literary agent clones. My one consolation has been to self-publish, the consolation being that I can hold my stories in my hands instead of just on paper. Small consolation. Almost all persons who self-publish end up eating their books since there is no real circulation into bookstores. In Amazon there is circulation, but they are crowded out by millions of other books, past and present.
I tried approaching the two or three commercial publishers whose standards are conservative values, but they only publish nonfiction. They publish books by famous talking heads where the books read the very same thing that the talking heads have said before, and that are read by persons who have already heard those messages and want to read/hear them again. I have repeatedly tried to convince the publishers that fiction is more powerful than nonfiction in spreading values; everyone knows “1984“ and “Atlas Shrugged,” but only a tiny minority remembers the equivalent messages in nonfiction form (e.g., the out-of-print “Black Bread and Samovars, In the Clutches of the Tcheka, British Agent”), if they remember the nonfiction books at all. As Breitbart so famously put it, “Politics is downstream from culture.”
But nothing! It’s impossible to get through their thick skulls. It would be one thing if one was rejected for bad writing, but to not even be considered? (The best rejection I ever got was in the beginning from a liberal, a rejection letter stating that it was obvious I was a very good writer, but he disliked what I wrote. I was ecstatic and almost framed that rejection. I should have. It wouldn’t have vanished in all my moves). Many conservatives are unimaginative, cowardly blockheads.
To prove to the reader that my experience and that of Aguilar are not isolated, I will (as is my habit in nonfiction) cite somewhat similar instances.
When Abigail Shrier wrote a book critical of the transgender mania among girls, Amazon took out the ads for the book. The American Booksellers Association sent Shrier’s book to booksellers, and some recipients had their tender feelings hurt in receiving copies, whereupon the ABA issued a statement: “This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s ends policies, values, and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.” Note the word “violent” simply for offering a book for sale. “Violent!” This is an accusation that is often hurled at anyone for saying or writing anything liberal fanatics hate to see or hear that contradicts their ideology in any manner: that speaking or writing anything that disagrees with their dogma is an act of “violence.” Such people should really buy a dictionary. They might learn something.
Publishers nowadays arbitrarily change the wording in books to be more in line with woke ideology without the authors’ approval. The children’s Goosebumps series, published by Scholastic, is one example. Likewise, the late British author Enid Blyton, has had her works made more palatable to the woke mob. Ian Fleming’s books have also been bowdlerized. Roal Dhal famously told his publishers not to change a single comma in his books; now that he is dead, the thought police has changed more than just a comma. To obtain the originals of the above works, one now has to rummage for old copies, that is, those that have not been thrown into a bonfire. But the lesson here is that when an author is dead, he is helpless to protect his creations.
Bloomsbury canceled a book on the British Empire for not sufficiently attacking the Empire. In recent decades, it has become fashionable in the UK for leftists to mutilate the history of colonization in order to demonize white Europeans.
Kate Clanchy’s memoir on teaching in Britain was initially praised but then somebody decided that it was blasphemous and the usual campaign of demonizing began. One author tried to defend her but quickly showed the white flag when it appeared he would be targeted next. Clanchy’s publisher issued three apologies, one after the other, before dropping her. Four years later, the publisher apologized to Clanchy, once the pendulum of opinion swung the other way, around the same time that “Anatomy of a Cancellation” came out on the BBC, a documentary on the controversy. A second rate author who had been particularly rabid, now that the tables have turned, is groveling for everyone to forget her role.
In the You Can’t Make This Up Department, Amazon once censored a documentary on censorship. The New York Times did something similar with a book also on censorship, and another book on censorship was canceled by a UK publisher. Little, Brown canceled a book, “Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics” by British journalist Julie Burchill because in it Burchill voiced “Islamophobia.”
Senator Josh Hawley wrote a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. The publisher canceled the contract right after January 6. When Vice President Mike Pence signed a book with the company, 200 employees (notice the level of infiltration) and a petition of 3,500 persons demanded its cancelation, voicing the usual liberal slogans. However, this time S&S published it.
When Scott Adams, the well-known creator of the Dilbert cartoon, seemed to criticize blacks, the top of the victimology totem pole, in his podcast, suggesting that “White people should get the hell away from black people,” retaliation came in waves. His forthcoming self-help book, “Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success,” was canceled by the Penguin publishing monopoly. Newspapers stopped running Dilbert. YouTube censored his previous videos. His agent dropped him. He died soon thereafter from cancer.
The publishing monopoly, Penguin in Canada, came close to canceling Jordan Peterson’s book after many of the employees had a meeting at the company and started a crying jag over the decision and voiced the usual slogans (note the usual modus operandi). Peterson’s daughter quipped that they should have been fired.
Obviously, the problem here with publishers is the same that has occurred throughout society, a widespread systematic effort at suppressing free speech. And many liberals openly advocate censorship, be it journalists, university professors, young people, or politicians. Things have come to such a point that people have started to self-censor. The worst part is that this hell-bent drive for censorship has gone hand in hand with those persons in the literary field who do not agree with censorship but have neither the brains, the backbone, or the cojones to resist.
As a result, I don’t hold much hope for my own books.
But do you know what the frosting on the cake in all this is? It’s that, if you remove the politics from the fiction that’s being published, the fact of the matter is that an awful lot of unadulterated crap gets published. I mean, some of that stuff is bad. I mean, really awful.
Armando Simón is a retired psychologist and historian, author of several independently published books, including “The U,” “Stories for Lions and Other Felines,” “Goodbye America, It Was Great While it Lasted.”
Views expressed by guest contributors to Issues & Insights are their own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the I&I Editorial Board.
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