Popaganda.

Just got back from observing the popular culture for another day! 

I occasionally work on books for younger readers. Sometimes they are pretty good. Sometimes they even achieve that rare quality of being a good read for an adult. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.”

At least, that used to be the case. Nowadays every one of them has to have some kind of propaganda. 

Nothing new there. Propaganda is the art of the emotional appeal, and it does not always make for bad art. The Nazis and the Soviets were terrific at film and poster art. Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove makes no attempt at reasoned appeal against nuclear weapons; it just wants to make us laugh and sick with fear at the same time so we can't think unemotionally about the subject. Cartoonish portrayals of political figures intend to make us ill when we see the real humans. And don't even get me started on pop music. A lot of craft can be put into the appeal that goes below the threshold of reason. Often it is meant to spur the good of the recipient, but mostly it is meant to support the cause of the artist.

I'm not seeing much craft these days, alas. It's definitely gotten worse in the last five years. The kids turned out from left-wing universities, their brains stamped like Oreo cookies with indoctrination, don't all come with creamy talent filling. They just toss off the usual canards with very little art, either hoping to make us two-minute-hate one target or accept something as normal that would have seemed preposterous yesterday. Adjust your Newthink dictionaries accordingly. These kids move up (no matter how many of their projects fail) and hire people just like them. The next thing you know, you're playing Candy Crush on your phone because there's nothing but crap on the bookshelves and in theaters and on TV.

Propaganda doesn't show the world as it is; it's either a picture of the world as the author thinks you should want it to be, or a kaleidoscope in which the only patterns that form are those of hate. 

So yeah, everything is insane out there, and of course your only hope is to read my books! 

Are they lousy? That's up to you. I don't think so. But at least they play with the rules of humanity as we know humans to be. They are not written with an eye on the scoreboard, making sure they check the boxes and win clapter. Even my fantasy books start with three-dimensional human characters you could recognize.  

Give one a read! If you don't like it because you think it's written poorly, I will give you a personal apology. If you don't like it because it doesn't conform to your social ideals, well, we'll have to agree to disagree. But please know that, oxymoronic as it seems, I write honest fiction.