If I’d Only Written It When…

If I’d only written Tales of the Tinkertoy when:

• I was 19 (1957),

• Publishers were relatively genre-free,

• Page count was not such a big deal,

• I could fail and reinvent myself as needed,

• Reader’s tastes were more in line with my own,

• I was not set in my ways.

I sometimes find myself thinking: “If I’d only written my book in 1957, I’m sure it would’ve been picked up by a publisher or an agent.” When I return to my more reasonable self, I wonder if others have had similar thoughts. For example, how many eighty-year-old writers believe that thanks to one or more of these rationalizations, they have been denied the official status of published author?

When I come to my senses, I realize that these thoughts get me nowhere. Success in life is largely tied to timing. It never happened, and that’s fine. Sometimes I drop it; sometimes I go further, trying to understand the roots of my thinking—the tricks of the mind that lead me into desires and rationalizations, manifestations of the ego

The deeper I go, the deeper my writing. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Tastes have evolved. And that’s why I started this blog: to rally people with similar tastes and their writings.

Simone de Beauvoir once called Stendhal and Joseph Conrad feminist writers. Add to that list Tolstoy (Anna Karenina), Henry James (Portrait of a Lady), and Theodore Dreiser (Carrie). Tales of the Tinkertoy carries on the tradition of these great minds. Where are the books from the spiritual progeny of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and John Fowles?