Books That Could Never Get Published Today

By Jack Engelhard

Readers at the New York Times have already spoken about the most overrated books of all time and the winners (or rather, the losers) are J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and God's "The Bible." I read all about it in the Times' Paper Cuts blog and arrived at the conclusion that the least favorable works were usually those that failed to adhere to political correctness.

Hence, Books That Could Never Get Published Today

The Hebrew Bible: Too Jewish.

Confessions of St. Augustine: Too Christian.

Moby Dick -- Dear Mr. Melville: A quite similar book has already been done by Jonah and it is still in print. We'd reconsider if you could produce a more sensitive Capt. Ahab. You do go on about whaling. Also, your opening line does not work for us. Can you come up with something better than "Call me Ishmael?" (Our first readers, by the way, were rooting for the whale.)

The Old Man and the Sea -- Dear Mr. Hemingway: We no longer use the term "old man." (Our first readers, by the way, were rooting for the fish.)

Leaves of Grass -- Dear Mr. Whitman. Good for you. We are glad that you celebrate America. We don't. Also, we are larger than you and contain more multitudes.

Ivanhoe -- Dear Sir Walter Scott: Glorifies chivalry. Women can take care of themselves and don't need men except to take out the garbage. Or haven't you heard?

Exodus -- Dear Mr. Uris: We could give this further thought if you would delete all references to Israel. Can you find some other country?

Diary -- Dear Miss Frank: We might consider this work if you would delete all references to the genocide known today as the Holocaust, also to your reminding people that you are Jewish. Can't you make yourself more "universal" for a broader readership? We enjoyed your tone of voice and some of our editors suggest that you place your predicament somewhere in Los Angeles, you know, growing up as a mixed-race foster child on the mean streets of south-central LA. We have already had great success with such a memoir, though later proven to be fraudulent. In your hands, however, this could work.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn -- Thank you for both submissions, Mr. Clemens. You have captured the times we live in so perfectly. You have presented our culture admirably. Your dialogue is pitch-perfect. You have not shied from using language that is offensive, insulting and derogatory. This is the mark of a great novelist - the boldness to tell life as it really is. Future generations have a right to know how it really was in America, warts and all. These two works - entirely authentic! What courage! For all those reasons, we pass. Good luck elsewhere.

Women -- Dear Mr. Bukowski: You must be kidding. Are you aware how insulting this is to women? Give it up and stick to your job at the Post Office.

Dear Mr. Whitman: We understand that, since you could find no traditional publisher, including ourselves, you went ahead and SELF-PUBLISHED Leaves of Grass. As we told you, our editors are the finest in the land and if we passed on it, it means that your book is unworthy. Going the self-publishing route is a guarantee that Leaves of Grass will never succeed. We regret that you had to take that step. Good luck finding another line of work.

The Metamorphosis -- Dear Mr. Kafka: We fail to get the symbolism. The man wakes up to find himself turned into a monster insect? We've been tossing this around from editor to editor and can't see the metaphor. Perhaps, however, you intend this to be a political novel, your political statement, in which a Democrat wakes up to find himself a Republican (in other words, monster insect) and thus raises havoc and horror among family, neighbors and friends. If that is the case, be more specific and we'll have another look.

Dear Moses: All right already! Thunder, lightning, hail, fire and brimstone were over the top and quite unnecessary. How do we get rid of all these frogs?

About the author: Jack Engelhard's latest novel, "The Bathsheba Deadline," now in paperback, places journalism at the center of our war on terror and has been hailed (by author Letha Hadady) as "a towering literary achievement." Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel "Indecent Proposal" that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com.

[Note: The first two chapters of Engelhard's novel about the perils of getting published, "Slot Attendant," are available for sampling on his website.

Are We Finished With Books? (Ask Salinger)

By Jack Engelhard

People are actually talking about the end of books as we knew them and loved them and though I am in this business, as a novelist, I am no expert on the publishing side, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about except what I read in the papers. But this is a sad day when we’re even discussing this.

Over the past two weeks or so, as reported in The New York Times, the publishing world has not quite disappeared but it certainly has shrunk.

One major publisher has stopped taking in fresh manuscripts and others have folded one imprint into another (or simply folded), leading to resignations, layoffs and outright dismissals. None of these big houses are independent or privately-owned. Not anymore. They’re all part of some conglomerate and most times the real owners are based in some other country.

These owners are not in it for the literature. They’re in it for the money.

Back when people like Charles Scribner, Alfred Knopf and Bennett Cerf ran the business – well, they did not run it like a business. They ran it for the love of the written word. Well of course they kept an eye on the ledger, but only to pay the rent, and generally they succeeded. New York’s Publishers Row was America’s literary beacon. Along (about the 1980s) about two hundred individual publishers dissolved into about five corporations which did not ask for the latest Ernest Hemingway but for the latest profit report.

Accountants replaced editors and three words were heard above all others – “the bottom line.”

When it was about books, literature in other words, the money came in. When it turned into “the bottom line,” the money fled. That’s one definition of irony. Some experts attribute the decline to the failing economy. No, the decline in publishing began a generation ago with all that “consolidation.”

Even best-selling authors today have to stay alert to find out where their editors have gone. Some have gone elsewhere, to some other imprint. Some have simply gone.

Maxwell Perkins gathered up thousands of scattered un-numbered pages from Thomas Wolfe’s basements and attics and turned them into “Look Homeward, Angel.” Bennett Cerf engaged himself in lengthy court battles (on the matter of “obscenity”) and risked his career to get James Joyce’s “Ulysses” into print over here in the United States.

We still have some editors like that, editors who care, but they’re going fast and most of it is not their fault answerable, as they are, to “the bottom line.”

Part of the problem, then, is the industry’s insistence on finding the next big blockbuster. This is like the movie business’s quest for the big opening weekend. In publishing, this leads to big front money to people who are not true writers but people who’ve made a name for themselves as politicians and “celebs.” Most of these advances are never recovered. Television’s Tina Fey, we’re told, has been offered $6 million for some book she’s about to write. There’s the flaw in a nutshell.

Writers, true writers, who count on a healthy publishing industry cannot be thrilled to find their world in such disarray. There should be no gloating. We need publishing to succeed. We need New York to get its houses in order. This much is for sure – the onus is off small indie publishing and, until we find out who’s on first, print on demand, yes, self-publishing, may be the way to go. Given the alternative, or rather the lack of alternatives, self-publishing is legit.

Readers will keep on reading. But will writers keep on writing?

As true writers bleed and sweat in futility at their typewriters, dreaming of sympathetic editors and publishers – meanwhile, Joe the Plumber gets a contract. He got published, thanks to some publisher who wanted to stretch that 15 minutes of fame. Joe the Plumber, yes, J.D. Salinger, no. Salinger does NOT have a book coming out.

Maybe that does not say it all, but it says plenty.

About the author: Jack Engelhard’s latest published novel, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, now in paperback, places journalism at the center of our culture, politics and war on terror. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel INDECENT PROPOSAL that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Engelhard can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com. (The first two chapters of my latest work of fiction, which may or may not get published, are up on my website. The complete manuscript is titled “Slot Attendant” and it’s about the frustrations of getting published.)

Caroline Kennedy? Yes!

By Jack Engelhard

Caroline Kennedy never grew up, not for me. She will always be that beautiful child who, carefree and happy, went romping around the While House along with her brother John John back when her father was president. Now there’s talk about naming her senator, representing New York. Then there’s talk that she’s not up to the task for lack of experience.

People say she’s never been in politics. So? All the more reason to give her that seat. We know about people “in politics.” Check out Illinois, for starters. New York itself had a governor who was booted out of office for bad behavior. It’s about time we put someone in office, senator or otherwise, who’s unaffiliated with this or that political machine. (“If you ever inject truth into politics you have no politics” – Will Rogers.)

Tell me she’s a Democrat which IS a political machine and I say, so what – we all have to be something. But as far as I know, she owes no favors, she’s untainted by “friends” and “cronies,” which means, again, as far as I know, that she’s clean. That’s rare for a politician – but here’s the charm. She is no politician.

That’s been the problem. We’ve had too many politicians getting into politics. It’s time to give someone else a chance; you and me type people.

Granted, she is not you and me. She’s Kennedy royalty and for some people that’s too much. So here I plead guilty upon a sentimental attachment to Caroline and to anything that speaks of Kennedy and the 1960s when, as just a minute ago, I spoke of her romping carefree and happy.

Those may not have been your 1960s but they were mine, up to November 22, 1963, when, in a split second, it all came crashing down, symbolized by Jackie still soaked in blood as LBJ was sworn into office. Perhaps the final symbol, marking the ending of an era, was Baby John John’s salute at his father’s coffin.

But before all that we romped all right. I’ll leave it to others to remember JFK’s demerits, like the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis and his un-readiness to meet the Soviets. As for me, I remember those couple of years as hip and sexy. America was young and playful. In my reveries I choose culture over politics, a culture of dreams, promises and youthfulness, yes, a new frontier.

I recall, in no particular order or reason, the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe, touch football, the fitness craze, those flirtatious press conferences, rock and roll and Beethoven in the White House, the Beatles, the Peace Corps and the call to reassert ourselves. It was good to be an American. But most of all, I remember JFK and Jackie. They were beautiful. They were adored around the world and we adored them here as well, not for the politics, but for the glamour.

JFK had a way with words and he sure had a way with women. But let’s not talk about that. We won’t even talk about the teetering marriage or of the election itself that needed help from Chicago’s cemetery wards. Please; no details. We won’t even talk about bomb shelters and World War Three coming at us from moment to moment. We still had a blast with Vaughn Meader, hula hoops, Barbie Dolls and Davy Crockett – all that as Khrushchev declared “We will bury you.”

Let’s remember that once upon a time we dreamed. We had movie stars running our country. As I wrote once before (in “The Days of the Bitter End”), “Not since Washington and Jefferson had America felt such a surge of renewal as embodied in this president and his even more glamorous First Lady. Together they gave us style, romance, adventure, a vision of glittering greatness without end. JFK was more than a mortal in terms of America. He was a star!”

What’s wrong with stardom? I’ll take that over politics any day. What’s wrong with the 1960s? Plenty. But still, it WAS morning in America!

JFK used to delight us with those images of his kids fooling around in the presence of international dignitaries. We were thrilled at such political incorrectness; it was downright hip. This is no facsimile, America’s Caroline. My gawd, this is a daughter of John F. Kennedy. JFK is still in the building.

Caroline Kennedy is a pure child of the 1960s. She’s a reflection of the innocence we once shared, those years when we romped for a brief shining moment. So yes, let’s give her a chance. She can’t do much worse than what we have right now, those Crooks Are Us gang who keep plunging us to new lows.

I admit that all this is but a dream. Then again, I too am a child of the 1960s.

[Addendum: Richard Nixon lost to JFK by the slimmest margin in history. Nixon’s friends wanted him to demand a recount, but Nixon refused on the grounds that it would disrupt the country. Give this man Nixon some credit for his own moment of glory and greatness.]

About the author: Jack Engelhard’s factual-novel THE DAYS OF THE BITTER END traces JFK and his generation. Engelhard’s latest novel, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, places journalism at the center of our war on terror. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel INDECENT PROPOSAL that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Engelhard can be reached at his website http://www.jackengelhard.com/.

Dirty Talk, Dirty People, Dirty Politics

By Jack Engelhard

First time I saw him on TV, I thought this must be some foul-mouthed rap artist. But no, this SOB is governor of Illinois. (See? It’s catching.)

We can’t seem to stop ourselves from electing the lowest among us to the highest offices. Or maybe that’s the best the pool has to offer; this dirt bag over another dirt-bag.

What I said some time ago still stands – the way we speak reflects our character. No wonder our culture is in decline – from dastardly language to dastardly deeds. If it’s true that we’re falling apart economically, politically and culturally, that only makes my point that everything begins with language.

Is there anybody around these days to write us something like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address? Hell, no.

Or put it like this, damn it, our nation is being run by dirty rotten scoundrels, one state at a time. I’ll admit that if you were to tape me around the house you’d catch me with a four-letter word now and then – but I am no governor, or senator, or even president. I don’t run your world like these people do.

Remember Richard Nixon? Those tapes proved him using language to make a sailor blush. Wait a minute. I forgot to mention Blagojevich's wife. She’s also been taped and her dirty talk equals her husband’s. There was a time when women never swore, but that takes us back to the Eisenhower years, the days of Ozzie and Harriet when “aw shucks” was pretty much the limit.

Even “darn” was barely acceptable. “Damn” really crossed the line and Hollywood had to do cartwheels to permit Clark Gable to utter that line. Frankly, my dear, it’s happening all over the place and I keep trying to pin the date when nearly all of us began using dirt talk. Maybe it began with all that rapping, when what used to be the fair sex descended into “hos.”

Before all that we had to watch ourselves against locker-room banter because “there are ladies present.” Jack Benny is still credited with the longest laugh ever in the world of broadcasting. That’s when a mugger demanded his money or his life, and for the longest time, he said nothing. People howled – proof that clean talk can be funny and that silence is even better.

I guess, though – once again we can blame it all on my generation, the generation of the 1960s. That’s when we decided to rise up against the Establishment and “express ourselves.” Women burned their bras as an “expression” of freedom and further liberated themselves by frequent use of the F-word. Guys always used the F-Word, but never around children or the ladies, certainly never within any governor’s mansion – never thinking that one day, like today, the ladies would join us in cussing up a storm.

Our form of rebellion, in addition to rioting on campus, was to wear our caps backwards. That’s how we told the world to go bleep itself, and maybe that’s when we started going to hell in a hand-basket. (Whatever that means.) If I were governor, I wouldn’t use the euphemism “bleep.” I use “bleep” only because this is a family newspaper and there are ladies present.

Maybe it all began with Lenny Bruce and his Seven Forbidden Words, which, of course, I cannot repeat, but he did, in Greenwich Village. He could never use those words on television, not then – but today? Are you kidding? Check out those comedians on HBO as a measure of how far we’ve gone up or down; depending on how you define progress.

Or maybe it began with Bill Clinton when his dirty laundry was exposed on television, within the eyes and ears of even six-year-olds.

In case you think I’m picking on Democrats, wrong. We can all use some soap to wash out our mouths. Civility is always a good place to start, damn it!

About the author: Jack Engelhard’s latest novel THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, now in paperback, places journalism at the center of our politics, culture and war on terrorism. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel INDECENT PROPOSAL that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. His can be reached at his website http://www.jackengelhard.com/.

King David: Faith Lost and Found

By Jack Engelhard

That’s quite a fix to be in when not only have you run out of answers, but you’ve also run out of questions.

How many times can we ask – Why did God let this happen?

I’m here on the question of Mumbai, India, the slaughter that took place, and in particular the Jews who were singled out for special torture and murder by Islamists.

Via e-mail messages, I’ve been getting many words of understanding and comfort, but none of them works for me. Have I lost faith? That can never happen, not with my genes that date back to my Biblical namesake, Jacob. But something did make me teeter. I lost the connection. This happens to me now and then, certainly when I think of the Holocaust. Why did God let this happen?

No, there is no understanding or comfort. There is only whatever faith we find within ourselves, and here too I am lacking. I cannot stand alone.

I turn therefore, as always, to King David, figuring if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. I stand on his shoulders. David was not only our greatest king, he was also our greatest Torah scholar. We have it from legend that he awoke each day at the first sun to study Torah for five straight hours before he got down to the business of monarchy. Picture the scene!

King David – himself a prophet, for only a prophet could write the Psalms – was a man of perfect faith, unyielding from beginning to end under whatever trials. He was not a perfect man. Ethically he tripped and fell, he sinned, but all that, his imperfections, only make him more real, more human, more enduring. Whatever his transgressions, he always turned back to God in contrition. (“See my affliction and my travail, and forgive all my sins.” From Psalm 25)

Let’s remember that each word that I read in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses – they are exactly the same words David read and studied 3,000 years ago. Word for word, we match up in the original Hebrew. Imagine David reading these words of Jacob that I read just this morning – “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” I find that to be utterly fantastic, beautiful and thrilling. From 3,000 years ago until today, we are related, we are kin.

Legend, again, has it that David was frustrated over God’s refusal to speak to him directly, as He spoke directly to Moses. Today we can say thank goodness for that, because out of this frustration came the Psalms, David’s sublime literary outreach; poetry unmatched for everlasting brilliance in everything we call prayer, liturgy or literature. Though David was purely Jewish, his poetry is embraced by all faiths. The first book printed in America (by the Puritans) was the Bay Psalm Book.

David speaks to me as if he were right here, standing beside me. With me, he turns the pages of those Psalms he wrote. With him, I cry out for justice, even for vengeance, and with him, I plead and I suffer and sometimes I rejoice, but always, I pray. I pray with David for I cannot pray by myself. I don’t have the strength, the valor, the trust, the faith – not on my own.

I need King David. To be honest, I don’t read his Psalms as sermons or religious texts, but as words within the family, written and even spoken by an older brother, much wiser, who’s been around, knows a thing or two about life, love, despair and hope, failure and success, war and peace – and he is not preaching, just talking. The proof of this, to me, is that within his lyricism, his songs of praise, he is remarkably candid and personal. He is king, but he is mostly my friend and constant companion.

So, after Mumbai, that’s where I went searching, into his Psalms, to find his faith and then to transfer it all into my puzzlement and emptiness.

As often as we to turn to it (speaking of all mankind) we never tire of David’s “Divine Shepherd,” his Psalm 23: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, For Thou art with me – Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of my enemies – Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

No, there will never be answers – but finally I can whisper Amen.

About the author: Jack Engelhard’s latest novel, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, now in paperback, places journalism at the center of our war on terror. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel INDECENT PROPOSAL that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com.

Recession Bingo -- Jack Engelhard

Turns out – according to The New York Times – that Barack Obama took in nearly a billion dollars for his successful presidential campaign; all that from fellow Americans donating their pennies, nickels and dimes, and all of it during a time when we’re being told that there’s a Recession going on.

I forget what sum what’s his name collected on the Republican side, nothing that can match Obama’s windfall, that’s for sure, but it was plenty.

So what Recession are we talking about? Yes, many of us are hurting, but SOMEBODY is raking it in. Like I always say – everything depends on luck.

Over at the casinos in Atlantic City (speaking of luck) the gambling tables are full. People are shooting dice all over the place and the roulette wheels keep spinning. The slot machines are rapt with dreamers. Meantime, workers at these same casinos are getting fired. Right, there’s a Recession.

Gamblers are NOT being laid off.

In doing research years ago for “Indecent Proposal” and more recently for “Slot Attendant,” I found the casinos to be a perfect measure for what’s going on in our economy, politics and culture and despite the millions going into bankruptcy and foreclosure, there’s another America that’s doing all right and that’s good news within all the bad news.

Ballplayers keep signing multi-million dollar contracts – and the stands are full.

In “Slot Attendant” by the way, a novel that I wrote from first-hand experience, I note that it’s usually the wrong people who win the million dollar jackpots, bad people or people who are rich already. One lady comes to mind in particular, a real bitch who just inherited something like $50 million from a deceased husband and sure enough the million dollar bells go off at her machine. Toledo Vasquez was the slot attendant on duty and she tipped him five dollars.

Some people keep winning. Some people keep losing. That’s life. That’s luck.

A wise man once told me that the Americans with the most money, people with “the real” money, are those who run their own Mom and Pop stores. In other words, they are self-employed, self-empowered, not dependant on a regular (and irregular) paycheck. They don’t clock in or clock out. Bless them.

I’m all in favor of Big Business and as Michael Medved points out, practically everything we use (like this computer) and everything we eat and everything we wear, all of it is a product of Big Business. I have to buy a car from General Motors. I can’t build one in my backyard. However –

Given the decline in our economy, in our culture, in our politics, it is amazing how so many of our “best and our brightest” were so wrong about everything, and continue to be wrong. These are (mostly) men who graduated from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, men we believed in and trusted, trusted with our money and our lives, and through sloth, deception, incompetence and corruption profited only for themselves. Greed is not good.

Or as I said once before – the wrong people are always in charge.

How did so many Detroit car makers lose so many billions so fast? Didn’t somebody raise a red flag at the loss of the FIRST billion? The stock market keeps going up and down – one day up 300 points, next day down 300 points. Well, that’s not you or me playing this game. I’m told these are “speculators.”

Whoever they are, they are playing Monopoly with our savings.

Politically, I take it on faith that a few politicians are in office to serve the public but that most are in it for the candy.

Culturally, late word has it that the book publishing business is going through an industry-wide upheaval (just like Detroit and Wall Street). Top people are getting fired. One publishing house is being “consolidated” into another publishing house. Almost all the big ones are owned by corporations OUTSIDE the Unites States.

We don’t own our own books! We’ve sold out. Consolidation and out-sourcing, that’s partly what’s been killing us. Odd – when American publishers were owned by independents who cared about good writing and good books, run by true editorial giants like Bennett Cerf, those businesses thrived. Everything tanked when all of it was given over to “the bottom line.” Editors have been replaced by accountants.

Tina Fey (not to be confused with Ernest Hemingway), according to news reports, has just signed a $6 million contract to write a book. Is this a good business decision? (It sure means no Recession for one American.) I’m not talking books. To me, this speaks of the same cockeyed “wisdom” we’ve been getting from Washington, Detroit and Wall Street.

This Recession will come to end but only after we stop the “experts” from playing Bingo with our world.

About the author: Jack Engelhard’s latest novel, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, now in paperback, places journalism at the center of our war on terror. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel INDECENT PROPOSAL that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Engelhard can be reached and his Works can be viewed at www.jackengelhard.com.

Writer Burns Her Own Book

Hi there fellow Google readers and bloggers. For some reason I was unable to post – that is, cut and paste – a terrific piece by Orit Arfa about frustrations she endured trying to write a novel. She did more than give up, for the moment. She burned the book; surely as an act of defiance.

I think her piece is worth reading by anyone who’s met this type of frustration in writing, or in anything.

I did manage to get it posted on my personal website, so if you’ve got a minute or two, please ck it out at www.jackengelhard.com.

Thanks – Jack Engelhard