Feminist Marxism was on an inexorable march to cultural victory this century. Not artistic Marxism, since feminism is inherently inartistic and catechetical. So, expecting good storytelling from its disciples is like seeking beauty from a brutalist architect. Yet they have dominated screen and literary fare for more than 20 years via two Sovietist methods — the relentless saturation of the feminist-“minority” narrative and the blockage of traditionalist truth. An opinion piece last week by the New York Times’s last conservative man standing, Bret Stephens, The Literary World’s D.E.I. Checklist, revealed the dysfunction.
Read more Netanyahu’s Overlooked Record on Israel’s Arab Citizens
Stephens’ piece overviews the ten fiction books selected this year by the National Book Foundation. Nine of the authors check minority status both in identity and subject matter. They are: A Palestinian woman’s novel about her father. An Indigenous Nation poetess’s short stories about American Indian characters. A Haitian American’s novel about a Haitian American’s trauma in Miami and Haiti. A Latino queer’s novel about the 1990s queer underground scene in Bogotá (what’s the opposite of a must read?) Another American Indian’s short stories about Native American characters (if the first one wasn’t enough). A Jamaican black queer’s novel about black queers in Jamaica. A Mexican woman’s saga about four generations of women in one family. A Turkish American male writer’s novel about a woman confronting government oppression in Turkey. And a “trans” author’s novel about a trans health-care worker. Whether the last is a “trans-woman” or a “trans-man”, “they” won’t say, either about “their” protagonist or “themself.” Only one author, Alexander Maksik, is a straight white male, though you can throw in Jewish for the minority sweep.
They cast out, and keep out, the men and women who can write basic truths in a gripping manner, and their poseur replacements blow.
“By my count, in the past decade, nine of the 10 winners of the National Book Award for fiction belonged to a minority group,” Stephens wrote. “Bluntly, the National Book Award has become a D.E.I. checklist: Only authors with preferred identities, preferred topics, and preferred politics stand any realistic chance of winning.”
The fact that none of this year’s NBA fiction selections will become best sellers — or decent sellers — bothered the five-judge panel not at all. It consisted of two women, a gender-unidentifiable “they-them,” and two men who must have been cowed like the two out of three on the Lindsay Clancy jury. Straight white men write literary and generic fiction better than most women and minorities. And you don’t have to go back to Homer or Hemingway. See living authors Bernard Cornwell, Stephen Hunter, Andrew Klavan, David Morrell, Larry Correia, Dean Koontz, and countless others. And you can throw me in the mix.
I would rather win an Edgar Award like Klavan, a Bram Stoker Award like Morrell, or a Ross Macdonald Award like Koontz than ten National Book Awards because I happen to be a Latino author. But I’d never win one regardless because I write about all-American romantic tough guys and beautiful feminine women who like men. Even my femme fatales appreciate them. My new mystery thriller about two Washington private eyes bodyguarding the leader of a growing return-to-chivalry youth movement threatened by a Muslim-feminist-communist alliance would blow up any Big Five editor’s computer.
And the last immigrant I fought for to remain in America was Elian González — along with a brave band of fellow Cuban exiles. Until Clinton’s A.G. Janet Reno sent rifle-armed men to seize the little boy at gunpoint. And no Democrat shed a tear over his removal — or for his mom who drowned bringing him to America. Or called the soldiers Nazi stormtroopers like they’re branding ICE agents taking out actual criminals.
Read more ‘Sweet Caroline’ Must Die: The Stadium Song That Won’t Go Away
Thus, when you read the data about the steep drop in fiction reading, consider what they’re hiding. People haven’t stopped reading good mass appeal books. Mainstream publishers have stopped providing them. Like their entertainment industry counterparts, they would rather lose money offering woke slop to bitter liberal women and beta men who won’t support it than profit by providing traditional entertainment to normal men and women who will welcome it.
But here’s the big secret. Major publishers and producers have no choice but to virtue-signal and sink doing so. Because they couldn’t tell popular stories even if they wanted to. They cast out, and keep out, the men and women who can write basic truths in a gripping manner, and their poseur replacements blow.
They’re all about to find out what Hollywood already has, what the Soviet Union did in 1991, what hopefully America won’t post November 3 Election Day. That a system based on fantasy ideology instead of material reality cannot stand. The U.S.S.R. couldn’t keep Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago from getting smuggled out of the country — each to cause untold damage to the false communist utopia image.
In 1984, a tiny publishing house that had never published a novel before shot a literary missile that helped shorten the Cold War. It was a unique techno-thriller by a novice author about American intelligence and Soviet military disillusionment, and the manly heroes on each side. President Reagan called Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October “the perfect yarn,” making it a phenomenal seller. Today it wouldn’t even make the slush pile at any of the Big Five publishers.
Independent publishers and movie producers are pulling more than their weight turning the tide in the Cultural Cold War. They’re showcasing talented authors, screenwriters, and filmmakers. All the public has to do is support them and us for a mutually rewarding result. Oh, and vote down the communist Democrats in five weeks.
READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:
Paramount’s Hollywood Exit Could Trigger an Avalanche in Los Angeles
Run, Hide, Fight: Infidels — and Forget the Girlboss
The Witches’ Sabbath on Election Night
First Amazon Customer Review of The Washington Trail (republished last week): “A good series starter. Intriguing characters and a well written plot that keeps you reading, good twists. I recommend this book.” – Melinda Smith. Help break the woke lock on fiction and have a great read doing so. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, fine bookstores, and my website. Book Two in the series, The Camelot Trail, comes out November 17th.
Read more My Daughter Couldn’t Read, but at Least I Had Principles
About the Author
