🎉🎊🙌🙌🙌 An outstanding interview with the Librarian of Celaeno, Liza! So many important and timely topics were discussed in this interview. The Librarian’s voice reminds me of that of a radio announcer. His voice for some reason makes me think of Jay Leno.
The public education system in this country is broken, outdated and insufficient for preparing children and young people for the real world. None of what they learn will ultimately matter or ever be used in real life. Students even those that excel, hate school because you sit in a dingy, dark, small, and cramped classroom in at a tiny uncomfortable desk. Your tired, a boring adult is standing in front of the classroom droning on about a subject you couldn’t care less about and will likely never use a day in your adult life surrounded by a bunch of other bored, tired and depressed and anxious kids who feel the same way you do.
That’s not even to mention bullying, drugs, peer pressure, dating, puberty, sex, pressure from adults to decide what you want to do with your life, extracurricular activities, sports, mental health, etc. High school was a nightmare for me and I know the same was true for you Liza and for most kids. Unless your one of the popular kids, you’ll live a miserable existence in school as a wimpy, unpopular dork-a-doofus. This is just how it is. On top of that, you never learn how to think critically because all your parents and teachers care about is you gaining the skills and credentials you need to get a job so you can make money. 🙄
Furthermore, reading and writing are things we do a terrible job teaching students how to do. Instead of reading Pride and Prejudice, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, All Quiet on the Western Front, Monster, A Christmas Carol, The Grapes of Wrath, Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Odyssey, or Romeo and Juliet, they instead insist on reading slop like Born A Crime, Orientalism, How to Be An Antiracist, White Fragility, Just Mercy, and So You Want to Talk About Race? Or they have them read song lyrics by the likes of Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar or just Sparknotes rather than the whole book.
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ No wonder our kids can’t read or write. In fact, there are kids in college who are totally illiterate! Media literacy instead of English? 😅 You need one to understand and comprehend the other. Yep. You and the Librarian were spot on when guys you brought up that people used to go to college because they WANTED TO and loved learning and sought knowledge.
But then in the 1970s, a study came out showing you could earn more money if you have a college degree. All of a sudden everyone started to go to college and get degrees. Is this claim true? Yes to an extent. Having a college degree helps but what got these people far in the world was NOT the degree itself, but rather the lust for learning and the skills gained by that person who soaked it up like a sponge along the way.
But then everyone and their grandmother started going to college whether they wanted to or not and what came out of that were legions of angry, disillusioned and unfulfilled individuals who did all the work only to be stuck working at McDonalds or Starbucks. Everybody had degrees so now they weren’t worth as much anymore to employers. Contrary to the propaganda you’ve been taught, a college degree is NOT a passport to a job. Many degrees these days aren’t worth the paper their printed on. College is a scam if we’re honest.
The caliber of students produced by colleges these days are often empty shells that are childlike, oversensitive, difficult to work with, bad communicators, and immature. Employers avoid hiring them like the plague. These young folks furthermore are unable to think, read or write.
They have no idea how to express themselves or communicate with other other human beings because their made to focus on things like math, science and business, they have completely ignored and devalued teaching them how to think and problem solve, express their thoughts and feelings and understand the world around them.
Literature these days is dumbed down, bland, formulaic, sanitized, politically correct garbage that is lacking in creativity or originality, and the writing style is all the same as all the rough edges of it have been ironed out. You can’t write about racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, etc. or you’re a closeted bigot who must go to Klan meetings in your spare time. Nor will they consider your literature if you don’t check off their identity boxes and your writing isn’t obsessed with identity or the class struggle. Also, make sure you have plenty of unhoused, previously incarcerated pansexual elves or a protagonist who’s a non-binary Asian neurodivergent person who identifies as a frog 🐸 who’s pronouns are te/too/toot and has mental health issues.
All this makes for pretty cruddy quality literature. The failure to confront mortality does indeed lead to madness. You can’t avoid your own human limitations or that one day you will die. By the same token, one can not one away from the ugly stuff in life. As to the publishing industry it’s dying a slow, agonizing death. It like the example of the music industry Librarian made. The agents of the Greatest Generation didn’t get hippie music but thought that consumers might like it. But when the hippies got to be agents themselves they assumed they knew what the public would like.
The people who run the literary industry are upper middle class and wealthy people from the coasts who live in the big cities and all run in the same elite circles and only talk to people who think like them. They live in a bubble isolated from the rest of western society. They don’t live in the real world and run away from reality every chance they get. I think self-publishing is the best route to go for you, Liza. Following in Joseph Massey’s footsteps I think would is the best route to go because then you wouldn’t have to worry with the editor making changes to your book to make it more “palatable” for the public or discriminating against you for your political views. I am absolutely NOT saying your books aren’t any good so that is why you shouldn’t continue to get an agent or editor from one of the big publishing houses interested in them. I just think that you could be successful on your own without them telling you what to do. I don’t trust them with your hard work.
I was stunned to learn that most contemporary literature sells only 5,000 copies. But in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been because these books are so awful and full of ideological propaganda and nothing interesting or engaging for the reader to sink their teeth into. I hadn’t even heard of the two authors you guys mentioned. Jonathan Frazen and Donna Tart are totally unfamiliar to me. I literally can’t name one contemporary author. At the end of the the day, the literary field is on life support. It is is to survive the big publishing houses must go down, wokeness must be expunged from literature and Indie writers and poets must rise to the forefront. I’d like to close out this response with a most poignant quote by Liza: “Thomas Mann is just f***ing with us.”
🎉🎊🙌🙌🙌 An outstanding interview with the Librarian of Celaeno, Liza! So many important and timely topics were discussed in this interview. The Librarian’s voice reminds me of that of a radio announcer. His voice for some reason makes me think of Jay Leno.
The public education system in this country is broken, outdated and insufficient for preparing children and young people for the real world. None of what they learn will ultimately matter or ever be used in real life. Students even those that excel, hate school because you sit in a dingy, dark, small, and cramped classroom in at a tiny uncomfortable desk. Your tired, a boring adult is standing in front of the classroom droning on about a subject you couldn’t care less about and will likely never use a day in your adult life surrounded by a bunch of other bored, tired and depressed and anxious kids who feel the same way you do.
That’s not even to mention bullying, drugs, peer pressure, dating, puberty, sex, pressure from adults to decide what you want to do with your life, extracurricular activities, sports, mental health, etc. High school was a nightmare for me and I know the same was true for you Liza and for most kids. Unless your one of the popular kids, you’ll live a miserable existence in school as a wimpy, unpopular dork-a-doofus. This is just how it is. On top of that, you never learn how to think critically because all your parents and teachers care about is you gaining the skills and credentials you need to get a job so you can make money. 🙄
Furthermore, reading and writing are things we do a terrible job teaching students how to do. Instead of reading Pride and Prejudice, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, All Quiet on the Western Front, Monster, A Christmas Carol, The Grapes of Wrath, Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Odyssey, or Romeo and Juliet, they instead insist on reading slop like Born A Crime, Orientalism, How to Be An Antiracist, White Fragility, Just Mercy, and So You Want to Talk About Race? Or they have them read song lyrics by the likes of Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar or just Sparknotes rather than the whole book.
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ No wonder our kids can’t read or write. In fact, there are kids in college who are totally illiterate! Media literacy instead of English? 😅 You need one to understand and comprehend the other. Yep. You and the Librarian were spot on when guys you brought up that people used to go to college because they WANTED TO and loved learning and sought knowledge.
But then in the 1970s, a study came out showing you could earn more money if you have a college degree. All of a sudden everyone started to go to college and get degrees. Is this claim true? Yes to an extent. Having a college degree helps but what got these people far in the world was NOT the degree itself, but rather the lust for learning and the skills gained by that person who soaked it up like a sponge along the way.
But then everyone and their grandmother started going to college whether they wanted to or not and what came out of that were legions of angry, disillusioned and unfulfilled individuals who did all the work only to be stuck working at McDonalds or Starbucks. Everybody had degrees so now they weren’t worth as much anymore to employers. Contrary to the propaganda you’ve been taught, a college degree is NOT a passport to a job. Many degrees these days aren’t worth the paper their printed on. College is a scam if we’re honest.
The caliber of students produced by colleges these days are often empty shells that are childlike, oversensitive, difficult to work with, bad communicators, and immature. Employers avoid hiring them like the plague. These young folks furthermore are unable to think, read or write.
They have no idea how to express themselves or communicate with other other human beings because their made to focus on things like math, science and business, they have completely ignored and devalued teaching them how to think and problem solve, express their thoughts and feelings and understand the world around them.
Literature these days is dumbed down, bland, formulaic, sanitized, politically correct garbage that is lacking in creativity or originality, and the writing style is all the same as all the rough edges of it have been ironed out. You can’t write about racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, etc. or you’re a closeted bigot who must go to Klan meetings in your spare time. Nor will they consider your literature if you don’t check off their identity boxes and your writing isn’t obsessed with identity or the class struggle. Also, make sure you have plenty of unhoused, previously incarcerated pansexual elves or a protagonist who’s a non-binary Asian neurodivergent person who identifies as a frog 🐸 who’s pronouns are te/too/toot and has mental health issues.
All this makes for pretty cruddy quality literature. The failure to confront mortality does indeed lead to madness. You can’t avoid your own human limitations or that one day you will die. By the same token, one can not one away from the ugly stuff in life. As to the publishing industry it’s dying a slow, agonizing death. It like the example of the music industry Librarian made. The agents of the Greatest Generation didn’t get hippie music but thought that consumers might like it. But when the hippies got to be agents themselves they assumed they knew what the public would like.
The people who run the literary industry are upper middle class and wealthy people from the coasts who live in the big cities and all run in the same elite circles and only talk to people who think like them. They live in a bubble isolated from the rest of western society. They don’t live in the real world and run away from reality every chance they get. I think self-publishing is the best route to go for you, Liza. Following in Joseph Massey’s footsteps I think would is the best route to go because then you wouldn’t have to worry with the editor making changes to your book to make it more “palatable” for the public or discriminating against you for your political views. I am absolutely NOT saying your books aren’t any good so that is why you shouldn’t continue to get an agent or editor from one of the big publishing houses interested in them. I just think that you could be successful on your own without them telling you what to do. I don’t trust them with your hard work.
I was stunned to learn that most contemporary literature sells only 5,000 copies. But in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been because these books are so awful and full of ideological propaganda and nothing interesting or engaging for the reader to sink their teeth into. I hadn’t even heard of the two authors you guys mentioned. Jonathan Frazen and Donna Tart are totally unfamiliar to me. I literally can’t name one contemporary author. At the end of the the day, the literary field is on life support. It is is to survive the big publishing houses must go down, wokeness must be expunged from literature and Indie writers and poets must rise to the forefront. I’d like to close out this response with a most poignant quote by Liza: “Thomas Mann is just f***ing with us.”