458: Personality Issues; Beautiful Losers and Winners

Personality

Hypocrisy and altruism stop at roughly the same point in a person. Although finally copping to your own rottenness and experiencing exhaustion at the highest level of do-goodishness you are capable of are not the same thing, both terminate close enough to the center of a person to form a picture.

Of course some people are hypocrites to infinity, thus easy to understand. Yet there appears to be no people who are do-gooders to infinity and beyond. Even Jesus could meet one leper too many, and get quick with the or else for persons slow to accept the Good News.

One’s sympathy for the downtrodden may be suspect because it is expressed by a being who is extremely self involved due to the instincts of self preservation and the naked fact that what they believe to be “good news” does not involve dying at the end of an extremely dull life then worshiping the Boss for all eternity. When one considers that saying “Jayzus H. Kree-ryste” and shooting your parents with a bazooka lead to the same flavor of punishment, unless forgiven by one of the Corporation’s Agents in time, it is easy to be cynical and certain that, in the short term, nothing really matters, because there really is no such thing as a sentient long term experience of any kind (before anyone complains, I feel that all organized religions are evil–not just the Cross).

Still, whether it be fear of or else or some dark covetous instinct barely understood the the foulest amongst us, we often find ourselves rooting for the losers of the world–but as long as we do not have to touch them or in any way deal with them personally, or impart too much of our own material goods. So, this week I once again want to extol the memory of the man once labeled the World’s Least Successful Author, William A. Gold (1922-2001).

Mr. Gold wrote over three-million words, eight novels and thousands of stories, articles and in between pieces. He sold one bit for the equivalent of fifty cents. I have mentioned Mr. Gold in the past, yet I continue to be moved by his staggering futility. You see, I decided to actually buy something he had written, but when I placed his name into the Amazon information banks they had never heard of the guy. Amazon kept trying to hustle William Goldman, who was a success.

This both stunned me and increased my affection for the man. I figured that even a dead guy could self publish on Amazon, but not the resilient Mr. Gold. Then my own personality dichotomy kicked in. I had sympathy and admiration for the man, but something deep inside wondered if maybe I could gain something for myself from his legacy of failure.

Hence this post.

But to William A. Gold’s ghost, who may be reading this, I say “Well, Bill, that’s the way it goes. But remember, there is no such thing as bad publicity–unless you are Bill Cosby, Jimmy Saville, Prince Andrew….”

Winners

No one should confuse our five writers this week with Mr. Gold. Each one reached a far larger audience this week than he did in a lifetime.

Michael Bloor led off the week. 2023 has been Mick’s year with us. He has published both several stories and articles this season, and the trend will continue into next year. (In fact, to get an accurate account of his published pieces on the site requires checking three lists between stories and Sunday features and stands at at least eighteen, with more to be counted.)

Mick’s Two African Lessons is an excellent example of finding a fresh way to keep alive a disgraceful event in history. As George Santayana wisely declared: “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

The subject of aging and losing one’s dignity is a topic we see plenty of in submissions, thus it must achieve a higher standard to get across. Such is the case with Barbara O’Byrne’s The Elephant in the Room. What shoots down many of the other sincere attempts is a lack of humour. They tend to be lugubrious, but this one is fully alive. Until the “sending away” of unwanted human beings is dealt with by our species in an honest manner, we really ain’t got the cockroaches beat.

Simian Revenge by Marco Etheridge is Marco’s twenty-fifth with us. This one combines human and Simian viewpoints and discovers that we have more in common than just the hate of being caged. As always with Marco, this asks the reader to think. Which is one strong trait that all the works this week share.

Anne Marie Potter returned with Sorting Apples on Thursday. A young woman is trapped by her sense of duty and yet can imagine the great variety that life has to offer if she turns her back and leaves her alcoholic father and apparently severely depressed mother. I can testify that this sort of thing happens often and comes with no clear winner choice wise. Beautifully realized.

Newcomer River Jordan closed the week with her excellent site debut Scorched.

I consider the American South to be a holy land in the sense that it is rich with sin, blood, loss, evil, good and a self structured redemption that only the saved can understand. When Southern fiction is done wrong, there’s nothing more terrible, but done right, as here by River, you get a look at how things must have stood in Nod, long ago.

Behold the fab five of the week. If you missed any this week, hit their links and enjoy. You will find each one much more enlightened than the close that follows, yet I am a slave to duty.

Beautiful Losers

The world of fiction is rife with fallen idols harvested by unscrupulous producers. This results in The Comeback Story (even for those who have not been around or away in the technical senses). I close with a list of persons and fictional characters (and two things) that I have sympathy for, but not to the degree that I will not use them for my own purposes. As always, the last slot is yours.

• Mr. Gold
• Bela Lugosi (post Dracula; sick, addicted and still donning the cape till the end–and after)
• “Troy McClure” (The Simpsons excel at this sort of character–to the degree that four in a row, including Mr. “You might remember me…” appear in this list, and there are many others–voiced by the tragically murdered Phil Hartman)
• “Ol’ Gil”
• “Moleman”
• “Edna Krabapple” (Bart’s teacher, and constantly cynical lonely heart–voiced by the late Marcia Wallace)
• The Keytar (It failed to exit the ‘80’s and became that decades version of the ‘70’s double-necked guitar)
• Guys who still work the mullet
• Tanya Harding (One stupid mistake ruined her escape from the Trailer Park)

Leila