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April 30, 2008

I'm gonna be fiddling with my stupid Oprah book forever. The latest thing I'm calling it is Oprah's Dead Son, but it's still not anywhere near done and I've gotta get it done in order to go back and get it done right. I think I started it in 2002. That might have been a while ago. Here's an e-mail I just got:

Subject: remove me from your spam list You're on your own list and I don't do spam. G. Mr. Jones. I received the e-mail below unsolicited from you this morning. I do not know you nor I have I done business with you. I have requested not to receive any more emails from you. Unsolicited commercial emails are spam. I will forward the next one I receive from either of these addresses along with my last two emails to the New York Attorney General's consumer protection division. According to your public profile at the Columbia Journalism School website, you're working on your first book "Fake News, Real Politics." I have a free website listing agents and publishers which may be of assistance to you. I sent an e-mail to the address you provided on the Columbia site, which in and of itself is a tacit solicitation of e-mail communication. Further, my e-mail was in no way "commercial." I'm not selling anything. I gave you a link to a free book, links to chapters of a free audio book, offered to send you a free copy of the fifteen-hour audio book in its entirety and gave you the url of my free website which may aid you in your search for representation and the publication of your first book. The audio book is a narrative nonfiction account of the history of America from 1943 to 2003 which includes pertinent audio clips from noteworthy individuals who helped shape "real news" during those years, from The Shadow, Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, JFK, MLK, Robert Welch, Harry Truman, etc. to Allen Ginsberg, Leadbelly, Walter Chronkite, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, etc. (see the free index I provided you for the others). What that all means is that the book I gave you for free and the audio book I offered to send you for free is "news." Your bio says you're a news guy who, as such, should be interested in news. Whose fault is it that you're not what you say you are? Feel free to include this reply in your complaint to the NY Attorney General and/or whomsoever else you may want to complain to. Thanks. G.

Here's the original e-mail I sent the guy.

Quote:

Here's Ginny Good in its entirety:

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn1.html

Here are some sample chapters from The Audio Book of Ginny Good.

Chapter 7: North Beach, New Year's Eve, 1962
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch07m.mp3

Chapter 13: San Francisco, Tijuana, Mississippi, New York, Summer, 1964
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch13m.mp3

Chapter 19: La Honda, May, 1965
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch19m.mp3

Chapter 23: Haight-Ashbury, Fall, 1967, Part 1
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch23m.mp3

Chapter 24: Haight-Ashbury, Fall, 1967, Part 2
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch24m.mp3

Chapter 32: Hillsborough, CA, Summer, 1982
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch32m.mp3

Chapter 35: Ashland, OR, February, 2003
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch35m.mp3

Here's the index:
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn.html

If you want a copy of the whole huge fifteen-hour extravaganza on .mp3 CDs for free, give me an address and I'll send you a copy. There's a bunch of other stuff on my little website, too. Click some links and see. Thanks. G.

Gerard Jones
everyone@everyonewhosanyone.com
http://www.everyonewhosanyone.com

Unquote.

"...they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt
have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am
whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any
kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be
thee, nuncle..."

CNBC
900 Sylvan Avenue
Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
(201) 735-2622

http://www.moneycentral.msn.com/cnbc/tv

Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132
(305) 350-2000

http://www.herald.com

Yo! Feel free to keep sending me stuff, but to wordsonwords.com instead. Peace out! rap

Cool. I'll stick up a link to your site, too. Thanks. G.

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch22m.mp3

Nice comments on Amazon, Gerry. Especially yours! best, rap

The Kindle Store copy of Ginny Good doesn't have any comments yet that I know of. I made a few comments at the regular Amazon, but nothing untoward. If you want to see all the other stuff people have said about the book, click this. Thanks. G.

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggrev.html

Sun Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
(954) 356-4000

http://www.sun-sentinel.com

What a charmer you are. I wouldn't think of asking you to remove my name. It's not as if every crank, kook, and would-be-author seeking a shortcut to publication doesn't already know how to reach me. Best wishes.

Thanks. Same to you. G.

Should you ever get another book published by a traditional royalties-paying publisher-- odds are against you there, too, I'm afraid -- please make sure I get a review copy. I promise coverage. And yes, I realize your present publisher qualifies.ishes.

Odds are against me 'cause I'm not a kiss-up and I don't write Nazi piffle, yes, but odds were against lots of immortal artists and in favor of thousands of forgotten, craven hacks. You're the one missing out on reviewing the greatest work of literary art of the 21st Century. The Audio Book of Ginny Good is on my website for free:

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn.html

If you don't want to download it, I'd be glad to send you a two-disk set as .mp3 files...or you could get a review copy of the real book from the publisher. It's timeless literature which didn't go out of "style" during the two years since it's been published. Thanks. G.

No thanks. One of the problems with publishing nowdays is the sheer volume of books coming out. I can't get to more than a fraction of the titles I'm already certain I want to review. While I subscribe to the theory that 90 percent of everything is crap -- that figure may be too low--that still leaves hundreds if not thousands of worthwhile new books each year. No publication can possibly cover so much territory. If you want my advice, and judging from the arrogance of your emails I'm guessing you don't, but here it is anyway: You'd do yourself a favor if you dropped the egomania and paranoia, which I suspect is as much an attention-mongering act as anything else. It makes you sound like a self-published crank. And self-published cranks never, ever get coverage in real newspapers and magazines. Oh, you might enjoy the occasional exception, but that's all it will be, an exception. Indeed, based on the tone of your emails, I was 99 percent certain you were self-published, or, at best, working with a subsidy publisher, until I checked with your publisher. I don't mind being vilified on your website. Vilification is my stock-in-trade as a reviewer and cultural journalist, and I can take it as well as dish it out. But you don't want to sound like an amateur. You're just giving editors reason to dismiss you and move on to something else. And you might consider devoting less time to hating those that reject you and more time to writing.

Also, no matter how good your book may be, it is most certainly not the "greatest literary work of the 21st century." And suggesting that all writers who have enjoyed better publication and review attention are "suck-ups" who write "Nazi piffle" -whatever the frack that is--is evidence of a coarse sensibility and an unsubtle mind. I suspect it is not an accurate reflection of your true nature as a writer and a person, but then, I don't really know you and it could be exactly who you are. In which case you'll want to conceal that to all and sundry if you hope to get anywhere. Finally, tearing down other artists is the wrong way to go about building yourself up -- unless, of course, you are a reviewer.

I offer this because I'm amused by your website, and because, to my immense surprise, your publisher turned out to be legit. But while I'm happy to entertain your reply to this note, I do not have the time to engage in a continuing conversation. Publish another book with a real publisher, alert me at least a month or three before publication, and I'll give it serious consideration for review. Meanwhile, good luck.

Don't engage me, that's typical and cool, but I don't lie. I don't have to; I'd rather be right than rich. The Audio Book of Ginny Good is the greatest literary achievement of the 21st Century. Listen to it and see. Or not. Stay brainwashed, that's fine with me, you've got lots of company. Thanks. G.

http://grumpyoldbookman.blogspot.com/2005/06/gerard-jones-ginny-good.html

http://www.janmag.com/biography/ginnygood.html

Let me know when you immigrate to the same planet I live on.

Don't count on it. Why would I want to live among people who rag on stuff they don't listen to? Remember Plato's cave? Of course you don't want to come out of the shadows to be blinded by the bright light of truth and beauty and art and charm and humor. It's all safe in your cave. Stay there. See if I care. G.

I mean, I take the time out of my crushing schedule -- you think I'm at the office on Sunday for fun? -- to write you a detailed email with genuine observations, and THIS is your reply? You don't need publication, bub, you need therapy.

Your crushing schedule is comprised entirely of meaningless silliness and recycled drivel. I'm in my office on a Sunday for fun. That which you hate, do not do. Your "genuine" observations were party-line claptrap and boilerplate. Physician heal thyself. G.

It's obvious now that you'd rather nurse your sense of persecution, and the false sense of specialness it gives you, than to make real headway. That's fine, no skin of my nose. Don't think that makes you a lonely genius, though. I've been reviewing books and writing about authors for 20 years. Your kind is common as grass.

Nonetheless. Should you ever publish a second book, with, as I said before, a real, royalties-paying publisher, then I'll consider it for review if I receive a review copy. If I made mental stability a criteria for the authors whose masterworks are reviewed in the books pages, I'd have very little work to do, indeed.

If you write in your blog about what a philistine I am and how I tried to hurt your feelings -- boo-hoo -- be sure and include the whole story.

You're not a Philistine you're simply deluded by what replaced the universal truths Faulkner used to talk about--money and celebrity and envy and ego and finicky nit-picking and Nazi propaganda. Why aspire to excellence when it's so much easier just to drag everyone else down into the hole you're in? It's not your fault. You read the same books and watch the same movies we all do. There's no other game in town, thanks to you and the fifteen thousand other people like you on my little list. I do appreciate your trying to engage me, however. Not many people do 'cause they get their heads handed to them like you just did. Thanks. G.

You know nothing about me. Clearly, you've read nothing I've written, or you'd know how pathologically misguided you are. I've criticized celebrity culture more than once, with gusto and joy, but I also have to work inside the media maw if I want to have a bully pulpit, and, oh, not least, make a living. Otherwise I'd be an embittered little irrelevancy like you. Criticism from inside the beast is not rare, by the way, which you'd know if you read any respectable cultural publication, from The New York Times, The Washington Post, or most any big city newspaper to Vanity Fair, Harper's, The New Yorker, the Nation, The New York Review of Books and many, many more. The good is often on the same page as the bad. Take Vanity Fair, for example. Its celebrity coverage is despicable and disgusting beyond what any decent person ought be exposed to. Yet its journalism and cultural criticism is of a very high order, and attacks exactly the kind of things you complain of: money, privilege, celebrity worship, excess of all kinds. Your hypocrisy, let me add, is almost as profound as your stupidity. If I'm such a freaking Nazi, why do you desire my notice? Oh, and your use of the term "Nazi" just underscores your ignorance. It's the wrong name for the disease you wish you had the wit to diagnose. Fascism is not the problem; it's corporatization and the suppression of diverse voices in the pursuit of every last cent of profit at the expense of every other value. In this email exchange, you've revealed yourself as an imbecile who has well earned his isolation. Grow the frack up and acquire a sense of irony. Otherwise, may you choke on your futile hostility, not to mention your laughable illusion of artistic purity.

If you could somehow manage to get over your prickliness you'd see we're on some of the same pages here and there. What if my book's as good as I say it is? Wouldn't it be a crying shame that nobody ever got to know about it? Thomas Mann had his books burned. There was some modicum of notoriety attached to that act, but what if books that are just as "subversive" simply get ignored? If you think I don't have exquisite reason to be pissed-off, I disagree. Oh, I read one of your movie reviews. Harry Potter, I think it may have been. You should read the reviews I sent you. They're not me talking. Thanks. G.

Too late, pal. I gave you a window and you chose to piss through it.

You sound like the Israeli government...a window to nowhere, but thanks all the same. You think if a "good" agent and a topnotch editor at an established publishing house spent a lot of money buying, producing and promoting a book that it's worth the paper it's printed on? Ha! They, like you, are all part of the same closed, incestuous system that has made nothing but money-grubbing schlock during the entirety of this century. Now that's something to crow about. If it weren't money-grubbing schlock it wouldn't get bought, produced and promoted and you wouldn't consider it "worth" reviewing. Get it? G.

Please. Not you again.

It's my inalienable right to crack myself up. Here's a mediocre chapter of one of my books that's better all by itself than the last ten books you've reviewed put together. G.

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch13m.mp3

St. Petersburg Times
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St. Augustine Record
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American Media
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Minneapolis Star Tribune (McClatchy Newspapers)
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http://www.startribune.com

Mr. Jones. Thanks for the note. As a complete failure as a fiction writer (so far at least), I have found your web site truly enjoyable. You definitely do have a leg up on me, having published a novel at least. Keep up the good fight.

...yours is the first response of any kind I've gotten to the 10,000 emails I've sent out so far. Glad you like the site...I have fun with it or I wouldn't do it. G.

Obviously there aren't many aspriing novelists among that lot. Otherwise, they probably would know about you. Have you ever thought about trying to mold your web site results into something publishable? It's such a hoot it seems like there's something more that can be gotten out of it.

Nah, there's really nothing publishable other than what's published on the site itself. It's my own invention. There are "real" books on the site...I just stick up any old thing, like the free fifteen-hour audio book. Nobody pays any of it any mind. If they did, I'd run out of bandwidth in about twelve seconds. If you want to read the real book and/or listen to the audio book, let me know and I'll send you a copy. I've got a bunch 'cause they're not for sale anymore. Thanks. G.

St. Paul Pioneer Press
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City Pages
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Minnesota Public Radio
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Public Radio International
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Internet Broadcasting Systems
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Dallas Morning News
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Houston Chronicle (Hearst Newspapers)
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Austin American-Statesman (Cox Newspapers)
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Austin, TX 78704
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http://www.statesman.com

Fort Worth Star
400 West 7th Street
Fort Worth, TX 76102
(817) 390-7400

http://www.star-telegram.com

So, now you have a first-hand understanding of the publishing world, right? Bob Ray

I have a fair to middling understanding, yep. Thanks. G.

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch08m.mp3

San Antonio Express-News
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San Antonio, TX 78287
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http://www.mysanantonio.com

Arizona Republic
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http://www.arizonarepublic.com

Arizona Daily Sun
1751 South Thompson Street
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
(928) 774-4545

http://www.azdailysun.com

(@) = Not a corporate fascist. (Feel free to apply for non-corporate fascist status...simply tell me in fifty words or fewer why you think you're not a corporate fascist.)

(*) = E-mail bounced. Correct information much appreciated. In fact, anyone who knows anything I don't know, let me know.

(!) = E-mail blocked (just mine, not yours), probably 'cause the intended recipient and/or the company by which he or she is owned and operated is an extra brainwashed, super chicken, corporate fascist goon.

(666) = Asked not to be contacted (by me, not by you), very likely because he or she is a happy little slave boy or a happy little slave girl and doesn't want it any other way, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Gerard Jones
everyone@everyonewhosanyone.com