March 31, 2005
Okay, just to wrap things up before my lion-taming lessons begin out at the golf course, here's the e-mail I've sent to all 6,000 or so people on my little list now that I've finished The Fourth Edition. Now I might send out a press release but I doubt it; media dweebs and book review boys and girls are a pretty ignorant lot, too. If they want to say stuff about my slick website or my beautiful books I'm sure they'll do so all on their own but I ain't holding my breath. I'm washing my hands of the whole kit and caboodle for another six months or so, at which time I'll come up with The Fifth Edition, which might include the morons who call themselves book review editors and sundry other media goons:
Finished, finally, fhew...
People wonder why I went to all the trouble of making Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing and Tinseltown Too, an online directory of 2,500 of the top literary agents, editors and publishers in the US, UK and Canada, and 3,500 or so Hollywood literary & talent agents, studio executives and independent film company boys and girls. Now that The Fourth Edition, April 2005 is finally finished, I'm gonna tell you why.
For fun, that's why. To crack myself up. And because it's a new kind of art—a new kind of literature, an approximation of the truth for a change. EWA's got more useful information in it about the book business and the movie business than anything else you can get anywhere for free, that's for sure, and it's gonna stay free like the rest of the best things in life.
I also made this whole huge 4.57 MB website to make it easier to get my beautiful books rejected some more. My goal is to be the most rejected writer of all time. I reached that goal clear back at fourteen thousand or so, but I wanna keep adding to the record so no one will ever break it. When I get done with this round of "querying" I'll be up to around 150,000 rejections, give or take. I'm proud. I'm happy. It's only fitting that one of the best writers who's ever lived should be far and away the most rejected writer who's ever lived. Virtue is its own reward.
A third reason I made the thing was to create a record for future historians. When some Chinese scholar is digging around in the rubble of American culture to find causes for the rise and fall of what was once the richest, sweetest, kindest, most powerful nation on earth, he or she will see the names of the people who prevented anything worth reading or writing from being written or read or made into a movie and will make the correct assumption that it was that arrogance and that greed and that ignorance that undermined the heart and soul and morality of an otherwise pretty cool country.
But the main reason I made the site was so that I could sit down one fine day like today and send all 6,000 of the shortsighted, money-grubbing goons and giggly twits in the book business and the movie businesses an e-mail telling 'em exactly what I think of 'em. If you're reading this, you're one of those selfsame, shortsighted, money-grubbing goons or giggly twits who has rejected my beautiful books in one way or another going on a hundred and fifty thousand times over the years and here, briefly, is what I would like to take this opportunity to say to you, if I may:
I write great books, important books, books worth reading and writing, books that would make great movies, and you reject 'em, how stupid is that? You produce crappy books and crappy movies for money, I write great books for free. Who would you rather be, you or me? Wait, wait, you've already answered that an astronomical number of times but, what the heck, go ahead and answer it again. Ignore this e-mail like you ignored the others I've sent you. Prove yet again how truly worthless and ignorant and stupid you really are. Go on about the oh so very important business of making money buying and selling lousy books and lousy movies, live your lies, make your piddly piles of nickels and dimes and Deutschmarks—die, rot, be forgot, that's fine with me, but my little website's gonna give you some measure of immortality whether you want it or not. Ha!
Your children and grandchildren are gonna see your name among the thousands of chicken-hearted, money-grubbing schlock-peddlers and giggly twits and useless goons who dismissed my beautiful books and chose instead to go gaga over the unspeakably inane, mind-numbing twaddle that will become known as American literature and culture of the early 21st Century. And you picked it. Wow. Should you feel good about yourself, or what? It's kind of cool being one of the best writers who's ever lived but how cool can it be to have prevented anything worth reading or writing from being read or written or seen at the movies? To have ignored one of the best writers who's ever lived? To have rejected the last few books that were worth reading or writing in all American Literature? Not very, that's my guess. It was pretty cool to have written them, though.
You may never know how stupid you are, how ignorant, how useless, how negligible, etc., due in large part to having your head buried all the way to China in the dirt of your own giggly greed, but posterity will. You'll be lumped among book review editors and their idiotic ilk who have (with the single exception of Linda Richards who picked Ginny Good as the editor's only choice for the best nonfiction book of 2004) neglected to read or review the coolest book published anywhere in the world so far this century. Oh, well. I wouldn't want to be one of their children or grandchildren, either.
The thing that really cracks me up is that then y'all have the gall to call what some wide-eyed, innocent Saudi kid gets taught in a madrasa "brainwashing." Oh, my gosh. To love God instead of Money? Yikes. What kind of an absurd, subversive notion is that? Those towelheads ought to be bombed back into the stone age. Naturally you know what matters. Money. Period. That's it. You love money. You adore money. You worship money. You eat, sleep, drink, breathe and take baths in money. Money isn't everything, it's the only thing. Whoever said "the love of money is the root of all evil" must be some kind of terrorist, some kind of whacko Islamic-fundamentalist. "Where your treasure is there will your heart be also." It must have been some whacko that said that, too.
You won't ever realize any of that either, of course, but future generations will. Your children and your grandchildren will be shunned because of you. They'll be embarrassed, they'll be afraid to play with other kids, they'll get teased, they'll be made fun of, laughed at; no one with any brains will have anything to do with them because it will be widely assumed that they were born with your moron genes.
Take heart, however, it may still not too late! You might be able to redeem yourself. You may still have a chance to make life a little easier for your otherwise ill-fated progeny. Take a look at Ginny Good. Buy the hardcover rights. Buy the Brit rights. Translate the sucker into Dutch. Get me to read it into a microphone so it can be an audio book. Future generations will treasure the sound of my glorious voice reading the gorgeous words I wrote back during that time when literature and culture was at its lowest ebb and you'll be revered for "discovering" me. Your children and grandchildren will be honored, flattered, sought-after instead of shunned...and all because of you! Whoopdeedo. What better legacy could you possibly leave them than that?
Or better still, do it for yourself. Make a movie out Ginny Good so you can say you did one thing worth doing in your life. Or take a look at any of my other beautiful books. Buy or sell or make movies out of one or two or three of them while you're at it. Be a hero to your heirs. If you wanna find out how, click this: Manuscripts for Sale or Rent. You'll thank yourself. Your children will thank you, your grandchildren will thank you, your great-grandchildren will thank you, I'll thank you, but I'd thank you anyway whether you're a demonstrable idiot or not. Thanks.
Gerard Jones
p.s. I know there's a fine line between delightful cynicism and bitterness. I cross it on occasion but I'm basically pretty pleased with myself and with the books I write and with the objectivity with which I see things. If you want to see more delightful cynicism, bitterness, bravado and the way things are, click this: Rants, Diatribes, Etc. I gotta go play golf in the rain. G.
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