“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.”

- John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Physical descriptions also provide a writer with the opportunity to segue into a character’s self-appraisal.

“It made Hale’s manner strange. He couldn’t help showing his desperation. He could hear the girls laughing at him after he’d gone, at his clothes and the way he talked. There was a deep humility in Hale; his pride was only in his profession : he disliked himself before the glass - the bony legs and the pigeon breast, and he dressed shabbily and carelessly as a sign - a sign that he didn’t expect any woman to be interested.”

- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

Appearance can also signal to a reader what kind of life a character has.

“Without the coat, her body had a lean look to it — as if she worked too long, and ate too little or too poorly. Her gloves and tall brown boots were caked with the filth of the plant, and she was wearing pants like a man. Her long, dark hair was piled up and back, but two shifts of labor had picked it apart and heavy strands had scattered, escaping the combs she’d used to hold it all aloft.”

- George Orwell, 1984

More modestly, physical descriptions allow for comedy the reader might not anticipate at that location in the narrative.

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when.’”

- P.G. Wodehouse

A physical description can limit itself to a body part—the eyes, hair, etc.

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

In my own writing, I think my best descriptions are currently unpublished. However, there is a villain’s description with which I’m reasonably happy. It is brief but useful for establishing the threat he posed to the main character in the novel. It is inspired by a line in Richard Matheson’s novel Hell House.

His was the face of a dog right before a bite, empty of motive other than abuse, but with just enough privilege for human likeness.

- Kev Coleman, Our Name Is Dare

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There are not many great endings. They are difficult to write, and many an extraordinary story does not have a final page that is equally exceptional. Further contributing to their scarcity is the reality that great endings are hard to fashion from middling stories. Tying up the loose ends of unremarkable characters and uninteresting conflicts doesn’t provide much in the way of a finale. To be fair, it can happen. One such ending that comes to mind is Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans).

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Another exception like the one above closes A Tale of Two Cities. I’m sure there are howls out from people decrying my belief that this is not a great novel. I should clarify that I believe A Tale of Two Cities is a very good story. It has a fantastic opening and glorious end. The rest of the narrative, though, does not have the same dizzying highs as Dickens used in A Christmas Carol (a much underrated work). Returning to A Tale of Two Cities, it ends as follows:

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a woman—had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.

“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

I care deeply about how a story leaves a reader. I write to break my readers’ hearts when I reach the last words. The ambition of this heartbreak is not discouragement, because I don’t write to wound. Life wounds well enough without my help. Instead, I want different people to close my book than the ones who had opened the cover. I want them to have changed. I want them to be more curious, more grateful, more convinced that what happens in the world is meaningful. And I want them to be dissatisfied with an unexamined life. I want readers to feel the cure brought by the final course of a great meal where many flavors had crowded within each spoonful of dessert.

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Where’s the fun in that?

Let’s imagine you and I are characters in the same novel. I alone know that another character, my grandmother, is dead. Without using definite language, I can definitely communicate that I did not like the woman using indirection.

You: Where’s grandma?

Me: She won’t be coming down for breakfast.

Understatement, an indirection of another form, could have functioned similarly.

You: I heard grandma had a bad fall. Is she okay?

Me: More or less.

The authors of The Elements of Style might have taken objection to my earlier euphemism, “She won’t be coming down for breakfast,” if they were still alive. However, those seven words, empty of any comfort, suggest a lack of sentimentalism on my part or, at the very least, that my grandmother’s passing is not a hard burden to bear. That’s effective writing. It gives the reader the opportunity to put the pieces together rather than supplying them directly with a perspective.

If the story were going to use the exchange to reveal something about my grandmother instead of me, it might employ an indirection like the following.

You: Have you talked to grandma lately? How’s she doing?

Me: I don’t think she’ll be criticizing your weight anymore.

If the indirection needs to make a more critical statement about the grandmother’s personality, allusion can be employed.

You: Do you think grandma will check in on us after she dies?

Me: I’m sure she’ll be looking up at the both of us.

Speaking of death, at the bottom of this post is a photo of W.B. Yeats’ grave. The photo is not mine, but I have been there. He is buried in County Sligo, the same county from which my father’s side of the family came. The same county hosts Ben Bulben, a mountain about which Yeats once wrote. I saw the mountain before I drove with my wife to Drumcliffe to see the poet’s resting place. There was an ache in me not to live in a land so beautiful, and an ache for my ancestors who couldn’t afford to stay. And then I saw the tombstone and smiled.

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I am not so confident in his verdict. Consider the following observation from Berrett-Koehler Publishers:

“According to the latest Bowker data (Publishers Weekly, March 23, 2026), 4.2 million books were published in 2025 in the United States. This is the number of titles that received an ISBN number from Bowker. And here is the truly shocking figure: the number of new titles published each year is 15 times greater than it was 20 years ago.”

Critics cannot consume this volume of literature and advise the public on which books are noteworthy or promising. Most books will be neglected despite the best intentions of industry professionals. Further, as an outsider, it also seems that a few critics would prefer to highlight authors who are “worthy.” I won’t quibble with the criteria used to establish this distinction, but I will note that talent and virtue have no intrinsic relationship. In other words, subpar people can write sublime books, a truth that should comfort all who pick up a pen, myself included. Limiting literary evaluation to the worthy could not come at a worse time for writers already awash in a sea of competition.

Readers are not picking up the slack for critics in the search for exceptional writing. The number of readers has not grown the way the number of titles has. Data from Statista paints a picture of plateaued growth in the past six years and sales far below their peak during the early 2000s.

Our education system, for its part, has produced a culture of non-readers, if we are to believe what Statista has published on American literary consumption.

Data from a government antitrust case (opposing the merger between Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House) provides additional support to the fear of undiscovered Shakespeares. As reported by Gigazine.net, the CEO of Penguin Random House provided the following answer to the question of how many books sold 500,000 copies in the four years from 2018:

‘From my understanding, it was about 50 people.’ In addition, a Department of Justice lawyer revealed that, based on data on 58,000 books published in a year, ‘90% sold less than 2,000 copies, and 50% sold less than 12 copies.’

Writers are told to “build a platform” when they ask how to be found by sympathetic readers within this unpromising environment. A platform is a multi-channel online presence that generates staggering amounts of new content in order to attract viewership that can be converted into book sales. This approach, of course, assumes a writer has the time to prepare and craft emotionally engaging content while maintaining existing professional and personal obligations. To me, the approach seems a recipe for burnout, assuming a writer already spends considerable time working on his or her craft. Alongside this prospect is the compromise that too many platform-development consultants encourage. They advise writers to prioritize effectiveness (i.e., maximum viewership) over quality not only in writers’ platforms but in their books. The consultants’ message is not to be a discovered Shakespeare but to be discovered.

Are there any Shakespeares hidden deep within an Amazon listing or advertised on an author’s blog or Substack? It’s hard to say. The odds of someone writing on that level are quite low, but the odds of finding such an author seem even lower.

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The tools were not perfect text analysts; for example, they counted different forms of the same word as unique vocabulary instances. Nevertheless, they produced some insights I lacked about my prose. Here are some of the more interesting attributes they found:

• My average sentence length was nearly 12 words (see the distribution of sentence lengths in Graph 1 below)

• 9 percent of the words I used in the novel had 3 or more syllables

• The longest sentence in the novel was 59 words

• For every 100 sentences I wrote, 59 had quotation marks (which suggests I use dialogue more frequently than I had assumed)

• 10 sentences per 100 ended with a question mark

• The Dale-Chall Readability level (which estimates the education needed for a specific text to be read easily) was between the 11th and 12th grades

Graph 1: Average number of words per sentence

There were three statistics I desired that the online tools did not provide:

• The percentage of words in the novel that were unique vocabulary words

• The percentage of words used only once

• The number of -ly adverbs (e.g., angrily, sadly, softly, suddenly, etc.) used per 10,000 words

The first statistic interests me because I try to avoid excessive use of any single word, with exceptions made for basic grammar words such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs of being (e.g., is, was, etc.). Related to this is the percentage of words I used only once in my novel. I’ve noticed that I have a difficult time finishing novels with very narrow vocabularies and I’ve tried to avoid this pitfall. The third missing statistic was the number of -ly adverbs I used per 10,000 words of text. Writing manuals condemn the use of -ly adverbs because they tell the reader what the writer should demonstrate through character behavior. Consider the following sentence:

The boy showed his model airplane proudly to his father.

This sentence can be better expressed without a -ly adverb.

The boy presented the completed model, held high on his palm, turning it left and right so his father could see the flawless painting.

One writer has gone so far as to say that “The road to Hell is paved with adverbs.” In Ben Blatt’s book Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, he published a chart comparing the use of -ly adverbs among several famous novelists. I don’t think it would shock many writers to learn Hemingway fared well in this analysis, but I do think they would be surprised that Mark Twain and Amy Tan used -ly adverbs almost as infrequently.

Above chart cited from Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve.

I did a quick search of the letter combination “ly” in my novel using Microsoft Word and found I had 516 instances across 89,000 words. A cursory review found that non-adverbs such as “family,” “fly,” “monopoly,” and “belly” were caught in this net. I also discovered that I used the word “only” more than I had realized. All the same, I was relieved to find my number of -ly words per 10,000 was below 60.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

— Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

— Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

In Austen’s quote, the claim is tongue-in-cheek. A wealthy single man is not necessarily seeking matrimony. However, this comic assertion tells the reader something about the world within the story and it hints at base opportunism.

Tolstoy’s quote, in contrast to Austen’s, seems to be a conviction. An analyst might quibble about the evidence needed to support his position, but everyday readers will likely find that, while never having given the matter thought previously, they share the same opinion. Happy families do seem similar. They are supportive. They are loving. They show kindness, honesty, and respect to one another. Unhappy families, on the other hand, have a thousand ways to misery.

Is Tolstoy’s claim true in all situations? Of course not. Does it matter? No.

Opening a story with a claim does not tie the plot to the pronouncement. It can merely set the mood or reflect something important about a character’s perspective. An opening claim can even be indefensible yet beautiful and, being beautiful, receives no complaint from the reader.

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some, they come in with the tide. For others, they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.

— Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

Most people are not writers, which is a shame. When I say it’s a shame, I don’t mean that the world is poorer for not reading everyone’s scribbles. Talent, tragically, is in uneven supply. What I think is that people should be in the habit of writing, even if the words are secret and never shared. Writing a book is an excellent exercise for self-understanding, and writing one hundred thousand words will unearth your own claims about the nature of things.

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The second novel portrayed a person destabilized by grief. The moorings of convention that allow any human to survive in this world had been quickly untethered by the death of a loved one. I had no objections to this premise, only compassion for the protagonist. However, the story ended with the protagonist consciously holding nihilism and meaning together effortlessly. It was unconvincing. The problem was not the contradiction itself; that is to say, not the unresolved competition between nihilism and meaning, but rather the absence of its consequence: chronic uncertainty. An uncertain life is never a comfortable one. Uncertainty aches because volatile forces are hard to localize. A little meaning, like a little poison, soon affects the whole body. The same is true of nihilism.

This is true whether meaning affirms life or denounces it. When meaning is redemptive, it taints our existence with the conviction that we and what we do matter. It is provoking. It tempts us to make sacrifices, take risks, and perhaps even forgive the wrongs that have left us scarred. When embraced, redemptive meaning is a continuous learning that transforms us.

When meaning is the reverse, a faith in the folly of all human endeavor, it leaves us with self-preservation lurking behind our kindnesses and compassion, always weighing the cost nervously, always watching the scales despite the ultimate futility of the effort. Bitterness and disappointment and fear inevitably follow. For nihilism to numb this pain, a person must no longer see human endeavor as folly. It must be itself and nothing more. Human endeavor is human endeavor just as atoms are atoms. In other words, the indifference of nihilism must be complete, and this is rare. We are wired for meaning, whether meaning be good or bad.

If a literary character is to exist with neither meaning nor nihilism discredited, I think this must be portrayed as happening unconsciously, intuitively, and the plot will truly begin when this contradiction can no longer be ignored.

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Below is the opening to A River Runs Through It, a novel that I cherish. In three sentences, I know something important about the narrator, where he lives, his father, and his worldview. A lesser writer would need paragraphs to do the same and likely veer into clumsy exposition that hovers above the story rather than in it. The opening below, in contrast, is tight as a drum with everything organically linked.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.

Read this and you’re hooked. You want to know more.

When authors start a story, their first few sentences invite a reader to the rest of the pages. Acceptance depends on whether the reader perceives a promise of excitement or discovery or wit or connection or even some trivial entertainment. If that promise is not made after three or four sentences, an author is dependent on a reader’s goodwill, which is in short supply these days.

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Despite its power, The Sound and the Fury loses many readers a few dozen pages into the opening. The first section is narrated by a thirty-three-year-old with profound cognitive deficits, Benjy Compson. Benjy has never been able to speak. The section is this man’s shifting thoughts, his mind skipping between the present and the past without giving the reader his or her bearings. The section begins with a famous baffling sentence, “Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.”

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.

How long did it take you to realize Benjy was watching people play golf?

Faulkner gives Benjy an enviable memory, and his recall allows for other characters’ verbatim dialogue to serve as exposition for Benjy’s puzzling impressions. More importantly, Benjy’s equally vivid experience of present and past reminds the reader that wounds neglected yesterday remain unhealed today. This was not just true for Benjy. It was true for Mississippi. In the case of Benjy, though, there is the disappearance of his sister Caddy, who had loved him, kindly, patiently. She has been long gone and she hasn’t. Their time together in childhood is still happening. Benjy is still living there at any given moment, and at any given moment, she is gone and there is overpowering sadness. What was taken away from Benjy is always being lost. The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Upon first reading, the opening section of The Sound and the Fury is frustrating when it’s not confusing. Benjy, for example, is sometimes called Maury, and you must wait for Benjy to overhear a conversation about his name being changed as a child to understand. But there is so much magic in the stream of consciousness once you have read The Sound and the Fury for the second time. What confused in the first reading, illuminates in the second. It is a masterpiece.

I reread The Sound and the Fury recently. It was my fifth time through the book. There will be a few more readings before I leave this life.

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When I write a post on this website, I don’t have the time for editing. I do my best to share something meaningful, and I move on to the next ask on my “To Do” list. However, there are instances where I can’t leave things well enough alone and pride makes me return to a post. Last week I published a post entitled “Intention vs. Accusation.” I’m sharing below edits I subsequently made since some of my readers consume my articles for their insights on writing and, for me, most of writing is revision.

Change #1

I made the first sentence a stand-alone paragraph. “One of the greatest perils of writing is to be misunderstood (the other, of course, is to be understood too well)” is sufficiently thought-provoking to keep a reader on the page but the following sentence, “Misunderstandings in reading sometimes arise because a reader treats a particular literary character like an actual person,” diminished some of the first sentence’s force given its immediate proximity.

Change #2

The words “of the story” were removed from the sentence, “More accurately, readers relate to characters like specific people known from outside the text of the story, souls whom they dislike and by whom they feel slighted,” because the phrase was redundant and added nothing of value.

Change #3

The sentence “There are millions of book choices in the world, so a reader donating time to your novel, the book awash in that sea of options, is deeply appreciated. It’s hard to be angry with someone who showed you a kindness” was changed to “There are millions of books in the world, so any reader donating time to your novel—the book itself awash in that sea of options—is deeply appreciated.” The phrase “book choices” was tightened to “books,” and the later use of book in the sentence was given an intensive pronoun (“…the book itself”). I also replaced two commas with em dashes, though whenever I use an em dash I fear an accusation of AI writing since Large Language Models use this punctuation more frequently than humans.

“A reader” was changed to “any reader” because “any” strengthens the notion of gratitude on the part of the author.

I’m still not satisfied with the use of the second person (“…to your novel”) within this sentence. It occurs over a dozen words in and has no antecedent in the opening phrase. Perhaps I’ll improve it in the future.

Change #4

“Most writers (I suspect) have little appetite for composing a Rorschach test instead of a story that is heartrending or transformative or beautiful” was revised to “Most writers (I suspect) have no aspirations for composing a Rorschach test instead of a story that is heartrending or transformative or beautiful.” The word “appetite” implied more of tolerance than purpose while “aspiration” hit the nail on the head.

Change #5

The observation “Perhaps, but this gives little credit to my imagination” was made more explanatory through the wording, “Possibly, but this suspicion gives little credit to my imagination, which is perhaps a worse slight.” Additionally, the sentence has become comical in suggesting that underestimating my imagination is more insulting than believing my fiction’s immorality mirrors my own.

Change #6

“To write is to invite misunderstanding” was improved to “To write is to be always misunderstood to some degree or another.” The latter sentence makes misunderstanding inevitable rather than potential. The sentence is also more vulnerable and, perhaps in being so, attracts more compassion and emotional investment from the reader.

I don’t think the concept here is particularly original. I’m sure it has been stated many times before but often truth is more effective than originality.

Change #7

Finally, I shortened the sentence “It is the blood of the sacrifice of writing.” The revised version reads, “It is the blood of writing’s sacrifice.” There’s no fat left on this sentence. Using fewer words both places the word “blood” in closer proximity to the description of writing as sacrifice (sacrifice in this context alluding to a blood-shedding that offers a life in exchange for approval) and ends the sentence with the word “sacrifice,” emphasizing it.

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Misunderstandings in reading sometimes arise because a reader treats a particular literary character like an actual person. More accurately, readers relate to characters like specific people known from outside the text, souls whom they dislike and by whom they feel slighted. The interpretive algebra goes something like “My neighbor Mark B. is condescending and he’s cruel to his family behind closed doors. Character X is condescending and therefore X has cruel intentions.”

When this situation occurs, it puts an author in an uncomfortable position. There are millions of books in the world, so any reader donating time to your novel—the book itself awash in that sea of options—is deeply appreciated. It’s hard to be angry with someone who showed you a kindness even if that kindness comes with a healthy serving of misinterpretation. On the other hand, considerable time and effort was expended in the crafting of a character, and any reader’s disregard of the character’s words and actions in favor of some extra-literary personality is a source of exasperation. Most writers (I suspect) have no aspirations for composing a Rorschach test instead of a story that is heartrending or transformative or beautiful, though perhaps this is my own projection. When I consider the purpose of a novel, it is easy to be naive and simple-hearted.

A different kind of misunderstanding occurs when a reader believes that an author pens characters with an uncritical endorsement and, by extension, embodies the same moral failings as these characters. It is guilt by association, character assassination by character assignation. Put simply, my characters are evil so I am evil.

Possibly, but this suspicion gives little credit to my imagination, which is perhaps a worse slight.

The risk for character/author confusion is greatest with respect to a story’s main character. A protagonist is not necessarily a hero. In fact, interesting protagonists can personify extreme contradictions. Writing professors laud contradicted characters but readers may detect a tacit approval of the worst behaviors contained in the contradictions. To be fair, there definitely are immoral characters lionized by immoral writers. Such is life. Great writers, however, have a flair for characters with troubling inconsistencies. Hamlet repeatedly procrastinates through much of his eponymous play but then kills Polonius impulsively. Lenny in Of Mice and Men is a gentle soul, childlike, but who ultimately kills Curley’s wife. If we expand our attention beyond the protagonist to supporting characters, we have the conflicting nature of the knights in Murder in the Cathedral. They viciously assassinate Archbishop Thomas Becket but, afterward, address the audience to justify their actions in detached calm. The first of the assassins begins their defense by saying:

We beg you to give us your attention for a few moments. We know that you may be disposed to judge unfavourably of our action. You are Englishmen, and therefore you believe in fair play: and when you see one man being set upon by four, then your sympathies are all with the under dog. I respect such feelings, I share them. Nevertheless, I appeal to your sense of honour. You are Englishmen, and therefore will not judge anybody without hearing both sides of the case.

To write is to be always misunderstood to some degree or another. It is the blood of writing’s sacrifice. But—and never forget this—there is also the small possibility that your words will live long enough to be understood again and again and again.

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I don’t want to write like this.

I have no interest in surrendering my own disagreements with people (they are one of life’s small pleasures), but I don’t want them turned into a literary cudgel. Unnuanced villains belong in cartoons and comic books. Nuance in villainy does not require a sympathetic character, but it does demand the character be compelling as opposed to a caricature. Caricatures are boring because they do not deviate from the expectations of prejudice. They do little other than uncritically affirm how deserving they are of the hate the author directs at them.

I do have a few exceptions to this rule about villains. Consider Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. Yes, he is a caricature but he is a wonderfully entertaining caricature, a testimony to Charles Dickens’ considerable skill as a writer.

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

Over my career, I have spent much of my time dealing with people in high tech, politics, and media. This has introduced me to many kind and brilliant people but it’s also given me an inordinate exposure to sociopathy, psychopathy, and borderline personality disorder. It’s been hard for a sensitive soul like myself and I can see how it’s influenced how I’ve crafted villains in published and yet unpublished works. For example, in Our Name Is Dare, I wrote the following passage about one of the principal villains:

Borte was keenly aware of injustice, not so much as its victim but as the object of its implied presence. From the time he was old enough to consider anyone other than himself, Borte was disgusted with those who had more, more of whatever, in his opinion, always being undeserved. Rather than a trait in need of correction, his parents encouraged the conviction, believing it would increase his prospects for success. It did. Borte could do, and did, almost anything armed with this belief.

In the Gospel of Luke, it is written, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’” If you’ve read Our Name Is Dare, you can tell me in the comments whether I followed my own advice and was successful in making this villain more compelling than caricature.

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© 2026 Kevin Coleman. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added, “But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!” Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket, he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written “Thames Court.” Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.

Let us turn from the anemic use of weather in Paul Clifford to a brilliant consideration of weather, Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man. [Note the ellipses below are not in the original text but I have chosen to use them because the Substack tool will not display empty line breaks.]

…

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

…

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

…

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

…

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

…

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

…

A great writer can make you love what you otherwise reject. I am no nihilist but I love The Snow Man because it slips me into such an imagination with all its terrible power. In The Snow Man, the weather not only creates a mood but becomes a knife of uninvited introspection and emptiness. Let me share what I find some of the most enviable lines as a writer. It could take a lifetime to conjure a phrase like “One must have a mind of winter”. The land becomes a sterile desert in a January frost. To have such a winter mind is, perhaps, to be uninhabited of thought and hope. Likewise, “and have been cold a long time” is an undecorated description that distracts nothing from the simplicity of being deprived warmth for so long it changes you.

Last, there is another issue to consider in the poem, this one unrelated to the weather but worth mentioning all the same. Just as the color black is never explicitly mentioned in the body of Stevens’ poem The Domination of Black, there is no explicit figure made of snow in the verses of The Snow Man. There is, though, mention of a listener. This listener, whether made of snow or flesh, could easily stand in for us as we face the nothing that is not there in winter and the nothing that is.

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While my novel alludes to innumerable works, two loom particularly important: the Grand Inquisitor section of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and the poem The Tyger by William Blake. The original title for Our Name Is Dare was Theodicy, and works like Karamazov and The Tyger inform how my novel wrestles with the concept.

With this said, let’s examine intertextuality in practice. Below is an excerpt from Our Name Is Dare. In it, a political dissident faces a brutal interrogator. The interrogator has warned, “After you break, nothing will be sacred. Even the questions that terrify you most will be lost: Why did God let this happen? Why didn’t someone save me? Why does Dimitri go unpunished? Look at me, Revekah. Come on now…in my eyes. I’m the end of all faiths. I am the undeniable proof things do not turn out well.”

In turn, the dissident, despite torture and privation, recites the questions that convince her life is fundamentally remarkable even in the midst of her suffering and she points out all the questions the interrogator never asks that diminish who he is as a human. Finally, she says, “Here’s another thing you don’t ask: How does this end for you? You think you’re some kind of tiger, but tigers spend most of their lives with empty stomachs because with every kill, the herd that’s left is a little stronger and a little faster. You’re going to grow old aching with hunger, Dimitri. Your enemies will grow smarter and you’ll grow slower until the day the chase is given to someone better.”

Now let’s read The Tyger by William Blake.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

-

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

-

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat.

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

-

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

-

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

-

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

-

When Blakes asks “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” he expresses his bewilderment at the destructive reality of a tiger being the work of a good Creator. Now let’s reread the first passage. The reference to a tiger is not accidental nor is the repeated use of questions in the larger context.

“Here’s another thing you don’t ask: How does this end for you? You think you’re some kind of tiger, but tigers spend most of their lives with empty stomachs because with every kill, the herd that’s left is a little stronger and a little faster. You’re going to grow old aching with hunger, Dimitri. Your enemies will grow smarter and you’ll grow slower until the day the chase is given to someone better.”

How has your interpretation deepened? Note that the allusion to The Tyger does not parrot Blake’s framing of theodicy but, instead, engages it with another perspective (which is developed more fully throughout the story).

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© 2025 Kevin Coleman. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

This discussion begins with one of my favorite passages from Shakespeare: Macbeth’s reaction to news of his wife’s death.

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare’s playwriting is known for its iambic pentameter, though the plays themselves are not exclusively written in this meter. Iambic pentameter is a meter with five (penta) iambs (a syllable stress pattern where the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed, though deriving from Greek verse where vowel duration occupied the role English gives to stress). A famous example of iambic pentameter in Shakespeare is from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

By bolding and capitalizing the stressed syllables within the sentence, we can see iambic pentameter in action.

But SOFT, what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS?

In the case of our earlier passage from Macbeth, we find Shakespeare employing iambic pentameter in a particularly effective way within one of the lines.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Visualized for syllable stress, we have:

To-MOR-row AND to-MOR-ow AND to-MOR-row

Notice the stresses on the word “and.” The iambic pentameter stress pattern produces an emphasis on this conjunction linking the same thing (tomorrow) over and again. This stress reinforces the larger tedium and futility Macbeth expresses within the passage. The result is exquisite and haunting, and it’s exquisite and haunting because of the craft manifested in Shakespeare’s arrangement of the words he chose. In our period, a period where critics too often sneer at such linguistic ornamentation, we need to hold fast to lines like “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” They are food for the soul. And they are the tutors of great writing.

This evening take some your favorite book off the shelf and read aloud a passage you find stirring. If it is a great book, you may just hear something more, something that had been previously lost in an unspoken word

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Artificial intelligence, specifically large language models and generative adversarial networks, continues to improve its ability to extract and reproduce textual features. In other words, the technology can imitate writers better and better. One defense against this competition is style modulation within a novel and between novels. Readers of Our Name Is Dare are aware that the narrative shifts styles repeatedly. There are obvious transitions, such as when the story switches from third-person narration to a personal letter or a newspaper article or a government statement. Others are less obvious. In several action scenes, the pacing and sentence structure change. There are also places where a scene is introduced with a detached historical overview that slides into the story’s present moment. This makes the “house style” a bit unstable, but as long as I am compelling in the process, I think readers will enjoy the journey—and AI will have a more difficult time duplicating my efforts.

I already have two more novels completed and another in process, each in a different genre. I have tried to make literary craftsmanship the common thread among them, not subject matter or genre. Shakespeare had his tragedies, comedies, and histories, so why can’t I mix things up a bit?

AI imitation represents a threat to artists, and the statutory and regulatory protections against AI appropriation are anemic. If I am to defend my place as a writer in this environment, I have to accept that all I truly have are words as my shield.

Merry Christmas!

© 2025 Kevin Coleman. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

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A story’s final words, however, have a disproportionate influence on how the book is judged and, by extension, whether the same author’s next book will be explored. I remember early in my career learning that, in the travel business, consumers judged a trip by the highest high, lowest low, and how it ended. I’ve thought about this often in the context of writing, coming to believe an unsatisfying ending poisons the memory of earlier enjoyments.

With that said, let us turn to a handful of exemplary endings, copied below in no particular order. Isolated from their larger narratives, none of them can be fully appreciated but the words are wonderful all the same.

Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane when Aureliano skipped eleven pages so as not to lose time with facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror. Then he skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

- Middlemarch, George Eliot

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

– Ulysses, James Joyce

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

- Animal Farm, George Orwell

Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

- The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

- My Antonia, Willa Cather

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

– The Dead/Dubliners, James Joyce

Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘You’ve been feeling tired,’ said the stranger, ‘but I can do something about that. I’ve come to ask whether you’d care to join my Owsla. We shall be glad to have you and you’ll enjoy it. If you’re ready, we might go along now.’

They went out past the young sentry, who paid the visitor no attention. The sun was shining and in spite of the cold there were a few bucks and does at silflay, keeping out of the wind as they nibbled the shoots of spring grass. It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.

‘You needn’t worry about them,’ said his companion. ‘They’ll be all right – and thousands like them. If you’ll come along, I’ll show you what I mean.’

He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom.

- Watership Down, Richard Adams

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Today also marks a change in my relationship with Our Name Is Dare. Until today, it was a private work. It was my work. I owned the mechanics of the narrative, knew the reason behind every choice of word, saw the shadows of specific poets and philosophers behind this scene and that. Things will inevitably change. Readers will claim my words and characters as their own. My intentions will recede and their experiences will prevail. I don’t mind. I suppose I’ve done this with every book I ever loved. Yes, I always tried to understand each in light of what I could glean of the author’s purpose in the clues supplied by the story as well as what I knew of the author’s time and place. This is important to me. I am of the opinion that there is nothing duller than treating a book like a Rorschach test by making reading more about the the reader than the read. Still, I am human. Some words land differently than others. Some I treasure and they become part of me.

I wonder what words will be treasured from Our Name Is Dare. Below is a section from my novel that someone may learn to love. It is written from the perspective of a supporting character, a deaf woman. It is, admittedly, a minor moment, not consequential in terms of plot but quite material in terms of an issue with which the novel wrestles.

The last sound I remember is my mother calling my name. She wanted me to come inside for dinner. I was in the backyard catching fireflies. I’d guess she shouted at the top of her lungs because my ears were almost ornamental by that point. I probably heard things after that evening but my name is the last I remember. I don’t know if what I recall is how my name actually sounds or if the syllables became diluted in a way I can’t understand. If I dream my mother is calling me, my name sounds different than it does in my memory, but I can’t explain how.

There was a radiator in my bedroom as a girl. I was terrified of it. At night when the heat began, it would gurgle and clang and I would hide under my blanket until the noises stopped. When I slipped from hard-of-hearing into deaf, the radiator no longer scared me. I slept in peace. There are advantages to silence. When you hear, you notice less about the world because so much attention is needed for words. When you can’t hear, you spot how much faces reveal and what’s spoken in the way people hold their arms or sit in a chair.

Try it yourself. Turn on your TV with the volume off. Don’t watch actors, though. They’ve made a profession of lying to the camera. Look at everyday people speaking. Try documentaries or interviews in true crime stories. After a while, you’ll be able to spot honesty and lying better than you do when you just use your ears. I’m not saying deaf people can’t be as oblivious as the hearing. They can. The ones who stare at mouths to read lips lose most of the face. That’s why I carry a notebook.

I’ve met other deaf people, though I don’t keep in touch. My signing is slow and none of them want to write in my notebook. I do remember meeting a man from America who was born deaf. He grew up in Kansas. He told me when he was a boy he assumed light was loud because he knew lightning made thunder. Sometimes when the sky would flash he felt a quick rumble and saw how his family flinched. Whenever he felt thunder, his hands were in a flurry before his mother’s face signing “What did the thunder say? What did the thunder say?” As a child, he supposed hearing people’s lives were always rumbling because daylight and lightbulbs were always making their own kind of thunder, just too soft for the deaf to feel. When I could hear, I remember light being a silent thing. I think the hearing find absence in silence while the deaf find focus. There’s no sound to distract us. I look and pick over everything I see to make sense of the world, scavenging my memories to help. It’s just my opinion, but I think the hearing depend too much on speaking and mistake its loss for absence itself. The deaf know a word remains a word even when it’s unspoken. It never disappears. Only sound vanishes. If the hearing relied less on speech, silence wouldn’t be so overwhelming. I am always in silence but I am not cut off. Maybe the best way to explain it is to say it’s like looking at a Vermeer painting or a sculpture by Michelangelo. You feel what you see even if the art can’t be heard.

© 2025 Kevin Coleman. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

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For the opening of Our Name Is Dare, I wagered my literary fortunes on parallelism. It is a narrative technique that allowed me to progressively describe two of the main characters—sisters—over against one another in a manner that, while figurative and elegant, remained authentic to the narrator’s personality (their father).

In parallelism, two phrases repeat the same theme (or grammatical pattern), though the second instance of the repetition can be in the form of similarity, antithesis, or intensification (there are a few more variations but these make the point sufficiently). In the Old Testament, parallelism is common to the Book of Psalms though found in many other books. Below is an example from the prophetic works, Isaiah 53:5.

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.”

We have many examples of parallelism in everyday language.

• Like father, like son

• A penny saved is a penny earned

• Takes one to know one

Parallelism isn’t limited to binaries. Consider Alexander the Great’s statement, “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

The most famous use of parallelism in literature, of which I’m aware, is the opening to A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

One of the desirable effects of parallelism is its ability to focus on what differs within the two parallels. Dickens uses “It was…” ten times and this phrase quickly recedes into the background compared to its modifiers: the epoch of belief, the epoch of incredulity, the season of Light, the season of Darkness, the spring of hope, and the winter of despair.

There are, however, challenges when using parallelism. When a series of parallels:

• Are opposite, they are easy to anticipate and become uninteresting (“I once was happy but now I’m sad. The days were once filled with light but now the days are dark.”)

• Reiterate the same premise often, they can be tedious

In the opening to Our Name Is Dare, I attempt to avoid these problems by using unconventional parallels. For example, if two parallels are the opposite of one another, the second parallel may be a metonymy, that is to say, the second word is not thing being referenced but something else closely associated with that thing or concept. For those that have forgotten their high school English, here is an example of metonymy: “The Crown issued a statement,” instead of saying “The King issued a statement.”

In other cases of parallelism, I introduce a similarity that is not identical but the difference is subtle and, hopefully, slows the reading process.

Finally, there are times where I replace conceptual contrasts with actions that illustrate the concepts.

The explanation above is, I’ll admit, abstract and rather dry. Below is how I put my strategy into practice in the opening page of Our Name Is Dare. The entire first chapter is only 246 words but successfully (in my opinion) introduces three characters (Revekah, Daciana, and their father), foreshadows the plot, and offers a variety of personality traits that will contribute to the action that takes place. The opening also leaves the reader with several questions that require reading the novel in full to answer:

• Are the daughters truly a traitor and nihilist, or are these false accusations?

• Why is the father separated from his children?

• How is one daughter complicit in 91 deaths?

• How could the other daughter be responsible for the collapse of a nation?

I have two daughters, one a force of nature, the other metaphysics.

The older, wild leaps and clumsy pirouettes. The younger, whispers and nursery rhymes.

I have two daughters. The older is chaos, the younger mayhem. The older dumps her rock collection across the kitchen tiles. The younger darts behind me clutching the cat.

I have two daughters. One gravity, the other, clouds. The older hugs my leg. The younger begins to sing.

I have two daughters. One is love, the other, compassion. The older sees me alone and kisses me hard on the cheek. The younger notices me reading and nests her doll under my arm.

I have two daughters. One is frustration, the other, grief. The older is crying. The younger doubts.

I pick up one as I run to the other.

There are two, the first a promise, the second a threat. One will be accused a traitor and the other a nihilist. One the rise of disreason, the other, anarchy. One the spade of 91 graves, the other, the twilight of a nation.

I have two daughters, Revekah and Daciana. I am, and was from their first breaths and will be even past the last lost from my own chest, their father. Much of what is now happening began in these early moments when their mother and I labored to teach them their place in the world. I return to this time, quite often in my mind these days, to be reunited.

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© 2025 Kevin Coleman. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

There are several responses to political enforcement in the arts, the aesthetic vigilantism that censures memorable craftsmanship whenever it fails to mirror elite values. Despair is the most obvious choice, and delivers the highest commitment for the least effort. Collaboration is another alternative. It places the career of writing over the art of writing. Unfortunately, even the most obedient quisling may find him or herself inadvertently on the wrong side of the elites. History, it seems, keeps marching. As I write, I am thinking of a still-living author who was once lauded in the press. His novels reflected correct politics, and correct politics, we all know, is the basis for correct culture. All the ironies and contradictions of the postmodern synthesis were unchallenged in novel after novel. Better yet, those communities that the elite hated were denigrated in his writing, if mentioned at all. For a while, this approach brought him reward. Major media outlets reviewed his work, making it known to a wide audience and helping with book sales. Today, however, he is largely ignored. The exemplary politics of twenty years ago are insufficiently pure for this age, so much so they might be described as morally suspect. For example, female characters in his books, who once did not attract comment, are now condemned because they do not aggrandize womanhood sufficiently. Worse, some characters’ ethical lapses were not explicitly identified as lapses. His list of political sins goes on.

Perhaps this author’s experience is why it is best to write your best work, and sit back waiting for history to make its judgment. The elites are a fickle bunch, but it is undeniable they can be the end of an independent-minded writer’s career, condemning their works in the press or, worse yet, encourage literary agents and publishers to avoid such political defiance. There are options, though, for the condemned. The digital printing press is ubiquitous. Yes, smaller publishing houses and self-publishing offer little in terms of validation for the effort put into a novel. So be it. Literature is about writing and not the writer.

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