Thursday, December 02, 2010

The book is rejected, and LI is bummed

Well, the agent to whom I sent my proposal letter had one his factotums respond that it wasn’t the type of project for the agent’s “list”. No explanation, but I imagine that the factotum was the one assigned to the task of delicately warding off the cranks. And, admittedly, I am a crank.

Well, fuck it. I was bummed for a bit. But I still think that this small book works – it would be an excellent intro to my larger, more flou happiness book. If – I told myself, awake in the hollows of 3 a.m. as the snow began to really accumulate on the streets of Paris – if I just made a first chapter, some 10,000 word consideration of how, a, we moderns have come to at least accept the myth of homo economicus, and b., how economics, in its policy designs, has tried to impress the character of homo economicus upon capitalist societies.

Unfortunately, the story I want to tell has more than just one linear narrative – because in telling this story of the moderns, I am concerned to show that the moderns do not, contra the intellectual historians and the economists, make up one homogenous mass – that in fact in the everyday life of contemporary societies a number of exchange matrixes are in play – and in fact must be in play for capitalism to be liveable.

From the question and the thesis springs my drama – how HE has been fostered in society, and variously resisted by imagination armed.

So these are the elements I need to put into my first chapter.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Roger-- is this the 10,000 word essay you were talking about earlier? I'd be very interested to read it.

I don't know if there are any book publishers that would be interested-- but maybe a 'literary' magazine? (The kind that has broader intellectual interests than just literature-- I think there are some.)

Roger Gathmann said...

Yes It is really 35000 words. I can't get through breakfast on just 10000, Sarah!
I am working on the intro, and will publish posts of it - as I sorta like doing that. But I will hold you to your promise! When I find another publisher, I am going to finish a ms and send it to you, hoping you might have time to read it.

From the Holodomor to Gaza: NYT softfocuses on famine - the spirit of Walter Duranty lives!

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