Tuesday, January 1, 2013

An excerpt from "The Ginkgo"


My literary agent called the manuscript “an evocative book about ideas, exactly the kind of thing the American book-buying public is getting increasingly impatient with.” Then she declined to handle it. I understood her feelings, although at the time I thought: what happens to nations that get increasingly impatient with “evocative books about ideas”? Is this a healthy evolutionary trend for America?  Probably not. So I persist in my own sense of what must be said in print, regardless of what others believe. Yes indeed; the story of this relationship needs to be told, and especially to a nation becoming increasingly impatient with evocative books about ideas. In other words, a relationship quite unlike that imagined by a public increasingly impatient with evocative books about ideas. Why can’t I get that phrase out of my mind? I walk downtown. The sidewalks are filled with normal, everyday, people—lawyers, housewives, businessmen and businesswomen, panhandlers, college kids, and nondescripts.  Are they all impatient with evocative books about ideas? What are they not impatient with? Murder, narcotics, war?

The Ginkgo is available as a paperback from createspace.com/3382861 and also as an e-book from Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.com.

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