Literary Identitarianism
Contemporary Ideological Satire (fiction)
*This is a work of fiction. Sure, there is some of “me” in here, as there always is in fiction. But mostly it’s just a made-up story. I don’t identify exactly with any of these views, though I certainly sympathize with the narrator’s POV. But try not to read it as Michael Mohr…because it is not.
~
Mark Compton was scanning the absurd Manuscript Wish Lists of literary agents online. As a white 27-year-old straight male living in America—Crown Heights, Brooklyn—he felt foolish, rejected and excluded. And this feeling itself then led to the roiling, panicked shame which bubbled up from his solar plexus. Who was he— a white straight privileged American man in 2025—to complain about being in the most privileged racial class?
Yet, of course it wasn’t all that simple. Things never were. This was what Mark woke up thinking about. Strange how the human squirrel-mind works, especially when shifting in the mornings from unconsciousness to consciousness.
Mark, still lying in bed (just two mattresses on top of each other in his tiny room), slowly peeled the white sheets away and, clearing his throat as he always did in the mornings, swung his legs off the bed. He wore only his black pair of spandex boxers, which he always slept in. Snatching his phone he saw that it was 8:13am. Saturday. Mid-October. Finally cooling down, windy and cold out. Fall. Autumn, his favorite time of year. Having been born and raised in Chicago, he was used to real, actual cold, which the five boroughs knew little about in comparison. Chicago winters were legendary.
Adjusting his groin held tight by the boxers, he coughed and opened his bedroom door, his bare feet cold against the turquoise tiled floor. He lived in a reasonably priced, rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment on Sterling Place one block south of Brower Park, where he read on the green benches often.
Mark made coffee—black, no milk—and slurped greedily. He threw his jeans, socks and a sweater on. It was cold. Still, his radiator was howling. Out his window he gazed down onto the street, three floors down (no elevator) and saw a red Nissan Sedan pass by and then a gaggle of young Black men walking, gesturing, half-yelling, a couple of them roaring with laughter into the morning air.
In these moments he always felt ashamed due to his being part of urban gentrification, but he also knew enough New York history to know that, for example, Harlem used to belong to Italians and Jews way before Blacks made it their own, Park Slope used to be largely Irish, ditto Breezy Point in Queens. Back when ethnicity and familial heritage mattered more than overly simplistic melanin-race groups broken down into white, Black, brown, etc. A time when “the Irish” and “the Germans” and “the British” and “the Italians” and “the Greeks” etc were all seen as different and separate “races” all their own.
Long lost history. His grandparents’ generation.
Grabbing a second cup of coffee—he loved the smell of Colombian medium roast—he sat at his small desk where his computer was. His laptop was closed and turned off, as always. He’d been sending his novel, Logical Hedonism, to hundreds of literary agents since March, seven months now. The central premise of the novel was this: A white aggrieved working-class journalist living in Bozeman, Montana, uncovers the story of the decade when he discovers that the opioid epidemic was purposely used by the Sackler family to destroy America’s working-class Midwest ethos and will to fight.
The story leads to also discovering that it was the same wealthy clans in cahoots with the U.S. Government who lied to the people about unsafe COVID vaccines. (Population control.) The most “controversial” aspect of the novel was the friendship between the white working-class protagonist and a young Black man who is 21 and a hardcore Trumper.
They slowly become friends and, over the course of the story, they join forces to expose hypocritical leftists who have been trying, on purpose, to keep low-income Black communities perpetually poor and dependent using welfare, Medicaid and government payouts instead of helping them to stand on their own two feet, something Frederick Douglass himself had warned Lincon about at the end of the Civil War.
Douglass said this: “The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, let them fall! … If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!” (Frederick Douglass’s April 14, 1865 speech “What the Black Man Wants” at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Boston.)
Logical Hedonism, then, is about conspiracy theories (Mark was not a conspiracy theorist he just enjoyed exploring these ideas), the complexity of race, government overreach, control and manipulation, brotherly friendship, politics, and much more. (There was also a love story on the side.) The novel was 450 pages and he’d been editing it, revising it and polishing it for two years now. Since he was 25. Fellow friends and family (writers and non) had read it during that time and criticized it, given helpful and unhelpful feedback, and offered suggestions.
No one hated it. No one called it “racist.” (Including four non-white reader friends.) No one told him to stop working on it.
Except the literary agents.
There was, he discovered, a strange surreptitious class divide going on. Mark himself had been born into a working-class family near Chicago’s dangerous South Side. His father had been a bricklayer and then worked in construction, and his mother had been a heating and piping company employee working the store and doing customer service.
He had three older brothers. Mark was the “baby.” No one in his family had gone to college, himself included. He’d been working for his father on and off since age 14, under-the-table. Growing up he had white, Black, Hispanic and Asian friends; race, to him back then, seemed irrelevant. It just wasn’t something he thought about. He didn’t really notice it.
But now, 27 and living in Brooklyn, he couldn’t help but notice it. Not from other white people in his neighborhood, and certainly not from Black or brown people…but from generally wealthy, white, progressive, feminist young women who made up the bulk of literary agents.
Agents were crucial if you wanted to get traditionally published; they were the foundational handshake between author and publisher. In other words, an agent was the one who has insider publishing knowledge, knew publishing house acquisitions editors, formed close professional industry friendships, understood publishing contracts, and could make or break a new writer’s career. They could be reputation-building or reputation-destroying.
But all the agents he’d submitted his novel to had rejected the book. Mostly they were impersonal, copy-and-paste form rejections with the standard boiler-plate language about “unfortunately,” etc. But he’d also received quite a few personal and in fact pointed rejections which seemed to suggest—and a few times outright say—that his novel was “in bad faith” and was, also, something akin to prejudiced if not outright racist. The letters often utilized racial language to explain why they were passing.
One rare older male agent admitted the writing was strong, that he liked the voice and tone and style, and that he felt the book had the potential to gain a large audience…but that, “sadly,” the “racial component” came off as “insensitive and borderline bigoted.”
The literary agent Manuscript Wish Lists weren’t any better. In fact, they were much worse. Often they were absurd and sounded like Orwellian jokes. Agents said they wanted “non-white and minority novels,” “Stories about marginalization,” stories focused on “LGBTQ-IAA, asexual protagonists, novels with lesbian and trans heroes,” “white heroes or heroines who ‘understood their white privilege,’” novels with disabled but strong central characters, “books with an ‘anti-capitalist’ message, historical novels focusing on the trenchant horror of American slavery and the effects downstream from that even today, trans love stories, anti-Christian tracts, and much more.
In other words: Reading these agent wish lists made the publishing world seem like a Dystopian-Orwellian nightmare. How had everything become overtly political in book publishing? Art wasn’t supposed to be inherently and obviously political. Why were they so focused on only “minority” writers? Why the obsession with trans?
The fact that his novel included a Black character and that character was strong, moral and had lots of backbone…but he was a Trumper…also seemed hypocritical, as if lefty-progressives in book publishing were suggesting that all Black people thought the same way, which was clearly a racist idea. Anytime people adjudged certain inherent characteristics to any broad group—Jews, Asians, Blacks, whites—that spelled trouble. Hadn’t these people ever read about Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Franco and Stalin?
It all struck him as highly hypocritical and odd. These were supposed to be the “antiracist” people. But more than anything he lamented the politicization of writing, of novels, of art. Mark had read his Orwell, he understood the idea that “everything is political,” but he also knew that Orwell had lived between 1903 and 1950, through the rise of fascism, two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, etc. In other words: During the time of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and fascism which threatened the very existence of democracy and the glory of the human soul. A writer—or any artist—literally couldn’t be apolitical during Orwell’s era. It was, at that time, a litmus test for morality itself.
This was not that time.
His best friend James Dennert, a Black guy a year older than him who he’d grown up with still living in Chicago’s South Side, had loved the novel, praising it and saying that he enjoyed it thoroughly, even though he himself was not a Trumper but was a middle-of-the-road Democrat. Though James “disagreed” with some of the politics in the novel, he understood that it was a novel, and that, as fiction, he felt it came off as very realistic. He himself knew many in his community in Chi who’d voted for Trump.
Black folks all over the country had been shifting away from Democrats and towards Trump for several years. (Ditto Hispanics.) James understood inherently that you didn’t read a novel in order to feel safe or agree with the political perspective, it wasn’t about teams or sides; it was about The Art. A novel didn’t have to “have something to say” or “be political” or see the world through any particular lens. The goal of a novel was not to make you or any certain group feel safe, seen or heard. A novel defined and explained and justified itself solely on its own artistic merits. And this meant, if anything, leaning fully into nuance, complexity and gray-area.
One agent had written the following rejection:
Mark, thank you so much for sending me your manuscript. I read the first fifty pages. Though you clearly have talent as a writer, I found your central premise, especially the material covering the Black friend and COVID, to be problematic. I fear that the racial dynamic would open up the door to racial prejudice and that, furthermore, it doesn’t seem to speak accurately for most Black Americans, who are not Trumpers. It struck me as a bit…insensitive…for a white male author to create a Black character who is in agreement with said white character and who voted for Trump. The COVID stuff also read to me like right-wing conspiracy, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Though I feel very much that ‘anything goes’ (within reason) in a work of art, I also feel that many readers’ feelings might be hurt reading your work. I do encourage you to keep writing. Perhaps you may be able to find a more suitable, honest approach to your cast of characters. I hope you understand where I’m coming from and please do not take any of this personally. If you have future work from a different angle I’d be happy to take a look anytime.
Sincerely,
Rachael Bindleson, Literary Agent, Smith and Samon Agents, 14 31st Street, Manhattan, NYC
Mark hated, more than anything else, the weaponized use of the trendy contemporary word, problematic. The problem with “problematic” was that everything in life was problematic. Life itself was problematic. Existence is a problem and always has been for human beings with self-awareness, consciousness and the knowledge of their own eventual death. He’d read his Dostoevsky, his Sartre, his Camus.
The abnegation, the complete cessation of breath, blotting out our very lives both biological, physical and psychological. This was what Mark assumed most people feared more than anything else, in their true core, deep down inside, beyond all the layers of self-protection, invulnerability, hiding, secrets, the powerful social masks, the social acting. Death. The End. Finito.
James Baldwin had once written (and said) that white people needed Black people to be Black so that they (white people) had a clear object of hatred to scapegoat. Surely, up until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s, there’d been a lot of truth to this idea. (Especially in the American South.)
But now, long after Baldwin had died in 1980, and after the Civil Rights had beautifully changed institutions, the constitution, and cultural attitudes, it seemed to Mark like this had changed: White angry progressives needed white non-progressives to be White in order for them (progressives) to be clear about their new object of hatred. (Those objects being Black Americans with the “wrong” ideas and all non-progressive whites.)
Ironically, as America had become freer and freer, more and more equal, fairer and fairer over the second half of the 20th and first two decades of the 21st centuries, the “narcissism of small differences” had bloomed like a flower of doom: Suddenly the young generations, who saw that all the major institutional problems had already been fixed, began focusing on smaller concerns, such as “micro-aggressions,” and to, in fact, create problems out of thin air that didn’t actually exist. Racism had never been so diminished in reality, but in ideological arenas, for Progressives, they pitched the idea that things had never been worse.
~
Six months later—April, 2026—Mark now 28 and halfway through writing a new novel, a new small press accepted Logical Hedonism (without an agent) on the condition that Mark make some slight adjustments here and there. But nothing major. He agreed. The editing was reasonable but thorough and took nearly four months to complete.
The press had only been around for two years and had published a dozen authors so far, three Black, seven white, one Hispanic and one Asian. All had works considered “controversial” by major mainstream publishing. One by a white author and two of the Black authors’ books had been harshly criticized in major publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post. The reviewers felt the Black men basically had the wrong politics, and the white author was criticized for “glorifying rape.” (This was a ridiculously oversimplified and inaccurate portrayal.)
Mark’s novel, Logical Hedonism, whittled down to a sharp, polished 365 pages, was published exactly one year to the month after he’d been offered a contract, on April 16th, 2027. The editors at the publisher expected harsh reviews and plenty of blowback. But that’s why they existed: To fight the good (free speech) fight. Instead, two very surprising things happened, one right away, and one more slowly after publication.
The first was that, minus a few very small literary magazines and The New Guardian which tore the novel to pieces, the book went almost completely unremarked on. As in: Nearly zero reviews. The book reviewers and critics—largely on the political left—basically just ignored the novel, pretending it didn’t exist.
This was hurtful on many fronts, of course, for one because Mark felt like he was not being taken seriously as an author (as an artist), and for another because he felt he simply hadn’t been given a fair shake. If his novel had fulfilled agents’ Manuscript Wish Lists surely his book would have been reviewed and praised. But instead, because he had the “wrong” politics, and because he was the “wrong race” this was not the case.
But the second phenomenon changed everything and ultimately saved the day. Through a concerted effort by the publisher, pulling out every trick in the book and using every single insider book industry connection they had—and even getting now-presidential-candidate J.D. Vance to read it and blurb it!—the book began to make some noise.
More and more sales were coming in. More and more indie bookstores were stocking the novel. Finally, some middling, medium-level reviewers began reading it; it received strongly mixed reviews and from all sides. Some loved it and even called it “borderline genius,” and some called it “anti-literary trash” and “hate-speech.” The Strand Bookstore in Union Square in Manhattan, as well as other bigger indie bookstores, tried (sometimes successfully) to ban the book from being sold there.
In short: Within half a year or so of publication—around October, 2027—Logical Hedonism had, miraculously, and against all the odds, become a national bestseller. The ladies on The View discussed it. The New York Times Book Review wrote about it. Mark was interviewed by Joe Rogan, Sam Harris and Triggernometry, among others. He did a full USA book tour which lasted well into the spring of 2028.
Finally, a Boomer literary agent—a woman who’d been in the business since the 1980s and had once repped Stephen King—contacted Mark and they agreed to work together. When his second novel, Living in the Age of Ideological Idiocracy, was ready, it was sold for half a million bucks to Random House. That novel, too, published in the fall of 2029, was a massive, this time international bestseller. His sales surpassed even those of Sally Rooney, the Irish Millennial self-proclaimed Marxist author of Intermezzo among many other novels.
Mark was happy. He was 31 years old in 2029. J.D. Vance was president of the United States. (He even got to meet Vance. He wore a suit.) Every day he saw literary agents speaking out against the “hate” Mark Compton spread in his books. They treated him almost as badly as Charlie Kirk.
But he didn’t care. It didn’t matter. He’d fulfilled his dream of becoming a serious, published novelist. His family was proud of him. His friends. He was dating a mixed-race working-class girl from the Bronx. He still didn’t have a college degree and, given than most of the best writers of the 20th century also didn’t have college degrees—James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, Maya Angelou, etc—he felt absolutely fine about this. He’d even been awarded a presidential medal of freedom by sitting president J.D. Vance. (Vance, incidentally, had recently published his second updated volume of Hillbilly Elegy called Hillbilly Elegy: 2028. Mark had blurbed it. It sold out quickly.)
Mark didn’t care about politics. He wasn’t fundamentally a political person. He just wanted to write honestly and truthfully. All his life he’d been told by the mainstream media that Republicans were stupid, bad, bigoted and evil. Yet it had been white angry Progressives he’d always known to be bigoted. He had leftist friends and Conservative friends and libertarian friends and apolitical friends. He believed in free speech, a non-culturally-censorious environment, the right to produce whatever kind of story you wanted to, and classical liberalism.
Republicans under J.D. Vance now had 65% of Black voters. The Democratic Party had become the party of racial grievance politics, white elites, and political-ideological homogeneity. Democrats had fully lost the working-classes of all racial demographics. They were a fallen party. Vance was, like Trump before him, remaking his own party, becoming, to many people’s surprise, more classically Conservative, harkening in many ways back to Reagan. MAGA had not, after all, fundamentally or permanently ruined the Republican Party.
Slowly, the nation was becoming both more and less divided. Many felt that soon the Democratic Party would dissolve completely and something else much more open-minded, practical and intriguing would replace it.
The political phoenix rising.
Either way: Mark Compton was a powerful writer. And that’s all he’d ever wanted.
Another piece of stimulating writing from you. Thanks!
Life isn't fair. When one door closes, another opens.
The current 'problematic'* inclusion of discriminatory politics in traditional publishing is unfair and unfortunate. It is a power struggle: with one side winning and another losing. I think the battle is PRIMARILY about which side will generate the most profit to the corporations, not a dislike for straight white dudes. For me, unlike 'Mark Compton', this power struggle is not of compelling interest or nuance.
Traditional book publishing isn't the only game in town. If Mark Compton thinks he's at a disadvantage there, plenty of other options exist. Ironically, made even more accessible to straight white men by the unfair book publishing situation. If he really has talent and drive. Of course, in your story, Mark doesn't pursue these other options, beats the odds, and rides a wave of backlash. But I suggest his struggle wasn't rational or worth the risk. You only have one life.
*Love the way you called out this ambiguous, annoying word
Although my writing doesn’t deal with race or politics at all, I’ve noticed that most agents are exactly as you describe. I’m not ready to say I’m getting rejections because I’m a white male, but I’m inching that direction.