Segment of a New Novel (paid subs only; free preview for everyone else)

Fiction for Paid Subs

*This is the start of a new novel, or the attempt at one. For paid subscribers only. Please consider going paid if you want to read this and future selections. I haven’t been producing as much fiction lately, story or novel, so I figured it was time to change that. This is a very rough beginning. I have so far in total 34 pages (about 10,000 words) of this. There’s a third character which I’ll share next time; a Black POV, believe it or not. (Me being white.)

I’ve always believed that Art is supposed to be transgressive, and, more crucially, that writing is about empathy and imagination, “feeling into” other human beings’ experiences. If a white person can never know what it’s like to be Black—and fair enough!—wouldn’t the opposite be equally true? (A Black person doesn’t know what it’s like to be white.) You can dissect this in a hundred ways, placing people in various racial and ethnic categories, making the claim that writers should only write their “own lived experience,” that they should “stay in their lane.” But that strikes me as deeply boring and, frankly, authoritarian. Instead, why not explore anything and everything?

That’s what I’m trying to do here. This is the most non-autobiographical fiction writing I think I’ve ever done, though clearly I relate most to Blake’s character. But I am not him. I just want to create a fun, risky, nuanced space where human beings collide. Isn’t that the spiritual purpose of fiction?

I’ve never written any fiction quite this contemporary or overtly political. I suppose it’s meant to be satirical to a degree, but also serious. I’m trying to look through a magnifying glass at Our Time Now. Remember, this is a very early rough draft. Feedback is welcome, but try to keep it big picture.

*I added a poll for those who read the pages: Good or bad? Like or dislike? Keep going or not?

Michael

P.S. I’m also going to start, as an experiment, doing a Q & A segment for paid subscribers only. I’ll open up the thread for paid subscribers to ask me anything and I’ll pick one or two questions and respond in detail in a post a few days later. Let's see if people like this.

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Organic Shrapnel

A Novel

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1.

Livie

Olivia Greta Jacobs—“Livie”—was grateful work was over for the day. She sighed, traipsing down the long red-rugged hallway on the 17^th floor at Langor, Inc. Her boss—Ellen L. Langor—had been in a bad mood. The woman was 50 years old—exactly twice Livie’s age—but loved to gossip, kvetch about industry bullshit, and talk endlessly about her husband, who Livie suspected might be cheating on the woman.

She reached the elevators. Thank God. She pressed the button and listened as the pulley system forced the rectangular death machine—elevators brought up an irrational fear in Livie—up from down below, like some sinister devil rushing up from Hell.

Being a literary agent’s assistant wasn’t all that bad…but it also wasn’t really all that good, either. She made $35,000 a year. In fucking Manhattan. A mix of her parents and Columbia MFA Publishing Course student loans—now forgiven: Thank you Biden—made up for the rest and covered her exorbitant $4,200/month rent (a tiny studio). She lived in the perky, trendy SoHo District, in an apartment complex at the corner of Prince and Greene Streets, down the block from her favorite bookstore, McNally-Jackson Books. She had to admit: She was living “the life.”