Soulless Hacks & Garbage Heaps

My central beef with genre fiction is its short-sighted view of the human condition. Characters in crime novels are often hard-drinking geniuses whose only ray of sunshine is exterminating the criminal filth that blights the streets. We are deluded into believing there might exist some altruistic alkie surrendering his small quotient of happiness so other people can sleep safe in their beds at night, pretending crime isn’t everywhere.

This is a misleading hoax. More likely, the character would become an alcoholic and lose his job. He’d either rehabilitate himself after months of intense therapy (at his own expense) and then go to work as a store detective, or he’d hurl himself off a bridge.

I am personally insulted by genre authors who refuse to acknowledge the utter pointlessness of existence. As writers, we have a duty to lift our readers from the meaningless drudgery of their everyday lives and reassure them that comfort is to be found mooning the cosmos on a daily basis and drinking in pleasure wherever we can find it.

I started writing when I was teenager as a means of understanding the world. To me, the practice of day to day life seemed patently absurd, and my writing reflected this. I wrote parodies, piss-takes, and assorted hysterical rants as my means of comprehending the disconnection in my soul between my physical surroundings and my mindset.

I took enormous comfort from this, and as I grew into a mildly disappointing misanthrope, I found it impossible to function without writing as my means of expression, my means of understanding. So characters refusing to acknowledge their status as valueless pawns on a loathsome planet are cardboard deer and I spit on their antlers.

When genre writers refuse to confront the desperation of the everyday in their works, they are soulless hacks whose work is not even fit to grace the top of a garbage heap. Thank you. And yes, I’ll take that hug now.