One of my students is the editor of the school newspaper.  I work in a small school - so small I marvel it even has a student newspaper.  Though he claims to be only the editor, the truth is he is the newspaper.  He plans out each issue, writes the editorials, solicits fellow students to write articles, proofreads the drafts, and formats each and every issue.  All of this he does through his own initiative, with little formal teacher supervision. 

Yesterday, he asked me to proofread an article he wanted to include in an upcoming issue.  After I finished, I asked the student if his classmates enjoyed reading the newspaper.  He informed me that not many students read the paper, but the few that did enjoyed it.  He confessed that some of classmates occasionally asked him why he even bothered to publish a newspaper at all.
     "And what did you tell them?" I asked.
     The student shrugged.  "A lot of my friends ask me why I do it.  They say, you don't have to put out a newspaper; the school doesn't really need one.  I tell them they're right.  I don't have to publish a newspaper, and the school doesn't need one, but I think a newspaper helps make the school a better place."
     It is good to be reminded of obvious truths.  It truly is. 
    

Part of my motivation for writing The City of Earthly Desire was to address the utter immorality and inhumanity of the sex trade, be it through prostitution, slavery, or pornography.  Writing the novel allowed me to come to terms with my own willful ignorance of the immorality the "sex industry" and provided me a vehicle through which to challenge contemporary society's willful ignorance of the cruelty and dehumanization inherent in the sex trade. In a way, the novel is also my formal objection to the current passive acceptance of the sexual exploitation and sexual commodification of human beings as perhaps an undesirable, but ultimately unavoidable reality that simply has to be tolerated. 

In a world that not only defends but also actively and ceaselessly encourages and manipulates the individual to strive for pleasure and happiness as some sort of sacred duty, it is not difficult to conceive how such a bleak view of reality is so readily accepted by so many.  Heck, there are a slew of "reality" shows on television depicting people aspiring to make it big in the sex industry.  The participants are mostly portrayed as savvy business people with great ideas and marketing plans.  It's glamorous.  It's mainstream.  All the participants have one thing in common - they are all "rational" adults who have made a conscious decision to enter the industry of their own free will. 

There is no denying that there are adults who, having seemingly nothing else to offer the world, make a conscious decision to put their bodies or other people's bodies on the sexual marketplace for profit.  There is also no denying that, with a few exceptions, most of the businesses and trades these adults choose to enter are legal.  Therefore, the sex industry is all consenting adults who are legally doing what they do of their own free will.  Nothing wrong with that, is there?  If you like it, you'll accept it.  If you don't, you can easily ignore it. 
In either case, you are not obliged to think too much about the topic and you are allowed to get back to the business of getting on your life. 

If only life were that simple. 

For many years I too held fairly liberal views about the sex industry; now, I realize it is depravity, pure and simple.  Like those with more liberal views concerning sexuality and what adults are allowed to do with their own bodies, I refused to accept that the sex industry has a dark side.  Of course I knew sex trafficking, child prostitution, and sex slavery existed, but I refused to group them with the legal and legitimate branches of the sex industry.  Child pornography and sex slavery were anomalies committed by sick individuals and had nothing at all to do with the healthy, rational choices adults like me made when they desired a little sexual stimulation to break up the grayness of a drab week or ease the stress of a long day at work.  Sex trafficking and the like were rare occurrences, I told myself.  If they did happen, they were perpetrated by perverted people and they mostly happened in faraway places with horrible economies where people are forced to engage in such crimes because it is often their only way of securing their own survival. 

Once again, if only life were that simple. 

I could go on for hours about the sex trade and its inherent evils, but the main purpose of this post was to draw attention to the reality that "anomalies" like sex trafficking are far more pervasive than most people would like to believe;  it is also happening much closer to home than most people would feel comfortable acknowledging. 

Case and point, York Region, the place I currently call home, compromises of a collection of affluent commuter towns that sprawl out over the northern borders of Toronto.  On the surface, it is a place of spacious homes, green lawns, playgrounds, and good schools.  It is almost excruciatingly monotone in its suburban composition, but it is exactly the kind of environment most people are drawn to when they begin searching for a nice place to raise the kids. 

It's also a nice place to run a sex trafficking and child prostitution racket:

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/02/19/10_arrested_in_york_region_human_trafficking_probe.html

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/19/york-region-human-trafficking-investigation-arrests-ten-in-sex-trade-case-involving-young-teens/

Naturally, this has nothing at all to do with the legitimate sex industry.  It's just an anomaly, I'm sure. 

For me, Alexandre Cabanel's The Birth of Venus is one of those enigmatic paintings that straddles the boundary that separates love and lust.  On one level, Cabanel's erotic vision celebrates the epitome of ideal feminine beauty; on the other hand, the painting tempts arousal which distorts the beauty Venus displays and makes it something else entirely. 

It is one of the reasons I chose to include the painting in a pivotal scene in the novel The City of Earthly Desire.  In the scene, Reinhardt tries to communicate the essence of beauty to his teenaged son Béla who has stumbled into the chaotic realm of sexual awakening:
___________________________________________________________

Just before the school year ended, Reinhardt had a revelation and invited Béla to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They had not gone to a museum together in years. Béla diplomatically declined the invitation citing a burdensome load of homework as an excuse, but Reinhardt insisted. Ten minutes later, they were both sitting on the N train as it clacked along its elevated track en route to Manhattan. Once at the museum, Reinhardt made a beeline to the European Paintings section on the second floor and parked Béla in front of Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus.

“Tell me what you see,” Reinhardt said.

“Venus.”

“More detail.”

“Venus is a young woman with long hair. She's supine on the waves in the sea with a team of little angels hovering over her. Her head is turned to the side and it looks like she might be sleeping, but if you look closely, you can see she is looking directly at the viewer.”

“Haven't you forgotten something?”

Béla winced.

“Is she wearing any clothes?” Reinhardt asked.

“No. She's nude.”

“Do you find her beautiful?”

Béla looked at his father warily. “Yes. I think she's very beautiful.”

“Do you feel aroused when you look at her? Do you want her?”

Béla became red-faced – it dawned on him that the trip to the museum was just another of his father's sex talks in disguise “Sure. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Okay. Yes. I want her. Can we drop it? I don't feel comfortable talking about wanting a girl in a painting.”

Reinhardt ignored his son's pleas and pressed on. “Do you think that is the reason why Cabanel painted this nude? To arouse lust?”

Béla looked down at the polished floor beneath his feet and wondered what his father was aiming at. The question contained a hidden purpose, but he was clueless as to what that hidden purpose might be. He looked at the painting again. “I don't know. Maybe. No, on second thought. No.”

“Are you sure? Look at her. See her? Don't you want to climb into the painting and jump on top of her?”

Béla's red-face became even redder. Part of him did want to climb into the painting; he imagined himself wrapping his arms around her, cupping her breasts in his hands. In many ways, the Cabanel nude was no different from the nameless models in his secret hiding place magazines – she displayed the same intimate parts, struck an inviting pose – but the Cabanel nude was different somehow. Part of him wanted to jump on top of her, yet another part of him wanted to simply look at her and admire the beauty she projected.

“Sexuality is a tricky subject for artists. This painting is a good example of that,” Reinhardt said. He had planned out everything he wanted to say in advance, yet at that moment, he still struggled to find the right words. His voice wavered slightly as he spoke, but he felt more confident about what he was saying than he had on previous occasions. “You're at the age where you will begin to explore sexuality. Sex is one of the few ways a person can step out of themselves and form a union with another person. Because of this, it is a very serious subject and is not to be taken lightly either in art or in life. These days many people think sex is nothing more than a sport or a hobby. A mere recreational activity with no emotions or consequences involved. People who believe such things do not understand the sublimity and sacredness of sex.”

Béla analyzed the message contained in his father's words. He wondered why Reinhardt had badgered him for months about sex.

“Why are you talking to me about this?”

“You're at the age-”

“Are you saying I should wait until I'm married to have sex?”

“That would be ideal, but I'm realistic. Chances are you will have sex before you are married. And if you do, I want you to understand the seriousness of sex. I want you to approach it with love, not lust.”

Love not lust. Béla pondered the phrase for a moment. Soon every muscle in his body stiffened and his mouth gaped open; he looked very much like a person who had just been drenched with a bucket of ice-cold water. The notebook! He had left one of his notebooks in the studio. That's what had triggered his father's sudden interest in discussing sex. His face reddened so much, parts of it took on purple hues.

“The problem with sex is it is inspired by desire. Desire can come from two very different sources: love and lust,” Reinhardt explained. He found the expression on his son's face disquieting, yet plowed ahead regardless. “Love appeals to the higher elements within us. It is elegant and refined. Love appreciates beauty. Admires it. Nurtures it. Preserves it. Lust, on the other hand, appeals to the lower elements within us. It is grotesque and coarse. Lust misjudges beauty. Scorns it. Deprives it. Destroys it.” Reinhardt looked back at the painting. “Love makes sex sacred; lust makes sex profane. Sex without love is vulgar. Maybe Cabanel struggled with this when he painted this painting. Is it art or is it indecent? Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?”

Béla nodded and did his best to appear nonchalant, but shame and embarrassment were corroding his insides like acid. To his relief, Reinhardt said no more about sex or love or The Birth of Venus. Instead, he suggested they return home to Queens.

It's been a long, cold winter this year here in the Greater Toronto Area.  Today marked the first day in over a month that temperatures climbed over the freezing point, albeit barely.  It was a welcome reprieve.  After months of living under the oppression of frigid arctic air, 2 degrees celsius (about 35 degrees Fahrenheit) felt almost balmy.  The addition of sunshine for the better part of the day only added to the pleasant sensation of relative warmth. 

When I arrived home from work, I made a point of taking my two-year-old son outside.  (Actually, he was the one who made a point of wanting to be outside.  Poor kid has been cooped up indoors for most of the winter!)  A feeling of immense well-being overcame me as I stood on the sunny street watching him stomp purposefully into slushy puddles and carefully craft makeshift snowballs. I looked up to the sky and smiled.  A little sunshine can go a long way sometimes. 

In my novel The City of Earthly Desire, the hedonist Anthony Vergil, who spent his formative years attending the finest schools the United Kingdom has to offer, frequently and rather scornfully refers to universities as Citadels of Darkness.  I must admit that Verge's view of post-secondary institutions of higher learning are, for the most part, a reflection of my own.  There was a time I considered universities to be Ivory Towers, but my experiences in education, both as a student and as a teacher, have led me to the conclusion that the Ivory Tower ideal most people hold to be true is a sham.  Far from being Ivory Towers, most universities today have become, as Anthony Vergil vehemently insists, veritable Citadels of Darkness.   

Over the past week I have been privy to two separate complaints concerning universities.  The first came from a former student who is now an  undergraduate studying literature and humanities.  He criticized the institutionalized liberal bias of the school he is attending.  Though he seems liberally minded himself, he entered college expecting a place where open discussion was welcome and alternative points of view were not only allowed and tolerated, but encouraged.  He was not naive about the leftist bias of the school, but he expected that a place that touted itself as an inclusive, tolerant oasis of academic freedom would be open to exploring all viewpoints with honesty and fairness for the sake of education.  Instead, he finds himself in an atmosphere that not only discourages alternative points of view, but considers any idea that deviates from the ruling ideology of the institution as a direct affront, a hostile, aggressive, hateful attack that must be eradicated lest it infect anyone.  Simply put, my former student is troubled because he is discovering his education at university is more about practical indoctrination than it is about lofty intellectualism.

The other complaint came from a professor acquaintance who posted an article that lambasted the universities for creating a new class of working poor - the adjunct professor.  Over the last three or four decades universities have slowly abandoned the traditional employment framework they once offered their academics, researchers, and professors, and have replaced it with a system where a sizable portion of its highly-educated staff have become part-time, low-paid, no benefit, no tenure, no job security, temporary teachers. 

As I ruminated over these two grievances concerning universities, I was struck by a rather sad and pathetic but ultimately satisfying irony. 

After successfully entrenching themselves in universities, generations of liberals and leftists, armed with the weapons of political correctness, have been waging a brutal and ruthless war against all enemies of liberty, equality, and fraternity.  (You can't say fraternity anymore, of course; it is a far too restrictive and sexist phrase.)  For decades they have laid siege to tradition and have replaced it with a progressive tidal wave of -isms.  This ideology, wielded with vehement and rabid demagoguery to which the only acceptable response is mindless, unquestioning head-nodding and corrosive, poisonous resentment, has not only transformed universities, but also society as a whole.  One could argue the liberal professors' aims were noble ones; they railed against injustice, protested against oppression, demanded endless rights.  Unlike their predecessors, these new profs were not interested in keeping their high-minded theories to themselves.  They were set on bringing their elevated ideas to the masses.  One of their biggest rallying points continues to be that old cornerstone of Marxism - the exploitation of the worker by the bourgeoisie.  For decades, leftists and liberals have worked themselves into positions of power and influence, not only in universities, but also in politics and society.  In universities, they occupy leadership positions.  They write the curricula.  They determine what is acceptable and unacceptable on campus.  They monitor and control the tone and content of any conversation.  They strive to make the world a place of justice and equality and they work tirelessly to make their Ivory Towers bastions of progress and political correctness where tolerance and critical thinking are valued above all.  They strive to have all of this spill into broader society and for decades now they have been immensely successful. 

And yet these same self-proclaimed warriors for liberty and justice actively stifle any semblance of real education and shamelessly exploit, nay, screw over their slavish and servile army of witless true-believers.  True to form, none of those being screwed over realize that they are essentially being abused by their own ranks.  They seethe against the corporations and the capitalists and blame them for their plight while remaining willfully ignorant of the harsh reality that, with few exceptions, the corporations and the capitalists who run them are essentially made up of them: liberal, left-leaning technocrats.  Have none of these people read Orwell's Animal Farm?  And if they have, did they not understand it?

I wonder what will happen when the adjuncts are eventually replaced by holograms or, better yet, when the "corporations that run universities" figure out a way to make it socially and politically acceptable to have one professor from India or some other developing country teach tens-of-thousands of students through the internet or close-circuit television.  What will they these adjunct profs, who will be discarded faster than and as unceremoniously as the severed heads from the overworked Jacobin guillotines during the Reign of Terror, think of their liberal comrades in leadership positions then?  Being true to form, they will, no doubt, cry for revolution.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Anthony Vergil is right.  Far from being Ivory Towers, today's universities are Citadels of Darkness.  It is getting to the point where I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would voluntary choose to attend one as a student or work for one as a professor. 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn summed up the difference between the literature of the West and the literature of Russia simply and lucidly.  For him, Western literature was about careers, while Russian literature was about good and evil.

To comprehend Solzhenitsyn's insight one need do no more than compare one of Dostoevsky's novels to one written by his contemporary George Eliot.  Russian literature tends to focus on grand religious, moral, and existential themes, while much of Western literature is more tempered and preoccupied with the secular themes like social status and the pursuit of wealth and happiness.

I am not sure if this contrast between Russian and Western literature still holds true today.  I have not read enough contemporary Russian fiction to discern if the generation of writers born after Solzhenitsyn are still inspired by great spiritual, religious, and moral themes of the same caliber that possessed writers like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.  I do not know but I am curious to learn if the younger generation of Russian writers - those for whom communism is just a quaint, fuzzy, early-childhood memory - still focus on the "dividing line" that "cuts through the heart of every human being."  I am hope they do, but somehow I doubt it. 

There is one thing of which I am sure, though, and that is the path literature in the West has taken in the past twenty or thirty years.  The essence of Solzhenitsyn's view about Western literature still holds true for some works written in North America and Europe, yet the secular focus of social climbing and self-realization are yielding to much simpler literary themes, namely vulgar pleasure and mindless distraction.  To be sure, this kind of slop has existed in some form or other in the past, be it in the form of a Victorian-era penny-dreadful or the writings of the Marquis de Sade, but I would wager society has never been as flooded with as much literature of pleasure and distraction as it is now.  The advent of accessible self-publishing and e-publishing has only exacerbated the trend to aim low and use the written word to transmit nothing higher than cheap thrills and semantic sexual stimulation.  

Many could argue that this is all fine and well and not worth worrying about.  My response to such flippancy is this: it could be all fine and well and not worth worrying about if it were not for two troublesome points:  


First, the slop has taken over the mainstream.  The success of slop creates the "need" to publish more slop.  Publishers are swerving away from traditional literary fiction and are actively on the prowl to discover the next 50 Shades of Grey or any some other tripe that will pad their sagging bottom lines. Even more disturbing is the recent trend to include this slop in pedantically idiotic university literature classes.  


Second, and more disturbing to me, is the notion that a society's literature, regardless of its purpose and underlying financial motivations,serves as a direct reflection of society itself. Like the old adage you are what you eat, I believe a society is what it reads.  

Though Solzhenitsyn foresaw the decline well in advance, I imagine he would have been utterly unsettled by the precipitous decline of literature in the West. Perhaps he would have even gone as far as to claim that the war between good and evil in the West had come to an end or, at the very least, that it appeared to have tipped in the favor of the forces he scorned.   

Every now and then someone asks me why I chose to self-publish rather than try my luck with traditional publishers.  The question always prompts a smile.  In my particular case, there was no real choice.  The only decision I had to make was this: do I want to live to see my book in print?

Getting a book published by a reputable publishing house has never been an easy pursuit and it has become increasingly difficult with every decade since the mid-sixties.  The list of famous and recognized writers who "chose" to publish their own work because they could not get published otherwise is as surprising as it is lengthy. Conversely, there has never been a time in which it has been so easy and cheap to self-publish a book and place it on the market.  For writers, these two opposing forces have created one of the most fascinating and frustrating times in the history of the printed word. 

With the exception of the few who land contracts with publishing houses, most writers face the same set of choices I faced shortly after completing The City of Earthly Desire: I could have a manuscript that I could keep submitting to agents and publishers knowing that it would probably never be published or I could publish the book myself knowing that, on the whole, it would not be read.  Faced with these two options, I chose the latter.  Anyone who has read my novel The City of Earthly Desire would understand why. 

 

I began this blog as part of a rather unoriginal and weak "marketing strategy" for my self-published novel The City of Earthly Desire.  Possessing no real experience or talent in marketing and advertising and having no desire to dump thousands of dollars into a risky campaign that might never bear fruit, I generally followed the online marketing methods suggested by others. 

After a year of dabbling with book blog tours, review solicitations, book sites, author pages, and this blog, I have come to the realization that, for the most part, these activities do little to increase awareness of writers and their works.  Sure, there are some who have succeeded, but for the vast majority of authors looking for a little recognition, these pursuits and strategies are a waste of time. 

I was skeptical about my chances of getting noticed right from the start; the world has been flooded by an unimaginable deluge of self-published books and aspiring writers.  Regardless, I wanted to give a couple of things a try for the sake of experience and chance.  Well, I gained the experience and took the chance, and that's that.  I have not participated in any active marketing for months and I doubt I will do much in the future.  In terms of gaining recognition, I have decided the only way for me to get any is through more traditional means; therefore, I am focusing my energy on trying to get someone "on the inside" to take notice of my book. (Fat chance.)

In light of all of this, I began to question the purpose and existence of this blog which, on average, receives about two hits a day.  My initial impulse was to abandon it.  Because I viewed it as part of a "marketing strategy", I constrained the blog to bookish topics and my lame experiences as a self-published writer.  I purposely kept the focus of the blog narrow, the tone politically neutral,  and I avoided issues I truly cared about for fear of isolating, insulting, or alienating potential readers.  My posts were inconsistent and monochrome to say the least.  After a while I realized how counterproductive and contradictory the blog was in terms of a marketing tool: Here!  Read some really bland, poorly written posts that I hope will encourage you to read my exciting, well-written novel! 

So, what to do?  I have decided to continue this blog by shifting its focus away from being a marketing tool to being more of a venue for my thoughts and opinions regarding topics that are important to me as a writer and as a human being.  An open journal, more or less. From now on I will treat this blog as a means to keep the expressive juices flowing by focusing on issues and ideas I think important or intriguing.  I imagine the posts will invariably range from rough little rants to polished essays. 

Whatever happens, I am certain this change will inspire me to become a more creative and more consistent blogger in the future.