I No Longer Have Interest in Writing Fiction

In my twenties I typed up fiction stories and worked on my two novels and kept a journal. I borrowed my sister’s electric typewriter and felt modestly professional. Occasionally I worked as an English teacher, and had a little bit of daily interaction with fiction. I wrote short stories and vignettes at night and on weekends. But I began to sell radical left newspapers on the street and go to public meetings. The idea of putting some mildly leftist meaning into a fictional story that might be read at some future date my a few people who might get the message lost its appeal for me. Better to go out on a Saturday and sell a few issues of a radical left newspaper than hide a meaning in an arcane fiction.

I still read lots of fiction, especially works from the past. My undergraduate major was Comparative Literature at the College of Letters. The courses were like Great Books. The emphasis was on Western European literature with American works thrown in at the end. When I was in high school I saw ads for The Great Books of the Western World which was a series of about 50 volumes put out by Encyclopedia Britannica. I filled out a postcard in a magazine ad saying I was interested. Some hapless salesman showed up at my house unannounced when I was out ‘gallivanting’ as my mother used to say. The set cost about $300 bucks back then. I thought about that series about ten years ago and looked it up online. The set was still being put out, but the cost was now $1000. I spoke with a computer expert about my desire for the Great Books and he told me that we need to rethink how we look at books. All the works in the series are in the public domain, and all of them are online for free on sites like Project Gutenberg and as audio books on Librivox. cont. https://archive.is/Cttdh