Epilogue for BLOGS AND OTHER WRITING


EPILOGUE

Fifty years ago, expository, argumentative, and persuasive writing  depended  on the effective/affective  use of  clarity, tone, grammar, decorum,  structure,  logic, and diction.  The writing evidenced  a sense of history, purpose and audience.  Style and cultural literacy mattered.

 In 2018, writings that try to be more than " infotainment " are slowly vanishing .  They matter little except in some testing situations (Advanced Placement, HiSet Exam, and so forth) or in publications that target very discriminating readers.  What matters for readers in general is the promiscuity of social media, the eroticism  of  texting, the worship and photographing  of the ego, and rejection, imaginary or real,  of virtue, morality, and good manners.  In the global community of writers, the ignorant armies referenced in Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" clash with alacrity.

 Do some writers not fight back?  Yes, they do. They fight assiduously.  Nevertheless, writers must pay bills and feed themselves and their families. The temptations of taking a shot at instant "fame" and lucrative royalties are powerful.  Many highly skilled writers will compromise the  discipline of style, the fidelity of raw honesty,  and the desirability of cultural literacy for the sake of a buck.  Many quite good writers who resist, who struggle to identify elusive "truths,"  are not reviewed and  have small sales which don't repay a publisher's investment.  They are rusticated to the basement and oblivion. They  have the underground freedom to make violent noises their pre-historic  ancestors would have understood perfectly.  A few "successful"  writers in the USA and elsewhere allow themselves to be  managed by the whims of literary politics.  They  appear and shine for a brief moment. They  are quickly discarded when the publishing industry decides to manufacture a new literary star. Fame in the twenty-first century is a vicious beast. So be it.

In Blogs and Other Writing, I made a conscious decision to be politically incorrect and pre-future, to distance my work from academic and/or commercial markets.  Nothing more and nothing less can be asked of  persons whom Antonio  Gramsci  labeled  rural intellectuals.  I am simply a rural thinker. I was lucky enough to have THE KATRINA PAPERS: A Journal of Trauma and Recovery (2008), The Cambridge History of African American Literature ( 2011),co-edited with Dr. Maryemma Graham, and The China Lectures (2014) issued by university presses; The Richard Wright Encyclopedia ( 2008),co-edited with Robert Butler, was issued by Greenwood Press; the prestigious Black Widow Press took the risk of publishing FRACTAL SONG: Poems (2016).  Unlike my  previous books, this volume is downright subversive; it is  eclectic, surreal  and iconoclastic. It is designed to provoke sustained thought and the making of connections among artificially segregated disciplines. It  illuminates that some genuine questions defy answers.  Those questions only permit  diverse responses which do not cheapen with delusions and  popularity. I don't want to be assassinated by popularity.  I only desire to be read by a small number of brave, brutally honest people.  If and when those people engage the book, I suspect  I shall be vindicated.

Jerry W.Ward, Jr.             July 7, 2018

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