I miss Mad Max Perkins, I really do. Some of his readers thought it was a put-on, but a couple of my friends in the biz confided that if his gusty hyperbole wasn't the real New York City deal, it was a spot-on impersonation. After reading a BookAngst entry, I was never too sure if I was bracingly refreshed, depressed, peeved, gratified ... you name it, so long as it's anything but indifferent.
But Perkins 2.0 announced his "retirement" from the blogosphere two months ago, and it seems he was serious. Worse, it seems he quit out of pure vanity: his ratings fell! Dude(?), that's no reason to quit writing!
Of course, there might be unstated reasons for not going on: maybe there's only so much to be said about the publishing industry. If so, I suspect Michael Blowhard has pretty much covered it. As someone else has pointed out, "if he'd put this stuff between some covers, you'd have to shell out at least $17 for the trade paperback (which would never appear on the best-sellers lists even if it were a runaway success according to M. Blowhard), yet here it is at your disposal, for free."
Anyone with thoughts, designs, aspirations toward publication could do much, much worse than take a sip of Michael's strong coffee.
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