A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA -- IS THIS A NOVEL OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF WESTERN WHITE MAN?

A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA – IS THIS A NOVEL OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF WESTERN WHITE MAN?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© December 11, 2011

REFERENCE:

A select few are reading this in manuscript form.  I confess I have been impatient to hear their reaction to what they have read.  An acquaintance reacts to this.

*     *     *

Someone who has read this manuscript has noted my lament at not hearing back from readers, that is, with the exception of two.  That said the comments from these readers have been appreciated and useful.  At first, I hesitated to share what follows, but then thought, is it true what he says?  My sense is what he sees as my intent is just my limits as a writer.  I am simply trying to tell a story climbing to truth as best I can without apologies.  A writer writes:

Fisher, you can't have it both ways, ask readers to read you than dump all over them when they don't read you as you would like.  I'm not sure what your instructions were but I'm confident they were vague. 

You write like you read and most people, me included, don't read all that esoteric stuff you do, well, not all of it.  For example, I can see the influence of Sigmund Freud here.  Obviously, you have had some indoctrination with his doublespeak. 

Less obvious, but I'm sure you would argue the contrary; the influence of James Joyce is here.  I read "Portrait as an Artist as a Young Man," liked it and think you capture the double bind that Catholicism could put on the human soul.  I tried to read "Ulysses," which you apparently devoured.  I did read all the dirty parts, which I found delicious, but not nearly as delicious as your dirty parts.  Nina is fabulous.  She almost makes Devlin human.  Joyce's Molly Bloom doesn't hold a candle to her.  

One of my favorite authors is Pete Dexter whom I doubt many of your readers know, although he won the National Book Award for "Paris Trout."  Dexter obviously reads Joyce and shows the same devilish delight you show at men and women colliding with psycho-sexual energy. 

There is evidence of the influence of Joseph Conrad's  "Heart of Darkness," which you acknowledge, but also I can see the influence of "The Nigger of 'Narcissus'" and "Nostromo" here as well.   How many readers do you think read Conrad?  I would say between slim and few.

But the presence of Dostoyevsky, which pulsates through the book in dreams and innuendos, guilt and self-flagellation, betrayal and greed may be a bit much for readers that are reading the story on one level when you throw two others at them.  Why did you do this?  Or did you feel it added to the story? 

Green Island does have the feel of madness, and how normal madness is in the conscience of civilized man.  That was Dostoyevsky's ploy.  You are as much a moralist as he is without the same pathos.  I've read "Notes from the Underground" and "The Brothers Karamazov," and promised myself one day to read "The Possessed" and "The Idiot" and "Crime and Punishment," but haven't got around to them.

See what I'm saying?  I'm what you would call a reader of some patience with these obtuse authors, but you relish their company.  Although Green Island is clearly biographical, it is a novel of depth and depression, enlightened leadership and stubborn resolve.  On the other hand, although this might not have been your intention, it offers a view of the decline and fall of Western white man. Clever.

My advice, and you've never taken my advice before, is publish it yourself, and then bind up copyright protection for your family for the next fifty years, when it will be "current," and I suspect considered prophetic like Edward Bellamy's late nineteenth century novel "Looking Backward" predicted life in the early twenty-first century.  

Given what I've said here, I doubt if you will sell ten copies now, but you're loaded so who cares, right?

W.E.B.D