A WRITER RESPONDS TO READERS' COMMENTS: RE: A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA

 

A WRITER RESPONDS TO READERS’ COMMENTS

RE:

A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA

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

© April 13, 2014

 

 

REFERENCE:

This is a note to my editor at Amazon.com’s Kindle.  I will be eternally grateful to this man for publishing this novel that I wanted to be in print before I died.  It is a story no one else could tell because no one else experienced it as I did.  He took a chance, and it is an e-book today, a book that is blatant, in-your-face and which it is likely to upset and offend, and, indeed, cause the reader to defend every value and belief with which he or she harbors with such programmed resolution.   I predict one day it will be a classic not unlike Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” because it frames a condition that has led to the aftermath of the troubles in South Africa today.

 

Chris,

Someone wrote to me and asked how I felt about my reviews (4) of A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA on Amazon.com. 

Frankly, it gave me pause.  Surprise comes quickly to mind. 

A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA is a story I experienced and is told as truthfully and as completely and as honestly as I have the capability of telling a story, and I am quite satisfied that I have honored that commitment. 

South Africa was a wrenching experience and changed my life, and I think I convey that well.

It is the story of a man of certain capabilities that was spinning into a vortex of self-deceit and self-destruction as well as self-loathing finding all the stanchions that he thought supported his crumbling intellect fading away.  I think I convey that stream of consciousness extremely well. 

South Africa in 1968 -- for the British contingent of which I was a part -- was in sexual hedonistic hell that Hugh Hefner could never fathom much less fantasize about because it was totally a defensive mechanism of fear, fear that a native servant might lop off one's head in sleep at any time on any night, fear that there was no tomorrow.

I suppose you had to experience it to sense it and then you had to have the novelistic flair for telling the riddle and then the talent to wrap the mystery inside an enigma, which it was.  Perhaps I am a failure in that regard. 

That said I confess to being a fan of my writing, of all of my published works, for errors and malapropos notwithstanding, the substance of the story is my guide and not the style. Notice style is the charge and substance is used to compare with other works, works with which I am not familiar in most cases.

The most salient comment is that there are no redeeming characters, no heroes only demons and villains.  There were no heroes in South Africa in 1968, none!  Perhaps it is one of the reasons South Africa limps along today in 2014.  You cannot deprive the majority of any voice for 300 years and expect that contingent to take hold in a generation once in power. 

Thank you for publishing this novel.  I would hope some Bantu readers in South Africa would pick it up.  As you see, it is dedicated to them.

Jim