Dementia Novella

Dementia Novella: The symptoms are a wholly irrational urge to get into print; so says the literary agent Frensic in Tom Sharpe’s “The Great Pursuit”. If that was true in 1977 when the book was published, how the disease has spread. It has assumed plague proportions that threaten the survival of the dedicated writer of fiction who might actually have produced something worth reading. No longer can you approach an agent or publisher with some expectation of at the least getting a hearing and a promise to read your offering: more likely you’ll get a polite form reply wishing you better luck elsewhere, or else be ignored.

I don’t blame the agents or publishers. I blame the disease that can be contracted by touching a PC or Mac with a word processor installed. Unfortunately, unless there is a massive worldwide power failure and writers are forced back to the dark ages of manual typewriters, I see no cure. The literary world is doomed to the continuing spread of this dementia.