LogFAQs > #893080527

hollow_shrine posted...

ilfait posted...

What a stunningly astute analogy. Plumbing, just like writing, relies on humor, creativity. And a plumber must, above all else, just like a writer, be interesting and insightful.

A good plumber, or editor, will fix Picasso's Weeping Woman for us, to make it palatable to general audience and to ensure that we're not continuously filling our eyes with bacon grease and swallowing bowling balls.

You're being dense. Several of the comments in the manuscript points out this manuscript is currently written to coddle the egos and polemics of people who already agree with him (people like yourself), which is pointless because you all already eat him up.

It's convincing other people that's the issue. With the memes, in-jokes, and the generally unpalatable hate screed, there's nothing to convince people who aren't already drinking the cool-aid. More telling, the author is so up his own ass, it never even occurred to him that whole swaths of the rhetorical foundation was missing here. He might have been able to justify his writing style had he prefaced the first chapter with an essay explaining his particular style of polemics and why he thinks they are necessary in this work. But he's just not that thoughtful. So of course one of the uninitiated reads it, and immediately pulls the plug before he can (further) embarrass them.

S&S wants to make money, and what he gave them was a total waste of $250,000.00.

I skimmed his manuscript, reading only the sections that had comments attached to them, and I've heard him speak for maybe about 5 minutes in total. I don't think I can conjure up on the spot a single one of his stances, other than the fact that he seems to hate political correctness, which I do completely agree with.

If we're approaching this from a business perspective--one that I have almost no interest in--why should his publisher be concerned about whether Milo's arguments are going to persuade anyone who disagrees with him? As far as I know, the whole reason that people pay attention to him is that he tells the people who like him what they want to hear, and he tells the people who hate him the things that most enrage them, to the delight of his fans. Why do you think that toning down his writing, and trying to make it more acceptable to a general audience, and possibly more sensible, is going to result in more sales? Do you believe that the most rational, well thought out, even keel, uncontroversial, inoffensive, inclusive political books are the ones that are going to fly off the shelves? And even if that were the case, what leads you to believe that he has a talent for that?