How to be an unsuccessful novelist

Successful novelists tell us: Write what you know.

So if you are a peach inspector, write your book about inspecting peaches.

A rose gardener? The perils of aphids.

Throw an unsuccessful love affair in there somewhere, because we’ve all had them.

Then go back to peaches. Everyone loves peaches. But how many of us understand the dangers of aphids?

Let me tell you right now, my uncomfortable Americans, anyone who does not acknowledge the threat that aphids pose to our great country today does not understand the threat we face from communist, left-wing aphids, and their willing co-conspirators, the communist subversive Democrats. And yes, your typical aphid is a left-winger, which is why they fly around and around in circles. As a rule.

They all oughta be hanged. Democrats particularly. Along with millions of tiny little gallows we’ve got to construct to hang them damn left-wing aphids.

Am I right or am I right? (You have no other option.)

My second rule of how to be an unsuccessful novelist is: Know your audience — your readers.

I can’t help you much on this one, because my neighbors have stayed away from me ever since that unfortunate incident with the explosion at the fire hydrant, the bags of flaming manure and the little kids on the way to school.

Then after the police and sheriffs and EMTs arrived, there was that petite contretemps avec my Napoleon Mastiff’s “cleanup operation,” which was — let’s face it — what he was trained to do.

What better proof could be offered that I had trained him well?

Q:  (from a CBS reporter, on his knees sucking up to Paramount/Disney): Mr. Kahn, none of this explains, or ameliorates, the charges you are facing, under municipal, county, state and federal laws.

A:  Get to the point.

Q: (follow-up): Leading polls indicate that news of the charges against you have caused Colorado’s popularity as a tourist or homeowning destination to drop by 14% in a single day.

A: So?

Q: So …

A:  No follow-ups.

(Here the broadcast was interrupted by order of the Court of Common Pleas.)

Getting back to our subject today, which is … umm … ah! How to become an unsuccessful novelist.

Let’s take a look at Herman Melville, whose Great American Novel earned him $556, before 300 unsold copies burned up, along with the printing plates, two years after it was released. Melville was poor, having earned his bread not from writing but as a customs inspector.

Q:  What are you trying to tell us?

A: Surely you remember Chapter I of “Moby Dick.”

Q: Actually, no; I went to parochial schools.

A: How quaint. Well, in Chapter I, our narrator, Ishmael, gets into bed with a tattooed savage, yclept Queequeg, a pagan. No sex involved, not even a hint. Except, perhaps, for the smell of pork, so like the smell of humans roasting …

Q: Mr. Kahn I think this is …

A: Ishmael, you will recall was the firstborn son of Abraham and his whore Hagar, though Abraham was married to Sarah.

Q: Mr. Kahn, Hagar was not a prostitute. She was Sarah’s handmaiden, an Egyptian slave, with whom Abraham “did the deed” because Sarah was barren.

A: That’s what you say.

Q: Now hold on, Mr. Kahn, if that is indeed your real name. I received an “A” in Bible Studies at Eton and Oxford …

A: So did Bertie Wooster.

Q: Mr. Kahn, you are intolerable. Are you intending to be so, or is it just in your nature?

A: Opinions vary.

Q : (long pause here)

A: Are you aware of the Intolerable Acts?

Q: No, Mr. Kahn, I am not. Unless they refer to you specifically …

A: I figured. Your king — not mine — imposed them after the Boston Tea Party.

Q: Aha! That rebellion against God and the king …

A: Not against God. Just against the king.