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AFTER THE GOLDEN AGE for 06/09/2008
Vol. 2, #205
Dear Friends:
I have been away for months, with some occasional false starts. I desperately wanted to continue this column but found myself drawn into the demands of a major work which is now finished and might well be the most complex and difficult writing task I have undertaken through a long career. Among other things, it sums up and articulates the metaphysical and cosmologic visions interwoven among all these columns since the beginning. But now, after months of trying, of soul searching, of venturing beyond all boundaries, after some fifty rewrites, after probing the depths of my personal being and after locating that historic moment of threat to our presence on this planet, that moment which, in itself, might have marked the end of love, the end of religion, the end of humanity itself, I have taken that moment and made it the fulcrum of a seven hundred page blockbuster. In a way, it's not really a novel. It's very much like my two earlier works, Prophet and Gathering, which are more appropriately labelled "metareal". A demanding and, in some ways, new genre.
While I've been struggling with this fearfully difficult work, my earlier novels are achieving publication around the world, most recently, with Germany's major publisher, Heinrich, Hugendubel Verlag. My first novel, The Blowtop, which allegedly fathered the beat movement in the fifties and was described by the NY Times as "the first conscious existenialist novel in America" seems to be enjoying a new lease on life in France where it was first published in 1949 under the title: Le Cinglé. An Unlikely Prophet and its sequel, A Gathering of Selves, have both been optioned for movies by the same film company that did the international hit: What the Bleep Do We Know? (with the first film already in the can, and hardly a day passes when I don't receive a request for autographs for my fourteen years of writing both the Superman and Batman daily and Sunday newspaper strips and, of course, Bizarro, my very successful effort to deconstruct Superman there's more, as there would be, of course). I'll be ninety-two this coming November. And that's the reason for today's column.
I need a new agent, and a publisher. And I am loathe to go about the usual ways of finding them. Not as long as I can speak directly to the readers of this column. Oh, yes, I have an agent and a very good one. A man, gracious to a fault who succeeded in pulling my two last novels, Unlikely Prophet and A Gathering of Selves out of the coals of year-long disputes and misunderstandings between my publisher and the filmmakers with no profit to himself. In fact, Unlikely Prophet has already made it into film, thanks to Ken Atchity, of Atchity Enterainment International.
But at Ken's own suggestion, and in recognition of my impatience, and his preference for Hollywood mainstream works rather than Indy works like mine, I am seeking the agent or publisher who will now step in and take on my blockbuster, Tear Down That Wall. An interest in religion would also be a plus, but it must be heterodox and broad.
--Alvin
To anyone out there who may be interested in seeing this latest work of mine, contact me directly at the Round Table and indicate whether you'd like to hear from me by email or phone.
<< 03/03/2008 | 06/09/2008
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Recent Columns:
| NEWEST | Vol. 2, #205 I have been away for months... (03/09/2008) |
| 03/03/2008 | Vol. 2, #204 Section 4 - A legal issue as well? |
| 02/11/2008 | Vol. 2, #203 Section 3 - Introducing Mr. Sattvapalli |
| 02/04/2008 | Vol. 2, #202 Section 2 |
| 01/28/2008 | Vol. 2, #201 Section 1 |
| 01/14/2008 | Vol. 2, #200 I've been away a long time. Not just from this column, but far earlier than that... |
| 06/18/2007 | Vol. 2, #199 Superman as more of a process than a fixed creation |
| 05/21/2007 | Vol. 2, #198 "Bleep" team to make "Unlikely Prophet"... |
| 04/02/2007 | Vol. 2, #197 Consciousness Visiting (Part II) |
| 03/26/2007 | Vol. 2, #196 Consciousness visiting. My arcane subject for today. |
| 12/25/2006 | Vol. 2, #195 Problems Crossing the Border |
| 11/27/2006 | Vol. 2, #194 Sometime in the mid-1940s, Dan Miller, proprietor of the local general store in the rural village of Springs, Long Island, New York, acquired a painting from his new neighbor, the painter, Jackson Pollock. I knew them both in those days. But it took me many years to figure out how it might have happened. |
| 10/23/2006 | Vol. 2, #193 In writing these stories, my imagination often ran ahead of me. I tried to consider the meaning of these outsized heroes, |
| 10/09/2006 | Vol. 2, #192 Superman didn't become the rescuer, the savior and upholder of the law because he was made that way on some other planet... |
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