When I go into bookstores these days it makes me kind of sick. The problem is not merely that WalMart sized chains like Borders and Barnes and Ignoble only distribute trash in their outlet. No, the problem is much greater than that and consists of the reality that nothing of much worth has been published in many, many decades now. It’s hard to find much worth reading even in the independent bookstores out there.
Instead, we have rows upon rows of things like Occult and New Age, ‘Christian Fiction’, ghost written crap by politicians and media talking heads, etc. fluff to be found. No good English language literature, no translations of current foreign writers, no informed histories or current events, no nothing just know nothing stuff.
It was not always this way, since America was not always as dumbed down as it has gotten these days. American writers once had something to say, and some of their works once got published. That is not the case nowadays.
Professor Alan Wald some years ago tried to rehab and republish some of these works in a project called The Radical Novel Reconsidered. There was so little interest and knowledge amongst the American public, that many of these works were sadly never funded for republishing. But some were!
Here’s the easy way to locate them. Just go to Amazon dot com and punch in ‘radical Novel Reconsidered’ and you will draw up about 12 of these old radical novels at that site. Most of them can be bought used for $7 or less now, so check them out!
How sad that these great works of literature are now lost in our history, while oodles and oodles of trash dominates. We need a new effort to republish America’s great literature of the past, and until we get such it will be a depressing experience walking into the bookstores of our country.
Alas, our own ignorance and inability to read or know what is worth reading, has teamed up with corporate bottlenecks to publishing the works of good current writers, and now there just is little out there that is even worth reading. It can only change if we as a people can change?
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From Amazon dot com…
1. The Great Midland (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Alexander Saxton (Paperback – May 1, 1997)
Buy new: $22.00 Used & new from $7.152. To Make My Bread (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Grace Lumpkin (Paperback – Jan 1, 1996)
Buy new: $24.00 Used & new from $2.983. The World Above (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Abraham Polonsky (Paperback – Feb 1, 1999)
15 Used & new from $3.984. Burning Valley (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Phillip Bonosky (Paperback – Dec 1, 1997)
Buy new: $19.00 Used & new from $5.005. The Big Boxcar (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Alfred Maund (Paperback – Dec 1, 1998)
Buy new: $18.00 Used & new from $3.776. The People from Heaven (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by John Sanford (Paperback – Feb 1, 1996)
Buy new: $30.00 Used & new from $2.407. Moscow Yankee (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Myra Page (Paperback – Feb 1, 1996)
Buy new: $18.00 Used & new from $5.988. Pity Is Not Enough (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Josephine Herbst (Paperback – Jan 1, 1998)
16 Used & new from $2.999. Lamps at High Noon (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Jack S. Balch (Paperback – Oct 19, 2000)
Buy new: $19.95 Used & new from $12.0010. A World to Win (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Jack Conroy (Paperback – Oct 19, 2000)
7 Used & new from $19.9711. Tucker’s People (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Ira Wolfert, Angus Cameron, and Alan Filreis (Paperback – Jul 1, 1997)
Buy new: $20.00 Used & new from $6.6012. Salome of the Tenements (Radical Novel Reconsidered) by Anzia Yezierska (Paperback – Jan 1, 1996)
Buy new: $22.00 Used & new from $4.00