Friday 11/26/21
Here's something from yesterday that's emblematic of how I derange many people in their jealousy and manic obsession with me. It's frightening. I worry about when I do get to where I'm getting to that someone will murder me. The concept of what I am and what I am rattles around inside of the skulls of many people such that I can envision their spluttering last gasps on earth comprising raging words to the effect that they hate me for existing and they always will, etc., then the head falls to the side and out comes the lolling tongue. The end. This is one of the biggest pieces of the pie--that I make so many people feel this way. People who want to be me and do what I am able to do.
This person here is named Donald Brown. He's a former editor of mine at New Haven Review. Condescending person who's done nothing, of course, as a writer in his life, but has his Ivy League schools. He's one of the people I've worked for who told me I'll never make any money, adding that I should have been a professor (which is what his failure of a self is). I'm getting by right now with an industry against me. I am publishing more than ever, with an industry against me. And I'm going to make more money when all is said and done than I'll know what to do with. But people get off on saying this to me. I've had no less than three of my book publishers tell me to quit writing. You like that? Of course, that's about them, and only about me insofar as I derange these people. You know how they say that about Trump? I'm the good person, genius version of that, but to a far greater degree.
I don't want to say that "Oh, I'm the Beatles guy," because I don't know more about the Beatles and publish more on the Beatles than I do anything else. I'm just the guy. You pick the subject. I am the guy of every subject and there has never been anyone like that, and that's not even really what I do most of all. What I do most of all is invent stories. For I am story. But there's a Beatles op-ed out today in the highest circulation newspaper in America, there was a Beatles feature in The Daily Beast yesterday, another Beatles feature in The Daily Beast earlier this month.
So I'll throw up some screenshots here. Brown--probably drunk, obviously seething with the envy--gets on my Facebook author page on Thanksgiving afternoon, and posts what you see below, about my Daily Beast piece on the Get Back series. A series he hasn't seen. And he tells me not only am I wrong about it, and he's right, he attacks my ethics. Just sitting there on a Thanksgiving afternoon, and decides to go after Fleming, author of the remarkable piece. I encourage people to read it. It's great. Made me cry, actually. If one reads these pages, one will know that I thought this Peter Jackson effort would smack of some Care Bear-ism; you know, when there's that forced, fake happiness that everything seemingly must have these days, and I knew those sessions were not that way. I had twenty-four hours. I got the advance screener link from Disney, I sat there and watched the 8 hours series, then I wrote a 3000 word piece off of what I saw. What I saw wasn't in line with what I thought I'd see, but that's just a guess you do. I do no artifice. I am only concerned with truth. I have no ego. Truth and beauty does not answer to ego. I know what I do and I know the peerless level I do it at, and simply be being true to myself and my ability, the work is going to reach a level other work by other people does not and has no chance of reaching. I don't need an agenda. If you know the Ringo Starr song--or want to look it up--of "Early 1970," and also possess any rudimentary understanding of human nature--people from Ivy League schools almost never do--then you'll laugh over what Brown says about that.
But imagine doing this? You're taking on the leading authority on the Beatles, someone who is an infinitely better writer than you, because you're an angry old man consumed with the Green Beast, obsessing over Fleming in your cups on Thanksgiving. Was it worth it? Probably not, right? Because thousands of people are laughing now. It's not funny to me, because I know this is how I make a lot of people feel. That's one reason why I'm in my current position. That's a text exchange, too, with someone I know.
