The Dangers of Book Learnin' by Mars Cronin

[MarsCronin]

So my latest, which I'm now editing, is a satire. The narrator, Arty Shaw, is a failed writer of short stories. One of the running jokes of the book is that Arty is so bad, he doesn't just get reject slips from editors, agents and publishers, he gets reject letters. Some of which go on for paragraphs spelling out in excruciating detail just how bad he is. I'll post some of them soon, but right now I want to post one of Arty's pieces. I have them salted between chapters of the book to give the readers a taste of his work.

Comments, constructive criticism, etc are welcomed. Thanks...Mars

Here's the piece:

The Dangers of Book Learnin’
by
Arty Shaw​

Jon: “Welcome back. My guest tonight is well-known author and not so well-known pig castrator Eeeno Nuttin. He’s here to talk about his new book, The Dangers of Book Learnin’; a diatribe on the dangers of learnin’ things from books. He’s also going to tell us what it’s like to cut a pig’s balls off. Please give a warm welcome to Ino Nuttin. Wel-come, Mr. Nuttin.”

Ino: “Thank you, Mr. Stewart, and it’s not Eeeno, it’s Ino, like your eye.”

Jon: “Your name is Eye-no? Eye-no Nuttin?”

“That’s right, Jon.. Ino Nuttin”

“I thought it was pronounced Eeeno. You know, when you read it on the cover of your book, it looks like Eeeno.”

“A perfect example of the dangers lurkin’ in book learnin.”

“I can see that now, sir. My apologies. Heh, heh. With a name like that the kids must have teased the hell out of you when you were growing up.”

“Not that I can recall.”

“”Seriously? No teasing? None at all?”

“Nope. My younger brother though, the poor little fella, he did. Yeah Heeno got teased all the time. Got teased like a stallion that’s only allowed to sniff the mare.”

“I didn’t know they let stallions sniff the mayor, heh, heh. So let me see if I have this right. Heeno Nuttin, teasing. Ino Nuttin, no teasing. Is that what you’re telling us?”

"Yep. ‘Cause it sounds like he don’t know nuttin. Get it?”


“Yes. Yes, sir I get it. But...never mind. We’re here to talk about your book, so let’s do that. Why the ironic title? Why call a book--“

“Ain’t got nothin to do with iron. Where’d you get that from?”
Not iron, irony. You see...never mind. Why, sir would you call a book The Dangers of Book Learnin?”

“I thought you wuz a smart man, Jon. Is that a serious question? Or one of your smart-alecky ones? I can never tell with guys like you. It’s why I never watch this show.”

“I’m sure it’s our loss that we don’t have you as a viewer. But it was a serious ques-tion. Why that title?”

“Because books are dangerous, that’s why. It’s right there on the cover so ever’one’ll know up front. It seems to me one of us has been readin too many of em, and it ain’t me.”

“Clearly, sir, it ain’t you. But my question concerns the premise as well as the title. Let me phrase it differently. Let’s suppose that you’re right, that books are dangerous. How would people know that?”

“By readin my book. How you think? Are you really the host of a TV show? Or is someone scratchin my balls here?”

“Scratching your balls? No, sir. I can assure you that no one is scratching your balls. I’m sure there’s a lot of head scratching going on though., but no, there’s no ball scratching.”

“Why? You people got head lice? Iffen you do, we got a cure for that down on the farm. You just dip your head in gasoline for two minutes. Kills ever one o the little suck-ers. And that’s sumpin we didn’t learn from no book. Just down home good sense. Make sure you don’t light your pipe for a while though. Learnt that one the hard way. But, once again, not from no book.”

“We’re fine here, sir. No lice. You take things kind of literal, don’t you?”

“Well, I’m a writer.”

“But not a reader, as you’ve so eloquently explained. So let’s try this again. What, sir is so dangerous about books?”

“You can trace ever problem inna world down to a book. The Nazis knew that. Why you think they burnt em? For heat? Nope. They’s dangerous, is why.”

“OK. I’ll play along. And since you mentioned the Nazis, let’s start with bigotry and racism. How does that stem from books?”

“Let me answer your question with a question. How do people know the black man is inferior to the white man?”

“Well, I must differ, sir. That’s not--“

“From books is how. Iffen folks was ignorant about the intellectual, moral and spiri-tual inferiority of darkie, why we’d all get along jus fine.”

“No, sir. That’s simply not true. I won’t just sit here --“

“And what about stealin? Darkie wouldn’t know how to pick locks, hot-wire cars an such if he hadn’ta learnt it from books.”

“Well, sir, I see by the frantic hand waving of my producer that we’re either out of time, or about to have a race riot on our hands. So thank you for coming on the show. I’m sure we all learned something tonight. And not from a book either.”

“Now yer gittin it. But wait. We didn’t get to mention the sequel, coming soon to a bookstore near you. It’s called Don’t Read This Book, and it’s chock fulla--“

Cut to Black​

 

[MarsCronin]

Here's the Prologue to the book and the opening paragraph of the first chapter. Every chapter of That's Why Vampires Suck opens with the words...That's why, another of the running jokes. After the prologue the story is told by Arty himself in the first person.

Again, comments and helpful criticism are welcomed...Mars

THAT’S WHY VAMPIRES SUCK

A novel by

MARS CRONIN & R. T. SHAW


Prologue​

“That’s why trees cry, Mr. Shaw every time you put pen to paper. They grieve for the forests of lost brethren sacrificed to provide the reams of stock upon which you scribble your drivel,” Arty Shaw said. He was reading aloud from yet another rejection letter from a publisher. His live-in girlfriend, Tandem Swindell, was washing the breakfast dishes and listening with heartbroken sympathy.
Tandem turned off the faucet, dried her hands and walked up behind Arty. He was seated at the kitchen table staring with lost eyes at the piece of paper in which he’d invested so much hope only minutes earlier. She bent over and hugged him, whispering encouraging words.
“It’s not as bad as the last two,” she said. “That guy from Random House was plain mean. And that woman from Harper Collins who wrote, ‘Not if my children were roasting on a spit and the only way to save them was to publish your dreck’ in seven different languages? Well, she was just a showoff.”
Arty took her words to heart. She was right. He was getting better. And he would get better next time. His short stories might not be up to snuff yet, but he’d get published if he had to sit at his computer and write till the cows came home. And he didn’t even own any cows. “Thanks, Babe.You always know how to cheer me up. And you know,” he said brightly, “this one has a request for more submissions in it.”
“I must have missed that,” she said grabbing the letter as she sat across from him and sipped her coffee. “Where does it say that?”
“It’s in the subtext. You know, between the lines. The kind of stuff only another writer would pick up on.”
Tandem read the letter carefully. Her furrowed brow told Arty that she was missing the clues he’d so easily gleaned from the letter’s colorful language. She finished reading and gave him a questioning look. “Which lines is it in between?” she asked. “The ones that say, ‘Upon pain of eternal torment in the fiery depths of hell, I swear not a word of your nonsensical garbage shall see the light of day.’ Or the part where he compares your work to that of, ‘a donkey chained to the grinding wheel, crushing the Queen’s English to a coarse powder in a neverending circle of despair?’”
Arty smiled like the clueless bastard he was. “It’s at the end where he talks about the crying trees and the wasted paper. Don’t you see? He wants me to send future submissions by email. It’s as plain as the melting ice caps on the earth’s face.”
Tandem smiled. She knew him well, better than he knew himself. They’d been together since freshman year in high school, more than fifteen years now. And in all that time she’d never seen a discouraging word penetrate his shield of dreams. He was the embodiment of the Ambrose Pierce doctrine that black is white and down is up. And she loved him for it. She also knew just how to help keep those rose-tinted glasses of his looking on the bright side of life.
She reached across the table and gently tickled the hairs on the back of his hand. “Oh, Arty. My dear, sweet glass-half-full cup of cheer. Someone needs a rousing game of Naked Strangers at a Scrabble Tournament to get those creative juices flowing again.”
Arty leaped from his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “I’ll get the game board; you get the olive oil and rubber sheet, and we’ll meet in the playroom.”

CHAPTER ONE
In which lonely children chuckle, Humpty Dumpty has the last laugh
and a prognosticator of patchworked proverbs proves prophetic.
​

“And that’s why Cheez Wizz is technically neither cheese nor wizz,” I said to my audience of young orphans.

 

[MarsCronin]

This will be my last post on this thread until and unless I get some action on it. No point wasting anyone's time.

This should give everyone a decent taste of what the book is like. The footnotes will be hyperlinked in the ebook for easy bouncing back and forth. Hope you enjoy.

As always, comments, suggestions and helpful criticism are welcomed...Mars

CHAPTER ONE
In which lonely children chuckle, Humpty Dumpty has the last laugh
and a prognosticator of patchworked proverbs proves prophetic.​

“And that’s why Cheez Wizz is technically neither cheese nor wizz,” I said to my audience of young orphans.
While the kids were still laughing Father Paul walked up beside me at the front of the small assembly room. The giggling residents of St. Pat’s Orphanage started moaning in disappointment as they realized that my time with them was up for this week. A few of the younger ones ran up to my chair and started climbing onto my lap.
“One more, Arty?” Little Annie pleaded, her dimpled and freckled face shining from within a frame of curly red hair. Her green eyes stared up at me like two marbles sparkling with anticipatory love. She was one of my favorites, though I loved them all. She would always smile through the lonely nights safe in the knowledge that the sun would come out tomorrow, that tomorrow there’d be sun, good-naturedly taking the teasing of the older kids for her sunny disposition. I could never say no to her and she knew it.
“OK,” I submitted. I saw Father Paul smile knowingly. I decided to tell one of their favorite stories...for the umpteenth time. “Did I ever tell you how his friends did manage to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, despite all the nasty rumors spread about the land by all the king’s horses and all the king’s men?”
The kids cheered and applauded like I’d just announced that it was eat-all-the-Ben-and-Jerry’s-Chocolate-Rainbow-Crunchy-Raisin-ice-cream-you-can day. Which wasn’t coming up for another two weeks. I launched into my fractured fairy tale while watching my fellow orphan-entertainers at the back of the room. Tandem, the love of my life, was looking after the very youngest kids like a mother hen. She was a magnet to them and they flocked to her like stoners to a Phish concert.
GooRoo, our wellspring of warped wisdom who dressed like a prophet, sported a three-foot-wide mustache and spoke like Ghandi on LSD, was doling out deformed dictums like a demented Pez dispenser to the older kids. “Remember young seekers of the way,” I heard him say, “When God, he does the closing of a door, he does also the opening of a can of worms.”
“What does that even mean?” one of the twelve-year-olds asked in a I-know-everything tone.
“It has the meanings of wonder and joy hidden deeply within,” GooRoo explained about as clearly as a Muppet trying to teach philosophy to a bunch of chimps. “Like the onion thing, it must be peeled to the revealing of its layers. This must be done even though the watering of the eyes makes the seeing of the truth a blurry thing.”
As always, GooRoo left them speechless. They’d have a week to chew on the cud he’d given them to mull over like Talmudic scholars trying to dissect the words of Moses.
My three best friends, partners in rhyme and fellow members of team ABBA (Arty, Ben, Batshit and Alligator)*** were busily engaged with an audience of nine and ten-year-olds. They were acting out a Three Stooges skit. The one where Moe (played by Ben) taught Larry and Curly (Batshit and Alligator) a valuable lesson in irony by poking there eyes out when they couldn’t see the logic of his command to “Follow my orders like two of the Three Blind Mice following the voice of Gad through the desert.” I think I missed that episode.
I finished the Humpty Dumpty to a round of mini-applause, we said our goodbyes and left the children in the loving and capable hands of Sister Mary Margaret Ruth Helen of Troy. Father Paul escorted us down the hall leading to the front entrance of the orphanage. The clicking of our heels on the tile floor echoed off the bare walls. To my writery imagination it sounded like one of those clicking tribes from Africa had us surrounded in the jungle. I observated the peeling paint, the water-stained ceiling and the dangling light fixtures that were so old they looked like Tom Edison installed them himself.
“How’s the fund drive going?” I asked.
“We seem to have stalled at the halfway mark,” Father Paul said. “We need another five-million to break ground.”
“I wish I could do more.” I looked at my team mates and saw that they felt the same way. “We all do.”
“Heck, Arty,” Father Paul said. “You guys have done more than your fair share. You got a cool million from Arcwood McGosh and another half-million from some of your other clients. Not to mention your weekly visits and the field trips. You, every one of you, even your Socrates-by-way-of-the-sixties GooRoo, put smiles on the kids’ faces that last all day.”
“The grinnings of a lonely child does the warmings of the heart like the roasting of chestnuts over open firings.”
“GooRoo’s right,” I said. “We get as much pleasure out of our visits as the kids do.”
“Is that what he said? I can never tell.”
GooRoo’s wisdom is like a Tootsie Pop,” Ben said. “You have to do some work to get at the chewy center, but it’s there.”
Father Paul escorted us all the way to the street where my GMC SUV with BMW rims and SBD exhaust sat waiting for us. We hopped in and I powered down the window before starting the engine. I looked over the shoulder of the priest with a wild streak who took care of the children like they were his own and examined the deteriorating exterior of the orphanage. “well I hope you can get the new one built soon. This one looks like it won’t last another week.”
Father Paul nodded. “Something will come up. It always does when you least expect it.”
“The surprise of the unforeseen ending,” our diety of distorted dictums dictated, “is often of the pleasant variety. Like the wondrous cheese hidden inside the crust of the goodly pizza.”

***: We chose the name ABBA long before we ever heard of that sugary quartet from Sweden who pumped out puffed-up pop melodies like a four-headed Barry Manilow. When we hear them we decided, as our properly-nicknamed savant of imaginary savagery Batshit said, “No bunch of crooning sissies is going to steal our name and get away with it. I’ll hang them by there nipples, pluck out their pubes and stick those short-and-curlies in their eyeballs. Then--“ Ben muffled Batshit at that point and we decided that, if anyone was going to change their name, it would be the four queens of blandness from Dullsville. (see: “Invasion of the Harmony Snatchers; The story of how four dipshits fooled the world into thinking they were talented and ruined the good thing we had going by The Boxtops © Year of the thief in the night)

CHAPTER TWO
In which we revisit the lost summer, meet the lost
prophet and plan a partnership with a lost Hebrew​

“And that’s why pineapple don’t grow on pine trees,” I said to the mirror. I was practicing for next week’s visit with the orphans in the master bedroom of our apartment. Tandem wasn’t home from work yet. The guys had already left after we’d Bogarted our afterwork doobie and I was in the mood for a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Prairie Donkey Crunch ice cream with peanuts sprinkled all over it. But I dared not indulge. Tandem had a big meal planned and if I spoiled my appetite there’d be no dessert. And a slippery game of Naked Strangers in a Pool of Pudding was one of my favorite pastimes. Hence the need to keep my mind occupado.