A few years ago, I wrote on my critique page that I would stop collecting critiques after Nachtefteling.
Why? Well, because in my experience it is dystopian to have to score good reviews forever without this being reflected in the autoritairian structure.
That in itself is fascist: the writer who has to prove himself forever, and while he is doing that he is being hushed up by the commercial-conservative media. A writer having to prove himself forever is the very nature of writing itself, but not when that manages to have no reflection on power.
However, my publisher kept sending my books to review sites, actually out of habit. That’s actually inconsistent: why bother with reviews, I already have all the reviews I need to not have to prove myself.
Then the conservative-Christian order rises to the occasion and so the picture is complete. Writers who have to prove themselves forever, the have-nots, and the writers who are proven after one thin volume, the haves.
If you think, ah, but that’s how it is with talent – no, I’m sorry, but a page like my critique page cannot show an untalented person. And if we look at the reviews that the ‘haves’ manage to score, they are usually negative. So there is something else going on. There is no need to be unnecessarily mysterious about it:
The literary world is in the hands of a conservative-religious clique who manipulate things so that everything remains as it is.
So the pagan anarcho-psychedelic is delegated to the sidelines, left out of the canon full of good Christian writers. That is what is happening, and unfortunately it is not mysterious at all.
Because of the structural nature of this set-up – it has been going on since the 17th century, I believe – I see no point in sending my collections to this order any longer. And as I said, I’ve had enough reviews already. Why should I have to score endless positive reviews? Who are you doing it for?
No, give those reviews to young people, you can make them happy. I can only be made happy by a reader who says, thanks to my poems, they understand what poetry is or should be. That whole review machine full of psyborgs who want to practice their reading comprehension skill will at best irritate me, because real critics are now extinct.
