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Over the years, I have shown my stories to literary agents, publishers and even intellectuals (into whom I occasionally run by accident) and the consensus was that it was a pity that my stories, so lively and amusing, lacked in indiscriminate compassion. It’s a bunch of whiners out there, they told me. Look what sells. I did; but there was no way I could write a story in which the bad guys were to enrage the reader by being insensitive to the plight of the so-called underprivileged—for which crime they would have their heads blown off and their bodies pulverized in a spectacular car chase by the good guys (wearing seat belts, of course) as a warning to other insensitive morons.
So, left out in the cold without legal advice about a government compensation for mental anguish, I held onto a regular working-stiff job and continued writing politically incorrect stories to have a chuckle myself. The bottom drawer of my desk was packed with them by the time I finally saw the light.
I visited a friend of a friend, a single mother living from paycheck to paycheck, one of the unsung millions of working stiffs like me that politicians love to depict as wallowing in a morass of oppression and dire need. Yet her house was spick-and-span, complete with a couple of well-behaved, well-dressed, well-educated teenagers—and all that without a penny of a charitable or other politically correct assistance. In her living room was a handwritten sign that read NO WHINING, and she had no idea why I hugged and kissed her when I saw it. I don’t think she particularly liked emotional outbursts; but what did I care? She had made me realize that my books had a chance because there must be many more non-whiners around—at least many more than the media, the intellectuals, and the political would-be saints want us to believe.
In short, my books have been written for the amusement of non-whiners — to make them feel not as alone and in as much pain as they are being told day in, day out. For whatever change is coming down on this Great Empire, non-whiners be prepared to endure it with more than just fortitude. A good laugh about the bizarre and the breathtakingly insane might in due course help everybody see the light — whenever that may be.
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