If Tom Bissell is a literary villain, through his public attack on downtrodden writers, it’s only as an extension of a more powerful person, someone with the will, backbone, and standing that Bissell lacks. Bissell after all is a glib and characterless opportunist; a cheap gun for hire. It’s how he behaved in constructing his attack essay on the ULA.
But who stands behind Tom Bissell? Is it the figure in the picture? Using the facade of goodness, like my fictional character Fake Face in the e-book Crime City USA, does this person use others like Tom Bissell to express the darker and more vindictive side of his own personality? No one can be all good all the time. It’s psychologically impossible. I tend to believe that the more one pushes the image of pristine goodness, as this individual does, the more, to regain balance, is the actual person pushed toward the other side. If so, this bleaker meaner side finds expression through trampling outspoken underdog voices like that of the ULA. Not unlike the good Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego Mr. Hyde.
But who is this person? This ultimate villain? This font of evil in today’s literary scene? Beware! Let the photo above serve as warning that all in today’s literary world is not as it seems.
(Stay tuned for a host of fictional literary villains in the new satirical e-novel, The McSweeneys Gang, soon to be released.)
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