Is Dave Eggers Lit's Lance Armstrong?

There are a few parallels. Both have done many great charitable things. Both also, by all reports, behind the scenes can be quite mean.

Eggers has effectively bullied the entire literary scene. Is there a single journalist anywhere who’ll look into his personality or his operations? Most busy themselves writing abject puff pieces, dealing with the surface face only. But that’s not what real journalism is about—which should be, getting the real story.

The real story is what you never get from literature today. It’s all fake.

(Read the great e-novels Crime City USA and The McSweeneys Gang, fast-paced new fiction done in a non-“literary” pop style.)

Prisoner in a Cell

One of the scenes in Crime City USA involves a person in a cell. I identify with his fate, because as a writer I'm currently in a prison cell. Walled-off. Trapped. No way to get my words and message outside the bars to the world. At any hint of the whistleblower lit group I led-- "ULA"-- at the merest whisper, I can hear the guards reinforcing the walls of my prison, ensuring I never get out.

(This note is a communication thrown between the bars.)

Understanding Fake Face

What about Joe Paterno? Beloved "Joe Pa"? I'd bet his lovable reputation is a media creation. That, beneath it, Joe Pa is a ruthless bastard. I'd further wager that he knew the truth about the alleged perp as far back as 1998, and has spent all these years since covering it up-- including willfully and forcefully putting the matter out of his head. My opinion only, of course. Why would he do this? Because he loved power and because the football program takes in $70 million per year. This was too much for that kind of personality to give up.
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Which brings me back to my fictional character, Fake Face, who's featured in my latest ebook, which has the title of this blog.

The character may seem out of a comic book. The paradox of pop fiction, though, is its ability to put the hidden truth directly in front of you. There's far more truth in Crime City USA than in a thousand standard genteel "literary" works, which reverse the process. Literary writers give you layers of meaningless "realistic" details about the furniture, including human furniture. The truth about people and the world is nowhere to be found. Even if you dug through the description and details like through a mountain of pine needles, you'd find: nothing. The characters are idealized versions of the writers. They give you a plastic face. That's all.

Who's the chief Fake Face in the literary world? I mean, the phoniest? Would it be someone who most urgently wears a generous smile? Is there a writer like this-- or more than one? Think about it.