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1) It stinks 2) It is written in a code--like that of Modern Poetry--that afficinadoes of literary fiction or intellectuals understand but nobody else does. For instace, I was rading a piece called "Homesick Blues" in Terry McMillains groundbreaking 1990 anthology, BREAKING ICE that was my Bible back in the day. The story refers to H. L. Mencken. I know who Mencken is, and knew who he was then, because I was in the lit fiction game. But the average person does not know who James Baldwin was, much less H. L. Mencken. (You think I am overstating the case. I spoke to a very well educated Black woman the other day who was puzzled about the hostility between the U.S. and North Korea. "Well, that was that little War we fought with them from 195-1953," I answered. She as unaware of it. Most people read fiction for pleasure. They do not have nice cushy jobs at a college. They work awful boring jobs and do REAL work and don't want to come home, tired and have to work some more looking up every other word in a story. I don't have to. I read and study widely. Chances are I'll come across the name of Mencken by accident. Hemningway didn't go to no college. Shakespeare didn't go to no college. James Baldwin didn't go to no college. They all produced work that is studied in college. Today's college trained, college employed writer cannot produce work that can be appreciated by people who are not in a library 10 hours a day. In other words,in the immortal words of Emil Zola when literary types wonder why nobody reads their dull, derivative works I shout out J'ACCUSE!

Looks great Troy, thanks http://www.whitemansdisease.com/

Rereading these conversation is really motivating. I have work to do and the struggle continues...

I miss Chris, too. We needled each other and bickered a lot but we were really fond each other. He was bright and quirky. Wonder what happened to him?? He was from St. Louis and his book about "vampyres" was published by some fly-by-night publishing company Kola Boof was associated with. We really did have a good group back then. I'm FaceBook friends with Yvette, "Ferocious Kitty", Linda Watkins, "A Woman", "LambD", and "Yukio". Thumper, too, but he rarely posts. Wonder what happened to Mzuri, Crystal, Li-Li and ABM just to name of few.. I couldn't care less about Carey because he was one of those people I never clicked with, and the feeling was mutual. And we can't overlook all of Kola's groupies who were actually her posting under different names.

The only reason we're in here is we care about the culture says Troy Johnson. @aalbc #BusinessofBooks #KBF2016

The following video is Kellie Magnus, one of the organizers of the Kingston Book Festival. I'm planning or organizing a group trip to the festival this coming March. I just decided to do it and since this would be my first time organizing such an excursion and it is just 6 months away, I'm not entirely sure I can pull it off--but I'll try it really is a nice event :-)

I think some people are confusing "literary fiction" with what I would call mainstream AA fiction. I'm not talking about high brow stuff that would potentially be assigned in a college course. I'm talking about fiction that has some degree of depth to it beyond relationship drama and gangsta tales of drug dealing and shootouts. Surely, there are more stories that can be told and published from an AA point of view. They don't have to be "boring" at all. But this other stuff is the same story over and over again and it becomes very tiresome for people like me who actually read books regularly. I'm not sure if the people who read urban fiction are actually "readers" or if they simply like the urban lit genre exclusively. I don't know whether they ever venture outside of this narrow world to see what else is published or if they just want to read the metaphorical equivalent of a 6-car fatal accident on a freeway. Plus, to me, urban lit is like stripping. Once you've started removing your clothes, the observer needs more and more clothes taken off until the stripper is nude. Then what?

H.L. Mencken endeared himself to me years ago when I read his quote about "nobody ever going broke, betting against the intelligence of the American public". Just as historians once wrote about Europe's "age of enlightenment", a hundred years from now, those who still have control over their minds, will provide an account of America's "age of dumbing down".