Billy Michaels, Catherine Jenkins, Courtney Bubbles... these people are come of the greatest writers in the world. Why haven't you heard of them? Well there's only on problem, they can only write about one thing.
I’m not saying that they are the BEST at writing about that one specific thing, which undoubtedly they are, but if they turn their attention to anything else their writing becomes garbage, just so much flotsam and jetsom. If they don’t have their specialist subject to act as a prism to view the world then their writing’s worthless, it aint worth a damn. But give them a sheet of a4 paper and ask them to pontificate on their specialist subject and they astound you with their beauty and clarity. Their metaphors are perfect, their similes apt, their vision wonderful - capable of bringing you to laughter and tears an illuminating the human condition like a mag light torch.
Case in point, Billy Michaels, you won’t have heard of him, why would you, but a small section of society has. Billy Michaels writes, and only writes, about toy soldiers. But the fucker makes them come alive; he makes the page bounce; it sucks you in, if you couldn’t give a flying fuck about toy soldiers, and oooh boy, i could give a fuck then you should still read his writing. Yes he’s writing about the soldiers, and yes his writing is fabulous but he uses these soldiers as a spring board to tell you about the world, they keep him grounded.
Don't believe me? Read him, for god’s sake read him, but don’t try looking at the soldiers afterwards. They’ll bore you to tears. And that's the problem, once they're out of his lens, they stop being the most essential life affirming things in the world - the very substance of life itself in fact - and resume being tiny figurines someone has painted.
Catherine Jenkins? Beads, hand fired ceramic beads - she can tell the whole story of the world's economy - and therefore it's people and human nature itself through these beads. You take away the beads? You've got nothing. I read the one other piece she tried to get published that wasn't about beads. She said it was like trying tot ype with fingers of lead. And you could tell.
Courtney Bubbles? Pressed pennies. And there's others, dozens and dozens of them plowing their singular troughs.
Do I pity these people, these miniature goliaths? Well, I couldn’t possibly, as I’m fated to only write about people who can only write about one thing. Everything else I do is pure garbage.
Dedicated to Lester Bangs
