8.

Here’s the problem. Fiction is at its best when it is an honest expression of the particular view of the world of the author. What is my world? A psychotic world. Thus, over the past few years, I have been trying to express that word by writing psychotic rambling. Three quarters of a century after Joyce, one might think psychotic rambling would be something the literary art world might be open to. It is not. I query publishers explaining that I am schizophrenic, and when they read my novel samples, they say, "But this is only psychotic rambling." Actually, I do not know what they say. Perhaps they say something else; I have no idea. All I know is that, as far as my psychotic rambling goes, it is extremely interesting psychotic rambling. Difficult, but interesting. But I do believe that if someone does actually say, "This is only psychotic rambling" this is viewed as a genuine criticism. I do not know if it is a genuine criticism; I think many would say it is, and no one is really "right" or "wrong". I can’t argue with such a criticism. If "This is only psychotic rambling" is a genuine criticism, my writing, merely by having been written by a psychotic as an honest expression of his world, is worthless. If psychotic rambling itself is worthless, how is a schizophrenic to keep his expression of his world from being worthless?