What Audience?

A good excuse for Thomas having no idea who his audience might be, is the fact that the genre of the Dooven books is such a convolution of cross-over, that determining which genres are involved is all but impossible. As someone recently said to him, “Thomas, no adult wants to read about animals, and no children will be able to get through your turgid sentences.”

And because Thomas replied, “considering most of the words I write have more than three syllables, that obviously rules you out too,” things were more or less left at that—besides Thomas throwing a book at him and advising that he oughtn’t to look like a bookshelf. Although Thomas doesn’t take well to criticism (which is odd, considering his life revolves around it), the comment is valid. Could it be that his writing Anthropomorphic Absurdism might be a genre of its own, rather than an intensely convoluted cross-over? It’s unlikely, because that would suggest an originality which Thomas doesn’t begin to possess. More likely is that he has no clear idea of what he’s writing in the first place. “Choose a genre and write it well,” was the advice given by Robert Westall, author of ‘Where’s My Sandwich’ and ‘Have You Seen My Car Keys?’ Being an idiot, Thomas’ adage in reply is ‘Write Badly And Ignore Genre altogether.’

No wonder he has no audience.