Stealth

“Write books that get banned by the right and cancelled by the left.”

I read that recently on the internet. I do not remember where. Or the context. And my memory is almost certainly paraphrasing. At the time, it did not occur to me to capture the reference. And, with so much regurgitated content on the internet, I might not even be citing the original source in any case.

I remembered it a couple of weeks later, when I was editing the latest first draft of a novel I have been attempting for the best part of twenty years. It would probably enrage both the Right and Left, for different reasons. And if it were ever to be a successful publication (which is most unlikely), I would probably have to deal with death threats from one direction and cancellation from the other. I do not know which prospect intimidates me most: threats of physical violence that might happen; or public shaming that is already happening. I am probably not cut out to be a writer. Not that kind of writer, anyway.

The novel concerns a group of angels who counsel recently departed souls on the way to the next life. My intention is to be funny and I like to think I have pulled that off. But the idea of reincarnation seems to push buttons in people, even those who DO believe in it, when a narrative does not align with their own personal beliefs. As I was writing, I kept imagining how the stories would land in the minds of certain groups, from MAGA to BLM. And I attempted to write without judgment and let humor do the heavy lifting. But there are some scenarios that could be upsetting, such as an African American attempting to reconcile with previous lives as a White American. I purposefully avoided that scenario in favor of the reverse, but even then I felt I was getting into ticklish territory and might want to work with a sensitivity reader. That seems disproportionate when you are heading for something like a mashup of Monty Python and The Holy Grail, Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, Seinfeld and The Office, with more recent inspiration from Ted Lasso. So, I decided to set it aside for now. Perhaps I might just take the easy way out and remove the chapters that involve people changing race or religion or sexual/gender identity from one life to the next and leave it to the reader to wonder about those scenarios.

My last three years of high school were in a part of England where the Royal Air Force often practiced flying under radar. VERY LOW. Morning math class was disturbed by fighter jets flying close to the ground over the athletic fields outside. While they might have been invisible to someone glued to a radar screen fifty miles away, they made a big impression on us as they flew low over the school. They came out of nowhere without warning, made the ground shake, and then were gone as quickly as they had arrived.

I think that is the kind of impact I would love to have - flying unseen under the radar of the Right and the Left - but shaking the very Earth under the feet of the occasional casual reader. It is an ambitious goal and I am not sure I am capable of it. Perhaps I can just come in gently, touch the wheels down for a brief instant, and then climb back into the sky to disappear amongst the clouds (humor is great for that.) Do that enough times on the same landing strip, and someone might wonder what the pilot is up to. And then something they see in the news, even years later, will make them think of that little aircraft with the touch-n-go pilot.