My first novel, The Few Who Count, came out in 1985. I started writing it in 1977, when I had not yet turned seventeen. I finished writing it when I was not quite twenty-three. After two years of sending it to every publisher listed in the 1983 Writer’s Market, I eventually published it with Inverted-A, which was a small press run by my father.
The book has been out of print for many years, and it has just now become available on Kindle. It costs just short of two bucks.
1. What the Book is About
Here is the current blurb explaining what the book is about:
When a power struggle culminates in the abduction of Hannibal Grayne, those who are left behind must struggle with the flaws in the foundation on which his business empire was built: our system of government.
This is a novel of ideas, much like the writing of Ayn Rand. For those who value free enterprise, but who wonder why business in today’s corporate world is corrupt and drives away the best minds, The Few Who Count offers one explanation. Limited liability for stockholders is a violation of the accountability built into free enterprise.
The first paragraph in the blurb is pretty much how I described the novel at the time. The second paragraph is something I have since added, because I realize now that all my writing crosses genre boundaries, and many readers need explicit guidance on how to read a book and what sorts of messages to expect. It’s almost as if they can’t read the book unless they have already had it read to them once, with all the guideposts explained.
If you are interested in reading the Cliff Notes to the book, then you can see them here:
http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/The-Corporate-Entity
But the book isn’t really just about that, as no book is only about the text. There is also the subtext, and that is what the title refers to. This book describes a certain type of person, and how such people find each other, and how badly they suffer when they don’t find each other. It’s a book about social isolation, social disability, and about the ostracism that outsiders in every society face.
It’s also a story about love. Not unconditional love that anybody can get and anybody can give, but rather the other kind: the kind we can’t help giving, but only to the right person or persons.
2. The Reviews
There weren’t too many explicit reviews. In fact, there was only ever one, that I know of:
http://www.well.com/user/amnfn/tfwcrev.html
But I can also tell you about things that ordinary people said who read the book:
- It’s a good mystery, like Agatha Christie.
- Isn’t this science fiction?
- Why don’t the characters have any feelings?
- Why did they eat turkey sandwiches?
- How come Barman didn’t have a girl friend before he got together with Hayley?
- People don’t act this way.
- The characters behave like whirling dervishes.
I’m telling you all of this, because I want to be open and up front with you about this book. It’s not for everyone, and it certainly isn’t about everyone. If you want to read about people who are possibly different from you, then this might be a good book to read.
No, most people do not behave this way. But there are some who do, and this book is about them.
3. Flaws in the Work
One of the greatest flaws in The Few Who Count might be the inability to contrast ordinary people with the unusual people who are the protagonists. While I did include one or two normal characters, the normal people who read the book were alienated by the fact that there were too many negative normal characters, and not enough normal characters that readers could actually identify with.
Subsequent books that I have written have done better on this point. But this was my first novel, and I was concentrating on depicting my protagonists. I also stuck to the main plot, so I did not show anything that did not relate in some way to the story.
For those who really want to know about Barman’s early love life, here’s a suggestion: write a fan story! Unlike certain famous authors who feel they have to control everything, I welcome people to write in my universe. Just give credit where credit is due.
One of the things that my characters don’t do is play social mind games. They say what they mean. You can’t read between the lines to figure out their true motives, because their real motives are overtly conveyed. For some readers, this does not provide the kind of psychological texture to the work that they hope to find in a novel. But these readers are also the people who have trouble interacting with others based on the face value of what they say.
4. Things that I Learned about Life and People Since Writing the Book
Some people told me at the time that I was young, and that the novel reflected my immaturity, but as I grew and matured I would understand other people better, and I would develop into someone more like them, with a “social conscience and compassion”.
That hasn’t happened, but I have had many years to think about what people meant by that. By compassion, they did not mean empathy for the people in my book. They meant, empathy for people more like them. Or more like them, only worn down by ill health or disability.
The truth is that my characters were the ones with a disability — a social disability. And I can assure you that none of the people I know with all that “compassion” have the least amount of empathy for those who have to live in this world but are not equipped with the automatic ability to play the games that people play.
I’m not going to say any more. You be the judge. Read the book. When you think to yourself: “I would not have done that,” try to figure out if you know someone else who would. And if you are really into “compassion”, wouldn’t it be a good idea to keep in mind less social people when you make your plans for a better world?
Sounds like an interesting book. This may be a far fetched question, but could parents with autistic children benefit from reading this book? I have not read it yet, and I do not know for sure, but would the actions of the characters give them insight to how their children might act and behave differently in social interactions?
Sweetbearies, thanks. That’s a very insightful question. At the time when I wrote the book, I did not know very much about autism and would have scoffed at the idea that any of my characters had it. I would have said that they are all healthy, smart people who just aren’t very social. But at the same time… I always would have agreed that they weren’t “normal.”
Before, somebody was either “autistic” which meant terribly unreachable, completely in their own shell, or they weren’t. But now, there’s a whole autistic spectrum, and it’s a graded thing, where different people fit in at different places on the spectrum. I would say all my characters are somewhere on the spectrum, but very few would get a diagnosis, because they are very high functioning. Two in particular, a six year old boy named Tommy, and a grown up electronics expert named Eric Band, are really in trouble because of their lack of social skills, and they need help from their more social friends to make it in this world. Which is not to say that they have nothing to contribute. They are all producers and thinkers, and not one of them is a parasite.
Would this help parents of high functioning children on the autistic spectrum? It might, but only by showing, not by telling, as I myself was not aware of this label for this problem at the time of writing the book.
I have actually known several brilliant autistic people. One man was a band conductor, and played in a band himself.
Sweetbearies, did your autistic friends always consider themselves to be autistic? Did you think they were on first meeting? Or was the label and/or the diagnosis something that surprised both them and you?
The friend told me he was, but I would not have known this unless he had told me. However, I think he is a high functioning autistic, as he was quite successful in many areas of his life.
I’ve just created a promotional T-shirt for The Few Who Count.
http://www.zazzle.com/the_few_who_count_t_shirt-235366892559482300
Here is a new review of The Few Who Count:
http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2012/01/31/the-few-who-count-a-book-review/