Writing For the Masses

I recently finished Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism and decided I wanted to write a review of it for Associated Content.  I figured this might be the place to get the biggest audience of people who would never seek this book out on their own.  There's one problem, though: How do you write a review for the masses about a subject that most people have either no knowledge of or are totally misinformed about?

It is a lot harder than it sounds.

A vast majority of people get their views on anarchism strictly from the local news, which has never covered it correctly.  Even those in unions, which exist thanks to the past fights of the anarchists, have little knowledge of their group's anarchist roots.  Combine that with a nearly 400 page academic book and you have a situation where you almost can't write for a general audience.

I want the review to make the book sound appealing to those who would never consider reading it.  People interested in anarchist politics would have either already read it, or they would have it on their radar.  That isn't the audience I want.  I want the people whose knowledge of books is what they see in Borders.  So, in order to do that, I have the write the review as simple as possible (no detailed analysis of issues such as the role of gender in anarchist movements in Japan in the 1930s), while at the same time making sure the book's complexity is highlighted as to not mislead anyone.  I have to write the review to ensure that anyone who reads it and would be remotely interested in the subject matter will want to keep the book on their radar.

It's not often where you see books this specialized reviewed in venues that are designed to appeal to general audiences.  Usually they are given page space in journals and on specialized web sites.  That's because of the difficulty in writing such a review for general audiences.  It is almost an exercise in failure, and nobody wants to pay for that.  Luckily, Associated Content pays by page views, so it is up to the author to make his or her work appealing enough to get paid.

I don't know if I'll succeed.  I have a rough draft done, and I'm liking it so far.  It is simple enough not to bore, and it gives readers a good idea if they'll want to pick up the book or not.  Of course, my goal is to get people to read it, but I'm not hopeful enough to think someone is going to pick this up as a light summer read.  (That's why the Twilight series exists.)  But if I can get just one person to give it a shot, then I've done my job.

Her First Book

My daughter wasn't even a year old when I started reading to her. The first book? Alexander Berkman's ABC of Anarchism, a classic from 1929 reprinted by AK Press and obtained through its excellent Friends of AK Press program.

My parents would have been appalled.

My daughter is five now, and I still read to her on a regular basis, though she's nowhere near as interested in reading as I was at her age. She's slowly getting it on her own, though, which I think will improve her interest level. I've got around nine hundred books in my library and let her know when she can read she can read of them she can reach. (With that one exception.)

That first book, though, was important to me. I know none of it stuck, but I wanted a seed to be planted. I wanted to, when she would ask me years later, be able to tell her that her first book was an important one, and why it was important. It's essential reading for anarchists and the politically minded in general. I don't exactly expect her to have the same political values as mine, but I know she won't learn the proper things about anarchism in school, so I wanted to get first dibs on that.

Perhaps in the future, when she's been reading for few years on her own, she'll delve into the first book I read her. Maybe she'll have questions. Maybe she'll dismiss it as leftist garbage. If I can get her to question it, though, then I have done my job. You see, I don't think a parent's goal is to get their kid to think like them. It's to have the child question the parent as to his or her beliefs. That should be what every parent strives for. Anything less is unacceptable ... and in some cases dangerous.

Let's hope this first book set the gears in motion for her to be on the right track. At the very least it's better than Limbaugh.