Elites are once again invoking Reagan, dropping their G's and saying things in a folksy sort of way that's meant to capture the hearts of people. And it's all fraud; it's all stagecraft. And people are falling for a great deal of elite behavior in this country packaged as if it's proletariat behavior.

When I walk around my neighborhood, the grocery store, or the farmers market, I don't see Democrats or Republicans, Progressives or Conservatives. I see my brothers and sisters - living, breathing human beings with diverse and complicated stories, views, and desires that can't be packaged neatly in a box.

Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.

In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn't stop everybody (including me) from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed.

When in a movie like 'Housefull' you have to create comedy out of falling on a glass table or jumping from huge heights, it's all action, but packaged as comedy. Here you don't just have to perform a heavy-duty action sequence, but you have to make it look funny and that is really difficult. But it's fun... and I really enjoy it.

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