Authors Know Best

I have written a good book, an important book, an amusing book, a transformative book, a book that can save humanity from certain self-destruction but nobody knows about it. That’s because I’m a nobody. “Nobodies” can’t get noticed in our culture unless they are fashion models, rock stars, demagogues, or celebrities in sophomoric films or sitcoms. What a dilemma! So I have no choice, I have to get aggressive—become as tasteless as the culture demands—seize the only opportunity afforded me by my barely sentient fellow travelers. Am I doing this out of compassion? Nahhhhh! I’m doing it because it’s fun.

I am not operating under the delusion that anyone will buy or even want to read my book, it’s too weird. I’m more than a little weird myself. I have self-published a book with a highly esoteric content that seeks to be noticed among the other 800,000 self-published titles and 200,000 commercially viable titles. One million titles annually. That’s a lot, right?  The average sales of a book like mine? One hundred as in 100, and that’s the average, and not even I am arrogant enough to think that my book is average.

So you might think that what I am about to do is a little self-promotional. Well duhhhh! Who knows my book better than I do? My own assessment as to the value and significance of what I have written has to be far superior to that of a professional literary critic. Besides, my book’s content is virtually unknown in the Western hemisphere and there are no critics who could understand it let alone review it intelligently. So I am going to help them out. I’m serious! Now is not the time for false modesty.

Even with his formidable intellect and reputation, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), had difficulty selling his masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra. …Nietzsche had a bitter time getting it into print; the first part was delayed because the publisher’s presses were busy with an order for 500,000 hymn-books, and then by a stream of anti-Semitic pamphlets; and the publisher refused to print the last part at all, as quite worthless from the point of view of shekels; so that the author had to pay for its publication himself. Forty copies of the book were sold; seven were given away; one acknowledged; no one praised it. Never was a man so much alone.   Tell me about it.

Given the importance of the ever-present opportunity for a mystic to influence human consciousness in the direction of choosing awareness over self-destruction and suffering, now is not the time for self-deprecation. Self-promotion of both brand and books is acceptable and even to be encouraged. No less a personage than Walt Whitman was not shy in hawking his lyrical and mystical poetry. Walt Whitman notoriously wrote his own anonymous reviews, which would not be out of place today on Amazon. “An American bard at last!” he raved in 1855. “Large, proud, affectionate, eating, drinking and breeding, his costume manly and free, his face sunburnt and bearded.”   

I have written my own reviews on Amazon, albeit not anonymously, however, I have not compared myself to Shakespeare, not yet at least, but I believe in the content of Simple Reality. It is too important for the future of humanity to not encourage the choice of truth over illusion, response over reaction. Now is not the time to demur, to pretend modesty when we are in a crisis, when our very existence is threatened by our ignorance and our delusional fears. “A mystic strides across the human stage, confident and vigorous, no half-steppin’ in the joy-filled dance of life.” This is how Walt Whitman might have expressed his identity and this is the goal for all of us whether we are shrinking violets or “hairy-chested” type-A’s.  

For those of you engaged in the profession of reviewing books—feel free to use any of the following: P.S. Even if you don’t review books feel free to use any of the following. I won’t sue you for failing to make attribution, I promise.

Haven’t heard of this title? Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival.  You will. You will.

• A scathing indictment of an unconscious humanity. God, this is good stuff!
• Who is this guy? Where is he from? Henry writes with an objectivity of a visitor from another planet.
• This book has exploded on the human intellectual scene!
• The most controversial book since Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
• A kaleidoscope of feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and values that point to a world transformed.
• The work of an iconoclast par excellence. Henry’s hammer has left few of societies venerated statues standing or unscathed.
• At last! For those of us who are fed up by being wacked by the ego—a friend to help us fight back.
• This author has entered the marketplace of ideas and, like an explosive-laden terrorist, he detonates his book—not causing pain to humanity—but revealing the causes of human suffering.
• Henry has created a book that merges intuition with intellectual understanding, revealing a process whereby consciousness itself can be created.
• This book could have been entitled A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Transformation.
• This is the first in a trilogy ambitiously claiming to aid the reader in the creation of consciousness itself.
• This book synthesizes the wisdom of some of humanity’s most profound thinkers, East and West, ancient and modern.
• Henry wrote the book that he wanted to read. I am glad he did because I too wanted to read this book, but unlike him, I didn’t know it.
• In his first book, the Mile High Sage takes us into the spiritual stratosphere giving us a spiritual perspective of Reality from “on high.”  (Not while high, you naughty doubters.)
• A telling indictment of an American society careening headlong along the highway of self-annihilation.
• Henry tells it like it is and points us in the direction of how it could be.
• The first prosaic Western philosophical synthesis that is truly comprehensive, pragmatic and profound.
• The Gospel heard again in the myriad and melodic voices of science, philosophy, cosmology, religion and the world beyond.
• Order right away on Amazon. You don’t want to fail being in the know when the subject of this remarkable book comes up at the water cooler—and it will!
• The pandemic is coming and most of you are not inoculated. Get your shot today. A backlog of orders is sure to ensue, after all Amazon is not equipped to handle the “perfect storm” of orders for this once-in-a-century shocker!

 That oughta’ do it!