[Rupture, Verge, and Precipice]

You say there will be no readers in the future, that there are hardly any readers now. You count your measly 15,000—but you have always underestimated everything.
You say language will lose its charms, its ability to charm, its power to mesmerize.
You say the world turns, spins away, or that we turn from it. You're pretty desolate.
You mutter a number of the usual things: You say, ".... are rust," "...are void"'... are torn."
You think you know what a book is, what reading is, what constitutes a literary experience. In fact you've been happy all these years to legislate the literary experience. All too happy to write the rules.
You think you know what the writer does, what the reader does. You're pretty smug about it.
You think you know what the reader wants: a good old-fashioned story.
You think you know what a woman wants: a good old-fashioned—
You find me obnoxious, uppity. You try to dismiss me as hysterical or reactionary or out of touch because I won't enter that cozy little pact with you anymore. Happy little subservient typing "my" novel, the one you've been dictating all these years.
You rely on me to be dependent on you for favors, publication, $$$$$$$$, canonization.
You are afraid. Too smug in your middle ground with your middlebrow. Everything threatens you.
You say music was better then: the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac. You're boring me.
You say hypertext will kill print fiction. You pit one against the other in the most cynical and transparent ways in hopes we'll tear each other to bits
while you watch. You like to watch. Hold us all in your gaze.
Just as you try to pit writing against theory, prose against poetry, film against video, etc., as you try to hold on to your little piece of the disappearing world.
But I, for one, am on to you. Your taste for blood, your love of competition, your need to feel endangered, beleaguered, superior. Your need to reiterate, to reassert your power, your privilege, because it erodes.
Let's face it, you're panicked.