The Issue: Pleasing different audiences when one's ideas are incongruent.
I have written several hundred pages of non fiction essays on a broad variety of topics including, but not limited to, politics, psychology and contemporary sexual mores. The essays vary in size from aphoristic things that are merely half a page to pieces that are 20 pages long. This might sound really pretentious or grandiose, but I think my essays articulate new ideas.
I want to write a query letter enticing an agent to survey my collection of essays and put them into a book.
I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing. My ideas do not contradict one another, but they are incongruent, e.g., being against gun control and opposing Trump’s economic policies do not contradict each other, but the kind of people who are against gun control generally like Trump.
I don’t want to sound unduly sarcastic, but I don’t think people read things to be edified; I think they read to find their biases and prejudices confirmed or affirmed. Since sometimes I might be termed a liberal, and at other times I might be termed a conservative, I fear that everyone will hate me. (Actually, the terms liberal and conservative are too vague and plebian for my viewpoints; I am using these terms as a sort of short-hand.)
My questions:
1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?
2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?
3) What do you think I should do
Finally, although I think I usually write fluidly and gracefully, somehow I get very klutzy when I write to people in the literary community. I feel like the country bumpkins in the Beverley Hillbillies (Do you remember that sit com) eating possum stew among people who have only dined on the French delights of Escoffier. So pardon me if this post is dreadfully awkward.
I have written several hundred pages of non fiction essays on a broad variety of topics including, but not limited to, politics, psychology and contemporary sexual mores. The essays vary in size from aphoristic things that are merely half a page to pieces that are 20 pages long. This might sound really pretentious or grandiose, but I think my essays articulate new ideas.
I want to write a query letter enticing an agent to survey my collection of essays and put them into a book.
I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing. My ideas do not contradict one another, but they are incongruent, e.g., being against gun control and opposing Trump’s economic policies do not contradict each other, but the kind of people who are against gun control generally like Trump.
I don’t want to sound unduly sarcastic, but I don’t think people read things to be edified; I think they read to find their biases and prejudices confirmed or affirmed. Since sometimes I might be termed a liberal, and at other times I might be termed a conservative, I fear that everyone will hate me. (Actually, the terms liberal and conservative are too vague and plebian for my viewpoints; I am using these terms as a sort of short-hand.)
My questions:
1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?
2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?
3) What do you think I should do
Finally, although I think I usually write fluidly and gracefully, somehow I get very klutzy when I write to people in the literary community. I feel like the country bumpkins in the Beverley Hillbillies (Do you remember that sit com) eating possum stew among people who have only dined on the French delights of Escoffier. So pardon me if this post is dreadfully awkward.