{"id":7272,"date":"2020-02-12T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=7272"},"modified":"2020-02-12T11:00:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T11:00:10","slug":"the-bestseller-that-never-existed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/02\/12\/the-bestseller-that-never-existed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bestseller that never existed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first heard the story of Gene Shepherd<\/a><\/span> after receiving a 46th rejection slip for my novel.<\/p>\n

Shepherd was a New York radio presenter who broadcast regularly for twenty-two years. What interested me about him was that he created\u00a0 a best-selling book which did not exist.<\/p>\n

Because he thought disc jockeys were just an extension of the music industry, Shepherd played no music on his show \u2013 except the occasional tune by himself on a kazoo or a nose harp; otherwise he talked non-stop from midnight to 4.30 every morning. He had 50,000 loyal listeners for whom he first invented the term \u2018night persons\u2019: insomniacs, airline pilots, night watchmen, burglars, lovers and those who lived their lives while their fellow New Yorkers slept.<\/p>\n

One night he told his listeners that they had a great advantage over daytime\u00a0 people: they thought for themselves. He argued that daytime people\u2019s lives and tastes were dictated by rigid work schedules and especially by arbitrary consumer guides called lists: the ten best-dressed women; the twenty richest men; the thirty best songs; the fifty best novels.<\/p>\n

\u2018How many of you\u2019, he asked, \u2018ever voted for the Academy Awards? Who actually decides these things? Who makes up these lists?\u2019\u00a0 His concern had begun in a bookshop when the assistant haughtily told him that the book he had requested, a minor classic, did not exist because it was not on her publisher list.<\/p>\n