RATE THIS EBOOK!

CAN ONE MERGE LITERATURE AND POLITICS?

The Tower is a novel I wrote over the course of about five weeks in 2012, while I was living in Philadelphia. I wrote it as a prototype political novel– with pop elements– wanting to express my thoughts about the recent Occupy protests in Philly and elsewhere, but also drawing upon my experiences with an activist writers group in the previous decade. The chief subject of the book, however, was the city itself (which I was to shortly move from), presented in an unnamed, thinly-disguised version.

I posted the novel as an ebook at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and then more-or-less forgot about it. Forgot about, because of the uncertain nature of my life– living out of a duffel bag in low-rent apartments– and because I quickly moved on to other literary experiments, including with various attempts at fast-paced multi-dimensional fiction. (The first of those being an ebook novella titled Assassination of X.)

Forgot about, that is, until I noticed a notably negative “One Star” review of The Tower at Amazon, posted in 2019. From one of the critics of that activist writers group I mentioned?

Now, The Tower is assuredly not a Five-Star novel (few outside Tolstoy’s War and Peace are), but neither is it a One-Star book. Based on the clarity of writing and the clash of ideas alone, I’d think it’d qualify at least for Two Stars from any fair-minded reader! (More about that review and the person or persons potentially behind it in a later post.)

I’ve decided to correct some typos in the book, added one sentence, and have dropped the price to the lowest that Amazon allows– $0.99 U.S.– and reissued it. Why? Because I’ve realized this 50,000-word prototype is at least as relevant today, at the end of 2023, as it was in 2012. The world if anything is even more chaotic; the gap between rich and poor today even more extreme.

CAN I then get a few honest reviews of The Tower, anonymous or not? I’ve always enjoyed debate and the clash of ideas. I also wish to know the work’s actual flaws– I assume they’re many– so I can avoid such missteps in future experiments. There are many things I’d do differently with the novel myself. So: fire away! Let’s get those Two-or-Three Star reviews going.

For those interested, click on the link: here.

Thanks!

-Karl Wenclas