don't go there

Cripes. I should know better than to waste time screening Google searches for book blurbs, but I was asked to put together a a few quotes for “Bearotica 2” backmatter. I end up finding stuff that doesn't really help my state of mind, such as some overly clever shmuck writing in his bitchblog “Letters from a Strip of Dirt” congratulating journalist and “Bears on Bears” contrib Rex Wockner, referring to a strip of exchange taken from the discussion in the book, which Andrew Sullivan included at the end of his Salon.com discussion of bear subculture. Here's the original BoB quote:
“REX WOCKNER: A few intellectual eastern bears may think it's about subverting the dominant paradigm. Here on the West Coast, it's about sex. WAYNE HOFFMAN: It's more about ignoring the dominant paradigm than rejecting it actively, in my humble opinion. REX WOCKNER: It's more about not using words like 'dominant paradigm.'”
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20030802:
And here's the aptly named “Dirt”:
“And I'll always love him [Rex] for telling Ron Suresha (author of sub-cultural cash cow Bears on Bears), that he was, essentially, full of bear shit.”
The whole misguided statement steams me – clearly the boy's head was up his ass when he wrote that.
First, he doesn't realize that the “cash cow” of a book has brought in less than $2000 total, in royalties and profit made on books I personally shlepped around and sold. In fact, if you factor in the eight months solid it took to write the book, and the countless hours promoting the book, it probably total to about, say, minus ten thou. Making a quick buck on the Bear thing was not why I wrote this book, pal.
Next, he takes for granted that as an interviewer that sometimes I advance positions not because I personally believe in their truth, but because I want to advance a point of view that the reader may have or be interested in, or to cause reaction from the interviewee. This is a common interviewing technique calling “playing Devil's advocate” and I use it throughout the book. Perhaps it's not so obvious here – in a highly edited version of a wide-ranging online chat discussion with Rex and two other gay journalists – and I admit that it may be a fault of my editing the text that it seems I actually believed that the Bear thing is/was all about “subverting the dominant paradigm.” But I think this fellow has chosen to understand my view negatively because, perhaps, that it makes him think he's clever. Thus he takes the dialogue out of context to support his windy criticism. Looking at the book as a whole – and I have no reason to believe he read the whole book – that I didn't write it from the position of a bear cheerleader, but that of an investigative journalist. True, my thinking did change about the subculture as I went on, and I learned a lot.
If folks think I'm making out big from the Bear thing, and that I'm riding a gravy train to an early retirement luxury condo in Palm Springs, they're pitifully mistaken. I spent lots of my own money to write “Bears on Bears” and support myself meanwhile. Bearotica has been more a profit-making venture, for sure, but hey – if it helps offset the other costs, puts bread on the table, and gets me laid every so often, please tell me exactly – what's your beef with that? [pun intended]
I don't appreciate being called “full of bear shit” because I take an active interest in bear stuff. I'm one of a very folks who look at and write about what has become a hugely complex and popular subculture. I have my deep criticisms about bears, just as I do about every other aspect of life, but my general outlook is positive.
If anyone doesn't understand how I feel about the matter, or understand the reality of my writing work, then I suppose it's inevitable they will arrive a foolish and negative conclusion.
'Nuff said.