If you're an artist, you might appreciate this (secret) cave. It's dedicated to all of those who have attempted to express themselves artistically, and had the meanies tear them apart. My thinking here is not to subject those artists to more humiliation, but rather the reverse--to share the pain caused by those nasty cowards who live in the mirky shadows, afraid of showing themselves in the light of civility.  I've also included a few by literary critics. So here's the problem: we want our Internet to be free so that we can express ourselves intellectually and artistically, yet we're stuck with criticism that sometimes vaults over the top. And often it's not even a troll making the comment, just an average person who spouts off online without really thinking about it. But yet, there it is, the meanest, most humiliating comment out there forever for all to see. Pretty hard to run away from it. The pain goes deep. This cave is dedicated to those who have the courage and convictions to see their work through it all, bearing full knowledge that the trolls are out there and  are massed for attack. 

 

If you'd like me to include one directed at you, email me and verify it by sending me the link to it. It might make you feel better. 

 

 

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Re: Stephen King--"The Stand"...is a piece of cheap trash unworthy of toilet paper. Do NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES buy this book."

Re: Ann Rice--"Interview with the Vampire"...is a poorly written novel with a silly story as its basis. Only people who think they are vampires (or wish they were) will be be able to look past the fact that Rice has passed off one of those $2.99 romance novels as a weighty piece of fiction by simply making the characters "VAMPIRES!"

Re: Victor Davis Hanson-"The End of Sparta"...Repetitious and bloated beyond belief...the author revels in showing off his erudition, leaving readers in the dark. Very disappointing.

Re: J.K. Rowling-Harry Potter books..."We are a country with dramatically declining standards of literacy, increasingly dragged down to the lowest common denominator by the purveyors of all forms of mindless mass entertainment. The success of the Potter books is just another dispiriting proof of the Murdoch-led dumbing down of all our lives, or what Hensher called ‘the infantilisation of adult culture."

Re: Jonathan Franzen-"The Discomfort Zone"...An odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass: petulant, pompous, obsessive, selfish and overwhelmingly self-absorbed."

Re: G.G. Grace-"Sophronikos, Son of Sokrates"...I had the impression the author was simply tired of writing and gave up trying to come up with an adequate ending or perhaps was being pushed to publish.