Manuscript Submission, The Boomer Bible

 

Cover of U.K. Edition, 1991

Manuscript Submission, The Boomer Bible 

It is time to republish The Boomer Bible. The book is more relevant to the body politic now than it was even when it was first published. Your instructions call for complete manuscript submission. Here that is, in three forms, plus a depth backgrounder:

The Boomer Bible (Full screen view available, May load slowly)

http://TheBoomerBible.com  (Three testaments including LIVE Intercolumn Reference)

The Boomer Bible (physical hard copy; Amazon sells them as they periodically acquire them)

The Boomer Bible Website (The original archived background site, not originated by the author but by students of the book)

The Boomer Bible is officially out of print, no longer offered for sale by the original publisher, who offered the book for nearly 30 years, selling out the the original 88,000-copy print run before withdrawing the title. The rights have therefore reverted to me, the author.

The important point is that The Boomer Bible is not a forgotten orphan. (Do a keyword search for The Boomer Bible and for R. F. Laird.) It has battled the liberal bias of the American publishing industry throughout its long life. Prior to publication it was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “a sprawling, wickedly funny modern rewriting of the Bible that’s meant to sum up a generation.” On the other coast, the San Francisco Chronicle called it “One of the oddest, funniest, darkest, smartest and most innovative books to come along in years." Lewis Burke Frumkes of Writer Magazine said, "I hear Pynchon, Joyce, Wolfe and Cleese. . .an important new satiric voice." But the New York Times stunned the Workman publicist by telling her flat-out, “The Times will never publish a review of The Boomer Bible.” And they didn’t. The reviews as a whole were divided between lavish praise and indifferent scorn. Publishers Weekly yawned. National Review dismissed it at a glance: “A more boring, humorless, and in every way pointless 800 pages has rarely been bound up for sale.“ The Vancouver Sun hilariously missed the boat altogether: “This tasteless parody of everything in the 20th century. . . is not only ridiculously long at 800 pages, it's impressively empty-headed.“

Missed the boat? Empty-headed? Yeah. The book is a layered work of fiction (though generally shelved as nonfiction humor/satire) designed to reveal how the Baby Boom generation converted their legacy of western civilization into a nihilistic default to drugs, sex, rock and roll, and deep intellectual and spiritual  bankruptcy. Why the New York Times was smarter than some of the other papers of record. They knew the book was aimed squarely at them and their presumptions. This was a Bible written by punk musicians turned writers by computer technology (yes, AI described 30 yrs ago). Their collectively produced ‘band’ fiction convinced them that they were empty beings who knew nothing. So they set out to track down the affluent Baby Boomers who partied in their South Street Philly neighborhood and record what the Yuppies remembered from their own educations about history, literature, entertainment, political thinkers, and belief systems. The result was a Bible written by about 1,500 ‘punk writers,’ who crystallized the Baby Boom mentality they had discovered into an imitation Christ figure named Harry, who had a career closely paralleling  that of Jesus in the gospels. His ‘Trinity’ as Boomer messiah was “Desire, Certainty, and Blame.” He founded his own church, the Pontifical Harrier Parish, which was actually a huge and incredibly successful cartel for the distribution and sale of cocaine, called “Consolation.” Harry is captured, tried, imprisoned for life, three days after which he escapes to Rio to live happily ever after.

The scripture recording all of this history consists of two prefaces, a Past Testament, a Present Testament, a Punk Testament, a Book of Brayer, Hymnal, and an Intercolumn Reference that links the sources and uses of Baby Boomer influences into a work that unifies and transcends all the components as a commentary on this generation’s worldview and conduct.

Why will this book be relevant 33 years (life of Christ?) later and beyond? Because the nation that is presently dissolving around our ears was created by the Baby Boomer Generation, which is still in charge, since it includes everyone from 60 to 78 years of age, which turns out to be the prime career years of U.S. politicians holding national office and myriad other institutional leaders. The roots of their beliefs and behaviors are exhaustively documented in TBB. And these scriptures are funny. The book was sold over the transom to Peter Workman because he took it home, put it on his nightstand to read piecemeal at random, and couldn’t stop laughing.

The author was soon blackballed by American publishing firms, including Workman, after he wrote and submitted a satiric work aimed at feminists, their male opponents, and the social sciences generally. Publishers saw only that it was making fun of women and locked their doors.

But The Boomer Bible, as I said above, is no orphan. Copies are still for sale across the Internet at prices ranging up to $35+. It has produced follow-ons, outgrowths, and descendants that are published at Kindle and on the Internet. R. F. Laird is also a prolific blogger of 20 years under the name Instapunk, who has created and attracted readers to four huge blogsites (5,000+ substantive posts) whose texts and innumerable graphics are easily accessible on the Internet. Direct outgrowths of The Boomer Bible include the books Punk City (an indispensable companion to TBB), Why Is There a Boomer Bible?, The Zeezer Bible, The Lounge Conversations, and the large interactive websites BoomerBible.com (archived but accessible), TBB and 9/11, Shuteye Town 1999 (jDoe99.com), and Shuteye Nation(Shuteye2001.com). Books directly compiled from blogs include Gloves Off, Writing Down America, Indictment: An Obama Diary, (P)articles of InstaPunk, The XOFF News Channel, and White Privilege. Separately from these are a book of short stories, a book of poetry, a book about important American movies, and a book of my maternal grandfather’s diaries from the Western Front as a captain of infantry with the U.S. Rainbow Division in WWI.

Needless to say, a successful republication of The Boomer Bible would make all these works publishable/marketable to conservative audiences and useful in publicizing the background of The Boomer Bible and its author.

The first link above will enable you to borrow on an hourly basis the complete Boomer Bible as printed in 1991 by Workman Publishing (It is photographically captured page by page; you can even see the faint bleedthrough of print from pages following…) A new edition can be exactly the same, except for a new cover and a Foreword recounting some of the history and highlights included here.

I believe this is a golden opportunity. I believe The Boomer Bible is and will remain an important book capable of benefiting its readers in meaningful ways. I am a 69 year old American citizen who loves his country and has devoted his life to fighting those who would destroy or transform it into an amoral despotic state. I continue to write, and will do so regardless of anyone’s interest in republishing The Boomer Bible.

Thank you for reading this submission. I look forward to your response.

I’ll give the last word to my accomplished Internet friends Patrick Prentice and David M. McClean… 

Sincerely yours,

Robert F. Laird


**********

Thank you for any help you can provide.

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