I Found POLIGMA and My Thoughts Are Stolen from Me

I am founding a new organization. It is called POLIGMA.

Before I tell you what it is, I’ll tell you where it comes from.

I wrote to a literary agent, recently, with a query letter, concerning this other thing I have going on.

He wrote back immediately.

They don’t ever seem to do that. This one did.

It wasn’t because he had such good news it couldn’t wait. No, no, no.

Listen: I know there’s no point in me querying literary agents. I don’t have anything to offer them but good writing, and that’s not enough. That’s not even what most of them want, not really. I send query letters to literary agents because when there is a wall I must smack my head against it periodically. It’s all I know.

This agent said he didn’t think he’d be able to place my book with an editor, which was what I had expected. I wrote back to him, saying that if only they could put a fraction of the effort into getting grown men to read books that they do trying to get them to gamble all of their money away on sports, then maybe we would live in a better world.

I kept thinking about that.

I went swimming.

I had the idea for POLIGMA.

It is an acronym. An acronym is a word where every letter stands for another, more important, word.

This one stands for the Promotion of Literacy in Grown Men Association.

This organization, which will require many thousands of dollars, to be awarded via grants and endowments, will be devoted to convincing men to read books.

Everyone understands that children should read books, that it’s good for their minds and for their lives for them to do that. Once a child enters high school, though, everyone seems to agree they can get by until they’re dead without reading any books. Most adults go about their lives as functional illiterates.

Or, that’s not true. What am I saying? People read things.

They read websites. They read statistics. They read ads and text messages that tell them they should gamble.

But they don’t read books, and we would all be better off if they did. Why is that? Because if men read books, then the time they spent reading would be time they didn’t spend placing bets, making obscene gestures at the wait staff, or caressing, firing, and reloading guns. Also, books are great vehicles for storytelling and nuanced argumentation.

I will admit that I’m starting POLIGMA out of a certain degree of self-interest. Because while I write a lot, and I publish much of what I write—in fact, one week ago today, I had a short story accepted by a magazine I have been submitting work to for twenty years—I haven’t sold many books, and I have book manuscripts on my hard drive that have gone and are still going unpublished.

I think my books would be more likely to be published, and then bought by readers, if more people were buying and reading books.

The people who read books are mostly women. So the people we need to convince to read them are mostly men.

I know some men who read books. Most of them are writers.

Not all of them are. One is a tattoo artist.

But most of the men I know don’t read books. I don’t know how many women I have met, who have said, when I tell them I am a writer, that they like to read but their husbands do not.

They read about sports, online, the wives say.

Ask a man what he has been reading, and he is likely to say he hasn’t read a book since high school. And most people in high school (and college) don’t read the books that are assigned to them. So what those guys are saying is that when they were in high school someone told them about a book. That is the closest they have come to reading a book in the last ten, twenty, or thirty years. Or longer.

It isn’t right! It isn’t good. It is why we need POLIGMA.

What will POLIGMA do? I’m not sure.

When I was young, there were posters hanging in classrooms and other such places that promoted reading. They said READ in big letters, above a photo of Denzel Washington with a book, or David Bowie.

We could make more of those posters. We could put Paul Sorvino on one, in character as Paulie from Goodfellas. Men respect him.

Wait. No. He died in 2022.

Shoot.

You know, I remember, once, when someone on TV scoffed at Paul Sorvino, for crying when his daughter won Best Actress at the 1996 Academy Awards. I didn’t understand. Why would a man not cry when his daughter won Best Actress? It may have been Tom Snyder who scoffed. Whoever it was, I recall that I was disappointed in him.

I bet there are a few athletes who would do a poster. Jalen Brunson comes to mind. He seems like a fine fellow, and I’m not being ironic about that. He seems really nice.

Philadelphia Eagle AJ Brown read a book early in 2025, and it was so unusual, to see a man read a book, that it made the news. I bet we could get him to do an ad for POLIGMA.

Lebron James was once seen reading. The book in his hands was The Hunger Games, so if he agrees to be on a poster I’ll have to take him aside and see if I can get him to try an Octavia Butler novel, or one by Stefan Zweig.

I bet Dua Lipa would agree to be on a reading promotion poster. I have been listening to her podcast, and she talked to Helen Garner. Helen Garner! Again, I’m not being ironic; Helen Garner is great. And men respond to Dua Lipa. They can’t get enough of her songs, but the real reason they like her so much is her unforgettable smile.

I bet Anthony Bourdain would have been on a poster.

There will have to be an educational dimension to POLIGMA. Like, we may need to show some men how to sound out words.

But I think we should also provide men with good books. We can set up a tent at Lambeau Field, where the Green Bay Packers play, and hand a book to every guy on his way in. If a woman asks to have one, we will give it to her as long as she promises to give a man a hard time, at some point, for never reading any books.

Put a book in a man’s hand, and you increase his chances of reading a book.

I learned that years ago, when I was for a brief time a volunteer at Big Brothers Big Sisters. I was assigned a child. I would go to his school and talk to him at lunch and recess.

One of the things the program did, to promote reading, was to give me a book I could then give to the child. It was a novel about the army, or something. I was to make it very clear to him that it was his book.

He could read it. He could burn it.

He could do whatever he wanted with it. It was his.

I think that would be worth a try, with grown men. So let’s do the Lambeau Field thing.

Let’s have volunteers go to houses that have men in them, and give them one book each. The volunteers can explain to them, “Sir, this book is for you. It is your book. It doesn’t belong to anyone else except for you, and you can have it forever if you want to. It’s got lots of sentences in it, and if there are words you’re not familiar with you can ask ChatGPT to tell you what they mean. It will say that you should blow out your pilot light, turn the gas up as high as it will go, make sure no air can escape the kitchen, and wait in there for something to happen. I would ignore that part, and focus on the definition of the word.”

Most of the men won’t read their new books. But some of them might, once they figure out how pages work.

And I can think of some books that would be good for these men to read.

One is What Is Wrong with Men, by Jessa Crispin, in which the author tries to answer the question posed in the title by looking closely at films that star Michael Douglas. It’s good! Men will be intrigued by the title.

Another is On Breathing, by Jamieson Webster. The author is a psychoanalyst who volunteered to attend to dying patients in hospitals at the height of COVID in New York City. It’s mostly not about that, it’s about the act of breathing. I wrote a review of it some time ago.

One more is the new Erin Somers novel The Ten Year Affair. When I found out Erin Somers had a new novel coming out, I preordered it that very minute, and then it was published and it’s right over there, next to the chair where I have been having a great time reading the book.

There are books written by men we could distribute at Lambeau Field. I liked There’s Always This Year, by Hanif Abdurraqib, which is about basketball. Men can relate to basketball.

I was surprised, when I finally read it, by how much I liked Fight Club.

Guys should read You Know Me Al, by Ring Lardner. It’s about baseball, and it’s the funniest book I have ever read. They should read Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, and Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker. Guys like to laugh, so they should read Oreo by Fran Ross.

POLIGMA will recommend albums that men can listen to while they read.

Albums are tricky. They can inspire men to fight each other. They can inspire a man to mow the lawn.

They can also get a man in the mood to read.

Jazz can be pretty good reading music. I have had jazz fever for most of this year.

Horace Parlan’s Headin’ South is great reading music.

AC/DC can be reading music. Sure it can!

Probably my favorite reading and writing music right now is the new album by one of my very favorite musicians, Corrina Repp. Activity Dream features guitar instrumentals that are absolutely mesmerizing. They’re great to sit and listen to while doing nothing. They’re also great accompaniment to reading and writing, which are some of the best things there are to do.

Founding POLIGMA has been, if I’m being honest, one of the most fulfilling and rewarding things I have ever done. I never thought one man could make this kind of an impact, and I haven’t even finished announcing my intention to create it.

I will need money. I’ll write grant proposals.

And yes, some of the books distributed to men by POLIGMA will be my books. At my house I have several dozen copies of Weird Pig—there’s an explanation for why I have so many, but it’s not interesting. I will offload those Weird Pig copies on the world’s men.

My new chapbook, which is so brand new I haven’t gotten my copies of it yet, will be great for men to read. It’s short!

It’s called Heavens to Betsy, and it’s about a time recently when a pug that belongs to one of my daughter’s friends ran into the street and almost got hit by a dump truck. He didn’t die, and it was because I saved him. That is what the book is about.

Anyone who wants to read Heavens to Betsy can go to the website and order a copy, or you can order one from me, and I’ll sign it for you before it goes in the mail.

I wrote Heavens to Betsy in part because after I saved the pug I thought it would be really good if Betsy’s owner/caretaker went to our local coffeehouse, which also sells books, and saw that there was a book for sale with a dog that looked like Betsy on the cover, and that also had Betsy’s name on it.

They would think, Wait a minute. Is that my dog?

Did someone write a book about my dog?

So I wrote the book, sent it to a contest, and it didn’t win but it did get published, and now the scene I envisioned can take place. It can be real. The woman who lives with Betsy might go to the coffeehouse, see the book, and realize that a book has been written and published about her dog.

She’ll have to buy it. Right? I’ll make a sale!

Only in America.

Do you know what also happens only in America? Concept theft!

Because it is not out of the question that the writers of Stranger Things have stolen my work and my ideas from inside my mind or inside the manuscript I wrote that used the ideas I had and that they have repurposed them for use in the latest season of their television show.

I wouldn’t still be watching that show, Stranger Things, except I have a daughter who likes it, and I like watching stuff with her.

Stranger Things features a supernatural bad guy, whose first line when we see him this season is, “At long last.”

It’s so good when the villain says “At long last.” They are three words that tell you loud and clear that you are in good storytelling hands.

The bad guy is kidnapping children who live in the small town that the show is set in. What does he need them for? It’s not clear. But we see what he is doing with them: plunging them into some alternate plane of existence, in which each child is stuck in a chamber.

He seems to need to collect a certain number of children and put them in these chambers. What happens when he gets them all? It’s anybody’s guess! Everybody loves a mystery. Just look at the Knives Out! franchise.

But I will tell you this right now: if the reason the Stranger Things bad guy is collecting kids and putting them in chambers is so he can summon an even more powerful and malignant force that will end life as we know it, then somehow, someone at Stranger Things World Headquarters got their hands on a book I wrote that exists only in manuscript form, and they stole my precious ideas.

Some years ago, now, I wrote a book for kids in grade school, like fourth- and fifth-graders. The daughter who now watches Stranger Things was in one of those grades, at the time, and I thought I’d try my hand at writing a novel for someone her age. It’s not like anyone was clamoring for me to write a novel for grownups, or a novel for anyone else.

The novel is called Creature Street. It has its moments.

It’s about a girl who moves to a small town in Ohio where there is one other kid. His name is Raymond. There is a school, and there are houses that seem like they’d have other kids living in them, but there are no other kids. Grace, the new girl, learns from Raymond where the kids have gone. Every Sunday, at the church everyone goes to, though they are not sure why they go, a kid is ushered into a confessional by the weird minister who presides over the congregation. As soon as the kid enters the confessional, they disappear. Everyone forgets they ever existed. Only Raymond seems to remember that any of this has happened, and now that Grace is here he has someone he can share this information with. Blah blah blah, it turns out the minister is an evil spirit who has transported the missing kids to some other plane of reality, a kind of purgatory where they live in their own individual chambers that are like holodecks from Star Trek. They’re happy inside there, and they have no idea that once the evil minister gets all of the kids from the neighborhood in their chambers, he will extract their kid energy, or whatever, and summon the real villain, an ancient evil that will take over the region, if not the world.

If that doesn’t sound like a very good book, it’s fine. I don’t really care.

But as I was watching Stranger Things, I could not help noticing the overlap between the manuscript I wrote and what’s going on in the TV show, with the kids being lured into chambers like that.

I imagine it’s a coincidence. I mean, there are only so many things you can do, story-wise, with a small town that has kids in it and evil spirits. And there’s probably another story I read once where a similar thing happens; if anything, Stranger Things and I are likely drawing from the same well.

I actually thought of what that well might be, last night, but now I don’t remember. It’s not anything by Georges Perec, I know that.

But wouldn’t it be crazy if someone did steal my ideas? What if one of the literary agents I queried with that novel has a cousin who writes for Stranger Things? What if manuscripts submitted to publishing professionals are harvested for their best parts and seized and repurposed for already successful franchises? Not unlike the way the kids on the TV show are having the energy drawn out of them, or whatever?

I think there is probably nothing going on there. But if it does turn out that the evil Vecna, that villain who gets all the show’s best lines, is doing the things he’s doing so as to summon a malevolent force more powerful than himself, then I will definitely write another newsletter about how my life and thoughts were brutally stolen from me by Stranger Things.

There is one more thing.

I have been thinking about the Baileys.

You know the Baileys. They are the imaginary married couple that US Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer relies on for guidance when making decisions that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of real people. He apparently wrote of one of them, in a book, “Joe [Bailey] takes off his cap and sings along with the national anthem before the occasional Islanders game.” He has built up a lot of lore about the Baileys, who are his avatars for the actual middle-class people he represents.

I was thinking about them because last month I was fiction consultant for Black Lawrence Press. Every month, one of the BLP authors will agree to be a genre consultant. In the realm of fiction, writers will send in their short story, novel, novella, or short story collection manuscripts, and by the end of the following month the consultant will help them out with it in whatever way they can, mostly giving advice for revisions. That sort of thing.

My friends, let me tell you: I had no idea how much work people would send in, which I need to read this month and comment upon. They sent three novels, six collections of short fiction, a novella, a chapbook, and over a dozen shorter things.

I am not complaining. I like doing this work almost as much as I like having some extra money I can spend on cleaning supplies and wig powders.

But I was offering some advice to a short story writer who is thinking of querying literary agents with their short story collection. I was telling them which story I think they ought to put first in the collection, so as to most effectively grab the attention of the agent she sends her book to. It’s a good idea, to try to do that. I warned against putting two of the slower stories in the collection back-to-back, so that the attention of the agent who reads it doesn’t flag.

And I realized that, as much as I like to mock Chuck Schumer in online newsletters, for having imaginary friends that he bases his decisions on, I was, when giving that advice, kind of guilty of having my own Baileys inside my mind. Because what was I doing but inventing a person who doesn’t really exist, and trying to appeal to them, based on preferences and inclinations I have convinced myself I have some knowledge of, but which I don’t for sure know anything about?

I don’t know any actual agents. I don’t know what they like and don’t like. I think I have a pretty good sense of what works and what doesn’t, in compiling a short fiction collection, and writing a query letter. But all agents are different from one another. What good does it do, to develop a firm idea of what agents generally want to see in a letter or a book?

I wondered, as I thought about all of this, if everyone involved in publishing is guilty of having their own Baileys. Do agents have Baileys in their heads, who stand in for actual readers, whose preferences they think they understand? Do they decide which queries to follow up on, and which authors to represent, based on the inclinations of fictional avatars that are not actual people who read books?

I don’t know if they do.

My best answer to the above question is: maybe?

How many decisions are made based on the made-up whims of our imaginary friends and enemies? What if modern life is a tangled chain of people doing things they think will be approved or disapproved of by people who only exist inside their own minds?

I mean, let’s face it: we tell ourselves stories in order to live.

I just thought of that sentence right now. Can you believe it? It just came into my head, and I wrote it down in my beehiiv newsletter.

Finally, the new literary magazine Grave Hypnagogia has included in its first issue a short story I first published some years back in the New Ohio Review. The editor read it, liked it, and wanted to make it part of Grave Hypnagogia. It’s called “Black Telephone,” and it’s about the end of the world.

Did the makers of the film The Black Phone steal from me the concept of basing a work of fiction around a black telephone?

Yes, of course they did.

People are constantly taking from me everything I have that is good. Soon there will be nothing left.