For years, people have urged me to start a website to promote my
books; but I’m not a self-promoter, and have no interest in
becoming one. So this site is not promotional in nature, and has
no affiliation with any publisher or agency. It has, in fact,
come into existence to announce that I’m leaving the
book-writing profession, and to tell why.
A friend of mine is an American Indian activist.
His job, as he describes it, is to encourage Indians to voice
their problems, as do members of other “minorities,” so those
problems will be given some attention. The major difficulty,
Stony says, is that Native Americans have behind them centuries
of warrior orientation and conditioning – and warriors do not
complain. It seems to me that we authors are warriors, too – we
pretty much have to be – and as such, we do not voice our
problems, except to each other. I believe that we book-writers,
being for the most part instinctive loners as well as emotional
and professional warriors, have a hard time recognizing that the
individual author’s problem is the profession’s problem, is the
industry’s problem, is literature’s problem. But, in reality,
it is.
Before presenting the following essay to back up
that assertion, I’d better present some credentials. The
following descriptions of achievement were compiled by past
publicists and trimmed down a bit by yours truly. (Warriors do
not complain; they also do not brag. In writing the essay, I’m
letting myself get away with the one uncharacteristic act; I’ll
not let myself get away with the other.)
Benjamin Hoff’s
international bestseller The Tao of Pooh was on the
New York Times bestseller list for 49 weeks. Its successor,
The Te of Piglet, was on New York Times for 59
weeks. Both books brought the previously obscure philosophy of
Taoism to the attention of mainstream America. (For a couple of
examples of how mainstream: The Tao of Pooh was
the subject of a question in a TV Guide crossword puzzle;
The Te of Piglet was the subject of a question on the
television show “Jeopardy.”) For years they have been used as
high school and college texts for classes in a wide variety of
subjects including science, business, philosophy, literature,
and world culture. They have been publicly endorsed by notables
such as English pop-philosophy author John Tyerman Williams,
American marketing communication guru Michael Ray, Wall Street
investment counselor and author Bennet Goodspeed, and popular
actress Julia Roberts.
The Singing Creek
Where the Willows Grow, Hoff’s biography of 1920s
bestselling author and innovative naturalist Opal Whiteley, won
an American Book Award. It succeeded in restoring Miss
Whiteley’s initial but long-damaged reputation as a literary
genius, and has attained the status of “cult classic.”
Benjamin Hoff is listed
in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.
