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That Time When The Bond Villains Won
thoughts on letting the techbros have their way
In 1983, a mediocre man in his mid-30s who lacked any appreciable writing talent and who didn’t teach — at all — raped me after I won the blind-judged Claremont Colleges writing prize for the second year in a row.
He may not have taught much, but he had a free house and high salary as a named chair of literature at a school where grads say “Harvard, the ‘Pomona of the East.’” His “papers” are in a state archive. He even managed to finagle a book review or “cultural commentary” job with the Los Angeles Times Book Review, a publication where I’d been hired to work as an intern …
Based on my merit as a writer and student.
I never had the means or I guess courage to call him out to my former boss, a man I revered, Art Seidenbaum.
The man who raped me was an asshole, no doubt. But he was a selfless saint compared to the appalling antisocial beliefs, fixed obsessions, and flat-out evil of today’s leading techbros and the cold-blooded eugenicists at the financial institutions that sleep with them in an unholy, unshakeable sexual, fiscal, and cultural alliance.
Another man I cared for and admired, A.J. Budrys, wrote “Orphans is orphans and we understand each other …” as a dedication…
