Sitting round my pool today is Award
winning author, Gary Santorella talking about his gritty coming-of-age
literary novel, Dyed Souls.
“Superbly written though very disturbing…
Being an avid reader it will take a long time to find a book up to the standard
of Dyed Souls.”
With this little taster, please help yourself
to a glass of bubbly, make yourself comfortable and enjoy meeting my wonderful
guest.
Thanks so much for the opportunity to
contribute to your blog – you’ve been kind beyond words, and The Chill With a
Book Reader’s Award Dyed Souls received means more than you can possibly know.
In
my former life, and for many years, I was a counselor and Social Worker in the
settings described in the book. But I didn’t write Dyed Souls as another tome about the tolls of physical and sexual abuse,
family secrets or our societal failure to address mental health issues. As
novelists, I think it is our job to shed light on deeper truths than the superficial
tropes offered up by local newsreaders.
In
the United States, seven hundred children enter the foster care system each
day. I’ll pause for a moment to let that number sink in. 700. And many of these
kids end up in residential treatment centers (as described in the book),
psychiatric hospitals, or the juvenile justice system. We diagnose, drug, and
incarcerate children in unprecedented numbers. Most pundits, and “experts” think
that increasing expenditures for mental health awareness treatment is the
solution, but I don’t think that this is much different than believing that
removing access to guns solves senseless violence. This only addresses symptoms,
not root causes. Dyed Souls looks at who we are as human animals, and how far
removed we have removed ourselves from our evolutionary roots. We evolved as
societal animals. And societal animals - whether they are wolves, monkeys, or
humans - develop norms and rules that instill in individual members an
obligation via emotional bonds that contribute to something bigger than the
individual – the survival of the entire troop. In return, the odds of survival
for the individual improve. There is a balance between individual and societal
needs. But something has been afoot in American society, which I believe, has
shattered these bonds and destabilized this balance. Our focus has greatly
skewed to the individual – to the exclusion, and often, the detriment of the
broader society. We focus myopically on what makes us happy or benefits us in the
short run (including feeling no guilt about taking our anger out on others),
not on long-term beneficial outcomes toward some greater good that contributes
to the benefit of all. Our emphasis isn’t on acquiring wisdom (the dreams of
Thoreau and Emerson of an American Enlightenment died a long time ago), but on
our own immediate self-gratification. Knowledge is no longer tied to a sense of
civic duty or obligation, but simply a means toward getting a higher paid job. It’s
all about me. A deep cultural narcissism has set in. This is reflected, not
only in our politics, but also in how we are raising our kids. We’re more
interested in being our kids pals and keeping them (and ourselves) entertained,
or blindly approving of everything that they do, rather than instilling a deep sense
of moral obligation in them toward others. (My teacher friends in California
don’t bother sending notes home to parents when kids misbehave anymore, due to
the negative threats and confrontations they have received from parents.) And
this is one of the better case scenarios. The worst case is when we feel no
need to put away our childish self-gratifying desires at all. When we throw
away our sense of duty and obligation, we create throwaway kids. The children
in the book are a full reflection of the latter. Charlie, the central character
tries to make sense of all of this. Rather than accepting what is happening all
around him, he ponders the deeper whys of how he got to Hawthorne, and what he
will need to do to build a meaningful life. But he is hanging by a thread. In
this sense, he is a metaphor for what is happening in the US on a larger scale.
The life he assumes in the end is both a casualty of evolutionary imbalance, and
a hope for creating something better. But it is only when he is able to get
outside of himself that he is able to acquire the sense of purpose that he
seeks.
Thanks so much for the opportunity to contribute to your blog. And
thanks even more for everything you do to help Indie author’s works see the
light of day. I hope, in future, that people will look at Indie books in the
same way they do Indie films – as a place of sustenance, where they can find
thought provoking ideas and commentary that are often ignored by commercially
and fiscally minded mainstream publishers! And, my thanks to the hardworking
staff at Matador for helping Dyed Souls
to become a reality.
Dyed Souls has received 50
ratings (average of 4.42) and 31 reviews on Goodreads.com. Thanks to everyone
who has generously taken the time to do so!
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