So in other words, a cross between The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. (And maybe some Graham Greene for good measure.)
I'll confess to having read neither, but I am a slow reader and most of the books I read are from the first half of the 20th century.
...This is absolutely none of my business, but you sound awfully pessimistic. (Even more so in the Introduction Thread.) Are you OK? Self-doubt and gloom are inevitable hazards on the creative path, but I'd hate to see them ganging up to keep you from even pulling out of the driveway. Yes, I am an American, a nation where optimism is pumped into the water supply like fluoride -- but I've also wrestled with depression and I know how it can distort a person's worldview.
Thanks for worrying (really); I do have some moderate self-loathing issues, but they've been there long enough that I've learn to deal with them; they probably color my worldview (but then optimism too can color a worldview), but they don't get in the way of my writing —even if I thought my writing to be entirely worthless, I'll keep on writing, simply because I see no reason to stop. Really the main way in which my pessimism affects my life is that it makes me say dark things which worry people more than they ough to.
Though my offhand remark about the future success of my book is more realism than pessimism; what I'm writing is not in the current literary trends at all, and I am not involved in any way in the literary and cultural life that could build me a network of journalistic acquaintances; the chances that my book will meet anything more than polite indifference are objectively very low; not to say they are non-existent, but if it's a hit, it will be a surprise hit no one will have seen coming (not even myself).
