Pete is just too cynical at the novel's start to notice. The fact of the matter is that instead some of it is bullshit and some of it IS really quite good. It seems to me that Pete's character begins by thinking that all 'good' literature is bullshit being slopped upon the masses. But I really enjoy the arc of the character and how he does become disillusioned. I think it's really easy to write Pete off as an asshole and I think that is what Hely wants. Also, to muddle things more, I think Hely did the best he could to make the quality of the work presented as Brooks's and as Tarslaw's as indistinguishable as possible. I don't think Hely really means it as an insult the way he does with the other writer caricatures.

Preston Brooks is Jim Harrison or Cormac McCarthy, an honest earthy curmudgeon of a writer who has met some commercial success. If you write honestly and without bullshit, whatever is produced, even fiction, is *True*. A writer friend of mine recently said something along the lines of 'I don't believe in non-fiction as a concept.' I don't think of it as meaning Art as Truth, that everything written needs to be factually true or represent some truth.

Facts about preston brooks