Book Critic Brouhaha . . . ha ha ha ha

(The following is a revised version of a comment I posted on Baby Got Books concerning a controversy that has erupted concerning the loss of book critic jobs at major newspapers in the United States. The Baby Got Books discussion of this issue has continued, and I'd like to thank the folks who participate there for helping me to refine and expand my thoughts.)

It’s been interesting to me to see the controversy concerning the disappearance and shrinkage of book pages from newspapers as promoted by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) play itself out. When this matter first surfaced on Baby Got Books, I dutifully went to the linked website and signed the petition. And I would do so again today, if need be.

However, at that time, I never even began to consider the idea that lit blogs would be used in a blatant scare tactic to try to rescue the job of a single book editor at a single paper. Posts on the NBCC blog, such as this one and this one floored me with their poor reasoning, naivete, and flat out bigotry. Somehow, the literary crowd has gotten the idea into their heads that lit blogs and not greedy communications industry monopolies are putting book reviewers on the unemployment line and have taken to attacking them indiscriminately. Sheila Kohler, for one, implies that no one who blogs could possibly have any knowledge of literature, a position which, since it is not based in any sort of objective research, is merely prejudice. Although I suppose it is only fair that we expect her to be Kohleric.

The thing, at the end of the day, is this. Newspapers as a physical entity that people leave on the floors of America’s buses and subways is quickly turning into an artifact. It is a casualty of the Internet. The AJC should save Teresa Weaver’s job and do away with the paper. Commit to online editions. All the same content, just online. This is where you place your ads and what you sell subscriptions to. Costs come down because you don’t have to buy newsprint. (Which will cause its own economic fallout, but no solution is perfect.)

The other thing is this. Blogging is actually the future for professional reviewers. I pay The New York Times money each month for the privilege of pawing through their website unfettered, and I think they are ahead of the curve on this stuff. From what I’ve seen there, I think that traditional columns will morph in time into blogs, as will reviews. Because here’s the dirty little secret about book reviews: They are not pronouncements from on high, but are actually one-sided conversations between readers. Having formal book review blogs, with the opportunity for moderated comment, will only enhance that conversation.

Which brings me to the third thing. Book reviewing is not serious literary criticism. I work in a university English Department and the scholars I work with are the serious literary critics. Book reviewing is typically a journalistic endeavor on a par with stringing stories about fires. Pretty much anybody can write one and submit it and have a halfway decent chance of getting it published, depending on the newspaper. It’s one of the most basic ways of building credits as a writer and shouldn’t be confused with dealings in divine revelation.

Now, I will admit to participating on Baby Got Books, which is a lit blog. And I will also admit that there have been reviews I have have written but not posted because they seemed to me to be too much like professional reviews. That does not, however, imply that the reviews posted on Baby Got Books or any of the other lit blogs are inferior to their newspaper brethren, only that they are less formal than professional reviews and less likely to be presented as the utterances of some kind of oracle.

They also tend to be kinder than professional reviews, and I really can't imagine seeing something as needlessly hurtful as Dorothy Parker's "This is not a book to set aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force" appearing on the average lit blog. That, however, makes neither Mrs. Parker more correct in her judgement of that book than a lit blogger might be concerning Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

All-in-all, this controversy is just another struggle of the past to try to avoid the future. The people complaining about lit blogs are afraid. They are glimpsing the future and wonder at their places in it. Will they still be able to indulge in the usual round of logrolling and backscratching and free books that they’ve enjoyed for so long? Will they still be able to eke out the money for the gas bill or a nickel bag by dashing off a couple of ill-considered reviews? Will they still be able to continue to pass themselves off as experts in a field that defies expertise?

In my view, lit blogs like Baby Got Books–as distinct from reviews on Amazon, which quite often don’t make sense–are a healthy and potentially significant part of the conversation among readers that calls itself book reviewing. They are also great marketing tools for forward-thinking publishers. And they’re not going to go away, unlike the book review section that starts on page D-3. That, my friends, is history.

Oh, yes, and one final thought: If book reviews were as powerful as the folks at the NBCC seem to think, the collected works of Dan Brown would be out-of-print instead of the passing reviews of Teresa Weaver.

Stop the Presses: Another Drayton Update

I finished revising Chapter 11 a few minutes ago. That means printing out Chapter 12 so that I can start demolition work immediately.

That's one more good chapter to send to an agent, as soon as I can convince one to take a look at it.

No, No! Look Over There!

This is getting a bit circular, but I'd like to direct my few readers to my most recent post on my former political blog, Shooting Off My Fat Trap, even though it will direct you right back here. That post just plain amuses me.

It Can Happen Here

As I was walking from the parking garage to my office today (and it's a bit of a hike) I started thinking about the Bush Administration and the way that people will sometimes refer to them as being a bunch of Nazis. Now, of course, they are not Nazis. They're not organized enough. The thing that is so horrifying about the Nazis, the thing that makes Hitler's achievement in murder more spectacular than Stalin's or Pol Pot's is the simple, banal, bureaucratic efficiency of the thing. They laid tracks and established railroads, railroads with schedules and stops, and built camps, each designed to a specific deadly purpose, with a factory-like efficiency. They killed people the way that Detroit used to make cars, with the same lack of passion and the same plodding skill.

The Bushies, though, are not efficient. They are efficiency's antidote. Of course, in a couple of prominent areas--curtailing the right vote and lining the pockets of the already wealthy--they've got their chops down. However, in most other areas of both governance and misgovernance, they are a bumbling pack of incompetents.

So, they aren't Nazis, certainly not in the Hitler sense, and their being fascists is debatable, although their hunger to merge government, military, and corporate interests into one nationalistic lump is an indicator of, at least, sympathy with that point-of-view. However, I think the attribute that best defines them is their taste for totalitarianism.

These are people--mostly men, along with a few women in housecoats--who believe that they should rule without opposition or dissent. The argument they put forth in 2000, that counting all the votes available to be counted wasn't "expedient," is an example of their disdain for democracy, as are their systematic attempts in both 2000 and 2004 to disenfranchise, in one way or another, people who were unlikely to vote for them, and as is the current scandal enveloping the Department of Justice. It's all about obtaining single-party rule in perpetuity, the goal of every totalitarian.

These are folks who mourn the loss of the Soviet Union and hope to rebuild it here in the United States. Gorbachev is more in touch with the democratic spirit than Cheney is. Perhaps the time has come for a bit of glasnost here in the U.S.

Write Right: A Drayton Story

In the movies, writers are usually shown pounding out words by the baleful, rarely pausing and never stopping. Sentences pour forth in a cascade, as a cataract on a river, and that first effort is exactly what goes to press.

In truth, writers work very differently. Take Drayton, for example. I have a draft of the whole novel now, but am not even nearly finished. Instead, I am taking each chapter as it stands and rewriting it from the top. Right now, I am at work on Chapter 11, and it has changed almost completely. I've hardly relied on the previous version, but have it printed out as a guide to use as I go along. Most of the chapter so far has gone well. I have probably about 1800 words so far and am very pleased.

However, I spent the last week reworking three paragraphs and slowly adding a fourth. I go back, every day, and make changes and then change the changes. I think I'm almost finished, but only time will tell.

And this how writers really work. You write and then you revise and rewrite. You change and you change and you change, and then you get an agent who wants changes and an editor who wants even more. And you work and you revise and polish and never actually get it to the place where you really want it to be.

But that's the process.

Get Me Vegas

Well, Wolfie finally stepped down from the presidency of the World Bank--without taking any responsibility for his actions, of course. He can now go on the neoconservative speaking circuit and tell the faithful how aggrieved he is. That will be followed by his ghost-written book, Everybody at the World Bank Is Mean. And then--Oh, boy!--the chance for another Brit Hume "I Just Want to Help You Like Goebbels Helped Hitler" interview. Good times.

The White House has promised to nominate a successor tout de suite. I suspect that, in the spirit of conciliation, they will nominate either John Bolton or Donald Rumsfeld. Unless, of course, they nominate Brit Hume! Let's keep an eye on the morning line.

What Do They Call That Disease Again?

Last weekend, I had some bright thought about what I would write for my Thursday long essay. I made no note of it and told no one else, which, since no one else would really care, seemed prudent. As the week wore on, I thought about this subject matter from time-to-time, and each time took a moment out to congratulate myself on the brilliance of the subject and on my ability to remember it throughout the week.

This morning, senility won out. The brilliant notion for a post is gone, and it has left no forwarding address.

This, of course, left me in a bit of a bind this morning, especially since I had no idea that I had forgotten my topic until I actually opened up the window to start writing. So, what I did was this: I went for a walk.

Quite often, when I'm walking, all sorts of bright ideas occur to me. Ideas for stories, pieces of dialog, retorts I should have come up with 15 years ago, all of them pop into my fevered brain like kernels of corn popping in a microwave. On rare occasions, I actually remember them, but most of the time they pass through my brain like dandelion fronds floating on a gentle summer breeze. On even rarer occasions, I remember something that I had temporarily forgotten. Unfortunately, today was not one of those occasions.

I needed a new plan, a new brilliant idea that would take the place of the one departed and give me some topic to drone on about at some small length. So, I decided to write about memory and the way it slowly goes away as the years take their toll.

Now, I don't know for sure that this is what happens to everybody. Other people's memories may remain just as strong or poor as always as the years pass; I claim no special knowledge of that. I just have my own tawdry experiences to draw on, and fewer and fewer of them as the minutes tick by.

I used to have a quite formidable memory and could store away long passages from books, movies, and plays with ease. I used to study by reading the chapter in question the night before the test and then simply hocking it all up the next morning. I remembered incidents in my life down to the last, most excruciating detail and could report them at nauseating length. Sports scores, hitting and pitching statistics, and a detailed history of almost every sporting event played within my lifetime came to me like the card at a magician's fingertips.

Now I can barely remember how old my son is on any given day or why I went into the room I find myself standing in. Of course, it's just a function of having more to remember. Every day brings a new avalanche of information, all of which has to be sorted, categorized, and forgotten. It's at work, at home, and on the Internet. It's in the magazines and on the TV. Information, like fluoridation, is everywhere, and the older you get, the more of it you have to deal with. Did I pay them? Did I write that? What's for dinner? Where do we keep my socks? What's this for? Do we really need that? Who the hell am I?

If life is like a river, it has generally been at flood stage for some time now. It tires a person out and steals their focus. It's enough to make a person want to go live in the woods. As long as I could bring my computer, cell phone, TiVo, and satellite radio. Because when you come right down to it, I'm not really one of those--oh, you know, those people. The ones who do those things. The Whatchmacallits.

The Wolfowitz at the Door

Were Paul Wolfowitz a man of any character, he would have long ago resigned as president of the World Bank. Unfortunately, he has proved to be a gutless little weasel who confuses mere tenacity with courage and conviction. He apparently has gotten to the groveling stage in this little drama and has made the assertion that getting rid of him would be "detrimental" to the well being of the bank. The truth is that he got caught using his power to benefit one individual at the expense of the bank. Highhanded and smug, he thought he could recreate the World Bank in an image pleasing to him and his sponsors while avoiding any accountability for his actions.

Men--true men--do not act in these ways. If they slip, though, and this sort of mess comes to light, they do the manly and honorable thing: They resign.

On an unrelated note, hell is just a little more crowded today thanks to the passing of world-renowned hypocrite, Jerry Falwell. If there really is a literal Hell, then I am confident that he is there, dressed in a Tinky Winky costume and serving every whim of those he worked so hard to have hated and reviled.

A Couple of Things

First, I'm tired of trying to maintain three active blogs, so I'm just going to merge the whole bunch into this one. From now on, all my political and social rants, updates about my novel, Michael Drayton, Detective Guy, and the Thursday long essay will appear under this banner.

Second, I'd like to post a bit of a political rant. Based on the inability of the Bush Administration to disavow favored incompetents Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales and the sheer stubborn, pointless resilience of both of those gentlemen, it has occurred to me that we need some way of showing these folks what miserable failures they are. Because I think that is the problem: They don't get it. Since they seem to believe that every failure they encounter (and let's face it, everything these guys touch turns to dust) is someone else's fault and that the solution is to try even more of that failed approach for longer with more money behind it, they are clearly delusional. The poor guys need help. And the American people are just the ones to give it to them.

I suggest that we pelt them with over-ripe tomatoes at every opportunity. I think that bombarding them in this way whenever they appear in public just might get across the idea that it's time to retire. And just think of the boost the tomato-growing community will receive! Why, we'd need a couple of truckloads just for Dick Cheney alone.

Unfortunately, I have to suggest just such things because the cowards in Congress won't start impeaching and removing people. Start with Gonzales and move up the list. These people need to be taught that they report to us and not to each other. Although they may work at the pleasure of the President, they work at the service of the People.

Unlike a lot of the anti-Bush crowd (and I've been among them since before the beginning), I don't think that our current ruling junta is constituted of people who mean ill. I don't. And I think that is the truly tragic thing: These idiots think that every idea that pops into their feeble little brains is a gift from God and not just a notion that might be either right or wrong. They also have an instinct for totalitarianism. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have more in common, intellectually, with Joe Stalin than they do with, say, James Madison.

And when you're faced with people of this ilk, there's only one thing you can do: Grab a tomato.

The Punitive Nation

It has struck me over the years how the default solution proposed to almost any problem in the United States these days involves punishment of some sort. Deal with drug use? Impose draconian punishments. Late with the credit card payment? Impose a fee. Late for work? Write it up for the file. School not performing well? Cut their funds.

The idea is a foolish one. The assumption is that the prescribed penalty will affect behavior, but, of course, it doesn't. And the penalties, instead of making the situation better, make it worse. People's lives are ruined for smoking a reefer. Someone who was already in a financial hole is now a little deeper. A worker who was already poorly motivated has another gripe to add to the list. Students at an underfunded school have an even smaller chance of succeeding.

I'm not necessarily sure what the answers are to all these problems, but I know that punishing people doesn't help. The problem is that, once you've announced a punishment, you can't not implement it, no matter how destructive the imposition of it would be.

People don't like to hear this, but there is no programmatic approach to solving problems. It's all ad hoc. Whatever your ideology, you're wrong. Life is too complicated and random to be tamed by some system. And you don't have to take my word for it. Just pick a random stretch from history, and you will see in glorious black-and-white the failures of every ideology and system. The only way to deal with with the problems posed by trying to live in a society is to take each issue on its own, look at it, take it apart, and look for solutions that are inherent in the problem itself.

But, for God's sake, don't just resort to kneejerk punishments.

Welcome to Babel

A few months ago, I had a brief flirtation with a blog that concerned itself with the problems faced by copyeditors. The posts concerned matters of style, grammar, and usage, and the examples used were generally taken from the host’s place of work, a prominent American newspaper. Despite having been away from actively editing copy for some time, I pitched right in, contributing defenses of The Elements of Style concerning the rules advising use of the active voice over the passive and the misperception that Strunk and White proposed that one never use the word “that.” (Professor Strunk’s prejudice was against the phrase “the fact that,” which he claimed “should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs.”)

Over time, I became a regular participant and would pop off on every subject, oftentimes in complete contradiction to my actual practice. On one occasion in particular, I came out strongly and vociferously against starting a sentence with “and.” As I worked on my novel later that day, a certain conjunction kept working its way to the front of the line in sentence after sentence. Of course, I never revealed my duplicity on the blog; I considered it a family matter and nobody else’s damned business.

My participation ceased after the blog, which had been home to only current or former copyeditors, started to be visited by linguists. Now, I have nothing against the study of linguistics. I’m sure it has its uses, and it certainly keeps those who are interested in it busy. However, whenever the concern at hand is copyediting, linguistics and the people who study it are as useful as a paint roller is to a miniaturist.

Since linguistics is the study of human speech, no approach can be considered right or wrong, just as no frog can be considered right or wrong to a biologist. On the other hand, copyediting is the art of establishing right from wrong in the use of language, specifically the use of written language.

And this is where the conflicts arose.

“Ain’t” was suddenly defended as being no worse than “am not” or “amn’t” if the writer was feeling Irish. Just like the kid in the wheelchair down the street, “ain’t” wasn’t right or wrong or better or worse. It was just different. And to suggest otherwise was to be narrow-minded and bigoted and just an all-around nogoodnik.

My take on the subject was somewhat different. I stood with those who thought that “ain’t” had little place in formal writing, except when quoting someone or in fiction. Even then, there could be exceptions and no one advocated an Amish-like shunning or stoning over an occasional “ain’t.” After all, sometimes there just ain’t no word like it.

This skirmish was merely a precursor to the real battle though, which was prompted by a discussion concerning the phrase, “could care less.”

A group of us came out against it since the original phrase, “couldn’t care less,” seemed to more accurately reflect the intentions of the speaker. Others defended "could care less" as being an idiomatic expression. And that's fine with me. I disagree with that point-of-view, but it is a legitimate one and one I respect.

The problem for me came up when someone--a linguist--posted a comment that responded to one of mine. This comment was filled with jargon and buzz words and academic nonsense and ultimately argued that "could care less" is correct simply because people say that. I responded with a long, angry comment in which I attacked every point young Poindexter had made, and, not enjoying getting that worked up over a phrase that should be avoided whenever possible in both forms, left that blog and have never been back.

It is important that the idea of correctness in the use of the English language be preserved. Without having some standard, some lingua franca that all agree to, our ability to communicate becomes circumscribed and the American English community will slowly devolve into a loose coalition of small linguistic villages, shells of oarsmen all rowing in their own rhythm and direction.

As I pointed out in my farewell comment on that blog, I can make myself known in any group of English-speakers in the world, even when I might have trouble understanding those I am speaking to. The reason is that I speak Standard American English. And I will continue to prefer "couldn't care less" to "could care less" while trying to avoid both. Although, in the case of the proper use of language, I really could care less.

A Southern Yankee

Red Skelton made a movie in 1948 called A Southern Yankee, and it was based very loosely on Buster Keaton’s wonderful movie, The General. Keaton actually worked on A Southern Yankee as a gag man and contributed its most famous scene: Skelton traverses a battlefield during the Civil War and soldiers on both sides cease firing to let him pass. It turns out that he is dressed in blue on one side and the flag he is carrying shows the Stars and Stripes, while, on the other side, his uniform is grey and the flag shows the Stars and Bars. And this is how I feel: I am a southern Yankee.

I was born in Rhode Island in southern New England and raised partly there and partly in San Francisco and did not make my way south until I was in my early 20s in the spring of 1983. My father had died six months earlier, and a friend, an Atlantan whose family had moved north a few years before, had relocated to DeKalb County and was determined to lure me southward. With a burst of what I would come to know as typical Atlanta boosterism, she convinced me that the city was on the verge of blossoming into a theatrical Mecca, an ultra-humid Broadway that was just waiting for up-and-comers like me. And so I moved south, never ventured closer to the theatrical community than the fringes, and learned to regard the billboard on Peachtree that read, “Move Over Big Apple, Here Comes the Big Peach,” with a little more than a grain of salt.

In the intervening 24 years, I have lived north of the Mason-Dixon line for a mere three. Of the remaining 21, I have spent 17 of them in Atlanta and the remaining four in Northern Virginia in the suburbs of Washington, DC. And if you don’t think Washington is a southern town, think again. An attorney I used to know once told me that if you wanted to know what a Reconstruction government was like, you should try registering a car in the District.

Over time, I have learned that Southerners tend to distrust Northern candor, which strikes them as course and brusque. Northerners distrust Southern manners, interpreting them as shallow, insincere, and duplicitous. The truth, as always, falls somewhere in the great gaping middle, and the perceptions come more from a kind of culture shock than from a true assessment of what the denizens of either region are like. There are, and always have been, Northerners with manners and blunt Southerners.

Racism, America’s original sin, permeates both areas that provided contestants for the Civil War. In the North, however, it tends to be overt and angry and an issue that presents itself in occasional violent outbursts. In the South, on the other hand, it exists more often as an understanding and as an ongoing facet of the community.

I remember once, after a black coworker had flirted with me a bit, having my white supervisor come up to me to say, “That’s fun and all, but you understand that separate is separate.” I was nonplussed since there was nothing in my northern and western upbringing to prepare me for that concept. And I knew that had I confronted my boss with a charge of racism that she would have been flabbergasted. She no more thought of her attitude as racist than I thought of mine as revolutionary.
And this is the part of the Southern experience that keeps me at a distance, the part that knew Jim Crow, the part that can look at another human as something not quite human, not quite equal. Northern bigotry is based in fear; Southern bigotry is based in a perverse kind of faith and tradition. And there lies the difference.

Two Things

Thursday's weekly essay is below. Don't miss it! Unless you have to, of course. You know. I understand.

I know I said once-a-week posts, but this is special. And short. And oh so informative.

First, since I am generally only posting once each week, it might behoove anyone who wishes to keep up with it to subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog, a link for which is located at the bottom of the main page. It's really simple, and that way you'll always know when I post something new.

Second, I have started posting my thoughts on the Virginia Tech massacre and the phenomenon of rampage killings on another of my blogs, Shooting Off My Fat Trap. I'm trying to take a longer view of these tragic events than I've seen elsewhere. I'll just say here that there are no easy answers.

That blog is also available for RSS feed.

M F'in A in Creative Writing

Nathan Bransford is a literary agent who has a blog, and last week he wrote a post that asked his readers for their thoughts on the usefulness of academic programs in creative writing. As part of his post, he said,

[C]reative writing programs tend to stress short fiction writing even as magazines such as The Atlantic are dropping short stories, and short fiction collections have a reputation as being difficult to sell.

I thought this was a very interesting insight and made a connection that I had not made before: Academic writing programs killed the short story.

There was a time when the short story was America's favorite fictive form. All the major magazines, as well as the minor ones and many newspapers, published short stories. Major authors, well-known as novelists, practiced the art, and some were known for almost nothing else. Having read stories by Sherwood Anderson, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others, I can understand why. These stories cut through me and expose me to life as it is lived.

I don't think I've made my way all the way through a story that's been written in the last 20 years. At a minimum.

Short stories no longer speak to us or speak to our lives. They tend to be self-consciously solemn or ironic and generally just plain boring. They read like term papers written to impress the professor by the clever students, the ones who linger at the podium after the lecture to stroke the professor's pretensions and avoid his wrath.

This is the problem that comes when we stop looking at writing as a calling and turn it instead into a profession.

There are always going to be people who write because they have a knack for it, and it beats working for a living. It used to be that these people became journalists and the authors of various types of hackwork. But they never became leading novelists or poets or playwrights.

This is not to say that all the leading novelists in days gone by were geniuses; the great majority were nothing of the sort. They were, however, generally people who had been called to do their pitiful best in the telling of tales. In fact, the strengths that they did display--sentimentality, a gift for improbable action--were not the strengths of the technicians. The poor saps had no idea how terrible they were and went to their graves thinking of themselves as great artists. And if you don't believe me, I've got two words and a hyphen for you: Bulwer-Lytton.

The thing about the technicians is that they are capable with words. They can arrange them and stack them and even pull off the occasional piece of prestidigitation. They just have no talent for telling us about life as it is lived. They have ideas instead of empathy and theories in place of feelings. They are not artists, but workers, drones who collect enough nectar for a dew drop of honey, but no more.

Turning the vocation of writer into the profession of author makes it easy for the second-raters to rise to the top. The secrets of rising in any profession are always the same. It means playing the game, shaking the right hands, and riding the prevailing wind in whatever direction it takes you.

People who have been called are good at none of these things typically. They are always pursuing their own vision and speaking in their own voices, and nothing scares a technician quicker than an original voice. The profession takes on the trappings of the fraternal organization and the acquisition of an MFA can be understood as the equivalent of an initiation and a secret handshake.

The problem becomes that even the making of prose becomes part of the code. When this happens, the art of literature is doomed.

Blogging Off the Top of My Head

My first experience with blogging came when I encountered Phil Austin's Blog of the Unknown late in 2002, I think, certainly no later than early 2003. Blogging was still a new thing then, and Phil had taken a small squad of Firesign Theatre addicts down a rabbit hole called "Experiments in Writing." It was in many ways a fortunate accident that brought me to The Blog of the Unknown, and I learned a great deal from the writings of my cohorts there. It was, however, like The Journey to the East, doomed from the start. We Wayfarers eventually found our gorge of Morbio Inferiore, and The Blog was no longer what it was. It is doubtful that it ever will be again.

What I did not know at the time was that The Blog of the Unknown was an atypical blog. Most blogs were either political or confessional, with the most outrageous or sauciest ones being the most popular. When I stumbled into creating this blog in September of 2004, I had no idea that blogging was something of a fad and was a fad that had just about peeked. I saw it as a way of promoting my then budding radio show; it was a major component of my marketing plan, a plan that crashed on takeoff, or perhaps just as it was leaving the gate. But that's life.

In these last four or so years in the blogosphere, I have given thought on occasion to the phenomenon itself, to the acts of blogging and commenting, to how blogs work and how we approach them and how they affect us. I have thought about what the meaning might be in a literary activity that comprises mostly blather.

Has there ever been another means of communication that was open to so many and said so little? It is a medium that rewards brevity and courseness. Long posts (such as this one) written with subtlety and wit (it could happen) are anathema to the great mass of blog readers. They are in search of people with similar prejudices or similar problems or a peek into a fantasy version of someone else's sex life. The best posts do not make you scroll down or think a new thought or open yourself to another in compassion. Those things take time, and blogging tends to reward speed rather than depth.

As posts pile up in reverse chronological order, the New takes precedence over the Past, which becomes an artifact safely stored in an archive. Blogging has its roots in journalism, especially in news writing. The latest post is a slender newspaper that gets its day at the top of the pile before being banished to the shadows below.

Does blogging have a great effect on society? I doubt it. It's more of a symptom than a disease, more a reflection of society than its shaper. We live in a society that is devoted to shallowness and emotion and that mistakes chasing the New for living in the Now. Why should we expect any more than that from a blog?

Blogs are now, of course, on the wane. What happened to the Hoola-Hoop can happen here, although I doubt that blogs are in any danger of disappearing altogether, at least not soon. As newspapers move increasingly away from print, official blogs will replace traditional columns and the professional blogger will replace the amateur. And never again will there be a Blog of the Unknown.

Announcements

Well, I tried using the blog for my morning pages, but that didn't quite work out. The problem is that morning pages and journals are things meant to be done in private--you need a place where you can fail bravely and write poorly. Someone asked George Gershwin how many songs he wrote in a week, and he replied, "I write 14 songs a day. That way, I can get the bad ones out of my system."

That's the theory behind a journal.

And so, I have purchased an old fashioned notebook that I'm going to try to fill with an old fashioned pen. (It really is old fashioned; I use a cartridge-type fountain pen I've had for I-don't-know-how-long.) It's the only way to go.

That leaves me with a bit of a blog problem. What to do with this blog? Today, I decided on a course of action.

A couple of things occurred to me. First, I realized that the problem with doing morning pages on a blog is the public nature of it. The little button on the screen I write these posts on says, "PUBLISH," and that is correct. Blogging is a form of self-publishing.

Second, I realized that I don't want to publish inferior product. Any writing of mine that ends up in public needs to be polished and the best that I can make it. My best posts here have parts that make me outright wince when I reread them and this comes from the posts having been written straight off the top of my head. This is not my best work nor at all what I am capable of.

After tossing these ideas around the old brainbox for a while, I came to the conclusion that the best use to which I could put this blog is turn it into a modern version of the periodicals that were popular in the 18th Century. I mean, what was good enough for Addison and Steele and Samuel Johnson ought to be good enough for the likes of me.

In the interest of full disclosure, the appearance of this idea was influenced by a flyer for a talk given at the university I currently work for by the person who blogs under the pseudonym BitchPhD. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and give her a link on the sidebar in recompense. I'm just that kind of guy.

Anyway. The end product of all this mulling is that, from now on, I plan to publish this blog once each week. Every Thursday I will publish an essay on whatever topic I deem worth writing about. This coming Thursday, for example, I hope to write something about my experiences as a blogger.

Topical stuff--the kind of writing that comes when I just have to blow off some steam because we're ruled by a gaggle of morons--will still get posted to Shooting Off My Fat Trap. Updates on the progress in the marketing and revision of my novel will appear at Michael Drayton, Detective Guy.

And all of my journaling will happen in private and on paper. See you on Thursday.

The Dream Is Over--Or Is It?

Michael Drayton, Detective Guy did not make the cut in the contest over at Gather.com. Twenty semi-finalists were chosen yesterday, leaving Drayton, I'm sure, at position 21 or maybe 27. So close and yet so far. I got the impression that all the semi-finalists are genre-friendly potboilers, something which Drayton certainly is not, and since the imprint that all this is directed toward, Touchstone/Fireside, specializes in genre-friendly potboilers, that is all well and good.

Be of good cheer, though. All is not lost. I have already sent a query to an agent. At the very least, this contest gave me a solid deadline to shoot for, and I made it with a reasonable draft left behind for my troubles. The current version isn't perfect--the last half needs a thorough rewrite--but the story is in place with enough good writing along the way to show that I can write somewhat. And whether this first agent bites or whether it takes 100 queries to find somebody, I'll keep on. It's really that good.

This and That

I hadn't written anything today, and there is the idea that there is value in just putting something down every day as an exercise, and I don't know that I have anything specific to say, so I thought I'd just ramble on here for a while with small bits of things as they occur to me.

William Faulkner once wrote a sentence that was 1300 words long. I just came across that yesterday.

As I've looked back on the last several chapters of Drayton, I've seen that value of rewriting from the top, starting fresh and reconsidering every word. That's what we used to do in the old days of typewriters, and it was a good system for a writer. I'd really like to go back to using my manual typewriters, but it's not convenient right now. But once I'm a world famous novelist, I'll be able to do whatever the hell I want. You'll see!

There's been another shooting this afternoon, this one in the Omni Hotel in the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta. The discussion about guns in this country tends to revolve around laws and restrictions, but rarely around the meaning of guns to our society. Since there is far more gun-related violence in the United States than in any other developed nation, there has to be a difference in the way that guns are perceived. And while gun control proponents will argue that differences in laws make for different levels of violence, I'm not sure that that is the whole story.

It seems to me that, culturally, Americans believe two things about guns: 1)Possessing a weapon means having power and 2)using a weapon is a good way of solving problems.

It has become a truism that our basic American myth is not that of the founding or the Revolution, but the story of the expansion into the West. Our shared cultural myth depends on a couple of notions if it is to function in any way. The first is that anyone who goes unarmed is either a fool or a coward and often both. The second is that The Bad Guys need to be killed, preferably with a pistol, and preferably in a showdown. Compromise and discussion are cowardly and useless. Violence is the only means to right wrongs.

The problem with this worldview is that it is wrong. Rationality, compromise, discussion, empathy, and compassion solve problems. Time-and-time again, they solve problems while creating fewer new problems than violence does. Being reasonable, of course, doesn't come with the childish rush of excitement that holding a firearm does, and it often calls for far greater courage than can be found at the butt-end of a gun, but it has its compensations.

Anyway, that's just a longwinded way of saying that I think that if we want to see the violence and senseless deaths diminished, we should start by examining our collective feelings towards guns even before we should change the laws.

The Road to Crap

I've just finished reading a story in today's New York Times about a new blending of technology with theater that, in the words of George Spigott in the original Bedazzled, "fills me with inertia."

A couple of dingbats, working independently of one another, have come up with a way to have a projected image of an actor appear onstage with the actor himself. Now, that alone is an old conjurer's trick and no great shakes. It's the addition of software that can control the video image so that the image can react to the live person. Sounds neat, doesn't it? Here's why it isn't:

This kind of invasion of theater by technology never results in a better product. It merely results in a slicker visual experience that is usually used to hide the paucity of artistic value in the project as a whole. And then the next project is chosen because it will support the gimmickry and the whole of theater is given over to empty spectacle and a sackful of magic tricks.

How do I know this? I this because that is how it has always been. In my own lifetime, I've seen the entire musical form be debased by the amazing sets and pyrotechnics of Les Miserables and the collected works of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Don't believe me? Ask anyone who has gone to see Les Miz or Phantom what they liked about it best, and I'll give you a dollar if the first thing that comes out of their mouths isn't a tribute to the sets.

The problem that modern American theater has is that serious theater is pretentious and everything else is empty show. They try to compete with movies by being just as lame and laden with special effects, and both lose audience to the medium that's least likely to indulge in special effects: TV.

The Morning Page

I had thought of something to write about earlier today, but now it's gone. That's the limitation of blogging as a kind of journal: You need to be near a computer in order to do it.

Back in the olden days, we had things we called pens and other things we called notebooks, and we used to use the pens to write in the notebooks. Now, I understand how quaint and all that sounds, but it's true. And it worked, too! Nope. You never had to reboot your notebook, although you would occasionally have to replace the pen or at least get a refill for it. It was a good system, though, and it worked just fine. Oh sure, you couldn't spend time researching Britney's latest haircut or play a game of something other than tic-tac-toe or hangman, but we muddled through somehow.

Still, despite my complaints about all these newfangled ways, I find myself as trapped in them as anyone else. I, personally, have two computers and a third at work. I carry a cell phone, own a website, and keep a goddamn blog. I'm stuck, stuck in a world not of my desiring, but of my undoing. It seems to me that all this technology that alleges to draw us closer really pushes us further apart and cages us in our separate high-tech boxes.

The problem with the virtual world is its virtualness, and it only offers virtual experiences. We get lost in personas and handles and screen names, and try in vain to connect with illusions and stand-ins for authentic selves. The virtual world is a lonely one, a desolate road, not a superhighway. O! for the return of the lowly pen!

Good Advice

Last night, my dear wife made an observation about blogging in regard to the love/hate relationship a fellow blogger has with the medium that struck me as sound advice for any writer who also blogs. There are probably loads of people out there who pursue blogging from this angle, but I have not. Shame on me.

The great insight was this: A blog is a great way to do what adherents of the book Writing Down the Bones call the daily pages. As my wife pointed out, this used to be known as keeping a journal.

One of the hardest things about writing is doing it every day. There are always excuses to be made: I'm so busy. I need to give time to my family. I want to see the chick with the wooden leg on Dancing with the Stars. Ironically, one of the best ways to keep on track with any creative writing project is to do other kinds of writing as well. Truman Capote liked to start his day with correspondence. Many other writers are known for their journals--some of them better know for their journals than anything else.

Blogging is, of course, the modern form of journaling. To use it consciously as such is only sensible. And that is what I am going to try to do.

I wouldn't expect the contents of this blog to change much, since I've never been much prone to confession either online or in the various journals I've kept over the years. With any luck, the kind of nonsense that I've gotten by with for several years now will just appear more frequently.

In further news, Chapter One of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy has been closed down for viewing after its two-week run. We'll find out next Tuesday whether Chapter Two will go up or not. If it does, that will give me something to journal about next week. If not, I'll just begin the search for an agent.

Why It Matters

Chuck Klosterman has written an interesting and provocative essay that originally ran in the March 26th issue of ESPN: The Magazine and is now available online. In it, he makes a number of points concerning the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in the NFL, but most of the attention that I've seen paid to it concerns his assertion that

It can be strongly argued that the most important date in the history of rock music was Aug. 28, 1964. This was the day Bob Dylan met the Beatles in New York City's Hotel Delmonico and got them high.

Obviously, a lot of people might want to disagree with this assertion, but the artistic evidence is hard to ignore. The introduction of marijuana altered the trajectory of the Beatles' songwriting, reconstructed their consciousness and prompted them to make the most influential rock albums of all time. After the summer of 1964, the Beatles started taking serious drugs, and those drugs altered their musical performance. Though it may not have been their overt intent, the Beatles took performance-enhancing drugs. And this is germane to sports for one reason: Absolutely no one holds it against them. No one views "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" as "less authentic" albums, despite the fact that they would not (and probably could not) have been made by people who weren't on drugs.

He uses this line of argument as a basis for saying that using performance enhancing drugs may be at least understandable, if not permissible, in the NFL. He draws no hard-and-fast conclusions, except to say that this is something that fans will have to make judgments about in the future. Fair enough. It's an interesting article and good reading, as well.

However, I'd like to take issue with a couple of points that Mr. Klosterman makes.

First of all, I think that it's rather facile to refer to the drugs taken by the Beatles as "performance-enhancing." There is no evidence that many or any of their songs were written while the composer or composers were stoned and the whole idea of someone being able to write a coherent song while tripping on acid is absurd. They didn't use the drugs to enhance performance, but to alter perception. And the truth of the matter is that they in no way smoked a bone or dropped a tab in order to make themselves better musicians. They did it because they thought it was fun and, in John's case, it made it easier to handle a success he felt inside that he both did and didn't deserve.

Second, he is comparing apples and oranges. Art is not sport and sport is not art. Art is not a competition. Artists create in order to create, not in order to win. There is no winning or losing, just success or failure, and that is experienced on a very personal level in regard to each specific work.

Performance-enhancing drugs should not be allowed in the NFL for the same reason that we do not allow corked bats in baseball or let boxers clutch rolls of nickels: It's cheating. The assumption behind every sporting event is that everyone involved has an equal chance in terms of equipment and playing surface. The difference comes from superior skill and a certain amount of luck. When steroids and human growth hormone enter a sport, the so-called level playing field becomes a field of ridges and rises. As George Orwell put it, all are equal, but some are more equal than others.

This undercuts the fundamental assumptions behind athletics. Sure, it's an entertainment, and it's mostly about money, and the players, while highly paid, are chewed up and spit out with extraordinary disregard. However, part of what makes it entertaining is the notion that some players are more adept than others, that some teams are better coached and are more cohesive units. Performance-enhancing drugs undercut all of that. They reduce any sport to a competition between pharmacies. Is this player better than that one or does he just have a better connection?

Two more small points about the Beatles. First, we can't know what kind of records they would have made without pot and LSD and heroin. Given the extraordinary growth their work had already showed before meeting Dylan, we can assume that they would have made great records anyway, because that's what they did. Second, their meeting with Dylan was not their introduction into the world of illicit drugs. They took prellies by the handful in Hamburg, uppers given to them by a bouncer named Horst so that they could play eight- and twelve-hour sets. So, if Mr. Klosterman wants to give credit where credit is due, he should skip the fashionable Mr. Dylan and go straight to Horst Fascher.

Timing Is Everything

I read the following in a story about how Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband is suing Bill O'Reilly because O'Reilly called him a "fraud." (And, yes, I could say that it takes one to know one, but I don't think Mr. O'Reilly is a fraud. I think he really is a belligerent, know-nothing blowhard. At least in my opinion. And that's the difference between slander and mere insults: While Mr. O'Reilly presented his opinion as fact, I present mine purely as my opinion, however factual it may turn out to be.)

But on to the quote from the story, which refers to Prince von Anhalt's claim to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's infant child:

"Von Anhalt came forward with his belief that he may have been responsible for impregnating Smith the day after her death on Feb.
8[.]"

Now, is it just me or does this smack of necrophilia? Or was it some kind of Frankenstein deal? To be fair, he has the name for that sort of activity. Was he father to the child in the same manner that Dr. Frankenstein was father to the monster and Dr. Pretorius father to the tiny people in the glass jars (see The Bride of Frankenstein)? To quote Dr. Harry "Happy" Cox in The Firesign Theatre's "Everything You Know Is Wrong," "Could be! Could be!"

Today's Nag

Read and maybe even vote on Chapter One of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. It's a lot easier than Finnegan's Wake, better than the back of a cereal box, and a lot more fun than the headlines on Yahoo! or Google.

My Vast Empire

Even though it seems like the fad of blogging has peaked, there are those of us who soldier on, typically in obscurity, getting hits mostly from people googling "I hate symantec" or "beyond fringe peter cook bench." I don't know whether the typical blogger maintains one site or more, but I doubt that many attempt what I've attempted: I have four blogs. (I used to have five, but I deleted one. That blog name now sells jackets. I wonder if I could sue them?) Juggling that many blogs can be cumbersome, and I have thought about deleting or abandoning some of them, but have decided to keep them and use each according to its own purpose.

The following is a summary of how I intend to use each blog:

This, of course, is the central blog. Originally created to promote the radio show I developed, I use it now as a kind of all-purpose emporium of my thoughts and notions. This will continue, with the emphasis being put on social issues (such as my recent post on arts competitions) rather than politics. Flights of whimsy, passing thoughts, and random reflections will predominate.

The next blog I maintain is the one devoted to the progress of my novel, Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. Since the novel is now complete, I will probably use it to track my progress in marketing it. Of course, right now, the most important aspect of it is that it get people to VOTE FOR MY NOVEL in the First Chapters Competition at Gather.com. Join the expectant crowd gathering now and read the first chapter of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy and maybe vote!

The third blog I maintain is now called Shooting Off My Fat Trap, and it features my thoughts on the current political scene. Since I have no illusions about my lack of influence, this is a place where I just spout off and have a good time making fun of our leaders. Try it. It may just be the least successful political blog in the entire blogosphere.

The fourth blog is perhaps my favorite, but it is, unfortunately, dormant. It is called The Conning Tower after the column of the same name by Franklin Pierce Adams. It is a compendium of short, usually light, verse, jokes, anecdotes, and other miscellany. In order to work right, though, it needs outside contributions and only one guy was sending me stuff regularly. That turned out to be a lot of material for me to churn out while holding down a job and living life as I find it. And so, it has gone into a gentle coma, awaiting its opportunity to awaken.

The Novel Competition

You can now read the first chapter of my novel. It will be up for 14 days or until March 27th.

The Competitive Arts

I have been reading lately on Baby Got Books about something called The Tournament of Books at a site called The Morning News. What they do is to set up pairs of books in brackets in imitation of the NCAA basketball format and have judges (I'm not sure what actually qualifies someone as being a judge) decide which book is better. The winner then moves up to the next bracket and the loser is consigned to the dustbin of history.

While on its face this might seem like a rather fun and innocuous pastime, the trouble is that the perpetrators of it forget one thing: Art is not a competition.

Now, of course, they merely represent an entire society that forgets that. We have the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Tonys, the Bills, the Freds, and the Nancys, none of which really amounts to a pile of warm spit. There are also, the Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, and many other specifically for books. Now, don't get me wrong, if somebody out there wanted to give me a prize, I would gladly show up and give them thanks for loading me up with this tripe. That's just being polite.

Sports, politics, and war are related elements of the human character. The point of each is to win and pursuit of that victory must be total, dogged, and complete. This is why participants in each are always at risk of cheating--whether by taking performance enhancing drugs or tampering with the mechanisms of voting or using biological or chemical weapons or blowing up innocents with car bombs--since winning is everything, it is easy enough to rationalize winning in unethical ways.

However, there is no cheating in art. The point is not to win, but rather to explain, point out, and question. The artist tries to tell the truth or whatever portion of the truth they think they have a grasp on in as palatable a way as they can figure out how to.

Sports and art exist in different worlds. Sports are based in the objective. Either you get more points or the other guy does. Or fewer, depending on the sport. Even that event in the Olympics that mystifies so many men, that part of the gymnastics programs in which young ladies dance around while holding ribbon-bedecked sticks, is a competition with winners and losers who have been judged by an allegedly unbiased panel of experts. Despite the inherent subjectivity of being rated, there are still specific things that must be done and no amount of stylistic flourishes will compensate for falling off the mat or bumping into a spectator.

Art lives in the subjective. While a consensus concerning the value of a given work can be arrived at over time (usually a period of generations), it will always strike different auditors differently. My experience of "Starry Night" or "Eine Kliene Nachtmusik" or "Hamlet" or "A Tale of Two Cities" will always be different from yours, sometimes radically so. What mystifies one may delight another and no one can really explain why.

While the purveyors of the various arts awards and competitions may have the best of intentions, putting works of art in competition with one another debases them all. It takes the sublime and tries to make it concrete and attempts to reduce the ineffable to the pedestrian. The only exceptions are the Nobel Prize and any Lifetime Achievement awards, both of which reward a body of work for the simple act of being.

You Should Have Gotten It in Writing, Love

I just read a story on E! Online (courtesy of my My Yahoo! homepage--and yes, the Internet makes you type some damned strange things sometimes) concerning the divorce settlement being negotiated between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills:

Under the terms of the couple's alleged agreement, Mills will reportedly drop those demands and will in turn receive $48 in cash, plus a Georgian mansion worth $8 million.

Heather really should've held out for an even $50. Paul's got it. Just look inside his right shoe.

The Contest

I've just posted an item about entering the First Chapters contest on my Michael Drayton, Detective Guy blog

Let's Call It Adieu

I just finished the first complete draft of "Michael Drayton, Detective Guy." It stands at 42,000 words over 18 chapters, and I will submit it to the First Chapters contest tomorrow. I'll post the details about the contest and how people can vote for their favorites. (I believe it involves signing up on Gather.com, but that's free.)

In the meantime, I'm just stunned. After that passes, I'm going to go to work on a non-Drayton short story in the hopes that I can forestall the plunge into depression that usually follows completion of such a task. I'm going to try, as best I can, to not think about Drayton for at least a month. Maybe by then I'll be ready to attack the rewrites.

That's the thing about this writing business: It never stops.

Bed Goes Up, Bed Goes Down

Again with The Simpsons.

There's an episode--a clip show, actually--in which the plot is driven by it being April Fool's Day. Homer plays a series of practical jokes on Bart, and Bart responds by shaking up a beer in a paint mixer and getting Homer to flip the top. In the next shot, we see the roof of the house being blown off by a kind of mushroom cloud. Homer ends up in the hospital, possibly paralyzed for life. Homer entertains himself in the hospital by electronically raising and lowering the head of the bed while saying, "Bed goes up. Bed goes down." (Later someone else imagines him on a cloud in heaven doing the same thing: "Cloud goes up. Cloud goes down.")

I only bring this up because it reminds me of the limited approaches to policy--and the question of how to extricate ourselves from the morass in Iraq in particular--that our political leaders take. Every question devolves to a toggle-switch kind of answer. Stay or go. Fund or withhold. Bed goes up or bed goes down.

It seems to me that there are other ways of looking at this situation than just in binary pairs. I'm on record with thoughts for how to deal with Iraq that, whatever their plusses or minuses, are not just toggle-switch thinking. Good policy cannot be made just by a shortsighted, kneejerk opposition to whatever the other guys advocate. In order to make good policy, our policymakers need to get beyond the pairs of opposites and stick a toe into the great ocean of complex options that might be available.

Or Maybe Some Greenstamps

Well, now that Scooter Libby has been convicted by a jury of his peers, I suspect that it is about time for the President to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom or some comparable honor. O! Scooter! O! Scooter! If you knew they were using you as the fall guy and a patsy, why didn't you cut a plea deal and rat them out? They have no loyalty toward you. People, to them, are merely objects, meant to be used.

Poor sap.

The Homestretch

I did manage to finish the next-to-last chapter yesterday and carved out the beginning of the last chapter as well.

At the rate I've been going, I'll be done by the end of the week.

It's a Novel, But Not a Doo

Back in an earlier life, I worked for a relatively small company, under 100 employees, and we had staff meetings for our entire department of 60 or so people every Wednesday. One Wednesday, one of the supervisors, a black guy named Charles, who was one of the nicest people I've ever met, led the meeting his only flub came right at the end when, instead of bidding us adieu, he said, "Let's call it a doo." Now, I called this a flub, but I actually thought and still think that it is inspired. Even though it's been almost 25 years since I heard it, I will still from time-to-time call it a doo, but only when appropriate to the circumstances.

Well, a few minutes ago, I crossed the 40,000-word threshold on Drayton, which means that even the most persnickety editor will have to consider it a full novel and not a novella. However, that being said, I am not done. I should have the chapter I am working on now done by the end of the day, leaving only the final chapter to write. I'm nearly there. But it's not a doo.

This 'n' That

First, I'm happy to report that the Drayton novel is now up over 39,000 words. I'm about a chapter-and-a-half from the end. And while this chapter is coming out with surprising fluidity, the final one might be a jumble and merely a cascade of revelations. I have 13 days to finish it.

Second, I would like to note that, in fairness, the Bush Administration has suddenly and without warning showed some small amount of sense in its dealings with other countries. From what I've read, Secretary of State Rice has removed the neocon rubber mask she's been wearing for the last six years and has revealed herself as a pragmatist. I'm sure she's making Brent Scowcroft very proud.

The good news is that it only took six years of continuous bungling for Dick Cheney's cabal of fantasists to be discredited. The President himself has been notably quiet lately, which also has to be counted as a good thing.

At any rate, diplomacy has come to replace sabre-rattling as the preferred mode of expression, and I am delighted. If these negotiations with North Korea and Iran and Syria turn out well, and I am hopeful, we might be able to regard this as a true turning point in the progress of our nation.

Give peace a chance. It works.

Drayton Update

I've crossed the 38,000 word barrier just about a minute ago. The story's moving along toward its conclusion, but I can't guarantee that it will be done in time for the contest. Although it just might. For all I know, it'll be done tomorrow. At least in terms of this draft. There will be many hours of rewrites before it is somewhat to the point at which I can in good conscience offend the public with it. But it should be contest-good soon enough.

the shame of the whole thing is that I don't have the time to worry over each sentence and make sure the whole thing sounds right and feels right. The first two-thirds have received that level of attention and seem to show it. This last third may not reach those dizzying heights before March 15th. With any luck, somebody will pay me to fix that part later on.

At any rate, a boy can dream.

Some Things You Just Can't Let Pass

According to the Vice President, "We know that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength, they are invited by the perception of weakness." Like many things Mr. Cheney has said, I find that this statement is not only not something we know, it actually runs contrary to observable reality. Of course, reality is a location that is by its nature disclosed, so he has had little reason to visit it.

Let's look at some facts instead of just accepting broad platitudes, shall we?

Terrorists attacked us on September 11, 2001. Did they do so because they considered us weak? Since we were, at the time, the self-declared "world's only superpower," would it not seem likely that we were considered very powerful indeed? Is it not this very power--military, economic, and social--that scares the bejeebers out of those who would attack us? If weakness were the problem, wouldn't we see daily bombings in Monaco or Lichtenstein?

No. As usual, Mr. Cheney has the problem by the wrong end. He can't imagine a problem that can't be solved with the murder of a few more people. There are other points of view, and I find some of them compelling.

For example, I have recently had the privilege of visiting the King Center here in Atlanta and have had the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with that man's vision. He said many wonderful things, and here's one that speaks to a philosophy that Mr. Cheney will never understand. What Dr. King said was this:

* The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
o "Strength to Love" (1963)

This is the thing that our current leaders refuse to understand. The answer to terrorism is not war, but love. Social justice will do more to destroy al Qaeda than any number of soldiers and weapons will and will be a much more effective means of spreading democracy, if that really is their true goal. A nation as wealthy and powerful as ours has to develop the courage to try to see other nations not as possible subjects or clients, but as partners. We will do more to improve our security by raising others up than by trying to dominate or control.

Better economic conditions in Mexico and Central America would do much to end illegal immigration. Better economic conditions throughout the Islamic world would do much to undermine al Qaeda and other extremists. It is interesting to note that in England, where Muslims are economically disadvantaged and feel themselves oppressed, home-grown terrorists have sprouted to commit and plan terrible acts. Meanwhile, in the United States, where Muslims have prospered and feel themselves to be afforded open opportunities, home-grown born-Muslim terrorists are unknown.

In the course of the so-called American Century, the United States had only one, true foreign policy victory, and that was the Marshall Plan. By building our enemies up, we made them our friends. Prosperity is the greatest weapon we have.

In a Land Far, Far Away

I just finished reading an article in The New Times that described a PowerPoint presentation that was made by military planners in 2002 concerning the allegedly-as-of-then possible invasion of Iraq. Once the planning reached an actual occupation and post-Saddam period, the slides were stuffed full of puppies and balloons. The biggest job left for our armed forces was going to be sweeping up the rose petals that had been strewn in their path on the way in.

And this is the problem with the current administration: They always plan assuming that things will work exactly as they want them to. It never occurs to them that things might go terribly wrong and that instead of paring the American presence in Iraq down to 5,000 soldiers, we would be "surging" up to 150,000.

Prudent planning always assumes the worst likely outcome. The sunshine and lollipops stay stored in a box until needed. And had a worst-likely-outcome assessment been made of invading Iraq, it never would have happened.

Let's just hope that someone somewhere with some sort of influence will apply the proper kind of analysis to the invasion of Iran that Mr. Bush is now plumping for. Remember: Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

How Novel

Michael Drayton, Detective Guy is now up over 36,000 words. In fact, I've added more than 4,000 in the last 34 days alone. If I hadn't gone back and cut and rewritten a couple of previous chapters, I'd be even further along. (All numbers I give are net, not gross.) In fact, I went back today and trimmed Chapter 14 yet again--getting rid of some references to two characters who will never show up in this version--which leaves me only 98 words up, as of this writing, rather than maybe 250. But it's not about the word count, really, and I am trying to do a halfway decent job of it, even with a deadline looming over me.

Regardless, I will have a draft done by the middle of next month. If I can manage to work every day instead of 3 days out of every 4, I may even finish early. although, knowing me, it will probably involve a crazed, last-minute dash to an improbable finish.

Are the American People Ready?

There has been a lot of discussion, thanks to the candidacies of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton for president, about whether the American people are yet ready to elect either a black man or any kind of woman. And even though there may be merit in asking these questions, there is another one that occurs to me thanks to a certain person's declaration of candidacy today. And that question is this: Are the American people yet ready to elect as their president some guy named "Mitt"?

I'm sorry, Mr. Romney. The answer is most likely, "not yet." Mitts are for playing catch, not for running countries, at least that's how it will play in the heartland (a land, which, by the way, runs from one coast to the other and top-to-bottom; we all live in the heartland). In our electoral process, qualifications are meaningless and interesting ideas can actually be a detriment. A good name and a good hairdo, though, these are the building blocks for power.

The Novel Grows

I've just broken the 35,000 word barrier on Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. At the rate I'm going, I should have around 40,000 by the time I have to submit it for the contest. My plan is to continue writing somewhat carefully until March 1st. The last couple of chapters might turn out a bit sketchy, but they should get the point across.

All good wishes are gratefully accepted.

Resolution

The current falderal in the Senate concerning the passage of resolution that voices some kind of opposition to the President's planned increase in troops in Iraq stikes me as being just more of the smallminded political jockeying that has come to dominate our legislatures. The Democrats have their eyes on the next election and perhaps the Republicans do, too. Or, perhaps, they are still in the habit of protecting a President who sell each and every one of them out in a New York minute if it suited his needs.

However, whatever the motivations, the machinations going back-and-forth amount to so much nonsense. Nothing of any substance or value is being proposed or defended. It's all about posturing and pretense hidden behind a smokescreen they label "principle." It's all foolishness.

This is what the Democrats think of as reform?

The Jig Is Up

Well, the time has now passed in which all of the companies I have sent proposals to have begun operating in a new fiscal year, and I have not heard from a single one of them. I have not received even the courtesy of a rejection, just silence. Awkward, meaningless silence.

It would seem, though, that the only rational way to approach this would be to assume that no money or air time is forthcoming and that Next in the Series will not be moving forward at any time in the foreseeable future. While not dead, it is certainly in a coma.

I have, however, learned a few things through this process--a process that began more than four years ago. For example, I have learned something of my strengths and limitations. I have learned that my strengths are mostly artistic, and that I am not at all suited to the position of producer. Should someone appear somewhere down the line who had a flair for business and an interest in producing, I would be more than willing to pitch in with the writing, acting, and directing. Any and all who are interested should contact me care of this blog.

I have also confirmed that I am most fundamentally a writer. It's the core of what I do. I like sitting alone and sawing away at a manuscript. It's very fulfilling for me. I think I do a decent job of it, too.

And this speaks to why I am a lousy producer. Producers need to be gregarious and outgoing, two adjectives that are never attached to my name. A producer needs to be part salesman, part banker, and have a jot of accountant thrown in, too. I am none of those things. I'm the guy who likes to join words together in ever-growing groups in order to say to the world (or some small fraction thereof) "This is what reality is like for me. How does this match up with your experience of it?"

And so, I am going to concentrate on writing. I've been working on my novel, Michael Drayton, Detective Guy, with the hope of having a draft finished sometime this spring, with any luck, in time to submit to a contest being held on gather.com. I've submitted a couple of shorter pieces I had hanging around to reasonably sized publications. I have a full slate of writing projects awaiting the time for me concentrate on them.

The work I've done on this show will not go to waste, though. I've identified some shows that are already up and running and out there that take unsolicited contributions. A script should be in the mail somewhere in the next week or so.

The question then becomes: What becomes of this blog? What becomes of the website? The website will just remain as it is. It's not hurting anybody.

The blog? I'm not sure. On the one hand, I'm trying to not give away my writing at the moment. On the other hand, it has its uses. I've always found, in the past on my blog and in others, that threats to quit are usually made at moments of distress and self-pity. Although I'm disappointed at the result of this project, I am not distressed. Despite the sobering effects of getting nowhere fast, I am not sunk in self-pity.

So, all I can say about this blog at the moment is, "We'll see."

Cooperstown

I just read something online in which Barry Bonds was quoted as saying that he thought that Pete Rose and Mark McGuire should have been voted into the Hall of Fame. Forget how self-serving the statement was. Let us consider the proposal on its merits alone.

I think they should be admitted, and their displays kept in a special cheaters' wing to be specially built for them. It could be constructed along the lines of a prison and their busts located behind bars, which is where they belong. And then, a few years on, Barry Bonds could join them there, a great player turned humbug, a wonderful athelete undone by his own hubris and pride.

This Is Why You Need Hyphens

This morning's perusal of the headlines on my My Yahoo! homepage brought this item from Reuters' Sports:

Bonds set to resign with San Francisco Giants

I clicked on the headline expecting to read about Barry Bonds's retirement, although the use of the preposition "with" rather than "from" was puzzling. It turns out that he wasn't resigning from the Giants, he was re-signing with them.

For want of a hyphen, the headline was lost....

The Revolution's Here

I was just killing some time at work by skimming the headlines on my My Yahoo homepage, when I caught this one, courtesy of the AP:

"Temps rise in storm-stricken Midwest"

I didn't even need to read the story. It is clear to me that the temporary workers of the Midwest, finally fed up with being treated somewhat like Bartleby the Scrivener, have taken up arms against the oppressor. As a temporary worker, all I have to say is, "Fight the power!"

Alice's Restaurant on XM

For those of you who are interested in listening to "Alice's Restaurant" and reliving the Thanksgiving Massacree, it will be played on The Sixties on Six on XM Radio at about 2pm this afternoon. If you don't subscribe to XM, you can still join in the fun by signing up for a free trial.

Don't miss out!

Happy Holidays--Beware!

Well, I just received my first holiday crime memos, so it seems that it's time to post the one set of Christmas carol lyrics I've ever written. They are as follows:

(To the tune of "Deck the Halls")

Christmas is the time for stealing.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Take it if it seems appealing.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Pick it up; it's in your pocket.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Leave your desk, you've got to lock it.
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Happy holidays to all and don't forget the pepper spray!

The Vision Thing

A couple of months ago, back when I was down in the dumps and also in the basement, I wrote a post in which I said something about being addicted to grandiose schemes. Now, the first thing to keep in mind when considering this post is that it was written by a middle-aged guy who had just started working in a mailroom. Regardless of one's choice of careers, winding up in a mailroom as you approach your 47th birthday is a bit depressing. After all, the mailroom is traditionally the place where one starts one's work life, not finishes it. And if you don't believe me, just consult the collected works of Horatio Alger or the agent roster at CAA.

Now, however, from the Parnassus of the English Department, I am looking at life a little differently. It seems to me that I am not a person addicted to grandiose schemes, but a visionary. I have the habit of thinking--as the saying goes--outside the box, and as a result, can see possibilities that remain hidden to most people.

As a creative type, this can come in handy, especially when I find myself knee-deep in a story or script and there are clumps of bad writing, plotting, and characterization hiding behind the bushes just ahead. It can also be of use in real life, since I can often come up with creative solutions that never occur to most others.

However, the downside to this ability is that most people have a hard time understanding my vision, including--perhaps especially--the people who dole out the money. Money people, with exceptions, tend to look about a foot ahead of themselves and a foot behind at all times and confuse walking in circles with dancing a minuet.

That doesn't mean, though, that you give up, that you stop trolling the waters. You never know when the person you need to meet is right around the next corner.

According to Len

I am a TV snob. There have been many shows that have been popular and critical favorites that I have turned up my nose at. I didn't care for Cheers. ER left me cold. I didn't watch The Sopranos, and I don't watch House.

There have been shows that critics raved about that I couldn't stomach. However, there is currently one show that I love that makes all critics wretch. And that's According to Jim.

I'm sorry. I like this show. It makes me laugh. Out loud. Numerous times during each half hour. Larry Joe Campbell, who plays Jim's brother-in-law, is an enormously gifted comic actor. Courtney Thorne-Smith is very good as Jim's wife, and Kimberley Williams-Paisley gives a sly and winning performance week-in-and-week-out. Even the kids are good, which is quite unusual. There are funny jokes, and true ones, too. For example, in one episode, Andy--the brother-in-law--reveals that he has concocted a dessert in which he rolls sticks of butter in white sugar. He tells, with a wonderful mixture of shame, self-loathing, and pride, that he calls the "Shame Sticks."

We refer to Shame Sticks around our house the same way that we quote Felix Unger saying, "You're my eyes, Gloria!" It's part of our private code.

I'm always astounded at the amount of hostility that this show engenders, but I think I know the cause. It's Jim Belushi. And it's not because of the value of his performance, because he's really very good in it. There have been moments--and I'm talking as a fellow actor here--in which he has been about as good as an actor can be. And yet, he gets scorn instead of praise.

Why? Well, I would guess it's because nobody has ever forgiven him for being John's brother. He was always seen as being a hanger-on and a no-talent, and neither of those judgments is true.

Now, I liked John Belushi. I must've. I even went to see Continental Divide. However, Jim is not his imitator. His performance style is more controlled and more crafted. He's gotten a bad rap--partially because of the movie with the police dog--and he has not deserved it.

And one thing I know for sure: Both he and his show make me laugh.

Even My Hindsight Has an Astigmatism

As I was running around like a nut while trying to get some things done during my lunch break today, I had a realization about myself as a writer.

As I've posted on this blog before, I have considered myself a writer ever since a powerful--dare I say it?--metaphysical experience I had when I was 14. From that point on, writing was my foremost concern outside of keeping myself clothed and fed. It did not come naturally to me; I had to work and learn in order to attain even the moderate amount of skill I currently possess.

However, I don't think I truly became a writer until I started work on the scripts for this series.

I did some decent things before this, and the first few scripts I wrote (all revisions of leftovers from another time) are not quite up-to-snuff, but something happened, something changed as my work on the series progressed. It started with the second Jerry & George script, The Tale of the Weekend Upcoming, and really blossomed in the third Jerry & George script, The Road to Hell.

In these scripts, I started moving away from my sketch-comedy and sitcom roots and started delineating believable stories about believable people. The writing of those two scripts and Phil's Deli and the Xmas episode, Looking for Christmas, was more like writing short stories than writing radio scripts.

Of course, I have a several versions of extended fragments of some TV scripts I wrote some years back called Such Is Life that share these same qualities. Maybe I'm just rediscovering a path once trod.

Whatever it is, it's good.

None of any of these scripts appears on the demo. That may have been a mistake, in hindsight.

TiVo for a Better Politics

It occurred to me this morning while reading a story in The New York Times about the current Republican strategy to hold their majorities in the House and Senate that the whole way modern politics is approached could be changed if more people had TiVo. You see, with Tivo, the viewer can easily fast-forward past commercials, and I know that in our house the political commercials are sped through the quickest.

Politicians advertising on TV--a commercial activity--run ads that have degenerated to the lowest possible level:

Announcer: Bill Johnson is a stinkyhead who let his grass grow too long. We're not outright saying that he's a drug-abusing, mother-violating Sodomite, but you get the drift. Wink, wink.

And they always end just as The Firesign Theatre had it 36 years ago: "And you can believe me because I'm always right and I never lie."

That nonsense isn't worth having your brain washed over. And if everyone got XM Satellite Radio, they wouldn't be able to run local ads over the radio either. I'm sure they'd still find a way, but it just might make somebody somewhere talk about something of substance rather than merely slandering whoever is representing "the other side."

So, friends, do your part in the struggle to regain democracy here in the good, old US of A: Get TiVo.

This Is What I Get for Hitting the "Translate This Page" Link

A selection from a page that was originally in German:

First the caption under the photo:

“The number of applications for the theory to the Kauffrau or to the buyer decreased last strongly”: Daniel Alig, apprentice responsible person of the bank Linth with training daughter Sarah Gämperli in the branch Rapperswil.

Next, the first paragraph of the story:

Still Daniel Alig applications for a KV-training place in the coming summer receives. Alig is apprentice responsible person with the bank Linth at the head office in Uznach. Numerous training places are however already assigned for 2006. The district bank received approximately 60 applications in the past months, first in July. Those are clearly less than in the years before; a fact also the different banks determined. To occupy the bank Linth has eight training places, ever two in the four regions Linthgebiet, Zurich lake, Ausserschwyz and Sarganserland. “Past year had we approximately 60 applications alone for the region Linthgebiet”, says Alig. It can only courage-measure reasons for this salient decrease: “On the one hand resuming schools might have been made tasty for the school leaver. On the other hand I can also imagine that the attractiveness of this teachings suffered, because numerous Lehrabgänger finds no more place.” A further reason could be the 2002 imported KV-reform. It should the training enterprises revaluations. In addition, thus of them and the expenditure of the apprentices in the school teaching rose. To the defiance; with the quality of the applications Alig constituted an increase.

You can't make this up.

News Item

I wasn't planning on publishing anything here today--all my blogging energy will be directed at Shooting Off My Fat Trap, my political blog, which might be pretty busy in coming days--but I heard something on XM this morning that I just had to share. The easiest way to explain it is to quote from this version of the story as it appears on contactmusic.com:

LATEST: Songwriter PAUL VANCE has blasted reports he's dead, insisting it was an imposter who passed away earlier this month (06SEP06). Vance, best known for co-writing the 1960 novelty song ITSY BITSY TEENIE WEENIE YELLOW POLKA DOT BIKINI, has been inundated with concerned calls after news broke yesterday (27SEP06) that he'd died of lung cancer. However, the irate musician insists the victim, 68-year-old PAUL VAN VALKENBURGH of Ormond Beach, Florida, was an imposter who claimed to have written the hit himself under the name of Paul Vance. The real Vance admits he was astonished to read his obituary in newspapers, and see two of his horses dropped from races yesterday (27SEP06) because people believed he had died. He says, "Do you know what it's like to have grandchildren calling you and say, 'Grandpa, you're still alive?' "This is not a game. I am who I am and I'm proud of who I am. But these phones don't stop with people calling thinking I'm dead." Van Valkenburgh's widow ROSE LEROUX, who claims never to have known her late husband was lying about the song, says, "To have it come out now, I'm kind of devastated. "If this other man says he did it then my husband's a liar, or he's a liar."

There's great story in here somewhere about a lady who finds out that her now-dead husband of 40 years had done nothing but lie to her the entire time. I'm claiming it, although there's nothing to do about it if somebody else beats me to it. I'd just have to write my own version anyway. Changing the names and facts, of course.

Yesterday's Why I Like XM Moment

So, I'm driving along yesterday, going to get the boy from school, when what should come on the XM Satellite Radio but Alice's Restaurant. Now there's something you won't hear on Oldies 97.

UPDATE: Alice's Restaurant on XM on Thanksgiving! Check out the post.

Up from Under

My time in the mailroom has ended, as a suitable alternative was found and hired. Such is the lot of the temp: Today's necessity is tomorrow's dross.

But, fear not, I'm doing some bookkeeping for one guy and some research for another, so we should be able to get by for the time being.

On the plus side, I've got more time available for writing. At tleast I hope that's a plus.

In fact, I've posted a piece on Shooting Off My Fat Trap that I'm considering sending to a newspaper in the distant northeast. (Not the Times.--ed.) If anyone wants to, they're welcome to peruse said piece and comment on its suitablility for publication. Don't worry; it's okay to advise that it should be buried out back. Silence, however, will be construed as consent. That's what you call a legal warning.

In other news, I'm preparing to send a proposal for Next in the Series to somebody at the company I just temped at. First, I just have to confirm that I've got the right somebody.

And, finally, wouldn't you just love to see me have a column in some paper or something? I know I would. And not an obituary. Wise guy.

The Demo CD

I've been meaning to post about this for the last couple of weeks, but have been too busy being a man-about-town to remember to. The CD is basically finished and the early reviews are encouraging. I did make a small mistake, though. I forgot to record a small bit of song near the end in which the love interests plight their troth. I'll record that in the next few days to make it complete. It will be my first bonus track. Ahh, they grow up so fast.

However, that being said, I'd like to announce that the demo CD for Plant Your Wagon is now available to interested parties. If you'd like one, just let me know, and I'll get one in the mail to you.

Also, I have finished putting the radio script into play format, so if you know any producers who would like to perhaps inflict a world premier on an unsuspecting public just let me know. To the unimaginative, it would be kind of heavy on sets, but, as an admirer of Thornton Wilder, I would actually prefer as simpler production.

Anyway, this is just some proof that there's more to my life than just the mailroom.

Still Underground

The assignment underground continues to hang on, and dwelling in the belly of the beast has had a profound effect on me. When discussing alcoholics and other drug addicts, it has become a commonplace to mention that the person in question has to have bottomed out before redemption can become possible. Well, apparently, the mailroom was a low as I could go without disintegrating, because I am now ready to say the following: "Hi. My name is Len, and I'm addicted to grandiose schemes."

It has been my habit since youth to shoot--however fitfully--for the stars. I have done this because of a combination of self confidence, delusion, and fear of success.

I pledge, henceforth, to renounce this approach and to adopt a new, more practical one.

This does not mean that I am giving up on the radio show. They are going to have to reject me to get rid of me. It just means that, while that pipedream is playing itself out, I am going to concentrate on writing and submitting prose pieces. And not to The New Yorker, either. Not yet. I'll start with smaller, more reasonable outlets. In fact, if anybody knows of a publication that they think would just swoon over my kind of writing, feel free to let me know. Places that pay are preferred, but publishing credits count for something at this point as well.

I've got a number of essays I've culled from this blog that I'm refining and elongating with an eye to publication. The Drayton short story is coming along pretty well, and I figure Ellery Queen magazine isn't too mighty a publication for the likes of me.