I know only heartache can come from this. I get my hopes up, tremblingly extend my trust, develop confidence over time, and then… it’s gone again. Where I looked for a light respite from the trials and stresses of modern life, there is only the brute word, “Hiatus,” evocative of hernias.
Yet hope persists. And so I share the link with you — Anthony Sacramone’s brilliant Strange Herring blog is back.
For now.
Gertrude Stein had a least one manuscript rejected, as you will see in this rejection letter. This is good.
I don’t usually tell you what I do offline. I’m sure enough connections have been made for an investigator to find me, so maybe I’m just kidding myself about how much distance really have between here and, well, where I am. But I want to point out some articles I’ve written this week on the men’s conference I have been working.
CBMC held a great men’s conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last week with several solid speakers and a moving prayer and communion meeting on the snowy battlefield. Read the overview here. There are other short articles and videos, which you can reach from the Good News front page.
Ed Champion is a remarkable reader, critic, etc. (feel free to add to the list of how remarkable he is), and in this interview he recommends books for writers.
Ultimately, a novelist’s job — irrespective of whether she is writing speculative fiction or hard realism — is to understand how human behavior emerges from systematic consequence. If you can generate an atmosphere based on systematic consequence, then your novel will likely feel “real” even if it is set in a land populated by dancing elves or talking fruit.
For plot structure, “read Richard Stark.” For great openers, Burgess, Cain, and Murray have good examples.
I won’t be posting the rest of this week, as I’m going out of town today on a family matter. See you next week.
Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White, struck me as a fascinating study in excellent story set-up and development, capped by a middling resolution. The amateur psychological wiseacre in me suspects that the author himself must be ambivalent about the kind of stories he writes, and that ambivalence is working itself out in the reader’s sight.
If you’re not already familiar with him, Marion (“Doc”) Ford, White’s continuing hero, is a semi-retired US government commando and assassin, now living in happy obscurity in Florida, making his living as a marine biologist. His peace is frequently disturbed, however, sometimes by other people’s problems which can only be solved with his special skills, and sometimes by a call from his espionage handlers, who still keep him on a slack string.
In terms of creating and building dramatic tension, Tampa Burn is admirable. I thought, as I read, that I’d rarely come across a suspense novel so well plotted. At the beginning, Doc is contemplating proposing to his long-time on-again, off-again girlfriend, Dewey Nye. Suddenly his life is invaded by his old lover Pilar Fuentes, the one other woman he’s never been able to quite get over. She has recently informed Doc that her teenaged son Laken is in fact his (Doc’s) son. Doc has been keeping in touch with the boy, but Pilar has kept him at a distance. Up until now.
Now Laken has been kidnapped, apparently by a mysterious figure known across Central America as Incendiaro—the Burner. He has that name because he is horribly disfigured by burn scars himself, and gets pleasure from watching other people burn. Continue reading Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White
You’ve probably seen it on the web today. Secretly filmed footage of a New Jersey Planned Parenthood manager, repeating recent history by explaining (to a man and woman claiming to be a pimp and a prostitute) ways to get STD testing, contraception and abortions for girls as young as fourteen. According to the description given, these fictional girls are obviously sex slaves illegally smuggled into the U.S. from other countries. The manager seems to have no qualms about telling them she doesn’t want to know various things, and giving advice on how to fool the physician’s assistant on site. “We all hate her.”
I won’t disagree with most of the conclusions drawn by various commentators. Certainly this is further evidence that Planned Parenthood, which should never have gotten government funding in the first place, ought to be cut off.
But I think I detect a deeper problem.
I don’t think Planned Parenthood’s organizational management is actively supportive of child sexual slavery. Whether this manager’s attitude is typical, I have no way of knowing.
But I think her behavior ought to be no surprise, given the nature of the enterprise.
Why would a modern, educated woman—certainly a feminist, since that’s part of Planned Parenthood’s brief—collude so easily in the degradation of little girls?
My guess is that she came to this gradually. It’s the result of a desensitization process. One every one of us experiences, to some extent or another, in our time.
The first time she saw the results of an actual abortion (I would imagine) she was shocked. Probably had a few bad nights.
But she told herself, “I mustn’t judge. It’s not for me to judge.”
The first time she encountered a fourteen year-old girl impregnated by her fifteen-year-old boyfriend, she probably frowned. Then she told herself, “It’s not for me to judge.”
When a fourteen-year-old girl who’d been impregnated by her 26-year-old boyfriend came in, she was tempted to call the police.
But hey, how could she judge in this situation, either? She didn’t know these people. And anyway, somebody might ask embarrassing questions about the last fourteen-year-old girl she’d treated off the record.
And so it goes. At each stage, past compromises lead to new compromises.
Eventually, she can see no moral lines at all. “There ain’t no right, there ain’t no wrong. There’s just things people do. It’s not for me to judge.”
In our age, the greatest sin is judging sexual behavior. You can judge the wearing of fur, and smoking, and using “offensive” words, but hands off sex. Any kind of sex. The kinkier, the more sacrosanct.
This is the disease of our age, and it will kill us if we don’t address it and change our thinking.
If you follow the writings of James Lileks (and who doesn’t?), and read today’s Bleat, you’ll recall that he describes his weekend. For some inexplicable reason, however, he fails to mention what must have been the most memorable part of his Saturday.
He met me.
It came to pass in this manner. I told you on Friday that I’d be doing an interview with Mitch Berg and Ed Morrissey of the Northern Alliance on their regular Saturday show on WWTC AM 1280, here in the Twin Cities. What I didn’t know was that Ed wouldn’t be among those present. This explains Mitch’s invitation to me to come aboard, since he likes to inject a larger than usual dose of piffle on such occasions.
So I show up at the studio in Eagan at 2:00 p.m., a half hour early, as I’d projected, and pull into the parking lot. I pass a green Element automobile, but think nothing of it.
Heading toward the studio, my book in hand, I glance at the green Element, and there stands a compact figure I recognize immediately from his photographs, smoking a “small, evil cigar.”
“James Lileks,” I said.
He admitted this, his meditations ruined, and I introduced myself as a regular commenter on the Bleat. He pretended to remember me.
“What are you here for?” he asked.
“I’m on at 2:30 with Mitch,” I said.
“Oh. I’m on with Mitch at 2:00.”
Mitch had told me he’d have a guest just prior to me. He hadn’t told me it would be Minnesota’s most famous conservative humorist.
James offered to show me the way, got us buzzed in, and led me down the stairs to the basement studios (much nicer than I expected). I introduced myself to Mitch, whom I’d never actually met before, and Mitch asked me if I’d care to share my time with James.
Ask me a hard one, Mitch. Ask me if I’d like a date with Gabrielle Anwar. Ask me if I’d like an all-expense-paid trip to Norway.
A three-headed radio show with Mitch Berg and James Lileks? That’s not a tough decision.
So I sat in the green room, watching through the windows as Mitch and James did the first segment, and then they invited me in, found me a seat at the table, and issued me a pair of headphones. We chatted a bit while the commercials ran, and then it was show time.
I assumed it would be the kind of interview I’ve done before, where they ask me about the themes of my book, but Mitch moved on smoothly from that. He wanted to have fun—talk about Vikings in general, and kick the conversational ball around. Bad Viking movies, for instance, provide a fertile field for mockery.
It was great. Mitch is a tremendous host, and deserves a better paying gig. James Lileks is… well, pretty much what he seems to be in his writing. He’s dry, witty, erudite, and very classy. He treated me in every way as if we were fellow writers on the same level.
All in all, I like to think it was a little like the Algonquin Round Table, just without alcohol, tobacco smoke, or Dorothy Parker.
It was over too fast. We chatted a bit, said our goodbyes, and I drove home.
I hardly need to add that I suffered with adrenaline poisoning the rest of the day, and slept very little that night. Sunday I crashed, the gray clouds loomed, and packs of black dogs licked the back of my neck with their cold, pebbly tongues.
Pretty much what you’d expect.
But it was a great opportunity, and an unforgettable experience. Mitch and James are tops, and I’d take a bullet for either one of them.
You can listen here. Hour 2 of the January 29, 2011 broadcast is the one you want. It’s on top as of the time of this posting.
Looking for literary journal for the relatively new year? Here is a list of Bestselling Literary Journals
To listen live to my interview tomorrow (see post below), go to this site and click on “Listen Live.”
I think that’ll do it.