Media

Random House and Penguin Merging isn’t as bad as Disney and Everybody

M G Kizzia 1 Comment

            What is the worst Random House and Penguin can do?  Produce the best seller “Mister Poppers Randoms?”

            The news is George Lucas is selling Lucas Films to Disney.  Yes, I can see it now:

            Jedi jumps out with a blue light saber
The Hulk jumps out with a green light saber
Goofy jumps out with a yellow light saber and accidentally cuts off the Hulk’s arm.  “Oops! … Goarsh!”  That’s okay, Goofy.  For the Hulk that is only a flesh wound.
            Darth McDuck dies of laughter while the Disney narrator turns to the dark side …

Loki:    “I have an army.”
Iron Man:  “We have  Ewoks.”

            Kingdom Hearts IV will have Death Star land.

            Leia and Amidala get added to the Princess collection and laser-blast their rivals.

            Finding Nemo will be renamed “Finding Yoda.”  Buzz Lightyear will get a starring role in Star Wars VII.  And Marry Poppins will join the X-men by virtue of her mutant carpet bag. 

            Of course.  It all makes sense.  I can see it all now.  What could possibly go wrong?

Quotes From My Father: On Serious Writing for Serious Readers.

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            My father landed on Normandy beach in about the twenty-third wave.  He was a secretary for the Colonel who took over running the railroads in France as they were captured.  Dad could type about a gazzilion words per minute on a manual typewriter.  That was important, because the Germans only had one that could type half-a-gazzilion wpm.

            After trying so hard to keep his trains and tracks from being blown up, and being shot at a few times, as well as being bombed, he came home and studied journalism at Northwestern on the G I Bill.  He went from there to work in Washington D C, a place known for having no sense of humor.  Then after a brief stint in serious gangster land (Chicago) he ended up in New York editing Railway Age Magazine. 

            The company my Dad worked for all of his career published mostly professional journals and magazines.  My dad ended his career many years later as Executive Editor of Banking Magazine, the journal of the American Bankers Association.  Bankers also have no sense of humor (so I have been told).

            All that serious, professional stuff.  I think that is why it made such a mark when every now and then he would say, “Life is too important to take seriously.”

            His heart was light.  His writing was easy to read, and even, and sometimes especially when the subject was utterly serious and professional.  People not only read his work, they enjoyed his work. 

            We who seek to write, fiction and non-fiction should consider this lesson.  We believe in our work, especially when it is non-fiction – that it is important and oh-so-serious.  But most of all, we want readers.  As my son says, “Lighten up.”  This is a good motto to remember when you are so deeply immersed in the serious importance of your work you can hardly come up for air: “Life is too important to take seriously.”  — J. W. Kizzia

One Writer’s mid-week Writing Secrets 1: Tell a Story.

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Sorry, I don’t have a link but I would recommend reading the Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, August 29-30, page W3 in the culture section.  The article is by Lev Grossman, and it is titled:  Storytelling.  Good Books Don’t Have to Be Hard.  And it is subtitled:  A novelist on the pleasure of reading stories that don’t bore… My response is:  Amen.  Whether you are writing fiction or embarked on some journalistic enterprise (or writing journalistic-fiction which is all too common these days) it helps to have a story! 

Grossman blames our view of what constitutes “great writing” (literature) on the modernists in the 1920s who objected to the Victorian novels that tied everything up in a nice, neat ending.  Faced with all of the changes that came with modern life, these authors said, (recognized) that life did not work out in nice and neat ways, and so they produced such works as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Ulysses,” “A Passage to India,” “The Sun Also Rises,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Sound and the Fury,” and so on.  These all may be great books in their way, but the truth is (and Grossman says it well) they are too hard on the reader.  As he points out, “imagine what it felt like the first time somebody opened up “The Waste Land” and saw that it came with footnotes.” 

To be sure, all of these great works by great writers have produced in us a sense that quality writing must be like theirs:  “Mainstream” or “Literary;” yet, like the impressionist painters that revolutionized the art world, they have had their day.  The day of the “Mainstream” or “Literary” novel (so-called) is over.  To put it more succinctly:  modern literature had its time and place, but we are now living in a post modern age.

Thank goodness story is making a comeback.  Clearly, story is what readers want.    As Grossman points out, “Sales of young adult books (where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed) are up 30.7% so far this year (through June)… while adult hardcovers are down 17.8%.  Nam Lee’s “The Boat,” one of the best reviewed books of fiction in 2008 has sold 16,000 copies in hardcover and trade paperback according to Nielsen Bookscan… (while) the author of the “Twilight” series, Stephanie Meyer, sold eight million.”

My point would be that it pays to have a story to tell.  Readers want this.  Writers – Serious Writers are discovering this.  Agents and Publishers are a little slower, but I believe they will follow the money.  My hope is that someday maybe even the reviewers will catch up.

You remember story:  Beginning, middle and End.  Yes, I said end.  True, these days we might not wrap everything up in a neat Victorian ribbon.  (The lessons of the modernists were valid to some extent).  In our day, Scrooge might have a relapse.  (We would call that a sequel).  But still, a story ought to have some resolution, some conclusion; it needs to reach a point where one can honestly type:  THE END.  It should no longer be acceptable to end a story, “because my fingers got tired of typing so I went to bed.”

“But what of Great Literature and true Stream of Consciousness writing, and etc.?”  As Jessica would say, with a snap of her gum, a click of her tongue and a roll of her eyes, “That is so last century!”

 

Writing Tip 1: 

Tell a story.  Tell a good story.  Grab the reader.  Take them through whatever twists or turns exist, and when you are done, let them go.  This can still be great literature, and I believe it will be how the future sees literature.  You can say all you want to say about life, liberty and the pursuit in a story.  You can make great points, Dickens did, but first of all make it a good read, because if it is good enough, along with lasting beyond the lifetime of a blog, someone just might pay you for it.

— Michael

Reflections: The Four Rules of Great Writing

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1.         Write

2.         Start at the beginning of the Story and End at the End. 

            Don’t start with prologues, introductions or background details.  That isn’t the beginning of the story.

            At the end, characters may have more to say and more to do, but leave that to the reader.  Readers like that.  If there is a lot more to be said and done, perhaps there is a second story; but for the first story: Start at the beginning of the Story and End at the End.

3.         Great writing is not determined by what you put into it, but by knowing what to leave out.

4.         Write your own rules.  What works for you?

— Michael

Reflection: Tyranny by any other name still smells…

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Tyranny deletes freedom by definition.  It limits or eliminates choices.  Others make decisions on your behalf: what you must do, where you can go, and at times even what you must wear.  German Jews in the thirties wore the Star of David.  There was no debate.  The face of democracy in Myanmar is currently under house arrest — at least through the next election.

The military is a tyrannical system (perhaps by necessity) where people with rank tell those without rank where to go and what to do and even what to wear.  The fact that the military is often successful in its missions is to be considered.  Tyranny is not necessarily cumbersome or inefficient – not like democracies.  Mussolini made the trains run on time, and the people of Italy rejoiced.

But to succeed, there are two things tyranny must do: it must dehumanize people, and it must insulate (isolate) those at the top so their decisions are not touched by people (common humanity). 

First:  Sometimes, tyranny may demonize people, like the Jews in Nazi Germany or like the Nobility in the early days of the French Revolution; and it is not uncommon to so characterize the perceived enemies of the prevailing tyrannical order.  And to be sure, enemy lists are common:  keep that in mind all of you wacko-liberals and conservative, right-wing extreemists!.  Yet for most people – those not actively engaged in some form of dissent – at the least, tyranny must dehumanize.  This is the only way to insure that “a few people” can make those hard decisions that may mean life or death for “most of the people” living under the tyranny.  It might be hard to deny Bob or Mary their daily bread.  It is not so hard to deny 276-B and 617-M.

The military is well known for name, rank and serial number.  That the men and women have names is nice, but what really matters is the rank and serial number.  In the military, people are not people, they are numbers; and if you doubt the dehumanization that the military does in order to function effectively, try some basic training.

Second:  It is imperative that those at the top be isolated in order to make the hard decisions without being swayed by genuine human considerations.  This follows like night and day from the need to dehumanize.  Those at the top and also those on the job need to live in a psychological bubble, if not in a real one.  This is the way bureaucrats have worked successfully since the beginning of time.  The chief defense for death camp prison guards at Nuremburg was “I was just doing my job.”  It did not matter to them that people were being gassed and thrown into ovens.  “I was just paid (required) to do my job, and that is all I did.”  The bubble is imperative for any tyrannical system to operate effectively.

Why is this important?  Because too many people are suffering and I cannot see any relief on the horizon.

Tyranny through the last century and into this one has come in many forms.  One primary form has been in the board room and the upper reaches of the corporate world, and it is particularly apparent when a company becomes “Too big to fail.”  Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost over the past several months at an alarming rate.  Do you think anyone has lost any sleep over that fact?  Corporate Executives generally cannot even name a person on the “front lines” in their own business.  It’s just numbers.  We had 50 in that department.  Now we have 30.  (And to be clear, those 30 now have to work like slaves for fear of their own job).  Meanwhile, 20 more have joined the ranks of people who through no particular fault of their own have been discarded.  Yet the company goes on, telling people what to do, where to go (if they want to keep their job) and even what to wear (dress code).

And, of course, there is the government.  Now, you knew this was coming so don’t get your partisan knickers in a twist.  Instead, let’s go back a bit in time.  One (if not the) primary purpose of the United States Constitution was to guard against tyranny.  The Great Experiment, so-called, was to have a severely limited and deliberately restricted central government which would be responsible for the minimum duties deemed necessary for unity.  The central government was to keep its hands off and fingers out of everything else…everything.  Life was to be in the hands of the states, the local communities and with certain individual liberties guaranteed.  I don’t believe anyone would argue with the fact that we are a long way from the American ideal.  These days, it is nearly impossible to find any aspect of life where the federal government does not have some stake – a finger if not a whole hand.  So what happened?

It is debatable, but just as fast as I can put it: I believe the tipping point came when the Union (central government) forces beat the States (we called it the Civil War).  And Lincoln was a Republican.  By the time of Herbert Hover (another Republican) things had slid so far (and the central governors had become so isolated) the answer perceived for the stock market crash was MORE regulation and HIGHER taxes.  (Can you say, “Let them eat cake?”).  Of course, this led to the election of FDR, (a Democrat) who, far from pulling the government back from intervention in life, actually accelerated the process.  (Crisis you know: Depression and then the war).  The agricultural business in this country was socialized so long ago by price supports and subsidies, we don’t even question it.  Likewise steel, railroads, well… etc.  Then, LBJ (another Democrat) further accelerated the process by designing federal programs that actually encouraged dependency which, to speak plainly, encouraged the tyranny of the central government to tell people what to do, where to go, where to live and how much they were worth!

I believe both Kennedy and Reagan (in their own ways) did try to slow down the growth of tyranny, but more recently, Clinton sped it back up again, and so did Bush.

So now we have Obama and we find we are going to be told what kind of cars we can drive, what our salary will be, how much money we can make with the warning that if we make too much, it will be taken from us.  We are to be told what doctor we can see, what treatment we can get if we get ill, how we can heat or cool our homes, what energy we are allowed to use, and how much it will cost us… and what can you do with your own property without getting nine million permits and plan approvals first, not the least from the EPA.

With all of this, do I blame Barak Obama?  Absolutely not.  He is the conclusion, not the premise.  So what then, is the Great experiment over?  Despite all of the safeguards built into the system by the founders, have we slid into tyranny anyway?  Perhaps we have.  What I really want to know, though, is what our uniform is going to be.  It can’t be brown shirts.  That’s been done.  Personally, I vote for green shirts.  That would seem to fit the current culture and climate.