Kindle counting

Was Scott Turow clairvoyant when he chose to name the fictional setting of his multiple overlapping novels Kindle County?

That was my first facetious thought when reading about Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' new toy the Kindle, or as Newsweek breathlessly christened it, "The Future of Reading."

That's the thing about the technology game. Every hotshot techno-guru out there is convinced he's just about to trip over the killer app that's going to change everything -- and not incidentally, make him rich (or in Bezos's case, rich AGAIN). The problem in this particular case is that the killer app in question was already invented... in the 15th century.

It's called a book.

Yes, the Kindle device is designed to approximate the size and weight of a book, as if that little detail is going to close the deal for all of us print-addicted Luddites. And yes, it's pretty nifty that they developed screen technology for the Kindle that comes closer to imitating the visual texture of the printed page than anything ever seen before. And sure, it's pretty mind-boggling to realize that this device, linked wirelessly to Amazon's entire database of Kindle-d editions of books, could someday put every book ever written at your fingertips in searchable electronic form, even allowing authors to amend and update their manuscripts, adding new facts to non-fiction books or changing the endings of novels.

The Kindle has one insurmountable flaw, though. It's not a book.

Books are physical objects. Each has a distinctive appearance, texture, smell and heft in your hand. Each is unique, and permanent, and if it's really good, maybe even a permanent part of your home and your life. Almost every day working in my study I look up at my bookshelf and let my eyes wander across the spines of books I've read. Would it be fun to be able to search instantly for every time Robert Crais references a specific real-life location in Los Angeles in his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels? Sure. But I wouldn't give up my hardcover copy of The Watchman to be able to do it. And if he went back and changed the ending of the book, I would be outraged. I would feel cheated, and that the bond of trust between author and audience had been broken. Stories are stories, and their human imperfections are part of their essence.

Life within a display screen is not life, it's an electronic illusion of it. The Kindle is no more "the future of reading" than androids are the future of the human race. It's a soulless little machine, not to mention, what happens if you drop it while you're reading in the bathtub?

Writing about writing

Write what you know, they say. Of course, if you’re a writer, that may mean that you write about writing. Which is actually what I’m doing right now, despite the fact that I’m about to tell you why I shouldn’t and why in fact none of us should if we ever want to have there be such a thing as “popular literature” again.

Of course, the thought that writing about writing is a sign of the literary apocalypse isn’t even mine -- I stole it from another writer, the inestimably wise and amusing Nick Hornby. Well, just borrowed it really. He shouldn’t mind, I mean, at least I credited him with it as opposed to simply picking his intellectual pocket. Plus I’m doing my best Hornby right here and now, spinning out dry, chatty one-liners that conceal or explode deeper meanings within their sugary coating.

ANYWAY… despite the fact that I really meant to be reading The Great Nick’s newest novel Slam this week, it’s still hidden at bedside underneath one of his “massively witty” (says so right on the cover) collections of columns written for the British magazine Believer. Columns in which the Great One himself writes about, well, reading. In other words, he’s writing about other writers. Specifically, in the case of page 43 of Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt, writing about how he wishes other writers would stop writing about writing, or at least stop doing it so often.

Come on now, do try to keep up.

Hornby is justifiably concerned by the fact that the divide between the writers and readers among us and the rest of society has grown so large (a 2004 survey found that just 57 percent of Americans had read a book in the past year -- as in, so much as one single book, whether it be a Pulitzer prize-winning novel or an unauthorized tell-all biography of Britney Spears’ personal shopper). And he rightly observes that a sort of defensive retreat or shrinking inward seems to be occurring in the literary world, ticking off a stream of recent novels in which the authors’ central characters are also writers or otherwise part of the literary elite. He characterizes the danger like this:

“It excludes readers… maybe great art shouldn’t be afraid of being elitist, but there’s plenty of great art that isn’t, and I don’t want bright people who don’t happen to have a degree in literature to give up on the contemporary novel; I want them to believe there’s a point to it all, that fiction has a purpose visible to anyone capable of reading a book intended for grown-ups. Taken as a group these novels seem to raise the white flag: we give in! It’s hopeless! We don’t know what those people out there want! Pull up the drawbridge!”

And that is the attitude you can see not just online -- where on various blogs and message boards you’ll find the literati one-upping one another to see who can hold their brow the highest -- but on the bookshelves themselves. I was reading the other day about the fragmentation of popular music into a hundred tiny microgenres, and about how there are no Beatles or Led Zeppelins or even U2s any more and may never be again, because in a world of constantly expanding choices, the odds against any substantial subset of the population making the identical one have grown impossibly high.

The same thing seems to be happening in the world of books, where you have mainstream fiction, teen fiction, detective fiction, romance, sci-fi, non-fiction biography, non-fiction self-help, travel, cooking, sports, etc. And off in its own little elite corner of the published universe, you have literary fiction. Where the “real” writers hang out, you know. Members of The Club and all that. Literary lions who would not deign to write a sentence that the common folk might stumble across and see themselves reflected within, except as contemptuously-rendered caricatures.

This reflexive condescension toward the very masses that literary fiction nine times out of ten fails to reach ensures that it will remain safely ensconced within the gilded cage its authors seems to love so well. Hornby has spoken to this point directly:

"I profoundly disagree with those who equate 'literary' with 'serious' -- unless 'serious' encompasses 'po-faced', 'dull', 'indigestible'. Anyone who does anything that seems easy or light or which actually entertains people always tends to get overlooked -- apart from by the reading public, the only people who really matter. I reserve the right to write the kinds of books I feel like writing."

Can I get a "bravo"?

I for one am tremendously grateful that we still have a few talented writers like Nick Hornby around who believe you can better illuminate the human condition by writing about people you might run into while living a normal everyday life and reporting their experiences respectfully, with humor and pathos and texture and detail, than by indulging in snobbish literary navel-gazing.

It’s certainly what I aspire to. And after all, let’s face it, my navel just isn’t that interesting.

Monday news digest

Don't you just love it when one group of obscenely rich people sues another group of obscenely rich people in hopes of vaulting both sets of attorneys into their clients' income brackets? If so, you'll love reading about the Red Hot Chili Peppers suing Showtime. Sample wiseguy comment: “Now, if only the Scottish could sue Anthony Kiedis over the kilt thing.”

Longtime Mississippi Senator and “Thurmond For President” bumper-sticker purchaser Trent Lott is retiring to “pursue other opportunities.” I don’t remember seeing any openings for Grand Wizard advertised in the local classifieds, but maybe he meant other “other opportunities.” In any case, don’t let the door hit you etc.

Pakistan continues to simmer, and if you don’t think this matters, you’re not paying attention.

The writers’ strike also continues, but if you're jonesing for an emergency fix of late night talk show monologuery, try this.

The war on Christmas

After the customary New Year’s-to-Halloween cease-fire, it appears the so-called "war on Christmas" is on once again.

(Yeah, ‘cause everybody hates that Santa Claus dude… I mean, what is it with those creepy little elves, anyway?)

But seriously -- a state of being that can be difficult to achieve when discussing a subject which cries out for common sense as much as this one does -- let’s try to parse the issues here.

America has a long tradition of celebrating Christmas and incorporating Christmas trappings such as trees, stockings, gifts, etc. into our culture. So do the majority of so-called Western cultures. And frankly, I haven’t heard anyone anywhere make any sort of serious suggestion that we stop doing so.

What has been suggested is that we try to at least acknowledge that -- gasp -- not everyone in America celebrates Christmas, and certainly, not everyone who celebrates Christmas celebrates it in the same way. There are those who celebrate Christmas as a commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ. There are those who celebrate Christmas as a more secular mid-winter gift-giving and gathering-family-together holiday. And there are those who during the month of December celebrate some other holiday -- Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, insert yours here.

What is happening today is that people and companies and governments are being confronted by the diversity of the American populace and attempting to adapt. This diversity of thought and belief and tradition and culture is no longer a trend; it is a fact. You can like it or not like it, accept or not accept it, but it does not change the facts on the ground, facts to which companies and governments and individuals must adapt if they wish to continue to function effectively in modern society.

On the specific subject of the Christmas-centric marketing of goods, this old and fading habit seems doubly problematic. First of all, you have a substantial segment of the population that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, and second of all, you have the cheapening of the religious meaning of Christmas through its use as a marketing tactic. Many faithful Christians have become more and more disgusted by the commercialization of Christmas and the corruption of its spiritual meaning into a cultural imperative to “buy more stuff.” News flash: Jesus was not a capitalist tool. Quite the opposite.

When Pat Buchanan and company rail over the loss of American culture, what they seem incapable of comprehending is that culture is and always has been a moving target. The cultural norms and traditions of today were all new once, years or centuries ago. They came about through (now here’s a loaded phrase) a natural evolution of the culture, which will continue no matter how many people stand around on soapboxes of one kind or another shouting at the top of their lungs that they don’t want it to. You might as well try to tell the moon to stop going full every month.

It seems what’s needed here -- as in so many arguments we hear today -- is a little common sense. They’re Christmas trees; call them what they are. And put those Hannukah and Kwanzaa candles right there next to them on the catalog page. The inclusion of one tradition does not have to equal the exclusion of others, or the homogenization of all. And if in the checkout line this weekend you wish me a Merry Christmas and I wish you a Happy Hannukah, let’s neither one of us take offense, ‘kay?

News digest

Or should that be "news to digest"? I suppose not, since I don't have any weird food items this time around.

What I do have is the story of an anonymous California state worker who belongs in the Curmudgeon Hall of Fame's Picky Grammarian section -- hold a spot for me, would you?

Plus, this important news about why Santas in Sydney, Australia have been asked to change the way they greet customers. Could someone please send these folks a nice big bale of common sense? Yikes.

A sad day

The Bonds indictment can only really be considered a surprise in terms of the timing. Most people thought he was in trouble after his mind-boggling grand jury testimony was leaked lo those many, many months ago. But then nothing, and more nothing, and you started to think the feds didn't actually have a case, other than the word of a spurned woman with serious credibility issues of her own. And now? We'll see. Either way, it's a sad day for baseball and the San Francisco Giants and Willie Mays and the entire Bonds family.

Sad, and as Mike Celizic points out, entirely avoidable. You'll want to read the whole article, but I do think this one quote is worth repeating to anyone who gets a holier-than-thou tone in their voice when speaking of Barry Bonds: "Nothing he did was against the rules of the game when he was putting up his single-season home-run record and ruling the game like no one had ever done before. Baseball allowed him to do what he did, celebrated it, encouraged it and cashed the checks." And if he'd just had the courage and character to stand up and admit it, we wouldn't be here today.

The query

I've spent a considerable amount of time the past two months striving to learn the art of the query.

The query letter is a strange beast. It is, essentially, the high-falutin' literary world, which forever looks down on those bourgeouis attention-span-challenged Hollywood producer types, acting exactly like those bourgeouis attention-span-challenged Hollywood producer types. As in, you have two minutes to convince me to represent/buy your book. The scope of the task is the same whether you're approaching an agent or a publisher: pitch it in a paragraph. No, a shorter paragraph. Really, a sentence would be better. Actually, what they seem to want is for you to compress your 400-page, 81,000 word story -- plot, character, subplot, theme, genre and key selling points -- into a slogan roughly the size of "just do it."

Now, the reasons for this development are entirely understandable. There are a lot more aspiring authors out there than there are quality manuscripts. I have spent much of my career in politics, corporate communications and the music world interacting with people who are convinced they are good writers. A fraction of them are correct. This is not a put-down; it's a fact of life. Despite what some may believe, writing is not like riding a bike. Writing is like competing in a double-century race. You have to train every day, you have to learn from your competition, you have to be able to both strategize and improvise, and you have to have some measure of innate skill. If any one of those is missing, the best you can hope is to be pretty good. And pretty good is not going to get an unknown writer in the door of any agent or publisher in America.

So, agents and publishers have good reason to make you keep it short, just like that last paragraph should have been. If you can't edit yourself, why should they waste time reading your manuscript?

The steady yet painful process of improving my query letters over the past few weeks has offered me insights that range far beyond the basics of self-marketing, though. I started this process very much in marketing mode. My early queries sound like episodes of Project: Greenlight, full of important-sounding adjectives and adverbs and rendered in the deep and urgent tones of a movie-trailer narrator.

My first round of rejections convinced me that I was doing something wrong. My pitch was technically sound. But the tone was off. The biggest clue was perhaps the most obvious one -- my queries sounded nothing like my book. They sounded distant where the book is immediate, stiff rather than comfortable, self-conscious instead of confident.

This time around, I wrote the query like I wrote the book. I attacked the subject in bursts of short, potent phrases. I gave it a tone of total belief in the project. I edited ruthlessly. And I didn't let myself obsess over the "finished" product. My work here is done; out the door with you. Go forth and multiply.

An hour later -- more and more agents are accepting electronic queries -- I had my first nibble.

The key to self-marketing for me, though, turned out to be a matter of emphasis. As soon as I emphasized the "self," by writing naturally, the "marketing" became much more effective. My words felt genuine. They rang true. They had power.

So there's your lesson -- speak truth. You don't have to reveal everything. You just need to say what you mean, and mean what you say. Do that, and your audience will listen.

Good reads: Robert B. Parker

Enough about things that annoy me, already. Time to talk about things that delight me.

Robert B. Parker delights me.

The author of over 50 novels, Parker is best known for his Boston private detective character Spenser, around whom he’s spun something like 35 novels since 1973. Some have been adapted for the small screen -- you may remember the 1980s TV series Spenser: For Hire starring Robert Urich, or the more recent cable movies starring Joe Mantegna -- but like his contemporary Elmore Leonard, Parker’s material has never had the impact on screen that it does on the page.

That’s because Parker’s detective stories really aren’t detective stories at all. They are explorations of (in no particular order) psychology (Freudian and otherwise), family dynamics, self-deceit, love, loyalty and -- perhaps most of all -- honor. Spenser and his supporting cast -- he has one of the most colorful and entertaining supporting casts in detective fiction -- are all damaged in one way or another, but all share a common thread of trying to redeem their flaws by observing a largely unspoken code of honor. In Spenser’s world, it’s not which side of the law you’re on that determines your worth as a human being -- it’s how you conduct your life, whether it’s with loyalty and courage and honor, or lies and concealment and betrayal.

Fifteen years ago or so, Parker began branching out, interspersing new entries in the Spenser series with stand-alone novels and now two new continuing series. The Jesse Stone novels focus on the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, a man of few words and many demons, including alcohol and his emotionally co-dependent ex-wife. The Sunny Randall novels feature female private detective Randall, who’s also still in love with her ex-husband, the only guy in a major Boston crime family to go straight. All three series have distinct tones and narrative approaches, but all share Parker’s supreme gift for snappy dialogue and psychological intrigue. He has also managed to have each protagonist cross over into one of the others’ series at least once, with entertaining results.

Parker’s latest is Now & Then, a Spenser novel, and while I highly recommend it, you won’t be able to fully appreciate it without the context of the 30-some-odd novels that preceded it, as Parker continues to poke around and find new angles to explore themes and events that he’s been percolating for thirty years. My advice is to start with 1973’s The Godwulf Manuscript and read them in order. It’s fun to watch supporting characters get introduced and then reappear over time, to observe how Spenser evolves from a wisecracking self-absorbed male chauvinist to a wisecracking self-aware renaissance man, and to see how neatly Parker pulls off the trick of writing a 35-year series of novels in which the main characters barely age, while lesser ones observe the normal calendar.

Parker is a master. Enjoy.

Saturday scraps

First some apparently pro-Nixon idiot heckles James Taylor. Then a bunch of hyper-competitive women turn a hobby into cutthroat business. Here's hoping none of these people ever reproduce.

Purple reign

Just when you were thinking maybe I had gone on strike with the TV writers -- alas, poor Jonny, we hardly knew ye -- and just when I was starting to think there wasn’t much in the morning’s news to raise my ire, along comes Prince.

Those familiar with His Purpleness are probably aware of his checkered legal past -- his lawsuit against his former label, his performing in public with the word “SLAVE” written on his face, and his name-change to an unpronounceable symbol in an effort to make a point about his label owning the rights to market his public image. Points for creativity and all, but I’m not sure what that’s going to accomplish.

And as much of a creators’ rights advocate as I am, there is a line in this area that should not be crossed. You don’t win points in my book by being a control freak, and you don’t win points in just about anybody’s book by suing your own fans.  Let me say that again: suing your own fans. This is the second time Prince has sent his legal minions after his own biggest fans -- the ones who have spent their own tme and money setting up Web sites designed to promote his career. Their alleged offense? In their efforts to promote the man and his music at no cost to him, they have supposedly displayed images of Prince and Prince-related items on which he holds the copyright.

The fans running these sites understandably aren't very happy about this, and in response have formed the ingeniously-named organization Prince Fans United. Yes, that's Prince F.U. for short. There have also been renewed calls for the Purple One's head over at the Daily Vault.

The legal foundation for Prince’s actions is tenuous at best -- he’s a public figure and there is such a thing as fair use. The moral foundation is non-existent. The people he is suing are helping him, not harming him. What can you say about such behavior but: what a maroon.

Attack of the "idiot culture"

Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein says our celebrity-driven news media have fostered an “idiot culture” that devalues public affairs journalism.

This might sound like sour grapes from the old guard, but it’s hard to argue with Mr. Bernstein when this morning's lead headlines on AOL.com are “Which TV shows get hit by strike,” “Katie Holmes runs New York marathon,” and this stunning piece of investigative journalism: “Croc Shoe Fad May Fade.” No, really? Are you sure?

The circulation figures are telling:

People 3.75 million weekly
Newsweek 3.10 million weekly

In that sense, AOL.com’s headlines are right in tune with the pulse of America. The central government of nuclear-armed Pakistan is self-destructing before our eyes? Who cares? Katie finished a marathon!

And if you think “idiot culture” is too harsh a term, then take a look at the comments left by AOL readers after an AOL.com news article. Any article, it doesn’t matter. The level of dialogue, if you could call it that, is third-grade schoolyard, full of bullying taunts, racism and misogyny. The ignorance is blinding, the conversation so degraded as to make contributing to it feel pointless.

Who is responsible for this? We all are. And only we can change it, by demanding better from the media -- and each other.

Weekend update

Rambling thoughts on a Saturday morning:

It can be a challenge to maintain faith in people these days when the me-me-me ethic seems to have become the norm in American society. A friend was reminding me at lunch today how different things are in Europe where, for example, they don’t have to erect big fences around obviously dangerous things like railroad tracks or electrical transformers. The operating assumption in European society is that if someone is dumb enough to get hurt being somewhere that they obviously shouldn’t be, dealing the consequences of that behavior is the responsibility of that individual.

As a momentary antidote to our rampant me-me-me-ism, I’ve provided this link to a story about a member of the MLB champion Boston Red Sox who gets it. He gets that he is being paid handsomely to play a game, and that kids look up to him, and that it would be a good thing to give something back in a low-key yet meaningful way.

In view of the long-suffering Sox now having won two of the last four World Series titles, though, I do feel compelled to close with a quote from the most frustrated New York Met fan in America, Jon Stewart: “How can you be lovable if you don’t lose?!”

A capital offense

This is kind of embarrassing to admit. But let’s face it -- you’ve probably already noticed. This blog uses capital letters -- and punctuation, too.

How very uncool.

It seems many of the cool people – c’mon, you know who I’m talking about, you’ve known them since seventh grade, they’re always lurking in the hallways, flashing their logo’d casual wear and pretending not to be living and dying by every nanosecond of attention they can attract – want to make the Internet a capitalization-free and punctuation-optional zone.

Not that I’m an absolutist about this. For example, many of us cut corners when instant messaging… it’s kind of what that medium is all about. And I can buy losing the caps when it’s a design choice. Logos and imagemaps and such that don’t use capitals almost always look sleek and elegant.

But your more standard electronic forms of written communication -- e-mails, message board postings and even, yes, blog posts -- do not exist to look sleek and elegant. They exist to communicate information in verbal form. Style is allowed, but the minute your stylistic choices start interfering with reader comprehension -- like say if i were to suddenly stop punctuating or capitalizing so that you thought when i said your life is over I was threatening you rather than telling you i had borrowed your copy of a classic board game -- well, that’s when I tend to get a little pissy.

If you want everything to be pretty all the time, go make visual art. If you want to write, write. As with any other artistic discipline, certain rules apply and some you can bend or even break to your advantage. But sacrificing reader comprehension for some illusion of hipper-than-thou appearance is just you trying futilely once again to be one of the cool kids. And it isn’t, and you aren’t, and why in the world would you want to be, anyway? As long as Cameron Crowe is uncool, that’s the crowd I want to hang with.