Silicon Valley Upset By Trump, But Partially Responsible

Ok, this post is not about fiction -- unfortunately.

But, as we are learning hour by hour, President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration has caused chaos, not just at airports and other points of entry into the U.S., but around the world.

The Novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is Increasingly Relevant

The photo above, taken at my local bookstore, reminded me of several earlier posts that, to be fair, should have received more attention than they did.

Back in October, when the recent U.S. presidential contest was in progress, there was this one: The Rise of Hitler and the Current U.S. Election. (Please click on that link to read the full posting.)

Could I Be a Guest Lecturer For Kathleen Rooney's Course?

Perusing Literary Hub the other day, I was immediately attracted to a headline reading: "To Love New York City is to Walk New York City."

And, one might add, to write about one's walks.

After all, that's what my novella "Manhattan Morning" is all about.  My protagonist, Dan Morrison, with time on his hands, decides to walk from the Warwick Hotel at the corner of 6th Ave. and 54th St. down to just beyond Grand Central Terminal in order to buy a ticket for a bus that will take him to the airport the next morning. That's a distance of about 13 blocks.

As he walks, Dan is assailed by the sights and sounds of the city, which bring to mind a variety of topics thanks to a  process known as associative thinking. Ducking into St. Patrick's for a respite turns out to be anything but as the interior of a church brings to mind an incident Dan would like to put behind him, but still finds troubling.  Eventually, he has an unexpected encounter with a woman at lunch in Grand Central that gets him thinking about his future and his values.

You can read a free illustrated edition of "Manhattan Morning" by clicking on the name of the book.

A Book to Read After Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan Quartet

If you have read and enjoyed one or more books of Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan Quartet -- it starts with "My Brilliant Friend" -- you might also like to read "Eva Sleeps" by Francesca Melandri.

The books of both authors were originally written in Italian, but the English translations are of high quality.

Whereas Ferrante's four novels examine slices of Italian post-World War II history and society from the point of view of blue-collar southern Italians, often looking north, Melandri's book covers much the same time period, but from a different perspective.  "Eva Sleeps" is set deep in the history of an alpine Italian province known as Alto Adige that was once part of Austria, when it was known as South Tyrol. There, except for a brief period when Hitler essentially ruled Italy, the residents -- mostly German speaking -- look south, often warily if not with outright hostility.

More Themes of Young Adult Fiction

I've written several posts about Young Adult (YA) fiction, in large part because it is one of the fastest if not the fastest growing category of books in print -- at a time when most categories are flat or declining.

What's in these books?  Well, just about everything and especially, it seems, crest-of-the-wave social topics. If you are young, you want to be with it, right?

Next for Fiction: Trigger Warnings and Safe Pages?

I recently read an article on Literary Hub entitled "On the Use of Sensitivity Readers in Publishing" and it got me thinking: will we soon see novels with trigger warnings appearing at certain interior points, directing readers to "safe pages" within the book, where they can rest and suck on lollipops, certain that they won't encounter any micro aggressions before cautiously proceeding.

"Identity" is where it's at these days, in politics as well as in culture, and woe be it to anyone who offends, even inadvertently, a marginalized group to which they don't belong.  What is a marginalized group?  Well, pretty much any group other than white males, it seems.

Which brings me back to sensitivity reading, which Lit Hub  to its credit admits is a somewhat problematical activity. Is political and cultural correctness compatible with free literary expression and the role it has traditionally played in intellectual life?

The Lit Hub  article gives three views on sensitivity reading: that of a writer, that of a sensitivity reader and that of a publisher. Sadly, no effort appears to have been made to determine what the reading public thinks about this.

Is that important?  I don't know, but one could argue that a failure of certain elites to pay much attention to what was happening on the ground in significant areas of the country led to the election of Donald Trump -- for better or for worse. And one thing Trump repeatedly dismissed during his campaign was political correctness.

Most Debut Novelists Would Die For This -- Maybe

There are many, many novels written and not much space in The New York Times to review them. A debut novelist would just about die to get in there.

So how, one wonders, does a woman named Emily Fridlund get her first book, "History of Wolves," reviewed twice in the NYT over the course of three days -- and lengthy reviews at that, each with a picture of the author?  Do the journalists who write the daily paper talk to those who put out the Sunday edition? It appears not.

Hopefully, Ms Fridlund takes the view that anything said about her and her book is good publicity as long as the names are spelled correctly because the two reviews are not exactly in agreement.

On Thursday, Jan. 5, Jennifer Senior found "History of Wolves" disappointing. Fridlund withholds critical information from readers, leading them to believe they will be rewarded with something dramatic.  "Those thunderheads massing on the horizon let loose only a weak drizzle."

She also finds part of the story "disorienting" and "strained." 

In conclusion, Senior quotes the book's main protagonist, Linda, as saying: "It's not what you think but what you do that matters."  Fridlund, she says, "might have taken this to heart in a slightly different way. All the ideas in the world can't make a great novel. It's what you do with them that matters."

If Ms Fridlund was left a little downhearted by that assessment, the second review, by Megan, Hustad,  which appeared in the Jan. 8 Sunday book review section, turned out better.

She called the book "an artful story of sexual awakening and identity formation" that eventually turns more stomach-churning.

The overall result, Hustad said, "is a novel of ideas that reads like smart pulp, a page-turner of craft and calibration."

Well, which is it?  One could consult other reviewers, of course, but many (such as other authors) are too conflicted to be particularly objective. Or just take the plunge and maybe write one's own review.

Comments From Readers on Manhattan Morning (3)

"I did finally read 'Manhattan Morning' and it did revive my love of the city. But I was surprised by your focus on women's clothing styles -- I never would have guessed -- where does that come from? Where did the story come from and how much of it is autobiographical? And what was the impulse to write a novella?"
                                                                                                                        B.D.

I won't answer those questions here because readers should, in the first instance, experience the story as written. But I am happy to answer any questions individually.

For earlier reaction, start here.

Story Lines for Teenage Fiction

Are you interested in writing fiction for or about teenagers? If so, you might want to take a look at an article in the Jan. 15 New York Times  entitled "Social Media Rules, Created by Kids."

Nominally, it's all about what kids should and shouldn't post online and how parents might help them avoid mistakes, but it also contains material suggestive of story lines.

"Middle school can be an especially complicated time for girls. They are experimenting with social identity, even as their always-on digital world intensifies the scrutiny. Many want to be seen as pretty (even sexy, in some ways), but also as innocent and as 'nice.' This is an impossible balancing act," the article says.

How might that play out in fiction?

It's OK, one girl told the article's author, to post a photo of yourself in a bikini if you are depicted with other family members, but not alone. Be careful about posting photos of vacations in fancy locations. You might offend friends whose families can't afford them.

If you don't want to spend time with someone, don't claim you have too much homework. Just say you have other plans because a photo of you posted by someone else of you with that person could appear shortly.

Since a recent Pew Research Center survey found that about 24% of teenagers are online "almost constantly," behavioral risks loom large. And so, one might argue, do story possibilities.

Why would a young girl post a problematic photo?

"In a study published last summer, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the pleasure centers in teenagers’ brains respond to the reward of getting 'likes' on Instagram exactly as they do to thoughts of sex or money," the NYT article said.

"I knew I shouldn't have done it,  but I just couldn't stop," she wailed.

Conventional Publishing: In This Case, a Two-Year Process

In my previous post, I provided a link to an interview in which an author told how he had self-published a photo-intensive book on the 1970s Punk music era by means of a surprisingly successful Kickstarter campaign.  He went that way because commercial publishers wanted things done their way -- not his way.

Today I am providing a link to a different interview in which an author of a novel about teenagers describes her ultimately successful experience dealing with "Big Book" -- the conventional publishing industry.

A Book Self-Published With a Kickstarter Campaign

"The Ramones were not a bunch of dumb people making dumb songs, they thought about how to make dumb songs."

Ah -- the Punk era, last referenced here in my previous post.

The quote is from an illuminating interview of successful self-published author David Godlis by The Brooklyn Rail, a monthly on arts, politics and culture. Godlis' book, "History is Made at Night," is built around a series of photographs illuminating the 1970s punk scene.

After frustrating interactions with conventional publishers, who couldn't decide if it was a book about art or about music and didn't want to deal with something that didn't fit into one of their pre-determined categories, Godlis finally launched a Kickstarter campaign with the aim of raising $30,000.

At the end of a 40-day effort, he ended up with about $110,000 and 850 pre-sales of his book, which is currently priced at $40 a copy. Getting the book into conventional bookstores is another matter, however, since bookstores, even those that are independent, are closely tied in to the marketing apparatus of "Big Book" as one might call the mainline publishers.

Godlis' explanation of how this all happened is well worth reading.

Writing About the Use of Drugs

Why write about drug use in a blog about fiction -- other than the fact that drugs figure in many stories and not always in a convincing fashion? Many authors seem have characters taking drugs because transgressive behavior appeals to readers looking for vicarious thrills or an escape from ordinary, presumably boring life.

But at the same time it is a serious real-life issue, particularly at present with the opioid crisis. Today, The New York Times ran a feature story about what seems to be an growing epidemic in largely white middle class America --among the folks who used to be thought of as the bedrock of U.S. society.

The Challenges of Writing About Sex

As we all know well, sex sells and that as much as anything else is probably why it looms as large as it does in a lot of fiction.

But how exactly to write about it, or even more difficult, how to depict it, is a challenge for writers.

Early last year, Literary Hub, staged a single-elimination style tournament for "literary sex writing."  Such prose, I observed at the time, evidently stands in sharp contrast to ordinary old sex writing and as such, may be considered a high-minded, as opposed to a prurient, activity.

Comments From Readers On Manhattan Morning (2)

"When I read the book, I realized anew that I have never been interested in New York."

                                                                                                                                        D.C.

For earlier reaction, please click on this link.

Writing in the Internet Age: Quantify Yor Skills

Want to get a job as a writer in the Internet Age?

Katherine Power

Here's what one potential employer, Katherine Power, chief executive of Clique Media Group, a media and marketing agency, wants to see:

"I look for people who can quantify their value, who can really think like an entrepreneur and put a value around their skill set and growth. So if you look at a resume of someone who was a lifestyle writer for XYZ publication, I like to see that they wrote 16 pieces of content per week resulting in X percent growth in page views over three months," she told The New York Times in a "Business Day" interview.

There you have it: ever-increasing page views -- a metric that would leave me, well, unemployable!