The Writer's Life

The Chilling Path to Assassination

2009-11-29T17:20:00.000-08:00

The recent “crashing” of a Presidential State Dinner by a couple of wannabe celebrity publicity hounds sends chills up my spine, especially motivated by the picture of them being greeted by President Obama. It inspires the unthinkable.

It recalls the unavoidable “A” word, assassination, and to my mind, it is the most serious breach of security in recent memory, the consequences of which might have resulted in the most disruptive act in the history of our country. Indeed, the life of our President, whether we agree with his policies or not, is our most cherished living symbol, the jewel of our democratic aspirations.

If this sounds alarmist it should be, and I am appalled at this lapse by the vaunted Secret Service charged with the protection of the President. In this case, heads must roll and the procedures for the protection of our President reviewed and severely tightened. The celebrity-obsessed media, in my opinion, have been too kind to both the perpetrators and the protectors. It is a dangerous flaw in editorial management and exposes their ignorance and historical illiteracy.

Perhaps I am too sensitive about the subject since it formed the basis for the first book in my Fiona FitzGerald mystery series, “American Quartet”. The title refers to the assassination of four of our Presidents, McKinley, Garfield, Lincoln and Kennedy and a failed politician who replicated these assassinations by random murders that referenced the circumstances of these four assassinations.

While the motivation for these terrible acts were based upon whatever inner demons were torturing these murderers, the fact is that a determined assassin of single-minded purpose can be stopped only by an equally determined and aggressive defense.

Garfield was shot by a disgruntled office seeker who intruded on the President’s party while they waited to board a train in Washington D.C. Obviously he was not well guarded and the assassin easily mingled with the Presidential party. McKinley was shot by an anarchist who had disguised his weapon with bandages. He was well guarded when he stood greeting well wishers at the opening of an important event in Buffalo, New York.

Lincoln as we know, was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth. He, too, was guarded, albeit lightly, but Booth, a familiar face at the Ford Theater knew all the entry and exit points and was easily able to insinuate himself behind the box in which Lincoln was sitting watching the play. He also knew the applause and laughter high points which guided his timing to shoot.

John Kennedy was extremely well guarded by dedicated secret service agents whose ring of protection was easily penetrated by a determined assassin acting out of personal rage. Assassination attempts at Franklin Roosevelt, Truman and Ford were miraculously aborted by sheer luck. Reagan unfortunately did suffer the pain of a direct hit by a mentally unstable youth, but survived. The attempt on his life forced a revamping of Secret Service protective methods and changed forever Presidential access in every situation. Apparently it needs even more severe tightening.

What this tells us is that a dedicated and determined killer will, if he or she is so motivated, find a way to activate his or her mission unless thwarted by the most psychologically and technologically sophisticated methods of defensive interdiction. Of course, the Secret Service knows this and all its agents are brave men and women who understand that, if it comes down to it, they will take a bullet meant for the President or anyone else in their charge. They know too, that however efficient their protective ring, it is imperfect and at times luck and coincidence can play their miraculous and mysterious part in the process of protection.

They know too, that it is impossible to prevent all scenarios and surely have gamed all the possibilities of penetration by foes determined to achieve their terrible objectives. Indeed, we often fail to realize how difficult their task is. On a larger landscape, think of how our intelligence agencies must react to counter perhaps untold numbers of terrorists plotting ways to penetrate our defenses and achieve another Twin Towers disaster or kill our leaders.

One shudders to remember that the plane that hit the Pentagon might have been originally aimed at either the White House or the Capitol building with even more horrendous consequences.

Unfortunately, what is dead certain, despite whatever denials or rationalizations that memory often misinterprets or gets glazed over by time, is that there is someone or groups of someones out there bent on an act of assassination or terrorism that is chilling to contemplate. There are those who might call such a statement, unfettered paranoia. I call it acknowledgement of historical precedent, which has illustrated time and again the thin line that separates the human species from evil impulses.

Whether we like it or not we are living our lives in America under a sword of Damocles and are ultimately largely dependent upon government agents to protect us and our leaders.

There are those who might interpret the laxness of our protective ring around the President as representing a creeping paradigm of denial. The high minded absurdity of giving the perpetrators of 9/11 the soapbox of a New York trial in a civilian court, that will certainly stir the hearts of our enemies and encourage them to greater heights of creative destruction, seems to come directly out of the playbook of our enemies.

The argument that such a trial will illustrate our moral values pales beside the ultimate value of the human species, which is survival. Yes, I can still thrill to the great injunction of Patrick Henry and his over-the- top rhetorical cry of “Give me Liberty or Give me Death.” Despite its heroic trappings it is an odd and hopeless choice. Death presumes there can be no hope of liberty. And the absence of liberty assumes that death is the only option. How about “Give me liberty and the courage to fight for it by whatever means necessary”.

But the case of the White House crashers whose names I will not use as a personal protest to their sick celebrity drenched ambitions must be examined with relentless energy. The next crasher might achieve the unthinkable that will surely unhinge the nation in ways too horrible to contemplate.

Sarah Again

2009-11-21T07:57:00.000-08:00

One should be given combat pay for defending Sarah Palin in Manhattan. The other evening at a lecture, a s0-called distinguished author of political tomes reflected on the declining state of conservatism and cited Sarah Palin as the reincarnation of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who stirred the ire of the country by accusing a huge swath of the State Department as being card carrying communists.

Hearings were held and eventually the Senator, an authentic alcoholic, was exposed as a liar and a fraud, chastised by the Senate and tossed into the rubbish bin of history where he belonged. The ugly comparison ticked me off enough to challenge the author much to the consternation of the passive audience who had been nodding their approval throughout the lecture, which struck me more like a rant against Governor Palin, and despite being cloaked in snobbish intellectual certainty seemed far more virulent than I had heard in other Manhattan venues.

Aside from the emotional and inexplicable ugly abuse heaped on the Governor, the characterizations of her as stupid redneck trailer trash, a lousy mother and ignoramus, the final fallback position comes down to this: Is she qualified to be President of the United States?

In defense, I often try to answer the question with another question which goes something like this: Would you deem qualified for the Presidency a failed small businessman of limited oratorical talent who had never gone to college? A puzzled expression usually falls over the face of my interlocutor, then a wary grimace suggesting that I am asking a trick question, which, of course, I am. When the answer is a doubtful shrug, my riposte is that “you probably wouldn’t have voted for Harry Truman.”

It is important to note that when Harry Truman was President he was excoriated as being a hack politician, an ignoramus, a dumb Midwestern hick and hardly fit to step into the shoes of President Franklin Roosevelt who had chosen him as his Vice President for his fourth term for purely political and demographic reasons, and then rarely consulted him or met with him in person. Truman is now revered as an iconic President who led us into the postwar era, saved Europe and opened America to its greatest prosperity in history. History is always a better judge of “qualifications” than under the pressure of contemporary political events.

In dealing with this conundrum, I have been recalling the suggestion of my great late friend John David Garcia whose seminal book “The Moral Society” was conceived by him as a lasting testament to save our society from ignorance and eventual decline. In that book, amplifying a suggestion by Plato, he recommended that people who stood for office in a democratic system should first be formally educated in governing, certified by a degree, then only those who had been certified should be further credentialed by running for a legislature at the lowest level in a town council, for example, or running and being voted in as a Mayor, then moving on to run at the State level and after election to gain experience in State legislatures or the executive branch as Governor.

Only after being vetted by that experience would a politician be qualified to run for the national legislature or for President. One assumes that there would be a pool of certified politicians eligible to run with the experience in governing that would assure that they have the qualifications to participate in the complicated process of governing.

If that system were adopted we would not be conflicted on the question of qualifications, in much the same way lawyers or doctors are licensed or qualified by testing and a board of their peers. In the system we employ today, the only qualifications are age, citizenship, ambition and the ability to come up with enough money to buy staff and time and space in media.

In our present system, any jackass with the ability to raise a potful of dough can run for office and get elected to influence the most important decisions that impact directly on our lives. A wealthy person who has made a splash in business or has inherited family money can buy his way into Congress or an executive position like Governor at his whim. His election is not guaranteed of course, but his chances are directly proportionate to his wealth or the ability to raise money and hire people to fashion his or her presentation designed to manipulate the voters.

The goal is to package and brand a politician to fit the demographics of his target audience, the voter, and get him to “buy” the manufactured brand. Anyone with enough money can hire the people who are experienced in packaging and branding. We only learn hat we have been hoodwinked after the fact when we discover that the person we voted for was a mirage created by experienced manipulators. It is the Achilles heel of our current system, imperfect, messy and often insulting and destructive. But, as Churchill, has opined, the best of the worst.

I have always believed that John David’s Garcia’s idea was an improvement of our present system.

Obviously, we are very far from his dream of a qualified and credentialed pool of politicians from which to choose. Nevertheless the vetting process of starting at the bottom at a town council and working one’s way up the ladder does exist. Tip O’Neil was dead right when he concluded that “all politics is local.” To me it suggests that governance is learned at the lowest levels, where the give and take, the balancing of views the compromises and small battles are fought which hone the skills and credentials of politicians and qualify him or her as someone worthy of our support.

Which brings us back to Sarah Palin and her qualification for higher office, at least by the standards suggested above.

Palin was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska city council from 1992 to 1996 and the city's mayor from 1996 to 2002. After an unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska in 2002, she chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 until her resignation in 2004. She was elected Governor of Alaska in November 2006. Palin became the first female governor of Alaska and the youngest person ever elected governor of that state.

Oh yes, and she does have an undergraduate college degree, unlike George Washington, Harry Truman, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and others. And for all you teachers out there, the alleged trailer trash’s Dad was a teacher of science in the local public school system. And to all those hard edged alleged feminists, to my mind she qualifies as well as a poster girl of the feminist movement, going head to head in a man’s world while balancing the rigors of being a wife and mother. And she needs no defense as an inspiration to parents with physically challenged children.

‘Nuff said. Frankly, I doubt if the dyed-in-the-wool Palin haters will change their minds. Hate is the most difficult of all human emotions to expunge.

Go Sarah

2009-11-17T16:11:00.000-08:00

In my daily Manhattan world, where most of my friends and acquaintances are old style political groupies of a distinctly liberal bent, nothing gets them more riled, really riled, hyper-irritated, when I mention that I admire Sarah Palin.

They fuss and fume to such an extent that I have serious qualms of the effect on their physical health. Some, I can tell by the clenching of their fists and the sudden burst of color on their complexions, are on the verge of combat.

Frankly I am baffled by the extent of their antagonism. It is visceral, mouth foaming and indicates a kind of existential hatred I have rarely seen in the political arena. In my view it is completely irrational and fed by the snobbery, elite exclusivity, and a circumscribed media of like-minded, anti-Palin views that feed, reinforce, inflame
and buttress their antagonism.

Up front let me tell you why I admire Sarah Palin. I like the fact that she has a point of view of many of the women I met in my many years of living in the West: independent, family oriented, tough, opinionated, fearless, unafraid to air their grievances, and, above all, comfortable in their own skin.

She reminds me of the kind of women, heroines of yesteryear, who pioneered the western frontier and were willing to take on all the hardships inherent in putting down stakes in an unforgiving and dangerous land. I know this will sound absurd to many of my friends, but in some way, she reminds me of Hubert Humphrey who had been dubbed by the media as “The Happy Warrior.” Hubert, an old style liberal, jumped into the fray with a smile, a sense of humor and an unshakeable optimism. Unfortunately, his political future was trashed in Chicago by ugly protests and overreaction by the authorities.

I like Sarah’s competitive spirit and love of sports, her joy in the outdoors and its many wonders, including fishing, hunting, (yes hunting for all you effete New Yorkers who love eating red meat) skiing and hiking. I like the idea that she took on the good old boys who ran their fiefdoms in Alaska politics and bashed them at the polls. I like the idea that she took on the challenging balancing act of being a working mom in a demanding political job, and I have no doubt that she is fiercely devoted to her kids, to her country, to her parents and her friends.

Although she has obvious old fashioned values which I grew up with and understand, she has not shied away from modern mores and has grappled with the difficulties of raising children like most families dealing with the perils of child rearing in this ever more permissive society. It amazed me that she didn’t go into a depressive funk at the way the media treated her daughter, especially the ugly ridicule of Letterman.

Harry Truman, one remembers, was so pissed off with a music critic at the Washington Post who dissed daughter Margaret’s singing debut that he wrote a nasty letter to the critic in which he called him a son of a bitch. Frankly, Sarah showed remarkable restraint and should have kicked Letterman in his overactive you-know-whats for insulting Bristol.

Parents are often blindsided by adolescent peer pressure and their children’s foolish self-inflicted mishaps. She was also roundly criticized for exploiting her kids by taking them to the convention and on the campaign trail. Would it have been better to have left them home with a caretaker or a relative? Ask that question of millions of working mothers and check their response.

If anyone took the trouble to really delve into her record as both Alaska Governor and her excellent work and acknowledged expertise in the energy field, it would dispel the notion that she is stupid, which is the way the elite media has portrayed, pummeled and persecuted her. She is a realist, frank and open, big hearted and decent.

Maybe she wasn’t quite up to par on current events at the time of her hatchet job interview with Katie Couric, a fading media star who insults the fact that the great Walter Cronkite once held sway on that network. Anyone with experience in the news business knows that it’s pretty easy to make a jackass out of someone if you’re determined to do it, especially if you also control the editing.

Oh yes, she is enormously attractive, with movie star good looks, which, in her case, might actually be a political negative. Still, she has done wonders for women in specs who were often categorized as less than pretty. Remember all those Hollywood movies where the bespectacled woman removes her glasses and her boyfriend suddenly swoons with rapture over her beauty. I think she looks just great in glasses and probably has done wonders for the optical trade.

I may not agree with all of her political views and statements, which is par for the course, since I often disagree with everything in the lexicon and views of most politicians of whichever party. Review the campaign promises and rhetoric of the present occupant of the White House and compare it with the reality of those promises and you will know what I mean. He is hardly an exception. Few, if any politicians, will ever get passing grades on that test.

What I take issue with is the utter nastiness and Sarah bashing in the media that this woman has endured. It is far beyond the pale of political combat. It has been hateful, riddled with snobbery, bigotry and pure mean-mindedness.

When Sarah Palin is discussed in my social circles, she is characterized as trailer trash, ignorant, unfit, uneducated, downright stupid and worst of all, a lousy mother. Not only is she accused of exploiting her children for political gain, she is blamed for her daughter’s early sexual promiscuity and her family is characterized as hopelessly dysfunctional. And this passes for political dialogue in modern America?

To counter these rather disgusting comments, especially when they are particularly venomous about her family life, I ask these brilliant nose-in-air critics to look to their own families and honestly confront their own foibles and imperfections. It becomes dangerous territory since most people are rather touchy and in denial about their family histories, especially if they are divorced, have less than perfect children, and have squabbles that have poisoned their own lives. I put half the families in America in that category.

Then there is the matter of her intense Christian faith which has been fair game for the media. These are the same folks who once supported and gushed over the born again Jimmy Carter.

Women seem to be the most vitriolic and outspoken in their critique of Sarah. Indeed, isn’t she the personification of what women have struggled and fought for, someone who follows her passion and ambition in the work place, competes vigorously with her male counterparts and manages to fulfill all the rituals of motherhood and maintain a loving family life? Isn’t that what women wanted when they burned their bras in Atlantic City and started their long delayed revolution for equal treatment?

To depersonalize my inevitable counterattack I will often cite the family lives of some of our revered politicians of both parties and heroes of the snob media, stalwarts of the marriage tradition of “faithfulness”, e.g. the Kennedy brothers, Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and (sorry folks) Thomas Jefferson, a certified pedophile and a host of others whose personal lives are less than stellar, far less. As for parenting, I’d declare that off limits in this discussion.

This defense of Sarah is not rooted in her presently perceived qualifications to become President of the United States, a possibility that induces apoplexy in my social circles. I’m not beating the pots and pans for such an outcome, but I don’t completely rule out the possibility.

We have elected the allegedly qualified who turned out to be monumental duds. Recent history has Jimmy Carter’s Presidential legacy to reckon with and there are many of older vintage who have been disappointing examples of Presidential leadership. Indeed, the overqualified often stumbled. John Adams comes to mind.

None of these comparisons will matter to the Sarah haters. They will continue to spew their hatred and declare this admiral woman a danger to America as if she was the female reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. She will continue to be harassed by the same media elitist snobs, continue to be treated with disdain. If I was an Alaskan who voted for Sarah I would be offended as hell by people who think I was some Neanderthal moron for voting for Sarah as my Governor.

But then, the people in my daily circles in the isolated precincts of Manhattan will never surrender their prerogatives as masters of the universe, poseurs and keepers of the flame of intellectual superiority. Truth to tell, I often fall into that category and love the contention and combat of my peerless native city. Growing up in the old Brooklyn, before gentrification, and rooting for the old Dodgers, I guess I’m programmed for an underdog defense, and rooting for Sarah stirs my juices.

Frankly, Sarah needs no defense from me. She has the stamina and feistiness to rise above the endless array of targeted torment being spewed over her by the media snobs, many of whom will die off as their vaunted power bases splinter and break up into a thousand niches by the onslaught of digital technology and the Internet.

A Presidential perch is a long shot for Sarah. Out of my social circles in the alleged wastelands between the coasts, she has found a vast crowd of ordinary Americans, often described as the great unwashed, made up of working folks, many of them unemployed and disillusioned by the empty promises of the smooth talking and elegant speechifying of the people currently in charge, who feel some kinship with this very exotic political orphan.

The great Ivy Leaguers of both genders who are leading America over the cliff to financial ruin and their colluders in the worst Congress in recent history, who apologize for American exceptionalism, butt kiss our enemies and deny the ongoing phenomena of brutal Jihadist terrorism, will one day have to reckon with the likes of Sarah Palin.

SONY Reader to Offer Special Promotion of Fiona FitzGerald Mysteries

2009-11-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday the SONY reader will begin a promotion that bundles all of Warren Adler’s Fiona FitzGerald mysteries into a special price download that is a “must read” for anyone who really wants to know the truth about what happens behind the scenes in the nation’s capital.

The Fiona FitzGerald Mysteries

Fiona FitzGerald is a single, smart, sexy, strong-willed woman in her early 30's. who is a D.C. homicide detective. Because of her expertise in the mores of Washington she is given the assignment to solve those homicides that involve important Washington political and diplomatic figures. This acclaimed series has been hailed by critics as providing rare insight into the American power structure and the deviousness and corruption that occurs behinds the scenes.

AMERICAN QUARTET
Never underestimate the power of failure. Four seemingly unconnected D.C. murders stimulate Fiona FitzGerald's sense of history. She delves into a disturbing obsession of a socially prominent but failed politician.

AMERICAN SEXTET
Fiona FitzGerald uncovers a political sex scandal of massive proportions. Who could concoct a sexual conspiracy involving six men from the highest offices in the country - a great American Sextet!

THE WITCH OF WATERGATE
When an infamous reporter whose poison pen had destroyed many careers, is found hanging from her Watergate apartment, the elite of Washington rejoice. Fiona FitzGerald is on the case again.

SENATOR LOVE
The rain uncovers two bodies and Fiona FitzGerald is baffled. Both murders points to a powerful man dubbed as "Senator Love." Besides solving the mystery, will Fiona submit to him?

IMMACULATE DECEPTION
A powerful pro-life Senator is found dead in her nightgown. Looks like suicide but Fiona FitzGerald knows better. Things get more baffling when one shocking clue contradicts the whole case.

THE TIES THAT BIND
A Supreme Court Justice that Fiona FitzGerald once had a past with is the target of her investigation into the brutal sadomasochistic murder of the daughter of a prominent lawyer.

DEATH OF A WASHINGTON MADAME
Washington, DC’s struggling underclass and the U.S. Capitol’s socially prominent and politically aggressive upper strata collide in a horrifying crime. Homicide Detective Fiona FitzGerald once again battles prejudice and privilege to uncover the truth, confronting her own demons – and the violet-eyed wife of a powerful politician determined to erase the sinful secrets of the past.

Mainstream Media is in its Death Throes

2009-10-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

The so-called mainstream media, once defined as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and the three major network TV stations, no longer have a monopoly on the opinion making process in American life.

Why belabor the obvious? We all know why. Eyeballs are migrating to the Internet, that vast endless, timeless cloud of information that assaults us 24/7 from every corner of the globe. When eyeballs migrate, the money as defined by the advertisers migrates with them. The less eyeballs, the less revenue, the less revenue, the less investment by the media.

When the revenue decline reaches the tipping point, money dries up, shrinkage occurs until there is nothing left to shrink and the media entity dies or morphs into something else. That is what is happening now. The old media is dying. The new media is building on the corpse of the old media and it is too early to tell if the business paradigm for the new media will ever prosper. It might even die faster than the old media.

Television and radio has split its audience into tiny pieces. There are now hundreds of television channels and thousands of radio channels, and gazillion channels on the Internet. The Tower of Babel now extends into infinity.

Mainstream journalists, many of them now in save-the-world mode (ever since Watergate made celebrities out of investigative journalists) truly believe that we are losing our ability to prod the government into transparency, to uncover corruption and generally serve the public good. Thus, they contend, that the resources to expose the sins of government are drying up, splintering, becoming less effective. They have a point.

The new media now on the Internet e.g., the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Politico and on and on believe that they will fill the gap and become, if not what was once known as the mainstream media, the go-to media. Maybe. Politico is now morphing back into print with a local angle news sheet. They had better have deep pockets.

Those of us who grew up with the traditional mainstream media have, to say the least, mixed feelings about its demise. With fewer outlets we were more like a family, more connected. We knew what each outlet stood for. The public conversation was limited by comparison with today, but comforting since those of us who cared could embrace the information flow. We thought we were getting all sides of all arguments, that our press and speech freedoms were secure. We probably were. Sooner or later, corrupt politicians were exposed by the press and many removed or incarcerated. It amazes me that one crop of crooks are quickly replaced by another crop.

In New York when I was growing up there were eleven dailies. Now, there are three and who knows how long they will survive?

Were we unduly influenced by those who controlled the media? I’m not sure, since the line between the business side of the press and the news side seemed like a pretty wide chasm. Economic desperation may be diluting that ethic. Ideological lines have blurred and the media appears to manipulate its content and layout to favor the particular bent of its sixties influenced editors and reporters. Their nostalgic output seems a lot less subtle than it used to be.

As an ex-newspaperman, I know that editorial placement, headline writing, and the way stories are constructed by length and detail, can make spin often hard to spot. As a former practitioner both as editor and reporter, I can spot a bent story at a hundred paces. On the Net, the same process holds, but usually we know the ideological zone upfront.

In today’s media environment a few big public companies actually control a vast array of competing media. When one conglomerate owns a big basket of unruly entities, it is difficult to get them all to dance to the same tune. Besides, it doesn’t really matter to the operators. Their principal objective is revenue and profit. By and large, they are not selling ideology. They are selling eyeballs and ears. The more they deliver, the more they can charge advertisers. That’s business, and the business of business is business. If it sounds crass, it is.

So far, the migration of the mainstream traditional media to the Net has been a rocky road. It is also a rocky road for the so-called new media e.g. Politico, Huffington, and many others. I’m sure they’re credible but I’m not certain that they have as much influence as they claim. They, like many of their on-line competitors are still in start-up mode and have not yet reached a sustained profit, without which they will eventually fold or become something else.

An exception is the Wall Street Journal, which has paid subscribers on the Net, a lucky early choice with its mostly upscale target base. But most of the on-line media is free and dependent on advertising. I’m still uncertain, despite the hype, whether the advertising is paying off. In other words, everything on the Net that is defined as media e.g. the news business, and other forms of information peddling is still up for grabs.

Of one thing I am absolutely certain. Everything, not only media, is changing. And I do mean everything; delivery systems, marketing, content, medicine, the whole ball of wax. No sooner than we think we have it in our grasp then it moves somewhere else with the speed of light, perhaps faster. Everything that is, perhaps even what is commonly known as human nature.

The center is not holding because there is no center. Marshall McLuhan was spot on. The media have become the message. Google has proved the point. It and its copiers are swiftly becoming the media.

I suppose the trick will be how to keep up. Even this attempt at analysis will be obsolete the moment it is written. Remember that play: Stop the World- I Want To Get Off.

Forget it. It’s spinning too fast. It’s making me dizzy.

How about you?

Next Blog: The Dying of the Celebrity Culture

Dumb and Dumber in the White House

2009-10-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

Growing up in New York in the thirties and forties, there were at least eleven daily newspapers, all spouting varying opinions from both left and right perspectives. Offered by the news organizations were a potpourri of praise and anger, mostly anger, at perceived abuses, both social and governmental.

The din was loud, a Tower of Babel of opinions. There were public parades and protests. The Daily Worker was at its zenith. Hate speech and hate news outlets were commonplace. It was one big free speech and free press orgy, a massive free- for-all.

Having grown up in that atmosphere, I am appalled by the White House’s attempt to put the squelch on Fox News. Free speechers and free pressers should be up in arms. Every media outlet in America should be castigating the administration for instigating such a desperate act of deliberate discrimination. It cannot masquerade as merely depriving access. You and I both know the dirty word, censorship, the enemy of free speech, the scourge of a free press.

Indeed, the first act of a dictatorial power grab is to silence critics. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Chavez is doing it. Castro did it. And on and on, wherever a nation is under the heel of a dictatorial government. If the so-called powers that be can get away with this, then every outlet for free expression will soon be under siege.

This is the way dictatorships acquire absolute power. If it works, expect other outlets to follow. It’s like a virus and, heaven forbid, it might even extend to the Internet, as it does in such places as China, Iran, Russia, and other nations that restrict free speech, especially in many Arab lands and Africa.

By the so-called acceptable media not standing up to this distasteful and dangerous act by a new and obviously inexperienced administration, the media is collaborating in this travesty. Where the devil are the critics? Where is the outrage? Does the President get a pass on this?

And since when does the White House decide who qualifies as a news outlet? Obviously their definition is based on a blatantly false and ridiculous premise that Fox is “merely” nothing more than talk radio. Is that the next step? Muzzling talk radio hosts?

My defense of Fox News is based solely on their right to say whatever they damned please, whatever their biases and predilections. I once got into a fist fight in a Washington bistro with a major newscaster after alleging that TV News was becoming little more than entertainment. Pow! was the newscaster’s immediate response. He considered himself a serious journalist and he was. It happened around midnight and we were both two sheets to the wind, but, in an odd way, we were both partially right.

Nor is this the first time that Presidents have tried to isolate their critics. Imagine if George Bush decided to take action against his critics. His press conferences would be the least attended events since Mark Twain cancelled a performance because of a sore throat.

It was Harry Truman, when President, who said if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. Our new President and his advisors, who are obsessed with control, just can’t get it through their heads that an open society demands differing opinions, debate, protest, rudeness, emotional outbursts, loud noises, strained nerves and bad tempers. Democracy is a sloppy form of governing. But our shrewd founding fathers instinctively knew the dangers of forced censorship and made the free speech and our free press the very first amendment to the Constitution.

Don’t think our Constitution came easy to those august participants. They were a recalcitrant group of strong minded cunning argumentative individuals and what they hammered out was nothing short of a miracle. The sycophants around the President should reread the travails of President John Adams and how his attempt at censorship trampled his political career.

The President has said he doesn’t lose sleep over this attempt to throttle a free press. He might slumber peacefully, but there are a lot of us out there whose worries about encroaching governmental attempts at censorship interfere with our tranquility and do induce some bad dreams.

Frankly, I do believe that there are many journalists who are offended by the White House’s heavy-handed tactics. It has got to make them uncomfortable, even if their bosses are not losing any sleep over this tactic. The fact is that trying to pull the curtain down over Fox news, whether you agree with their predilections or not, is an egregious wrong-headed stupid, dumber than dumber and chilling idea.

Perhaps this rant might seem somewhat hysterical. No, I don’t believe the White House has a sinister long term plan to control the media, although it certainly might want to slap down its opponents. But perception presents its own dangers and to be perceived as deliberately punishing one’s critics does induce in some of us an inflammatory reaction….like this one.

Worse, as was true of all Presidents who tried this before, it does reflect a certain naivete and inexperience and is bound to create, aside from outrage, a loss of credibility.

Maybe some smart staffer should poke the President in dreamland, disturb his sleep and tell him that this action was a stupid idea.

The President's Secret Thoughts-a Speculation

2009-10-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is merely force of habit, but I often find myself imagining what powerful public figures are really thinking as they act in ways that impact on our lives. Unlike psychologists and psychiatrists, who make a lifetime study of human motivation and rely on data that has been acquired scientifically by repetition, experimentation, observation and insight, the novelist operates purely on instinct and imaginary license.

That said, I can’t help wondering what our President is thinking as he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize. He surely knows in his gut and admits that the prize is aspirational, based on his rhetoric and not on his accomplishments.

In his private thoughts, I truly believe he is sincere in that he wants to do everything he can to realize his aspirations as he has defined them in his speeches; to make the world a better place, to persuade people to put down their arms, to compromise, to rely on peaceful means to resolve conflicts and bring warring factions together for the common good. Surely, he is sincere when he aspires to ban all nuclear weapons, and, in general, help banish starvation, disease, and inspire governments to operate with compassion and decency.

His thoughts, too, surely reflect the obvious, that he is the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, with the persuasive clout to provide the guidance to accomplish his sincerely stated goals. Yes, he thinks that the Nobel Peace Prize, while premature at this stage, puts a respected world stamp on his intentions and gives him permission to take bolder steps to bring peace to the world, and to create a legacy that will celebrate his name as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, peacemaker in the history of the world.

That is certainly a noble goal and why shouldn’t he privately think that this is within the realm of possibility. After all, he has risen from obscurity at practically warp speed to become the most powerful leader in the world. He has got to think that he has been blessed, that he has been chosen, anointed perhaps, to save the world. People have responded to him with worshipful adoration. Does this baffle him? Perhaps it did at the beginning. Surely he must be asking himself: “Why me? Where has all this adoration come from? Have I been anointed?” Dare he deny by whom? It is impossible for him, or anyone with such a record, to deny the spiritual component of this question.

He has got to be thinking: “I have been chosen to achieve a mission of peace. I must now do everything in my power to fulfill that mission.”

To do this, he surely thinks and believes that people are more good than evil; that the various manifestations of cruel manipulation by tyrants, dictators, despots and oppressors can be ameliorated without bloodshed; that cruelty, selfishness and fanaticism can be banished by reason and example; that suicide bombers and those who brainwash them can be rehabilitated; that borders can be redrawn and protective walls demolished by reasonable compromise; that terrorists can be reborn into good citizens--that fanatical religious leaders can be redirected into tolerance and respect for other faiths, and that through powerful rhetoric and eloquent persuasion, mortal enemies can learn to live peacefully with one another.

He must believe that he now has been given permission to move ahead and attempt to force compromise, assure warring parties that there is more to be gained by peaceful negotiation and cooperation than by bloody confrontation. He must think that to do this, America has to act more like a brother among nations, an equal partner, rather than an elite exception. He must think our hope for a peaceful future lies with the concept that created the United Nations, which he believes is still the organizational structure, the ultimate forum, that will bring about world peace.

It is time, he must believe, that America must exercise humility and dispense with any action that might seem heavy handed or self-righteous by others. He must see this not only as a rejection of his predecessor’s legacy, but an endorsement of his own stated ideas.

He must believe that he has been licensed as preacher, moral arbiter, a kind of world trigger for mass inspiration which commands that we must all learn tolerance for all religions, and accept our differences and our various ways to acknowledge a supreme being. Instinctively, I sense that he believes in such a divine force, which would cover the mystery of who anointed him.

Surely he has read the Old and New Testament and is reminded of the prophet Isaiah’s immortal words: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

As a politician, he believes he is a realist, understands history, and knows that the story of civilization is a long blood drenched narrative of good versus evil, with good, in the end, destined to be the ultimate victor. Indeed, the word destiny he knows lives deeply in his psyche. He must see his destiny as a well-lighted path ahead, which he has been called to follow. Indeed, is it possible for any man to resist such glorification? I don’t think so and it is a cause for concern.

Yes, he knows that he is wise to the ways of politics and he has assembled a team of experts to advise him about how best to implement his message into action. He trusts them to tell him the practical truths but knows that he must make the hard decisions. He is well aware that the buck stops with him. Or, he speculates, is there some mysterious force that guides him?

Of course it is impossible to know the truth about his secret thoughts. Nevertheless, considering his miraculous rise, his visible glorification, the admiring crowds, the endless applause, the magical wonder of it all, can he resist the temptations of this mass adoration and the illusion of anointment?

How he answers that question within the deep confines of himself and acts on its personal implication, can very well determine the fate of America and, perhaps, that of the whole world.

Google To The Rescue

2009-10-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

If you are a living author or the heir of a dead author, the confusing legal battle between those who support and those who oppose the Google objective of digitizing all out-of-print books must be a daunting task indeed.

As someone who has been wrestling with the idea of keeping my works “in print” for more than a decade and has attempted to keep my authorial name viable via the opportunities afforded in cyberspace, I will attempt to wade through the mucky underbrush and offer my own assessment of the process. Bear in mind that I am an author not a lawyer.

The bottom line is that Google will digitize all out-of-print books both in copyright and out of copyright, published by, one assumes, companies or individuals, whether still in existence or long gone. Most of the books will be “orphans”, the product of long dead authors and disappeared publishers that have been moldering on the shelves of libraries, public and private.

How far back they will go is anybody’s guess. My assumption is that Google will begin the process in the English language and go from there. Indeed, Google’s maw is infinite and it will undoubtedly attempt someday to put every book ever written in every language into its digital coffers.

For the author or his or her heirs, the process is a cause for celebration. The fruit of their mind, their writing and their good name will find its way into a data bank. Their work will indeed be rescued from obscurity, neglect or anonymity. There is a provision for the author or his or her heirs to opt out of the registry of author royalty recipients if they so choose . If the authors are registered, they will share a royalty with Google, who will, of course, have what could amount to a virtual monopoly on this vast cyber library.

Google’s investment in the process will be enormous and, realistically speaking, it is doubtful that any company presently constituted will expend the energy and investment required to back this vast chore. Google’s financial recoup strategy will be through advertising and sharing in the royalties of those digitalized books that will be bought. In my opinion, it will be an eventual bonanza of enormous proportions. Knowledge and information is a valuable commodity and bound to attract entrepreneurs with ideas beyond one’s present conception.

After all, Google is a business, a public company, and quite obviously it sees in this move an excellent financial opportunity. While they might couch this idea in high- minded terms of being a boon to humanity, which it is, the business aspect cannot be ignored. In my opinion, the risk for them will be well worth the reward.

As for the individual authors and their heirs, the financial benefits will be more problematic. Those books containing passed over but valuable knowledge and missed innovation will undoubtedly attract consumers. Marketing by interested parties, meaning individual authors, rights holders and publishers will be critical and expensive.

Fiction writers like myself might find miraculous resurrection based on unpredictable and unintentional consequences. Such a hope has very long odds even if the living authors or their heirs are willing to risk making a major investment to re-acquaint a fickle public or to revive an author’s name long forgotten by a living generation.

The Authors Guild and other organizations who were adversarial to the Google idea at first did negotiate a royalty settlement that seemed fair to authors, although, in my opinion, few, unless they can enlist marketing skills that are costly and innovative or through as yet unknown miraculous events, will ever see much in the way of royalties.

That said, it is better for an author to have one’s works alive and available, then dead and forgotten. Yes, Google is bound to recoup its investment and probably make a respectable, perhaps a giant sized profit. Good for them.

In many ways, what they are doing is astonishing and bold, and for an author, dead or alive, it is a gift that is priceless. An author’s work will be accessible and swiftly available to anyone who is interested, whether by accident or design Only an author knows how difficult and all-consuming a task it is t0 write, the hours of sweat and toil, the research and energy required to produce a book. Most come on the scene like a butterfly and quickly disappear into oblivion. No longer if Google’s plan goes ahead. If the planet lives so will an author’s work.

Every author who ever struggled to create form and content to an idea or a story through words should applaud Google for its courage and innovation. They stepped up to the plate and are taking the risk. Let them reap the rewards.

I’m not quite certain I’ve got it right or considered all the ramifications. I speak as an author delighted by the prospect. I hope that all issues can be resolved and move this remarkable task forward.

By Hook or Crook, Now Comes The Vook

2009-10-08T05:17:00.000-07:00

The new charge by the panicked book publishing industry to combine video with text and create a hybrid book, cutely named a “Vook”, reminds me of that great line from Superman comics “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman.” Or is it?

Such an innovation was, of course, inevitable considering the astounding success of electronic books and its various delivery devices, led by Kindle and the SONY Reader now penetrating the market. It is certainly worth the experiment, especially for instructional books where movement might be helpful to explain the text.

Indeed, I can understand the marketing concept. Let’s attract book straying younger readers who are habitués of the short video format of YouTube and texting and try to win them back to reading longer works, meaning real books that have been the staple of the industry since Mr. Gutenberg came up with movable type. By real books, I mean traditional “content”, whether distributed via electronic text or through the printed page.

The concept, as it evolves, might be a way to partially fill the hole developing in the publishing business during this transitional phase between the decline of the paper book and the rise of the electronic book.

But for the dedicated reader who glories in delving into the world of fiction, and is the core consumer of works of the literary imagination and responsible for the bulk of adult fiction sales, I doubt if the Vook will penetrate this group. I base this assumption strictly on my own experience as both a reader and a writer of such works.

This does not mean that there might be a growing appetite for the Vook among those who yearn for the next new thing, and there is a good chance that it might become a profit center, although I wonder about its long term durability.

Speaking for what I believe is the majority of dedicated readers, I do not want my reading interrupted by an intrusion on my imagination as I immerse myself in the author’s story by someone else’s idea of how the characters appearance, background and reaction to whatever turn of events the author may want us to follow and understand.

The author’s purpose in creating his or her story is to bring us behind the scenes of a character’s life, his or her thoughts, emotions and an understanding of why he or she is acting in a way that motivates the action. It is exactly this insight that motivates the dedicated reader and gives literature its life force.

When reading a work of fiction, I want to imagine myself what the character looks like to me, what the environment in which these characters operate appears to my mind’s eye, and what and why the character portrayed is thinking while he or she acts.

I don’t want a middle man, via a video clip, actors and contrived sets, to tell me how to see the author’s story. In my opinion, such an intrusion is a diminishment of the author’s intention and waters down the reading experience. It suggests putting a steak in a blender and drinking it instead of getting the real thing, sizzling in bulk on the plate.

Having had three of my books made into films, I offer some modest authority on the process. Filmed content has its place. It can keep you interested for a couple of hours, even enthralled, but no matter how you slice it, it is not the real thing, meaning a true rendition of the author’s intent. Frankly, as a dedicated reader, I prefer the figurative movie in my mind, based on the way my imagination “sees” the author’s work.

This may be a convoluted way of expressing my point of view. As an author of works of the imagination I am obviously biased and conflicted, perhaps even somewhat stiff necked in my opinions. Bottom line: The Vook might work well for others, but it won’t work for me.

I doubt it will make younger people, addicted to the short blip, become dedicated readers, although they certainly might buy the idea at the beginning, perhaps long after. Brought up on low attention spans, this demographic is always in danger of enthusing mightily then coasting quickly away looking for whatever else is coming down the pike.

After all, this group has certainly bought into the “graphic novel”, an idea I personally could never embrace since the product strikes me as a comic book in a reincarnated binding. Having grown up as a pre-teen on comic books I can’t quite embrace it as serious fiction despite its pretensions, nor does it absorb my interest. Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but having once read bible stories in classic comics garb I can’t bring myself to take it seriously.

I know this will offend devotees of the genre, but I suspect that the dedicated reader might eschew such a contrivance, despite its obvious success. There is certainly a fertile market out there for this kind of “reading.” Indeed, its popularity, judging from the way it’s eating up book catalogue and shelf space, seems to be burgeoning.

As for the dire warnings I have been hearing for years about the declining reading public, especially among young people, I have always rejected such alarms. It may be that the offerings are not attractive enough to induce the younger people to step forward. Who knows?

As many of us know, the quality of a thing is not always to be judged by its popularity. For example, while I congratulate Dan Brown on his popular success, I wish I could be complimentary about its quality. In my opinion, the characters are cardboard cutouts, the narrative drive is B-movie exploitation, the clichés are beyond count and the mystery seems stilted and far fetched. On the other hand, the hype was beautifully executed and if money is the great measure of success, then good for Dan and his publisher.

Hell, I bought the book for my electronic reader and slogged through it determined to show my loyal support for a fellow author. Indeed, many of my publisher and writer friends believe that anything that brings people into the reader’s tent is a plus. I suppose the business bet is that the Vook will also increase traffic to the tent. It might.

As for its contribution to the wonders of books consumed by the dedicated reader, I doubt it will make the slightest dent.

Address before NYU Alumni after receiving Alumni of the Year Award

2009-10-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Address before NYU Alumni after receiving award as Alumni of the Year for 2009 on October 3rd.

Dean Santirocco, fellow alumni, students, family and friends:

It is with great humility and some measure of astonishment for me to accept this wonderful honor 62 years after earning my degree at NYU. I guess Woody Allen was right when he said you earn your success by just keep showing up.

Nor am I the only alumnus in my family. Sunny, my lovely wife of more than half a century is a graduate of the School of Commerce and my son David, then a tiny embryo was present at her graduation ceremony.

I can remember vividly my college days at University Heights, that stunningly beautiful campus in the Bronx that was regrettably sold by NYU in 1973 .

I entered the Heights in February 1945, the only graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School registered. I knew nobody in my class. I was 17 years old and my prospects were dim since I expected to be drafted soon after my 18th birthday. World War 2 was still raging.

When I first visited the Heights, I was overwhelmed by the sight of those architectural jewels of that campus, Stanford White’s peerless Gould Library, its attached Hall of Fame of Great Americans and the breathtakingly beautiful landscape. For an urban boy raised in the neighborhood ghettos of Brooklyn at the height of the depression, I really felt that I was entering the kind of sublime college life depicted in the movies of the thirties to which I was, like all the kids at that time, totally addicted.

My parents somehow begged and borrowed the three hundred dollars a semester for tuition, 12 dollars a point, and I worked odd jobs at 50 cents an hour after classes. Be aware, the value of money was different. A subway ride was a nickel, a Broadway show was 55 cents. Textbooks were a little over a buck. And I was more than sixty years younger.

I’m beginning to sound like an object to be evaluated for the Antiques Roadshow.

I would leave the family apartment in Brooklyn armed with the lunch my mother made me each morning, two egg salad sandwiches and an apple. I suppose, from a loving son’s now politically incorrect perspective a stay at home mother was a most treasured gift. Armed with my sustenance I would walk the six blocks to the subway, spend the hour and a half on the journey to Burnside Avenue in the Bronx, walk another ten blocks to this little campus oasis plunked square in the middle of a very urban environment.

It was hardly a hardship since I used the subway time for reading and homework. Marching soldiers in uniform in the army’s officer training program attended classes and were housed in the dormitory. I was automatically registered in the ROTC program and we drilled daily on the campus.

I truly felt that I was going to what my parents would describe as an out of town college. My mother believed that there were only two places in the world New York and out of town. Having lived out of town for forty years wandering like Moses in the desert, I can honestly say she was right.

In fact, I was so inspired by the Heights campus that I ran for President of the Freshman class on the platform of bringing back the old customs of college life that I had learned from those Hollywood versions. I actually remember a reference from that strange campaign speech, something about the romance of gold fish swallowing and wearing pork pie hats. I must have touched a weird nerve and was miraculously elected.

My father carried the clipping of my victory from the Heights newspaper in his wallet until the day he died, as if I had been elected President of the United States.

My freshman year was rather eventful to say the least. I entered in February. The Germans surrendered in May, the atomic bombs were dropped in August and soon after the Japanese surrendered freeing me from the immediate prospect of military service. I’ve spent the last six decades searching those Times Square victory celebration pictures hoping to find that skinny NYU student. I was there, both times, mostly shouting with joy and kissing strange girls.

Ironically, four years after graduation I was drafted serving two years during the Korean War. It was, after all, the only war we had at the time.

I was in an accelerated program and spent summers attending classes in Washington Square and because of the time frame never attended graduation ceremonies but picked up my degree in one of our campus buildings.

So what did I get from my college years at NYU? Treasure beyond words. For it was here in this institution that I discovered my calling.

My freshman English teacher Professor Don Wolfe set the course for my future, as if he had lashed the tiller of my life’s sailboat in a fixed position. I’m sure he never knew it, but it was his little complimentary scribbling comments in red ink written on my compositions and the way he had taught us the power of the written word and introduced us to that vast mysterious world of the creative imagination that set the course my life would take.

Believe me, that is a gift beyond rational comprehension. Like love, you only know it when it happens.

No, I was not singled out as being anything extraordinary, but somehow the light of providence found me and embraced me ever since. Thanks to this inspired teacher, I knew almost at once who I was and I knew what I absolutely needed to become. That moment alone is enough to endear me to my alma mater forever. I’m sure I am not alone. To have the astounding luck to find a sainted Professor who impacts powerfully on one’s life is, I truly hope, not as rare an experience as I describe.

Instantly, I became an English major and reveled in those wonderful classes taught by Professor Ranney who introduced me to the European novels which I still read again and again to re-charge my literary batteries and the course in the Bible as History taught by Dean Baer. To this day I am an avid student of literature and the bible, in my view one of the greatest novels ever written whose narrative drive continues to engage my interest.

Perhaps I am still trying to figure out how a book written nearly three thousand years ago continues to be a best seller.

Yes, I am gratified to receive this honor, but somehow I believe the award should be in reverse. The real honor should go to NYU, the college that provided the environment and those inspiring teachers who gave me purpose and stubborn unfailing and enduring aspiration, however modest my achievements.

In fact, I stand here as a living symbol for those who choose the teaching profession here in this great school and why it is a truly worthy undertaking. Indeed, the folks who chose violet as our school’s colors were prescient.

Violet, after all, is the most vivid color in the rainbow. It has been called the color of creativity, strength and spirituality. It was a great choice for a great school.

Esteemed faculty and administrators of this institution-- this isn’t my award alone, it’s yours as well.

Hitler at the UN

2009-09-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

Among the many instruments in the fiction writer’s toolbox is one
whose principal function is to re-imagine past events and personalities and present them in a reconstituted reality created in the writer’s mind.

The recent meeting of the UN General Assembly and the appalling speeches and conduct of many of its participants suggests just such a scenario.

What if the United Nations had been created in the thirties and one of the principal speeches was delivered by the then leader of Germany, Adolph Hitler in say, 1936? What would he have said and how would that have differed from what numerous speakers inflicted on the Assembly in 2009?

He would have pointed to Nazi economic policies with pride, citing that the profit motive was now regulated by the Nazi state in accordance with its needs. Copious use of taxes and subsidies was the policy of the state and he would brag about its progress. What he would not have said was that compliance was mandatory and based on terror. If you didn’t comply you were kaput.

But his principle point would be to extol the ethnocentricity of his regime and what he would term as the principle obstacle for creating that pure ethnicity, the Jew, and its alleged international cabal. While he might not have used the term Zionist, he would blame this Jewish cabal for Germany’s defeat in the First World War, the international financial depression of that time and all the other ills on the planet.

Even to the bitter end he was berating the Jews for engineering his downfall, notwithstanding that he had systematically exterminated most of the Jews in Europe in the most disciplined documented government sponsored killing spree ever devised.

He would have cited The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which continues to be a best selling book mistakenly categorized as non- fiction in Iran, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. He would cite the contrived lies in that absurd book as exposing the truth of his assertion that the Jews were planning the takeover of the world and, in the context of his time, that the rise of the Bolsheviks was in accordance with that grand plan.

He would have cited the Arab Jihad as another necessary tool to eliminate the Jews and extol the logic of such a necessity. Indeed, it would be remarkably similar to the existential threat hurled by Iran’s sinister President Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Is not its echo chilling? Hitler’s speech would certainly be eloquent and to most of the audience electrifying, soaring would be the operative description, inducing extensive standing ovations.

Most of the delegates would have remained in the auditorium since everyone was doing business with Hitler in those days despite his anti-Semitic rhetoric, including the United States.

Put it in the context of the recent speeches at the so-called United Nations and you would look hard to find any difference in subject matter of a number of the participants and speakers. After all, more than half of the UN formal condemnations have been about Israel’s alleged atrocities while real violators of human rights, too numerous to list here, have gone unmentioned.

One shudders to think of the future of our world dependent on such vapid and clueless leadership on display at the General Assembly. The posturing and absurdity of some of the speeches, particularly those of Ahmadinejad, Chavez and that Libyan clown as well as those whose speeches were filled with silly repetitive fatuous feel-good clichés about working together in peace and harmony, as if the bloody landscape of our contemporary world did not exist.

Just think of what some of these fools would do if they had at their disposal a weapon to wipe out civilization as we know it.
Perhaps, the faux geniuses of Hollywood have it right in presenting their doomsday scenarios that will soon flood the screens in a neighborhood theater near you. Imagine, too, what might have happened if that aforementioned and easily diagnosed psychopath Adolph Hitler had won the race to the atomic bomb. Indeed, the evidence of the UN General Assembly suggests that psychopaths continue to stand at its rostrum and spew their horrendous invective.

Worse, some of them, like the religiocentric Iranians, owing to the paralysis and lack of historical hindsight of those who have the ability to abort an impending horror, will soon have their own doomsday weapons. Considering that their religious convictions decree that they will get their reward in some after death pleasure palace, one should have little doubt that the use of these weapons will not be deterred by the fear of death or the concept of mutually feared destruction.

To those of us who have lived long enough to remember history beginning in the thirties and to those who study it, the idea that the past is a precursor of the future is a relevance that cannot be denied.

Remember that famous quote by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Indeed, the idea goes back even further. There is a passage in Deuteronomy in which, Moses urges the Israelites, to “ Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; Ask your father, he will inform you, Your elders, they will tell you.”

So the lesson of history was there from the beginning. Unfortunately not too many people paid attention.

The Race Card, a Joker

2009-09-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

You do not have to be an expert in history to know that hatred, blind, bigoted, ignorant, cruel hatred is a pervasive element in the human psyche. Perhaps, given the bloody record from the beginning of time, it is one of the most dominant features of the human condition.

The litany of hatred is infinite. Yes, there are people who hate blacks because they are black. People hate Jews because they are Jews. People hate Moslems because they are Moslems. Buddhists hate Moslems, Moslems hate Buddhists. There are endless sub categories, Shiites hate Sunnis, Hutus hate Tutsis. The point has been made. The sad fact is that this endless menu of hate has had horrendous, appalling, painful and murderous consequences, resulting in the deaths of millions of our fellow creatures.

Even in enlightened America where our Declaration of Independence proudly proclaimed that “all men are created equal” it has taken more than two centuries and a bloody civil war that took 700,000 lives to begin the process of “equalizing”, a condition that is still a work in progress. Even the most dispassionate observer can point to this progress with pride, optimism and impatience.

What prompts me to offer these historical and contemporary clichés is the current absurdity that any criticism of President Obama is a litmus test on racism. That is an insult to the innate intelligence and maturity of the American people who, despite all the parsing and hullabaloo gave a resounding electoral slap in the kisser to the idea that we are still an ignorant racist nation.

In a strange way, I feel sorry for President Obama, who wisely has rejected the characterization. The attempt to racialize his Presidency is a direct blow to his credibility and legitimacy. People who attempt to use this sledgehammer of stupidity are doing all of us a disservice. Yes, there are white people out there who continue to hate blacks and black people out there who continue to hate whites. We all know they are on the fringes, hardly mainstream considering the evidence of the last election.

Besides, the President is neither all black or all white, which makes the charge ludicrous. Indeed, the situation is made even more bizarre by a senile and increasingly shrill ex-President, Jimmy Carter, our worst chief executive in modern history, making overheated and absurd statements that tend to embolden rather than cool the ever-present forces of bigotry. The poor man is obviously suffering from a galloping case of white guilt caused by generations of his southern ancestors who abused, tortured and enslaved black people.

President Obama is right not to dip his toe into this simmering and bitter cocktail. Indeed, the growing middle class of black Americans should slap down such criticism before it gets out of hand, especially by some black politicians, who seem to be sprouting increasingly desperate methods to assure themselves re-election.

Sure there are minefields out there that continue to inhibit people’s aspirations because of prejudice and bigotry, but there are multitudes of people who have learned how to pick their way safely through these aberrant minefields of nastiness and hatred and take advantage of the vast opportunities offered in our multi-cultured, multi-layered, multi-racial landscape of opportunity.

It is both dangerous and foolhardy to label anyone who disagrees with President Obama a racist. It is time to declare it outside the rules of political combat. Such an act is antithetical to our concept of democracy. Worse, it sets up a false barrier to protest.

I, for one, would fight vigorously against anyone who would inhibit my right to protest, however vehemently, against the policies of any President, including our present one.

In my lifetime, I have seen all Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt publicly praised, lauded, vilified and disparaged. I have seen them cursed and satirized and burned in effigy in the streets and castigated in the media. So what else is new? Why should Obama be given a pass? Besides, he is well aware that he is the target of the opposition and is undoubtedly prepared for the virulent antagonism to his policies. He also knows that race is the joker in the deck and that most card games are played sans jokers. Race, for him, is a joker. It must be thrown out of the deck.

I will always remember the ugly hatred of my colleagues in the Pentagon, during my service in the Korean War, who berated President Truman for multifarious sins of commission and omission. He was characterized as the stupid haberdasher way out of his depth when he ascended to the Presidency after Roosevelt died in office. He is now a revered ex-President.

I keenly remember Johnson literally driven out of office by anti-war protestors and, of course, Richard Nixon who was roundly and universally condemned in the Watergate affair, which forced his resignation. And then there was Carter, contrived in his folksy sweater, telling us we were, to paraphrase, lazy and worthless, because we didn’t harken to his clarion bleat. History has proved us right on that call which moved him forthwith out of the White House and left him free to grouse, carp and castigate.

I often wondered how George W. Bush, could get up to work in the morning after the withering whipping he took from the media and the political left and right. History is still out on that one, although his Vice President can’t seem to shake off the lingering anger and personal animosity.

So now we have Obama, the ambitious upstart, black-white President, an amalgam of all of us, making a grand attempt at changes that most of the American people are not sure they want. Whatever the merits of his program, he is indulging in public relations gone amuck. It is one of the cardinal rules of public relations, of which I was once a practitioner, to know when to walk, albeit temporarily, off the stage. We’ve all heard his act so many times that he’s getting too repetitive and his speeches and pronouncements are quickly becoming somewhat boring clichés.

I know that sounds harsh, but he is really squandering his capital at breakneck speed. For the record, I am worried about the consequences of our astounding deficit, the terrible unemployment numbers and his ambivalent and dangerous foreign policy.

You can call me a horse’s ass or worse for my opinions. I will take no umbrage. But call me a racist and I will go along with Helena in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, don’t “bait me with this foul derision.”

Back in Print

2009-09-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

For authors who are elated by Google’s action to digitize all out-of-print books and pay out royalties it is, of course, a welcomed development. Despite the challenges by others who fear Google’s power, the concept of out-of-print digitization is here to stay.

Unfortunately, for those authors and their copyright heirs who see themselves as potential financial beneficiaries, I would suggest they don’t break out the champagne.
The primary reason for those books to be out-of-print in the first place, with few exceptions, is because they were deemed by their original publishers as a no longer promising investment, taking up precious warehouse and catalogue space. This is not to say that they did not merit preservation as viable entities, perhaps masterpieces, but for a variety of reasons, some patently unfair, they were relegated to the so-called dust bin of the book trade.

There were also many books lost to posterity when their publishers expired through death or business failure or simply got lost in the shuffle of history.

In many cases, these books do enjoy a modest life-cycle in second hand bookshops and Internet used books dealers. In libraries, they are eventually discarded. Libraries rarely rebind old books anymore. No additional royalties are ever paid to authors by any of these existing venues.

What authors can expect from this massive digitization is, above all, availability. The out-of-print books will join the millions and millions of digitized books in cyberspace, tiny particles in a vast crowd of text, novels, plays, poetry, and textbooks on every subject known to man, the contents of countless libraries. To quote the great Bard, “words, words, words,” an avalanche of words. It will be a Tower of Babel reaching to infinity.

With this endless rejuvenation will come the hopes of living authors, the heirs of dead ones, and other assorted claimants that they will enjoy an unprecedented revenue flow from readers who are just aching to download out-of-print books on the devices that are now exploding worldwide.

By what technical miracle will these digitized books come to the attention of the potential reader? This is the key issue for those who see in this process resurrection, rediscovery and perhaps, a big perhaps, some revenue flow.
As an author of works of the imagination, novels and shorts stories, I rescued my books from out-of-print status a dozen years ago by having my rights returned from the many publishers involved in the original publications, both in English and foreign languages. I resurrected them in all digitization and print formats and they are, of course, available now wherever books are sold.

My objective was to keep my authorial name alive in the only venue that can guarantee, at least theoretically, perpetual survival—the Internet. The objective is to keep the brand alive for as long as possible hoping that a new breakthrough book or rediscovery of an old one will create interest in all of my past works, which will never ever go out-of-print and, with luck, be recycled into movies or capture the imagination of future generations. Everyone has fantasies, hopes and aspirations. That is mine.

The problem is how to find a way for these works to rise above the incessant chatter, to be noticed, bought and read. That is the central challenge for both the author and the publisher, finding readers in an environment that has become a patchwork of a jillion niches.

With mass media outlets in print and television which can set the marketing fires ablaze with their reviews and best-seller lists declining precipitously, one can speculate with reasonable accuracy that they will slowly disappear as mass communication portals. The once dominant newspapers that were the target of choice to disseminate news and cultural happenings will morph to the net, shrunk to niche proportions along with a vast array of competitors that will splinter any attempt to make a big blast marketing push for a single book.

Marketers in the near future will be faced with how to carpet bomb the niches to gain attention, a challenge of epic proportions. All of the creative juices of the advertising and marketing world are attempting to meet this challenge and few have come up so far with an economically feasible plan.

Book publishers use the mass media to ignite the spark of word of mouth, which is the way most books gain real traction. Sometimes it happens naturally, albeit miraculously. But with the big box bookstores wrestling with present and future decline what will be left is the Internet which, so far, Amazon has mined successfully to sell its huge basket of books through its enormously successful portals. But when the time comes when the original kindling, no pun, of the mass media slowly loses heat all the Internet portals selling books will need to revamp their focus to satisfy the swiftly growing e-book audience. Of course, none of this will happen overnight, but my own best guess is that it will, indeed, happen sooner rather than later.

Publishers, too, will have to reorient their marketing strategies as they are faced with a cyberspaced distribution setup. Undoubtedly their strategy for survival will be to hone their communication skills and use the money saved on warehousing and printing to carpet bomb the Internet to gain exposure for their books. It seems a logical ploy but no one can be sure it can work successfully in such a moving target environment. Nevertheless, they will have the bucks to experiment.

Perhaps the day of the best-selling author will expire, lost in the Tower of Babel of the future. Branding authors will be harder and royalty advances will, as a consequence, decline. Serious novelists bent on a lifetime career and financial stability will have a hard time adjusting to the new reality.

Internet bookstores will depend strictly on volume and price wars are sure to proliferate. Publishers, who still control the commercial content gateway, will use the Internet to publish more and more digital books to chase their cash flow. Certain genre categories like romance fiction, mysteries, science fiction, series books and others will probably do well on the Internet although they, too, will run into problems of scale as more and more content comes into the infinite digital marketplace.

For the individual author, which is my focus, the challenge will be monumental. Can the major publishers one day discover the technique of carpet bombing the niches and get the word out for their authors? Or will they abandon their reliance on their few star sellers and bow to the lure of the niches by increasing their content output in every genre and category?

Will the individual author who tries to beat the odds through self-publishing rise above the chatter to gain enough audience to sustain themselves economically? At this moment there are thousands of sites offering self-publishing and promotional services to writers, ignored by the commercial publishing community, who thirst for self-expression, ego satisfaction and dreams of literary celebrity, fame, and fortune and who yearn to make their mark on an indifferent world.

The publishing business is not alone in gaming the future revolutionized by digitization and the Internet. Yes, fellow authors your books will never go out of print ever again, they will be available. That is no small achievement.

Reading is a two way communication system. This means that creating the text is only half the process. The challenge is to connect the two halves. It will not be easy.

Our Short Story Contest

2009-08-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

We have just chosen the winner and the runner-ups for the Fifth Annual Warren Adler Short Story Contest. Our submissions have been steadily increasing and the aggregate of submissions in the five years of our experience has been running into the thousands.

My motivation for establishing this contest was to enhance the popularity of the short story which was once a staple of American literary output with numerous magazines offering them to their readers. Indeed, it was once possible for a fiction writer to earn a good living by having his or her stories published in these venues. Sadly, that market has dried up.

Nevertheless, the art form endures and will surely catch on again in the age of electronic reading, which stresses brevity and compactness, although making a living from writing short stories is probably a very dubious possibility.

My observations from reading these submissions is that there is quite an array of literary talent out there and, more importantly, a palpable desire to be read. I have been amazed at the geographical reach of our contest. This year’s winner has come from Tel Aviv and we routinely receive submissions from all corners of the world.

I have found the quality of the writing running the gamut from fair to excellent and the sincerity, passion, discipline and devotion of the writers quite inspiring. I have been somewhat astonished by the number of stories that dwell on some terrible and traumatic circumstance of raging emotional intensity.

It appears to indicate that today’s writers view the world from a dark and gloomy perspective and prefer to explore those life and death issues that we face in our daily lives. It tells us that as we move further into the 21st century we are living on a fault line that might, at any moment erupt and send us all into oblivion. Few of our submissions offered escapist themes that inundate the popular media.

The fictional artist relies on deeply imagined circumstances and characters to create his narratives. He cherry picks from incidents and characters that have populated his or her real life. It takes talent to weave these details and experiences into the tapestry of fiction to create a genuine work of the imagination.

In the end, winners were chosen through the subjective interpretation and eventual collaboration of each judge in the traditional collegial manner. All of our decisions took into account the narrative drive, insight and imagery that underlie the creative process and were expressed in these submissions. We judged every story on the merits and are very happy with our choices. Although we judges came from different backgrounds and perspectives, we were remarkably similar in our tastes and in our selections.

When we started our competition five years ago we were pioneers of sort with a specific agenda. Today there are numerous short story contests as well as contests for novels and plays being mounted via the Internet. The key to the validity of these contests is the integrity and expertise of the judges of these contests. Without revealing who these judges are and merely using a generic term like “a panel of experts” is, in our opinion, worthy of caution for any submitting writer.

Note that the names of our judges Thane Rosenbaum, a respected novelist, and Kirsten Neuhaus, a literary agent, and myself, are freely offered. We are experienced people who understand good writing as well as the realities of the literary market and our judgments have been made based on our experience and very diligent evaluation. As in all such cases, we have made our selections based on how these stories have resonated and the skill by which they have been presented. Others might choose differently, but we stand by our choices.

What we have learned after these five contest ventures is that there is a great appetite for creative writing, which we celebrate. Even as the marketplace shrinks for fiction in every mode, the urge to create stories seems to be expanding exponentially with the ease of dissemination on the Internet. There are voices out there itching to be heard and we are proud to help in some small way to find a venue for these urges.

The next competition will be announced shortly and we thank all those who have submitted their work and will do so in the future.

The End of Life Debacle

2009-08-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

At the risk of throwing a figurative match into a giant batch of kindling, I would like to weigh in on the subject of “end of life issues” that has prompted an angry response by citizens at town hall meetings in which they confront their elected representatives.

The issue is deeply embedded in the human psyche touching on the most basic philosophical and religious tenets that are fundamental to our concept of mortality. We know from the very moment when intelligence dawns on the human brain that we are going to die.

So what is all the mystery about? Of course people are angry. It is the paramount issue of human life. We are well aware of the inevitability of death. We are well aware too that the highest expenditures of government health care occur in the last year or so of life. Couple this fact with the necessity of saving money on our health care programs and what you get is the logical progression that leads inevitably to the of economics of dying. It is a costly business.

This is the ultimate decision for all of us. If we are useless, unproductive, terminal, hopeless, how are we to be ushered into the great beyond? Are we to be cast out like human garbage or given the dignity of survival for a time? If we are comatose and brain dead are we still people? Who then will make the decision about the speed of our demise now that we have developed the technology of life extension? Doctors can advise, but the choice is up to the living, the progeny, the loved ones, who have a compassionate stake in the speed of the outcome.

It is a deeply personal issue, so painful, so fraught with guilt and contradiction, so scary that it tempts denial. It is a decision that pits the concept of murder against that of love, compassion and the sacredness of the life, however diminished.
Many of us have spared our loving survivors the decision by coming up with written directions on how and when to stop artificial life support. In some countries governments have sanctioned assisted suicides arguing that the human being has a right to make his own decision regarding the termination of his or her own life.

Considering the technological advances in medical technology and the fact that we are living longer, there is a certain logic in end of life counseling. We are all living longer and in a very short time there will be a giant glut of people crowding the corridors to oblivion. The costs will be astronomical especially when the baby boomers hit the end of their life cycle. The bean counters will be tempted to follow the logic of swifter end of life disposal, an utterly ghoulish thought.

What scares people is not necessarily the logic of such counseling, but the very idea that such counseling could be sponsored and paid for by THE GOVERNMENT. People instinctively know that once this issue becomes part of a government program, no matter how benign at first, it reeks of danger. If there is an issue that the government should not intrude itself, this is it. Yes, it is alleged that all language about exit counseling has been stricken from the thousand page draft circulating everywhere as a kind of stalking horse for a permanent bill.

In my opinion, the mostly clueless legislative bureaucracy on Capitol Hill shot themselves in the foot when they inserted this language in the health care plan. How obtuse are our so-called Congressional leaders? Don’t they have any insight and awareness into the deeply felt fears of their constituents?

This is not a partisan issue. It strikes deep into the heart of our psyche. Will there come a time when the powers that be decide who shall live and who shall die based on their productivity and their cost to the community?

Maybe to dub it a “Death Panel” is a stretch at this point, but that, too, has a certain logic if one projects it over time. However depressing, the issue must be confronted, hopefully not by the government. Not everyone will have the good fortune to die a swift and painless death. Some will linger in pain, under sedation, still clinging willfully to life with the help of technology. Few of us will be free to choose our method of expiration.

That is the issue and the dilemma that frightens us and provokes our anger. What it tells us is that most of us do not want the impersonal government and its army of indifferent bureaucrats to be a party to this profound decision.

What seems benign at first could one day morph into a directive, a legal requirement that might force us into some action that inhibits our having any choice on this matter. Worse, we might be told some day that government directives requiring certain actions to terminate life are for the common good.

It is futile to be accusatory and point to deliberate conspiracies and false rumors. Fear and hysteria are inevitable when this subject is raised, especially in a proposed bill before Congress.

Losing control over our destiny when we are most vulnerable is a frightening prospect. Intoning the biblical suggestion, this is one issue that we must keep out of Caesar’s hands.

But Is It Good For Authors?

2009-08-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

On the surface, the surge in the popularity of e-books and the proliferation of devices on which their content can be read seems like a boon to authors. At first blush the benefits seem too good to be true.

Books will never go out of print, a term that will have to be revised. In fact, all books that have been out of print, via Google’s vast undertaking, will be reincarnated. Everything ever written and published will be available to everyone who is tethered to cyberspace, which means the bulk of the literate world.

Moreover, everyone who creates content, whether it bears the indicia of a traditional publishing house or is self-produced, will be able to enter the world library, easily accessible to the eye-balls and minds of every literate person on the planet. Soon, very soon, the availability of e-books will permeate every electronic device across the full spectrum of gadgetry from laptops to cell phones to e-book devices to whatever new technology bursts upon the scene.

Thus the bound paper book as we have known it over the centuries will no longer dominate the business of printing, distributing, wholesaling and retailing content. That cannot be good news for the best selling author, book stores and traditional publishers and it may or may not be good news for the average author who has managed to eke out a living writing content of every category in fiction, non-fiction, and self help for every age and demographic.

It will seem like good news for the writer who will finally be able to have his work available for access by the multitudes. At last, the traditional gatekeepers to the world of publication will be demolished. All fences will be down. Anyone who believes their work should be read by others will have this opportunity for mass dissemination.

Unfortunately, the economic reality for the author and publisher is still illusive. The marketing challenge will be enormous. The day is coming when the marketing universe will shift almost completely to the Internet. Print media as we know it is in its death throes. Television and the Internet are swiftly merging. Availability of entertainment media is proliferating to infinity.

From the point of view of the individual author who cherishes the exclusivity of his lengthy copyright, who has labored with fierce determination to compose original content which he or she hopes is meaningful, important and for the ages, the outlook is somewhat cloudy. In fact, downright discouraging.

Considering that the marketplace will be glutted with perhaps centuries of out of print books with hundreds of thousands added by the vast army of wannabe writers from every corner of the planet, how will it be possible to rise above the cacophony to be heard, noticed and ultimately read? Worse, how can an author’s work expect to be monetized in an environment in which reading matter is mostly offered free of charge.

There is, of course, an opportunity to advertise in various ways on websites where eyeballs will temporarily reside, but the fickleness of an amorphous public will require a complete rethinking of advertising strategies. The cost per thousand measure used for years by advertising agencies is swiftly becoming irrelevant as a measure of real penetration.

How then will the individual author’s work be noticed, huckstered, promoted and monetized? I have been wrestling with that problem ever since I had the notion to digitize my then published novels more than a dozen years ago. Frankly, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that digital books disseminated over the Internet was the future and that original work could be protected through the life of its copyright and forever in the public domain via cyberspace.

Being ahead of one’s time has its psychic satisfactions, but the pace of creation will quickly outrun it. Surely, someone will figure out how to rise above the chatter and find the illusive key to the marketing dilemma. We all know that word of mouth is the only sure fire method of wide dissemination. But what happens when everyone is working their mouths at the same time?

It is obviously a boon to have one’s work available. You might even be able to forward it to vast multitudes. Much of these offerings will land in spam files. Publishers determined to stay in business will hurl fusillades of advertising at hundreds of websites hoping to score sales. They will go on a niche hunt, much like trout fisherman pick the right fly to match the ever changing insect hatch to lure their prey.

The on-line bookstores will be happy to take your money to place your material front and center and allow reviews, both biased and unbiased to analyze your effort. Lots of books will be sold somehow at much lower prices than the traditional paper book. Price points will be vastly changed.

It is still too early to tell what works and what doesn’t in today’s transitional environment. The phase out from the printed to the electronic book is just beginning and will take time to make the shift. The fact is that the book industry is entering a dark tunnel. There might be light at the end, but the chances are it will be greatly diffused with niche bright spots here and there.

At this moment in time many authors should be delighted that their books will be available for readers. That is certainly good news. To be “back in print” is a lot better than oblivion. At least the author will have a fighting chance for recognition, if not fame and fortune.

Dream on.

The Dividing Line

2009-08-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

As I grow older, I have become fascinated by “pop memory” and the difference between what I deem popular and what younger people see as popular. This has led me to contemplate where the dividing line is between this generational phenomenon.

For example, if I am sitting in a waiting room and pick up a copy of People magazine, devoted to the happenings of today’s popular celebrities, I quickly discover that I have absolutely no knowledge of who they are or why I should be interested. This is true of most items I am confronted with in the popular media. I used to be an avid reader of gossip columnists, a rabid movie fan, and I prided myself of an acute awareness of the popular culture with an encyclopedic knowledge of the names, lifestyles and antics of so-called celebrities.

No more. I am out of the loop.

Indeed, I sometimes enjoy tweaking my many younger friends with a barrage of questions about what I thought were the well-known names of celebrities only to discover a blank stare and a lined forehead in response. Making allowances, I do not really expect my younger friends to remember Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, and Eddie Cantor would be a stretch.

But I have now discovered that even Frank Sinatra is fast becoming a “never heard of” among the “with it” denizens of the upcoming generation. I dare not even ask about Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Winston Churchill and often wonder what would have happened to the memory of George Washington if he wasn’t prominently displayed on the one-dollar bill. Indeed, I have discovered younger people who think he was a bridge, a state, or a national capital. Worse, I have encountered younger people who believe that Adolph Hitler was an actor who played in some movies about Nazis.

As a kid, in the glory days of the Brooklyn Dodgers, I knew every player on the roster and their stats. What would it mean to today’s baseball addict if I mentioned that I had seen Ducky Medwick beaned or thought one of the greatest pitchers on the diamond, although often wild, was Van Lingle Mungo? Think of the giggles I would get from those who worship A-rod or sit in the bleachers of the spanking new Yankee Stadium.

What interests me is not the gap of awareness between the generations, but where one can place the dividing line where memory switches between the now and yesterday. At what age can one expect to be talking in tongues to a younger generation? At what age did my parents begin talking in tongues to me?

My mother once mentioned to me that twenty thousand people showed up at Rudolph Valentino’s funeral. Rudolph who, I wondered then.

In my short story collection New York Echoes, published last year, there was a story called, what else, “The Dividing Line” in which an older man married to a younger woman tries to discover when exactly their memories of the popular culture reach that grey area where neither find common ground. They grapple with this strange gap between them and agree to disagree leaving them to accept the situation as the way of all flesh.

Is it because we are living longer and our memories, if they are still operative, stretch over a larger expanse of time and our natural expectation is that others of whatever age have these same memories? Or is it because the cycle of awareness has accelerated beyond our brain’s vaunted storage ability and we are relying instead on the whirling dervish of technology to keep our memories somewhere in a computer file?

Perhaps this is why I am discovering a dividing line between people in my own age group between those who are reasonably or even marginally computer literate and those who have eschewed the computer as either too complicated or an instrument of the devil. It is often frustrating to discover that a close friend my age does not have e-mail and still relies on the pen and the telephone for their communications. That gap will disappear in time.

I am well aware that these observations are somewhat of a cliché and, I suppose, a normal part of the aging process specific to my generation which got caught in the middle of the computer revolution. I suppose, too, that if one made the effort as a kind of sociological and pedagogical experiment, one could keep up with the emerging pop culture.

On a sentimental note, one might opine that one person’s historical memory is nothing more than normal nostalgia and a yearning for one’s lost youth. This might explain my addiction to the black and white movies cranked out in the golden age of Hollywood. Not only can I name every actor in the flicks and know most of the stories cold, my interest is primarily in the sets, clothes, habits and language of the dialogue.

The atmosphere of those movies was bathed in cigarette smoke, men wore fedoras, and women’s clothes appeared far more elegant than today. People were dressed
up at even the most casual events and the value of money was astonishingly deflated when compared to today’s numbers. Brother can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee would be laughable in today’s Starbucks saturated world. A bad guy was a “mug.” A lady was a “dame” and often called “toots.” People said things like “scram” or “twenty three skidoo” and hundreds of other now dead slang expressions.

Most younger people I know instantly tune out black and white movies. Clark Gable, once known as the king of Hollywood, is identified occasionally by my younger friends as some kind of roofing material and Myrna Loy, at first guess, is usually considered a member of the Chinese Politburo.

Whoever is considered more ignorant or out of touch in the great lottery of life, there is one sure thing. Those who are completely in sync with the comings and goings of the contemporary celebrity culture will one day be completely out of touch with it in a few short years. Indeed, the Beatles will one day go back to being insects, Elvis will be the name of some hip surgery prosthetic, and Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson will one day be confused with American Presidents.

Andy Warhol was wrong when he said that everyone will enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.

The time frame he referred to might one day be measured in seconds.

The E-Book Is Winning

2009-08-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

The e-book is winning. Its ultimate victory was never in doubt.

This does not mean that the printed book will disappear. It will fade out slowly as a viable mass economic enterprise as this new reading technology takes hold. The basic issues were, and still are, about marketing and its twin sister packaging. The product has always been the same, content delivered by words, sometimes embellished by speech and illustrations.

Trade book publishers, using the familiar technology of print on paper and packaging their product for shelving, utilized every practical inducement device to make their product attractive to the potential consumer. They came up with eye-appealing colorful cover art to make their product stand out in stores, created advertising and publicity campaigns, best seller lists, advanced review copies, and endorsements from prominent authors to hawk their product. It worked for years. It still works, but it is morphing into other forms, some yet to be invented.

The education book market with its vast captured audience used other marketing techniques to get their product before students, utilizing the usual ploys of influence, lobbying and marketing, and following traditional methods to keep their product up to date and viable, using different, but effective marketing techniques. That too, worked for decades and that too, is subject to intense innovation as the new technology catches on.

Public libraries will continue to be impacted with the methods of book lending and the use of their facilities as gathering places for the literate and informed. They will live on, but in ways that will evolve their mission to continue their invaluable service.

But what these books contain within their printed covers, the content, will survive forever. Content is king, no matter how it is delivered. It is the economics of the delivery that is the main issue currently in play.

If you can dispense with expensive and complicated distribution expenses and deliver your product at a fraction of the cost of print publishing and without in any way denigrating your product, then the rules of profit and loss apply. Without costly production costs based on older technologies, pared down distribution systems, and no need for warehousing, the result is obvious. You don’t need an advanced degree in economics to see where the publishing industry is headed.

Because the commercial emergence of so-called “electronic paper” and the devices to support its use are accelerating exponentially, the technology will become more and more user friendly. Kindle and SONY Reader, the pioneers of this new marketing miracle will soon have more and more competition from many sources. Devices will be re-engineered and improved. Prices for these devices will be lowered and in the not too distant future electronic publishing will be the norm, the standard for the delivery of content.

This rather dry and self-apparent explanation seems to dismiss the fact that books are not only content deliverers, they are also sources of inspiration, insight, entertainment, and knowledge, and objects of esthetic devotion. They have been our beloved friends for centuries. The large collection of books in my library are like family and the electronic book poses a soul wrenching challenge, not only to the publishing business as it now exists, but to the psyche of all those who cherish books. Those that come after us will barely notice, if at all, the revolutionary character of the changeover of content distribution.

One cannot argue with reality. In my lifetime I have seen an endless line of products disappear from stores. Remember the ice box, the silk stocking, the girdle, the corset, the washboard, the mechanical lawn mower, horse drawn transportation, steam locomotives, the manual gearshift, the rotary dial telephone, the black and white movie, and on and on. But why belabor the obvious.

The paper book, bless it, will now go through the grueling process of pre-emption.
The good news is that content will never die. It is the circulatory system of the human intellect, the very heart of the one-on-one system of human communication through words. Innovation will provide another way to dispense content and create profit- making opportunities.

When I digitized all my then published novels more than a dozen years ago, I was defending my authorial name and assuring that my books will never go out of print, every author’s nightmare. There was a brief window of opportunity since publishers, during the early days of my novel writing career, had not yet demanded that their authors give up their e-book rights. That window has closed. Publishers now covet electronic rights and Google is now digitizing all out of print books.

The challenge for publishers and authors now is how to find traction on the infinite highway of limitless content. It will not be easy to separate the author from the pack, although clever innovation might one day find a profitable path. So far this magic bullet is illusive.

Marketing and distribution skills will be revamped to tackle the new reality. Authors and their heirs whose out of print books will be able to see the light of day via the Google operation will at the very least have their books available, although it is unlikely they will see much, if any, income. Even if the books are still under copyright, only the tiniest fraction of authors will ever see a dime. The book listings will be infinite.

We are entering a new world of book publishing through electronic books. At this point in history they are still a small part of the total book publishing economic pie. But the avalanche is coming as more and more books are digitized and more and more devices hit the market. The competitive issue now will be tweaking the devices to make them more efficient and user friendly as well as pricing their content.

Publishers are awakening from a long slumber as they are challenged to meet the electronic onslaught. Some will not go willingly into the fray, just as horse drawn coach manufacturers resisted the automobile. Others will figure out ways to compete and innovate, embellish and monetize their skill as the gatekeepers of content.

One thing is certain. Content will not disappear. In fact, it will multiply as more and more content providers enter the vast cloud of the wired world. The challenge will be how to find the model that will allow the publishing business to continue to be viable in this new environment, and how authors will attract and aggregate their readership and be supported by their art.

It will not be an easy task.

FUNNY BOYS, LATEST NOVEL BY WARREN ADLER OPTIONED FOR FILM

2009-07-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

Funny Boys, the latest novel by War of the Roses author Warren Adler about the Borscht Belt and Murder Inc.(circa1937) has been optioned for a film. It is the 12th novel of Mr. Adler’s bought or optioned by Hollywood.

Mr. Adler, whose The War of the Roses novel was adapted as a movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner and Random Hearts with Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas, has published 30 novels which have been translated into 25 foreign languages.

Funny Boys is the story of a comedian, or in the Yiddish idiom of the time, a “tumler,” in a Catskill mountain resort hotel in 1937 who gets entangled with the mobsters of Murder Inc.

The story authentically reenacts the speech and customs of the era. In the thirties, forties and fifties the area was known as the Borscht Belt and nourished the careers of some of the most famous comedians of the time such as Milton Berle, Red Button, Jerry Lewis, Sam Levinson, Myron Cohen, Sid Caesar and scores of others.

Murder Inc. was one of the most feared and ruthless gangs in New York, a combination of Jewish and Italian mobsters who wreaked havoc in New York before World War II. The novel recreates the atmosphere and environment of one of the most colorful eras in the twentieth century.

“Every time I option or sell a book to the movies I have high hopes for the picture to be made and be a smash hit. I feel certain that the material in Funny Boys, if handled correctly, has all the ingredients to make that happen.”

Another novel by Mr. Adler and James Hume, Target Churchill, which deals with an assassination attempt on the life of Winston Churchill has also been optioned by another production company. Mr. Adler wrote the screenplay.

Three of Mr. Adler’s short stories in the acclaimed collection entitled The Sunset Gang were adapted into a three-hour trilogy and shown on the PBS network. A musical of the stories written by Mr. Adler with composer L. Russell Brown was performed in Manhattan.

Cited as one of the 100 Best Authors on Twitter, Mr. Adler is also a pioneer in electronic publishing having digitized his books starting more than a decade ago. All of his novels are available on Kindle, the SONY Reader and all digital devices and through bookstores worldwide.

“I am always baffled when a book of mine is either optioned or bought outright by the movie people,” Mr. Adler said. “I don’t write with the movies in mind. One of my books Private Lies was purchased outright for 1.2 million and, after more millions were invested to develop it, it was never made. This was also the fate of Trans-Siberian Express, Madeline’s Miracles, novels from my Fiona FitzGerald mystery series, and others, some of which were optioned and bought numerous times.
“It is a flawed system, but somehow it manages to survive. Unfortunately, original material gets short shrift in the face of Hollywood’s penchant to base its future productions on past marketplace experience. ”

Mr. Adler is often outspoken about the adaptations of his novels. He considers The War of the Roses one of the most successful adaptations of a book to a movie and cites the fact that it has become a classic depiction of divorce. The term a “War of the Roses divorce” is now part of the world-wide nomenclature to describe the existential battles between separating spouses. Mr. Adler has never been divorced.

He was not as complimentary about the way Random Hearts was adapted and wrote a critique of the film in The New York Times.

Mr. Adler is also a playwright and short story writer. His latest collection of stories is New York Echoes and his plays are currently being produced in Europe. He is in the fifth year of his short story contest which has fostered talent among many writers through the contest’s popularity on the Internet.

The option to Lime Orchard Production, helmed by Jami Gertz and Stacey Lubliner was arranged through Hughes Entertainment.

Our Short Story Competition

2009-07-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

As the fifth year of the Warren Adler Short Story Competition draws to a close I thought it would interesting to share some of my observations about what I have learned about these so-called “contests” and the nature and motivation of those who submit and those who judge.

Before such competition proliferated on the internet I was involved in two short story competitions as both motivator and judge sponsored by the State of Wyoming Arts Council, a state in which I happily resided for nearly two decades.

First, my own motivation in helping to initiate and sponsor such a contest. I have always loved the short story as a literary device. In my opinion it is a literary art form of great purity, requiring discipline, a sense of craft, the skillful use of condensation and the challenge of narrative drive to swiftly engage the reader’s interest. Slightly exaggerating the imagery, I look upon the form as creating a vast world on the head of a pin.

While the short story no longer has the earning potential or popularity of years past when one could actually earn a living as a short story writer, the method and the idea of short fiction will, as a consequence of the growing brevity of attention spans, return once again to its rightful place on the mantle of literary acceptance. The thirst for storytelling is locked into our DNA, both as teller and “listener.”

My motivation for involving myself in such a competition is quite simply the preservation, encouragement and dissemination of the short story form. There is no shortage of people who want to write short stories and there is no shortage of people who want to read them. Both recognition and a cash prize are, of course, lures for submissions, but I have found that the former, being cited for talent and skill, has a lot more meaning for the writer than the cash.

In fact, I have discovered that the passion to become a full time writer both in fiction and non-fiction is growing exponentially in intensity and the competition for publication and recognition is as fierce and combative as anything I have seen in my lifetime. As paying markets shrink and words proliferate unfettered on the internet, a serious writer is faced with the frustrating, daunting and, often impossible task, of gaining traction in the marketplace for a full time career.

Because of this, the so-called short story contest has proliferated. There are so many being promoted and advertised that I sometimes think it a miracle that our contest has been able to sustain itself for half a decade. In the last two contests we have been forced to charge a modest fee of fifteen dollars to cover the expense of administration. It hardly pays for the cash prizes, which are largely my own contribution, offered happily and satisfying my own compulsion to advance the cause of the short story.

Of course, the key to the competition lies in the integrity of the judges, their point of view, their dedication to the process and the assurance that each submission will be read and evaluated in a fair and equitable manner. That is the standard that motivates our contest. Nothing matters than the story itself.

By its nature, the process is subjective and each judge brings to it a point of view that, like judges everywhere, requires a fierce inner debate and a sense of emotional connection with the author’s artistry. An experience in judging a Wyoming short story contest in which I was one of three judges taught me a severe and painful lesson in integrity and the necessity of maintaining standards.

One year, I nor the other two judges, both creative writing academics, could find in the submissions any short story that was worthy of being chosen for a grand prize. We were torn between fulfilling our mandate or simply not awarding a prize for that year. We chose not to award a prize. The decision was unanimous. The Wyoming Arts Council was furious. We had challenged the bureaucracy, sin of sins. The following year I was asked to leave the turf. So much for standards. Were we right or wrong?

As an aside, I must confess that I am wary of most awards for literature, from the Pulitzer, the Booker and on and on. Perhaps even the Nobel. Do the judges actually read all those books submitted or are they subject to panels of “screeners” who get to screen only the most hyped books by publishers and critics then toss them over to the high powered names to make the final selections. I guess I must be cynical to the core if I dare question whether even those prestigious judges actually read every book of those authors who are chosen. This is not to say I disagree with the choices. But I do get depressed when I discover that many of those authors chosen have not stood the test of time and are mostly forgotten.

Our present competition has three judges, Thane Rosenberg, a serious writer of novels and non-fiction, Kirsten Neuhaus, an agent who understands the marketplace, and yours truly. We make our choices and will undoubtedly fiercely debate the so-called winners, an agonizing decision, since so many of the submissions display the skill and talent of dedicated writers.

We are all presently deep in the process of reading submissions and will announce the winners in a few weeks and then we will post the winners on our website www.warrenadler.com. Our previous winners are posted on the site as well. We are proud of our choices and we hope that their skill and talent will engage their readers as they engaged us.

At Last, A True Film About the Professional Soldier

2009-07-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Hurt Locker, a film about a bomb squad in Iraq is a most amazing film, and one of the few films of recent vintage which actually tells the truth about what it means to be a professional soldier. Indeed, it is so different from the usual politically charged tripe about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that one wonders how the director Kathryn Bigelow ever got it made.
Indeed, ever since Vietnam, American servicemen, especially those in enlisted status have been characterized by the mediaocrity as using the services as a kind of last resort, a collection of losers at the bottom of the social barrel who join the Army to suck up benefits they could not get as civilians. Hollywood, which gets its cue from the same source, has often failed to understand the motivation of the professional soldier.
At the screening I attended, Kathryn Bigelow was on hand to answer questions posed by the audience. It was a theater in the west side of Manhattan, a place that is normally characterized as ground zero of the liberal intellectual elite, where ferment, contention and argument are in the oxygen.
By itself the movie is mesmerizing and the puzzle of the bomb defuser’s motivation is posed by a quote at the beginning that indicates that war was as addictive as drugs. The soldier defuser, despite the danger and risk, clearly loves his work. Played by a superb actor, he brings to his role absolute fidelity and while those who asked questions admired the movie, they seemed unable to understand the man’s motivation, which was far from what passed for the prevailing opinion in this area.
I wished I had gotten up and asked a question largely because I wanted instead to make an assertion based on my own experience as a soldier. I was more of an observer, a reluctant conscript, but I did observe the professional soldier in action. Like any true professional, a dancer, a writer, a mechanic, an athlete and on and on, the consummate professional is indeed addicted to his work. In the case of the hero of this movie, yes he is addicted to his job, not war, but the job itself.
This man is proud of his expertise. Despite the horrendous risk and danger, he loves the defusing process, the challenge of the wiring, the instinctive discovery of how the bomb was constructed and placed for maximum impact. He must get into the mind and motivation of the bomber to fulfill the objective of his job.
The bottom line of his effort is to prevent the bomb from killing people. Thus, the movie at its heart is about saving lives. By the tenor of the questions asked of Ms. Bigelow, the audience seemed reluctant to admit that it was possible for a soldier to love his work and to be proud of his expertise.
Indeed, the movie makes clear that the soldier feels never more alive than when he is doing his job on the battlefield. In recent years, however one feels about the origins and conduct of the various wars in which America has been engaged, somehow the military man has suffered the brunt of the negative criticism. This movie turns that concept on its head.
Looking back on my years in the Army, I have come to deeply respect the professional soldier. I saw many of them in action, doing their job with professional pride, just as in any occupation and calling. These are not people at the bottom, not, as some have portrayed them, life’s losers. No way. We are lucky to have them.
Kathryn Bigelow and her team are to be congratulated for their courage and persistence in getting this independent film made.

If I Were A Kid In Iran

2009-06-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

If I were a college kid in Iran, I’d really be pissed off.

If I were a guy I would see my future foreclosed by a bunch of religious fanatics trying to convince me that they were getting their messages directly from God. My future is a lot longer than those guys who run the show and won’t let me be young, have my own opinions, dream my dreams, have a chance at a future that tastes the good life, the fulfilled life. I’d be sick to death of tired old men telling me how to live my life. Screw them.

I’d consider what I had to face after graduation. Limited employment opportunities, high inflation, broken dreams, a drumbeat of unfulfilled promises, my future in the hands of idiots who insist that my thoughts be in lock-step with their antiquated views. I’d not be happy about my President going around the world acting like some bigoted clown and making my country look like we’re a bunch of hateful yahoos who support crackpots who go around blowing themselves up in the name of what? I love life. I’d want to have joy and fun and speak freely without some guy with a baton batting me on the head or threatening me with prison.

Hell, I don’t think America is the Great Satan. I’d like America and I’d like Americans. The kids in college in America have a much better shot at the good life than I could have here. Darn right I’d go to protest. This other guy I’d be supporting is not so hot either, but at the very least I wouldn’t want to hear any more bullshit about democracy. There’s no real democracy here. I’d want my vote to count. I’d want a better shot at the future.

Come on America. Go Europe. Can’t you see we’re locked up in a prison cell? Help us.

If I were a gal in college, I’d be doubly pissed off.

Look at what I’d have to face when I graduate. The men who run our country want to keep us down, encourage us to be a bunch of mindless breeders and wear that black outfit that completely demolishes my individuality.

Don’t I have a right to dress pretty, to exercise my right to celebrate my femininity? Why do they foreclose on my future? I’d feel trapped, chained to old rules created by old men who haven’t a clue what goes on in the mind and heart of a young woman. I wouldn’t want to be a second-class citizen. Stop stepping on my future. I’d want freedom and opportunity. Who wants bombs? Not me. Why are these morons wasting our money? Who are we going to bomb? Jews? I’d wonder what the Jews have ever done to us? Besides, I’d never met one. They left here long ago.

Sure I’d be going out to the streets to protest. What would I have to lose? I’d see on television how other women live in other countries. Why can’t I live like them? What do I threaten? I am a young woman with dreams like young women everywhere. Tear down those stupid barriers, you dirty old men. And I’d wonder where was the support of my sisters in other countries who won their rights by raising their voices? How about if they raise their voice for me? Where are they? Come on American women, I’d shout. Speak up. Your sisters are prisoners here in Iran.

My President?, I’d say. You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t represent me. I don’t want to be told how to dress, how to live, how to love. And I wouldn’t want my money spent to help spread chaos in other lands. For what? So that other women in these other lands can live like me. No way.

See me march in the streets, I’d shout. For crying out loud Americans, say something, support us. Believe me, this is no place to be young. It’s bad enough for young men and, believe me, I’d say, it’s worse for young women. We are drowning here. Help us.

In Defense of Sarah

2009-06-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

I have spent years as a political groupie and an observer of the personalities who played major and minor roles on the political scene. Living in Washington for decades, I knew many of the political figures who appeared on and off the stage, including Presidents, Senators and Congressmen.

Before my literary career gained traction, I ran a number of political campaigns for both Democrats and Republicans and can say, with modesty, that I understand how the system operates. I have seen political stars rise and fall for reasons both deserved and undeserved.

I do admit to a centrist position as my personal political doctrine. Admittedly, I am, like many novelists, more of an observer than activist and I do feast on argument and contention as a learning experience.

Having reached the age of entitlement, I say what I think, however outside the mainstream of prevailing opinion and I do believe in the polite laws of debate. I love hearing contrary views, listen carefully, applaud and encourage them in others and passionately refute them without restraint or personal animosity.

All that said, I vociferously disagree with obtuse entertainers like David Letterman and the vast Army of media mavens and talking heads who have been bashing Sarah Palin. It disgusts me.

Governor Palin, to my mind, is the ideal of a certain type of feminine achiever, a role model to a vast majority of women who have aspirations to have it all, meaning marriage, motherhood and achievement in a profession that requires hands on leadership skills. Others might not consider this path the paragon of female aspirations nor does it disparage them to offer her as an example.

Imagine, this full time devoted mother and wife, a woman of tireless energy, who brought down the old boy network in her home state and worked her way into the Governorship and is considered one of the most popular Governors in the United States to be the object of the vilest personal attacks in modern political life.

One might argue as Harry Truman did, that if you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen. Indeed, our political life has been filled with vicious accusations of sinister motives hurled by journalists, talking heads and political enemies against people with whom they disagree. Every politician knows he or she is fair game.

While I don’t agree with Governor Palin on every issue, I admire her achievement, her pluck and her remarkable restraint in the face of the worst underserved drubbing of a political figure in modern memory. I’m not an Alaskan or a Midwesterner but I do know of her remarkable achievement in pushing a gas pipeline that will carry Alaskan gas through Canada to warm the homes of many Midwesterners. Even her enemies will acknowledge this as a major accomplishment after years of fruitless negotiations by others.

As Americans we all have a right to excoriate our politicians, to vocally blast them when we think they are wrong, but I do think that remarks like those of an insensitive TV host insulting a 14 year old child is beyond the pale, in fact nauseating. What devoted and loving mother or father wouldn’t kick back when their child is insulted? Remember Harry Truman writing that letter to the music critic who wrote an insulting review about his daughter’s singing. Every politician who knows the sting of such criticism should have come to her defense and the idiot host should have apologized. Are you listening Carters and Clintons?

Sarah Palin, whatever you may think of her, has proven that she can take care of herself. She may not be some Ivy League hotshot, many of who have screwed up the country in the last couple of decades. She may not speak with great rhetorical flourishes or offer an image of gravitas so beloved of talking television heads. Indeed, she may even be too attractive to be taken seriously by those who expect their female politicians to be more matronly, prefer pants suits to dresses and not be burdened with the messy mommy problems of child rearing.

I need not wonder how Michelle Obama would have reacted if some TV host had disparaged her two beautiful girls. Mr. Letterman would not have been able to sit down for days.

Those like myself, who celebrate the rise of women in our society after years of restriction should be defending Sarah Palin, especially in this instance, not demeaning her.

My Most Influential Professor

2009-06-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

When I arrived at the University Heights campus at NYU at the age of seventeen in January 1945, I was astonished at its beauty, the wonderful landscaping and the architectural wonders that fully realized my fantasies of what a college campus should look like.

World War II was in its European death throes and the ASTP boys in uniform were, if memory serves, still active on the campus. The trip from Brooklyn from the Kingston Avenue IRT station to Burnside Avenue was more than an hour and the walk to the campus another fifteen minutes. I didn’t mind. I was teethed on the subway. My family never owned a car.

My parents could never afford to pay for campus dormitory housing and having traveled to High School by subway, I did not find it a hardship at all. By every measure I was attending a real college on a beautiful campus in a jewel of a setting high above a sparkling river. Sadly, it is no longer part of NYU, a historical mistake in judgment.

I registered for an accelerated course which would mean that I would earn my degree in two years eight months. Life was uncertain for a seventeen year old in that time. In less than a year, I would register for the draft and the prospects for ending the war with Japan were not promising. The Japanese although pushed back to the mainland were apparently determined to fight to the end.

At that stage in my life I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had just graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, an elite school that filled its ranks from students who had passed a rather difficult test and allegedly had a high enough IQ to pass the demanding courses. It took me one term to determine that I was not very interested in technical matters. Besides, it was an all boys school, a feature not very attractive to a young student whose testerone level was rising precipitously. I went through classes like an automaton, graduating somewhere in the lower half of a class of more than 700 graduates.

I was captivated by the Heights campus, made friends easily and, by some miracle of oratory and what must have been a deftly written speech I was elected President of the freshman class. This election produced a clipping in the campus newspaper that my father carried in his wallet until the day he died. I loved my days on campus and proudly wore the uniform of the ROTC. Unable to afford much else, I worked after classes in all sorts of odd jobs. I did not think this a hardship or unusual since I had worked after school ever since I was eligible for working papers when I was fourteen.

All freshman courses were required curriculum. But it was my course in English, taught by Professor Don M. Wolfe that, in retrospect changed my life forever. Many college students can cite similar experiences, the mentor, the inspiration, the great teacher who took the student under his or her wing and made the crucial difference, who pointed the way to a fulfilling and prosperous career.

Although I read compulsively and diligently, mostly the great adventure stories for boys that I found on the shelves of the Stone Avenue children’s library in Brooklyn I had never seriously imagined myself as a writer of the imagination. Nevertheless, in retrospect, I believe the spark must have been there. Perhaps it was my mother’s example. She was an inveterate customer of the lending libraries that were all over Brooklyn in those years, where for pennies a day you could rent all the novels that you could consume. It was part of her regular routine after the housework was over to concentrate on novels. Returning from school, I found her always with her nose in a book. If that was the spark, Dr. Wolfe was the one who provided the kindling.

He was not robust, nor did he have the propensity to charm his students with professorial humor or was he a master of the sardonic rebuke. He was pleasant and businesslike, hardly warm and fuzzy. He was clearly a dedicated teacher, but he was not given to socializing with students. He was not mesmerizing, but it was obvious that he loved teaching. I had no knowledge of his past or his background. He had arrived in my life full grown as himself, sent my way as a kind of miracle.

He assigned compositions and encouraged us to stretch the use of the language to create imaginative imagery and use muscular words to tell our stories and create our plots and descriptions. He was extremely diligent in his reading of our material. When I would receive one of my compositions back, he wrote his criticisms in red ink scrawls and you felt dead certain that he had read every word. It was through those red scrawls that I interpreted his message. You can write, son. Keep at it.

He did not single me out as anyone special in the class. Indeed, I can’t remember that he ever singled anyone out at all, but receiving those critiques, mostly words of praise and encouragement, clipped and copious, was all I needed to make my lifetime decision. I don’t know if he ever knew the impact that these tiny critiques made on my life, but he kindled something deep in my psyche, an ambition that still burns inside of me to this day. Is that not the ultimate reward for a dedicated teacher? For that reason alone, I will always love my alma mater.

I got an A in freshman English and, in fact, in all my English courses, two of which stick in my mind as essential building blocks in career, the European novel taught by Professor Ranney and the Bible as History taught by Professor Baer who was the Dean of the College of Arts and Science in those years. I extend to them my belated gratitude.

Believe me I am not exaggerating the impact of Professor Wolfe and the enhancement of the other professors. I was not as successful in my other courses, especially the sciences. Summers as part of my accelerated program I went to Washington Square, but none of the Professors there made as much of an impact on me as Doctor Wolfe.

A year after graduation I followed Dr. Wolfe to the New School to take a creative writing course. By then I was committed to spend my life writing novels, short stories and plays. Taking his course was like the icing on the cake. In my class was Mario Puzo and a number of other writers of great talent who I feel certain were equally inspired by Dr. Wolfe. At the New School, Dr. Wolfe arrange for the publication of a number of short story collections. Included in those anthologies was the work of remarkable talents among them Puzo and William Styron.

Was he aware of the fact that he was the greatest influence in my life? Perhaps in the lives of others as well? I doubt it. Sixty two years after my encounter with Dr. Wolfe, I credit him with continuing to be the greatest influence on my life and work.

Even today in my still very active career, he is still my teacher and guide. I cannot write a single sentence without wondering what Dr. Wolfe would say about it in his red ink scrawls.

I Want To Be Me

2009-05-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

I once wrote a script for a short film titled “The Year Nobody Gave.” It illustrated the tragic outcome if the money stopped coming to the particular charity that paid for the making of the film. It pointed out the terrible tragedy that would result for the recipients of the charity’s largesse. It was meant to scare the bejesus out of the good people who never gave to the charity and to encourage the regular givers to cough up more money.

I am reminded of that film by a number of recent solicitations on the phone, on the Internet and on the street corners to answer survey questions designed to discover my preferences for various products, political leanings and specific attitudes to this or that.

In other words, they want something from me. They want me to give them my personal treasure. I choose not to.

I never respond to these surveys. It is an act of rebellion. I refuse to have my preferences pigeonholed and numbers crunched into some statistical mish mash designed to create a strategy for some advertiser or politician to gain access to the pockets or votes of other people, myself included.

It is the results of these statistical surveys that determine pretty much everything that we buy, watch, listen to and vote for. Our behavior is tracked, parsed, coded, sliced and diced and categorized into every conceivable subset from our age, race, sex, geography, language, down into every personal detail of our daily doings. We are literally stripped naked, externally and internally. Our individuality is broken down into sub-atoms of attitude and preference. Our uniqueness has been erased by the tsunami of the marketers.

If this sounds like high dudgeon, it should. Even though I know that the statisticians have now put people like me into a new category marked rebellious, difficult and non-conforming, I take my stand strictly on the basis that it is nobody’s damned business what I prefer, what I eat, what I think, what I read, what I watch, what I listen to, what sexual preferences and fantasies turn me on, what I love and what I can’t stand. I hate the idea that everything that I am will become a statistic that will determine some mass activation of a product or an idea.

I am well aware that the powerful statistical survey industry will find ways to ridicule my revolutionary tone and come up with a thousand reasons why my attitude is counter productive to the mass culture and somehow destructive to our values and dangerous to our commercial and political system. They will point to the accuracy of their surveys and analysis and cite scientific evidence that underlines their theories.

From their point of view, the accuracy of their statistics proves their worth. They will claim that such statistics are the heart of game strategies. By their surveys and statistical analyses they claim they can predict future outcomes. If that is true, then we must have some built-in instinctual herd instinct gene, much like sheep, who are controlled by a few sheep dogs, who round us up, and lead us to be sheared or slaughtered.

It could be that most people want to be herded, told what to eat, vote, buy, do. It comes under the umbrella of “community.” Many people may really want to be like everyone else within their preset category. Billions of dollars are bet on such statistical outcome predictions. Game theory depends on it. Indeed, they may be right. So what?
I am probably an anomaly, outside the mainstream. Actually, I believe in community and am willing to observe tribal rules. I am not an outlaw, but I prefer being an outsider, a non-participant to these obvious manipulations. There are many people who don’t understand that they are being manipulated. Nor do they care. I do. It violates my sense of self.

There are certain inner boundaries that I consider sacrosanct. There is something inside me that cries out for my individuality. I do everything in my power not to be pigeonholed. I don’t want to tear down the structure, I just want to declare ownership of my secret private place and to keep it locked away from prying eyes and ears.

In another age such an attitude would by symptomatic of the once acclaimed label of “rugged individualism”, a term much derided in our contemporary world.

I keep wondering what would happen if none of us ever answered a single survey or gave away our inner treasuries, the core of ourselves. Indeed, I have often been tempted to answer such surveys by deliberately giving false testimony, but that seems a bit too aggressively sinister and telling deliberate lies goes against my grain.

I do recognize that this lofty ambition to preserve my individuality may be an exercise in futility. In today’s world the computer is the instrument of our personal revelation. Our statistics are being stolen from us. Big brother and sister are watching, listening and slotting us into categories. We are stripped naked, unarmed and undefended from the hucksters who, like ardent obsessive fisherman, troll to land us, strip us, bake and broil us to better consume our essence.

I realize this is a harsh indictment. Any software novice will tell you that we are being parsed and coded every time we power on our computer or land on a website. This means, that despite my highfalutin rebel cry, we are being perpetually monitored, analyzed and categorized.

Perhaps I am baying at the moon and there is no place to hide, although I am forever hopeful that technology will find a way to come up with an automatic blocking mechanism. Maybe they already have.

Which brings me back to the point of this essay. What would happen if nobody “gave”? What would happen if all of our thoughts and actions, our preferences, our yearnings, our hope and fears, our choice of products, politicians and pleasures were magically blocked? Would manufacturers suffer because they would not be able to know what would attract the buyer of the manufacturer’s product? Would politicians be unable to tailor their promises to specific categories of potential voters? Would financiers refuse to gamble on businesses that cannot “prove” their need by research and statistical analysis? Would advertising messages be too scattershot to be effective?

The fact is that even with the aggressive pursuit of profiling potential customers and voters, of researching every nook and cranny of our preferences, businesses still fail at an astounding rate, politicians lose, products come and go, and the laws of unintended consequences happen with remarkable repetitiveness.

What would happen if we kept our mouths zipped to any survey taker that crosses our path and managed to escape all surveillance methods on the Internet or wherever? Would the fragile pole which holds up the consuming tent collapse?

I offer no panaceas, no hopeful strategic hints. Maybe I’m just throwing pennies into a bottomless wishing well. Call me selfish, egocentric, delusionary.
Fire up Google and ask for “I want to be me…” lyrics. There are nearly fifty eight million hits in the index.

Nice to know I’m not alone.

How I Got The Idea For Banquet Before Dawn

2009-05-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

This was my second novel. During my early years in Washington when I was in the Public Relations business, I ran a campaign for a man seeking to fill a Congressional Seat in Maryland. This was back in the early seventies. The country was in ferment. Neighborhoods were changing radically. Race riots had occurred in the late sixties in Washington and Baltimore. I witnessed them at first hand. At the time I owned a radio station in Baltimore.

The station studios were in the Penthouse of a building directly across the street from the Armory. From my window I could see National Guardsmen in uniform and armed. In the parking lot was an assortment of military vehicles. One had the sense that law and order was breaking down and the politicians could not control the government.

Not long before I had attended a veterans convention in Boston and an incident occurred that added to those elements that together triggered the idea for this novel. My wife and I entered a restaurant in downtown Boston with two friends, both representatives of the government, a state department official and military officer. There weren’t many patrons in the restaurant and we were enjoying a few rounds of drinks before dinner.

One of my friends began a conversation about Mayor Curley who had run Boston with an iron hand and had been recently convicted of corruption and was serving time in prison. Curley was an icon, especially to the Irish community, which at the time was the power elite that ran the city. Loyalty to Curley, despite the corruption scandal was still endemic. The Boston Irish loved Curley with an emotional fierceness that brooked no criticism.

My friend, buoyed by the booze was particularly virulent in his distaste for Curley and voiced his criticism loud enough to attract attention in the nearly empty restaurant.

As we talked, a policeman arrived and sat down in a conspicuous spot directly in our site line. He proceeded to unbutton the leather holster at his side displaying the handle of his firearm. We interpreted this action as a direct attempt at intimidation to answer the insult my friend had apparently made to his political hero.

The policeman sat there, staring at us throughout the meal. I recall being reminded of the book by Frank O’Connor titled “The Last Hurrah” a fictional account of Mayor Curley’s last campaign, a brilliant book that was made into an equally brilliant movie with Spencer Tracy playing the Mayor. Although it is hard to pinpoint the exact eureka moment when the germ of the idea for Banquet Before Dawn popped into my mind, but I am certain that it was these elements and memories that became the ingredients for the stew that nourished my imagination and created the story.

After all, the book is about an aging Irish politician from a Brooklyn district that was once predominantly Irish and the Congressman had always been a shoo-in for re-election. His district has undergone a swift and radical change, from Irish to Black. Not only had the racial content changed radically, his Irish base had disintegrated and he was suddenly confronted by the realization of his irrelevance. Although brilliant in his social skills and political savvy, he cannot relate to the new people and the new alliances. His political appearance at a traditional event in a Brooklyn hotel results in disastrous consequences and closes the coffin on his political career.

It was never optioned for a film, but one of my acquaintances the late Jason Robards, a superb actor of Irish ancestry read the book, loved it, related to and wanted to star in it if it was ever sold the movies. One day, perhaps, it may make it to the silver screen.

The Next New Thing

2009-05-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Remember the title of that play “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off”? Sorry folks, its too late. The Internet has made our planet spin too fast. If you let go, you’re a dead duck and if you manage to hold on you never know where you are.

The days of leisurely contemplating and observing our world through the morning and evening newspapers is long gone. Even the broadcast media, at their fastest cannot keep up.

It is only on the Internet that we can be, for a nanosecond, slightly ahead of what is coming next. Turn away for a nanosecond and we are behind. That is the true definition of spin.

I am talking about what is commonly known as “news”, which means new information. News happens all the time. It is pervasive and ubiquitous. It has always been thus.

Once it was doled out through the strainer of agencies like newspapers, wire services, broadcast and other media who employed a vast network of truth checkers. Soon no one will be checking. Few are checking now. All strainers are being junked. There is no time. Attention must be squeezed into the nanosecond. Can the human brain move that fast? One wonders.

If I’ve lost you, try below.

Something momentous occurs on the planet, Antarctica, Saigon, Baghdad, Cleveland, Washington, wherever. It is instantly reported by somebody somewhere. It travels around the world in nanoseconds. It sets off an avalanche of opinions, analysis, by a vast army, uncounted millions, who crowd the blogosphere and social networking sites convinced that others are entitled to their opinions.

But before they can finish typing the first letter of their blogs and postings another event occurs, travels at warp speed around the world, making their thoughts instantly obsolete. The mortality of their opinions is instant. A happening is barely a blink.

The accuracy of this fast moving information is impossible to assess as to its truth or validity. There is no longer any mechanism to find out. Only opinions, conjecture, and words, words, words spinning relentlessly.
A case in point.

Swine flu. It is a new strain. Someone on the Internet says it has jumped from pigs to humans. Someone suggests pandemic. Someone blogs about the 1918 flu which killed millions. The Internet is flooded with opinions, suggestions, and dire predictions. A Vice-President warns people not to take public transportation. People become uneasy, frightened, demand government intervention. Governments intervene. It may or may not be the right thing to do. I am not taking sides, since I am also uneasy. The point I am making is that the speed of the information comes in nanoseconds.

Hard on its heels is other news. The Chrysler bankruptcy and its implications, the dire news from Afghanistan, the economy, a supreme court justice resigns, a senator changes parties, the Taliban threat in Pakistan, the crisis in Darfur, the crisis in Sri Lanka, the nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran, bombings in Baghdad, and ever onward. All these events are followed by battalions of bloggers, squadrons from the Huffington Post, (huffing and puffing) from Politico, from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and its ancillary opiners, and the twitterers and their related herd, millions of them, pontificating, arguing, hating, insulting, approving.

Tell me you know who to believe and I’ll call you a liar. No one knows. Few, if any have checked. Gossip rules. Rumors swirl. Many insist they know for sure. We are all buried under an ever-growing mountain of bullshit.

Things happen so fast, that one can barely remember what has gone before. And even if the bloggers, the posters, the talking heads, the politicians, the pundits, anyone who who is plugged into the Internet, of every age, sex, race, religion or whatnot is shouting his or her words on the fast spinning planet, they will all be quickly deleted and everyone will begin again, shoveling you know what against the tide.

Indeed, we are living in a totally new paradigm. Master that perpetually spinning paradigm for your own personal ends and you are a genius.

The best example of this genius is our President Barack Obama. I mean no disrespect. I am in awe of his achievement. He is the essence of the truly successful modern man. Nor is this in any way a political judgment. Whatever he advocates is irrelevant to his navigational skills.

In his two memoirs, he has envisioned himself. With extraordinary talent, he created the way he wanted to be perceived. Comfortable with his natural gifts for charm and oratory, his story and his natural persona, he found his niche and with astonishing speed convinced people that he had the right skills and intellectual muscle, the best tone, the greatest story, to become the man he had envisioned himself. His timing was pristine. He had found the perfect moment.

He pushed all the right levers. He understood the essence of the Internet and its touchstone, the next new thing. He embodied it.

Think of this. With the exception of his two extraordinary books, he wrote nothing more of note. He didn’t have to. We knew little about him except what he told us. Aside from that he had no record to speak of, no other writing, no long career in politics, no foreign experience.

His life story as he has told it is an anomaly. It touches every experience that social scientists point to as the prime cause for failure in life. Despite his white mother, he is perceived as racially black. He comes from a broken home. His father abandoned him when he was an infant. His mother died early in his life. He was raised by grandparents. His name suggests foreignness. Such a background is common in the impoverished population.

He is absolutely correct as recorded in the new book by the majority leader of the Senate Harry Reid who quotes Obama as saying. “I have a gift.” Indeed, above all else, he has the gift of self-awareness and believes in his soul that he is worthy of his role and qualified to pursue it. Without such confidence nothing is achieved. He has single handedly convinced others who he believes he is and has climbed the pinnacle of world politics. It is an extraordinary achievement.

Having found the secret of getting there, he must now discover the secret of staying there. Will the same Internet model work? Can he continue to be the next new thing again and again? Like the rest of us he can’t stop the world. And he can’t get off. Besides I don’t think he wants to do either. He knows how to live in the environment of spin. He is at home.

He is in sync with the vast pool of people who have mastered the relentless spin of the Internet. He knows the secrets of multi-tasking and the limits of attention span. He is addicted to his blackberry. He knows his audience and they know him. They are his people. They are in the multi-millions. Like the Internet, they cross borders. That is why you see vast crowds cheering him overseas.

When you are multi-tasked, agile minded, and have trained yourself to live with spin, you can believe that all things are possible. Hope never runs out. You know that there will always be the next new thing.

In the midst of the primary campaign, I met a journalist who adamantly predicted that Obama would win the presidency. I asked him why he was so dead certain.
“Because Obama is the next new thing,” he told me.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
I saw.

There are those who say that as President he is overexposing himself. No way. He is using the Internet model exactly the right way, presenting himself as new every chance he gets. Before the bloggers can blog one thing he is on to another.

Actually, I believe these multiple burdens and crises afflicting the country and the world, will, in the long run, be a boon to his presidency. He will be able to thrust and parry, act and react, proceed to the next new thing, relentlessly, cautiously, cool and purposefully. The new next thing is the essence of optimism.

As we go forward in time, he will offer the next new thing over and over again. If the next new thing is faulty, there will be yet another next new thing and people will not remember the once new thing because it will be supplanted by the new next new thing.

I’m sure you’re confused. Not the President. He is an expert in the next new thing.
It sure works for him. Will it work for the rest of us?
I hope so.

We Must Save The Old Bitch

2009-04-20T05:45:00.000-07:00

There is nothing sadder than watching something beloved and essential to one’s comfort level and well being decline. No, I’m not talking about the human aging process with its relentless surge of decrepitude and eventual oblivion. I’m talking about something that has always been there in my life for decades, stalwart, steady, exciting, frequently aggravating, but the most enduring stimulant to starting one’s day, more potent than its accompanying coffee eye-opener.

I am talking about The New York Times, once the immortal grey lady, now slowly morphing into a stripped down version of a retrograde teenager showing off in a desperate attempt to be noticed or, in this case, stay noticed.

Nevertheless my love affair with the old grey lady continues since I can still see vestiges of her classic beauty that keeps me interested, perhaps more out of nostalgia and habit than necessity and utility. The fact is that if the New York Times did not arrive at my front door in the morning, I would be bereft. A huge gap would open in my life that could never be filled with whatever the vast cloud of the internet could provide.

Strangely, the Times has morphed into a bizarre version of ideological schizophrenia. It has become the impassioned champion of its non-readers whose eyeballs would hardly matter to those advertisers who seek to sell goods and services to its ever declining readership. On the other hand, it does satisfy the ideological demands of many of its readers, whose “save the world” mentality protects them from the guilt of plenty and extreme comfort that punctuate their lives.

One would think that such breast beating would actually increase the readership of its paper. Then again, perhaps this ideological pose is the least important reason why people read the Times. It has, far and away, the best arts coverage of any mass media paper, probably in the world. Its feature stories, always well written, imaginative and often surprising in content, offer a marvelous potpourri for curiosity hounds like yours truly. I am often astonished by the imagination of its editors in ferreting out wonderful sidebars to international, national and city life that have often been neglected elsewhere. And, their sports coverage is darned good.

There is enough non-ideological material to make up for the obvious bias. Some star op-ed columnists are almost universally nasty. For example, Frank Rich, a pleasant fellow in person, seems to be running a close race with Maureen Dowd as to who will win the nasty prize. Frank, who single-handedly nearly ruined the live theater business when he was the drama critic for the Times, maintains a sniggling self-righteous nose-in- the-air superiority that makes one shudder with inferiority anxiety.

As for Maureen Dowd, her column must attract a large readership of psychiatrists to observe her love hate relationship with her own gender. I read them both avidly, proving the theory that nastiness has great entertainment value for people of my ilk.

Then there are the self-righteous op-ed lecturers on the subject of the way the world should be run, meaning Tom Friedman, Nicholas D. Kristof, David Brooks and Paul Krugman whose economic views offer even more fodder for the Times’ non-readers. Let’s throw in Bob Herbert for racial sensitivity. No racial slight, real or imagined, goes unwritten.

Their “how-to’s” have spawned for these writers an entire ancillary personal profit industry with ever burgeoning contracts for book writing, speaking tours and talking head babbling on the boob tube. More power to them. Talking to non-readers puts them in an income category that makes them wealthy enough to buy the goods advertised in their flagship distributor.

Kristof, who sheds tears for third world atrocities is quite eloquent on the depressing treatment of females in many of these abominable countries. One wonders why his exposes don’t send ardent feminists into violent protest mode along with the rest of us allegedly caring humans. Or does it indicate that Times readers are mostly armchair activists who prefer to bleed privately and leaving the dirty work to its non-readers.

As for the editorial pages, here is classic umbrage taking to satisfy the most hardcore “progressive.” The page screams with “down with the rich” and “republicans are neanderthal” indignation, offering a perfect magic bullet right into the heart of its readership which is mostly “upper middle class and comfortable to very rich” and, without a doubt “democratic or faux independent.” I suspect the target audience is themselves, the privileged guys and gals who run the editorial end of the business.

I keep wondering how many readers of the Times live in subsidized housing or how big a circulation the Times has in the borough of Queens, statistically the most multi-culturally geographical designation in New York City and probably the world. As the Bible for political correctness, the Times has a world-wide franchise on this transforming vocabulary in which evil doings are deliberately scrubbed clean of vituperation. Indeed, it won’t be long before the Times will describe terrorists as “wayward youths.”

I’m sure the right of center crowd, if any remain, are left with heartburn and rising blood pressure if they read the Times editorials, undoubtedly with masochistic fervor.

As for the Jewish readership, which is probably a healthy statistic, the paper’s anti-Israel stance may have little to do with a decline in circulation, since the paper acts as a bellwether of bias and a record of Israel baiting, both obvious and subtle, that offers a proper standard for the many Jewish organizations to attack. How could they keep score if they didn’t read every word of this outrageously anti-Israel biased coverage?

On the other hand, the United Nations personnel must revel in such coverage and surely provide a heavy statistical bump to its circulation figures.

Whoever selects the Letters to the Editor also takes its marching orders from the same folks who put together the editorials and approve the stunningly subliminal and brilliantly biased headlines embedded in the news coverage. And their so-called ombudsman tries desperately to prove that he is not a toady to those who write his paycheck.

I’d give the live theater and movie critics so-so reviews. The theater guys try hard to impress us with their broad range of knowledge and often forget to review what is on the stage, so caught up are they with their own intellectual narcissism. But hey, at least they cover the whole turf. The movie reviewers are less snobby and, in my experience, more on the money. But then, the job has to be very dreary these days with most popular movies mimicking big screen video games.

I hope I’ve left out no area or target of insult. Nasty can be fun. Bottom line is I love the old bitch and despite all my huffing and puffing I could not imagine not having her greet me in the morning. In fact, I find myself rising at least an hour earlier to cadge the paper before my wife gets the front section. Indeed, this is the only serial disagreement in our otherwise tranquil married life.

And I pity poor “Punch” Sulzberger, the heir to the Sulzberger-Adler family alliance that built the Times into what was once the most powerful and influential newspaper in the world. I sincerely hope he doesn’t fall into that shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves cliché that signifies the beginning and end of good fortune. That rumble you hear is those venerable newspaper builders rolling over in their graves as their golden boy heir fights to take the lady off life support.

I, for one, will stand by the paper and defend it to my very last breath.

And no, in the interest of fair revelation, I am not a descendant of those Adlers. I wish I were.

The E-Book Revolution- Part II

2009-04-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

When I was advising Sony executives when they began the groundwork for creating the Sony Reader, I implored them to keep the device pure, meaning to create a comfortable user friendly alternative for paper books. I argued against tarting up the device with calendars, telephonic communications, e-mail, video or any multi-tasking that would inhibit the reader’s concentration on content.

My argument was based on the presumption that a truly dedicated reader approached the book as an entry into an intense parallel world that required deep, trance-like concentration to fully appreciate and absorb the author’s intention which, on his or her part, required a similar singular focus.

As a pioneer and evangelist for the e-book alternative to the paper book, I was simply reacting to what seemed obvious, that digital technology was moving at lightning speed into the mainstream, that reading on screens was a generational certainty as new generations began their screen “reading” long before they could actually read, that the use of computers, while not quite replacing oxygen to sustain life, was on the verge of becoming ubiquitous and as common as underwear.

I was, of course, reacting to my own bias as a reader and a writer. When I opened a paper book I did so with the expectation of the privacy and isolation required to absorb the full scope of the author’s intent. I wanted no distractions, nothing to inhibit my concentration. I knew that the author was crying out for rapt attention so that the reader would buy into the one-on-one communication system that is inherent in the process.

Admittedly, because I am an author of works of the imagination, I have a certain reverence toward books and the hard work of creating a coherent narrative. I am certain that writers of informational material, like text books, self-help, spiritual, instructional, and other categories feel the same way. Why spend countless hours creating such material if there was not an audience of even marginal interest out there waiting to read it? Which brings us to the most salient point of all, why would a publisher acquire a book if not to monetize its potential?

I am well aware that no business is going to invest the huge sums of money required for disseminating such a device without the possibility of maximum returns. The dilemma, of course, is whether multi-tasking is a necessity for the dedicated reader or that the add-ons will compete for attention and downgrade reading as its primary intent. On the other hand, purchasers of these devices might like the possibility of switching conveniently to other tasks while pausing in their reading.

There are lots of ways to argue the point, but in the end the bottom line will probably determine the outcome of how these digital readers will be configured. Then there is the dire statistical news about the decline of reading which, if true, might further inhibit dedicated reader devices.

My own views are not stubbornly biased in favor of the dedicated reader, the human version, nor do I look pessimistically at the future of reading, despite the gloomy statistics. The power of reading and its pleasures, for example, in the realm of story telling in providing insight entertainment and wisdom needs no defense. In fact, the worldwide expansion of literacy makes the point moot.

With all these new readers coming into the market, some percentage will certainly drift toward book reading as a prime content provider and will opt for the convenience of digital readers. The pool of potential readers is expanding not declining and many are sure to discover the joys and advantages of reading.

The advent of the Kindle offers a step-up in the competition since it cuts the umbilical chord of the computer and, at least at first, has managed to get some publisher’s consent to lower its offering price. This may not continue as publishers see it as a growing challenge to its paper book pricing. It is unlikely that they will be able to succeed in such tactics as more and more people opt for digital readers.

While it might seem jingoistic in favor of the English language, I inject this interesting statistic. America is only the third largest national market for English language material. China with its vast population is number one in English literacy, followed by India. Thus, for a writer in America, the chances are pretty good that the authorship of digital material in English has a good shot at expanding his or her audience without the inconvenience and expense of translation and paper book distribution.

I know these arguments will be stubbornly resisted by those who believe that the dedicated reader will lose the monetary competition to movies and videos in the marketplace.

In my opinion, as an avid consumer of movies, I believe books trump movies in this realm. Movies are a passive story telling device requiring not much brainpower or even concentration and a suspension of belief that the characters acting out the story are merely mimicking real people in their actions.

On the other hand, the characters in books and their pursuit of narrative goals somehow seems more true when filtered through the human imagination. We can spend lifetimes debating this point, and I cite the Bible as one example where words have created an enduring narrative that has been sustained for more than three thousand years with far more impact than any movie ever made. I am well aware I am pushing the point to extremes and risk everlasting calumny for what might seem like heresy. Remember I am talking story, not religion, if that is possible in any discussion of the Bible.

As you can see, I vote strongly in favor of the dedicated reader without any of the bells and whistles of distraction. I’m not balking at an audio add-on, since that process satisfies the requirement of privacy and isolation required for the absorption of content, although I wonder whether it can compete totally with the eye-to-word experience. We are talking here of the delivery of reading content and the future of this process.

In this age of massive revolutionary change on all fronts technological, financial, international and ideological it’s probably not wise to make long term bets. I made the author’s digital bet because I believed that this new technology would prevent books from ever going out of print. It was prudent for a living author to have publication rights reverted and to create a website as a way to promote his or her titles and continue to keep his or her authorial name alive as long as possible, on and on into the unknowable future.

With Google’s promise to digitize all books out of print I may have to refine my strategy, although just having the books available as digital fodder may have no effect at all like paper books moldering on shelves in libraries.

Things are changing so radically in shorter and shorter time frames and a subject like delivering reading material might not engage many interested parties. But in this age of fractionalism, I like to think that there are enough people to care about books and reading to make this take on the problem relevant. At least I hope so.

All of Warren's books are available for the Sony Reader and Kindle

How I Got the Idea For Fiona FitzGerald

2009-04-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

It was the early eighties and the mass media consensus on gender was undergoing a massive change. Women were on the march and the emphasis was on both upward mobility and equality on all fronts, especially in the workplace.

In the culture of imaginative fiction, the concept of the heroic figure was being “genderized” and the notion of the female cop, soldier, firefighter, construction worker and other jobs once considered male turf was swiftly disappearing.

Although I had never tackled the mystery genre which was growing in popularity, my agent persuaded me to take the plunge and since I lived in the metropolitan Washington area, I decided to use the police department that covered the nation’s capitol as my venue. In casting around for a knowledgeable female who could give me some insight into the inner workings of the department and her own psyche I was lucky to find an experienced female homicide detective, Judy Roberts, who led me deep into the entrails of the mindset and procedure of police work as seen through the female perspective.

Thus was born Fiona FitzGerald, a brilliant young white woman, working with a largely black dominated police force. Because I was familiar with the political and social circles of the power elite in Washington, I conceived the idea of Fiona working only on those cases that involved that segment of the Washington upper crust.

The first book in the series, “American Quartet,” dealt with a failed politician whose twisted mind conceived of the idea of staging a replication of the assassinations of our four American Presidents. It was cited that year by the New York Times as being one of the most outstanding mystery books of that year. The series was born, although the background of Fiona was to undergo a profound change after the second book “American Sextet” was published.

In the first two books, Fiona’s father was a New York cop and she had grown up in that city.

As with all of my books, the movie people beckoned and I found myself discussing film projects with a number of producers. One of them suggested to me that instead of making Fiona, the daughter of New York cops, it might be more interesting to make her the daughter of a prominent Senator who had grown up in Washington.

The idea appealed to me for many reasons and I made the change, immersing her in a culture that I knew a great deal about. She was now ensconced in the heady precincts of elite Washington with many contacts in that world, social, political and media which allowed me the opportunity to expand on all the possibilities inherent in that milieu.

In the five books that followed, she was assigned to investigate murders that related to the power elite. It was a world I knew well. Readers addicted to the series would unfortunately be confused by the sudden change of background from daughter of New York cops to daughter of a prominent late New York Senator. I took the plunge and got few complaints.

A new publisher, founded by an experienced former executive of a major publishing company, decided to take on the series and I consented to move Fiona to his new company. This gave me the opportunity to fix Fiona’s background in the first two books and make her uniformly the daughter of a Senator. I rewrote parts of the first two books to fix this situation and saw in this new publisher a chance for Fiona to go on indefinitely solving murders among the players in the power structure.

Alas, it was not to be. The new publisher went bankrupt before he could launch the full series and I was forced to continue with the original publisher. Thus, in the first two books, Fiona remains the daughter of a New York cop, although in the subsequent books she had been transformed into her new incarnation.

Nevertheless, the movie and TV people continue to pursue the idea of starring Fiona. Two film companies have optioned the Fiona books. NBC has optioned the material twice, once for movie of the week and once for a series. Scripts have been commissioned, including one by yours truly and another prominent television writer, but so far, she hasn’t found her television or movie legs. Nevertheless the books continue to be in play and there is some optimism that Fiona will once again be on her way to movie or television stardom.

In the meantime there are always the seven books and she has a growing fan club.

I Love a Parade

2009-03-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure why it is but I often cannot watch a parade without my eyes welling up and, at times, tears run down my cheeks. Perhaps it is a mixture of nostalgia and some powerful feeling of pride and kinship, but when I see the American flag fluttering in the breeze as it passes by, followed by people marching in lock step to the rhythm of a drumbeat timed to brass trumpeting or a piper’s tempo, I go all queasy inside.

I’ve been marching in parades since joining Boy Scout Troop 157 in Brownsville, Brooklyn when I was 12 years old. These experiences began during World War II, and our scout troop Drum and Bugle Corps participated in the commemoration of the raising of plaques to the boys in the service in scores of neighborhoods. It was a matter of deep patriotic pride among the neighbors whose sons had enlisted or were drafted to serve in the Armed Forces.

I was both a drummer and a bugler and not very good at either but passable enough to march and play. We held band practice in PS 183 a few blocks from our headquarters in the finished basement of the Silverman house on Strauss Street. Later, as the war progressed, the band played again at the same sites when gold stars replaced the blue ones.

The most memorable parade I ever participated in was the Victory Parade down Fifth Avenue after World War II was won. I’ve been in a number of parades since then, but nothing surpasses that event. I played the bugle in that parade and can still hear the cheering and see the vast crowds that lined the avenue. It was a glorious heart stirring moment. It was America at its pinnacle.

As a parade watcher, there is one parade that sticks in my mind and just recalling the images of that day sends chills of patriotic pride down my spine. It was, as usual, up Fifth Avenue, and for some reason I found myself at a high floor along the parade route. It was the celebration, if I remember correctly, of the first group of troops to come from Europe after their victory in World War II.

It was led by one of the youngest Generals in that war, General James Gavin who was the Commander of the 82nd Paratroop Division. Imagine, a single soldier, this ramrod straight young general in his shined paratrooper boots and perfectly groomed uniform, a single symbolic American solder leading the victorious Army that had brought down a cruel monster, the demonic Adolph Hitler and his evil attempt to shackle the world to his brutal idea of the master race. Behind him marched the men of the 82nd, proud men in a division that had taken enormous casualties and who still retained the pride of belonging as they strutted in perfect sync down the most famous thoroughfare in America. You don’t have more stirring images than that to quicken the pulse and appreciate the meaning of sacrifice and victory.

Whenever I can, I attend the greatest annual parade of all, the St. Patrick’s Day parade, where those of Irish ancestry, men, women and children, proud of their heritage, swagger up Fifth Avenue with all the pageantry and regalia they can muster to proclaim their pride and glory of having come from the Emerald Isle and become part of a great new country. It is an inspiring event, seeing those wonderful Irish faces marching together in a parade that lasts more than six hours and sometimes longer.

It is a spectacle worth attending, not only for its pageantry, but what it says about the big-hearted melting pot that is America. These days the parade is speckled with people of all races who are part of the vast network of Irish beneficence that welcomes all people to celebrate with them. Considering that the Irish immigrants were once reviled as low class drunken troublemakers by the powers that then were running America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the St. Patrick’s day parade illustrates the upward mobility that our way of life portends for those who come to our shores to ply their dreams.

I find it inspiring to see people celebrating themselves and the native culture that has stitched them into the American fabric. Indeed, Fifth Avenue is the route of choice for ethnic groups of all varieties to exhibit their traditions, their music and their pride in being Americans. To celebrate Columbus’ landing in the New World, both the Spanish who claim him as a native son and the Italians who make a similar claim organize a parade on different days, a double whammy.

There are parades celebrating the heritages of Germans, Puerto Ricans, Greeks, Jews commemorating Israel Independence day and other groups who wish to memorialize their native roots. The time and effort that goes into these activities is awesome but the results offer a profound perspective on the vast patchwork quilt of the American experience.

Nostalgia must strike something deep inside me to be so stirred by watching parades. Perhaps it has something to do with my father who would carry me on his shoulders on what was called Armistice Day to see the bands and doughboys of the peacetime Army along with veterans of what was once called the Great War, march down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn during that bygone holiday many years ago.

In those days lampposts were festooned with wreaths, and red poppies were offered for sale as a reminder of that brutal war and the men who were left behind on the bloody battlefields of Europe. When I sometimes think of the American blood shed to protect our European allies from their enemies and the ingratitude of their progeny, I often cannot control a trill of anger.

Indeed, I am often angered by people who cite the hostility to America from people of other countries as proof that somehow America is a land of arrogance, selfishness and greed. Worse, I grow livid with rage when our own citizens rant about our imperfections and imagined cruelties as if we are motivated by sinister forces with evil intent, condemning us as a nation without a soul or a sense of humanity. By no means are we a perfect populace and we often make monumental mistakes in our choice of leaders, and it is true that there are many among us who are corrupt and greedy or afflicted with other evils of the human condition. It is also true that we do terrible things to each other, but not because we are Americans. Rather because we are Homo sapiens with built-in evil traits that, at times, dominate our actions with awful consequences.

But I contend that we Americans are a lot less worse than other organized governments on this planet, more enlightened, and, by and large, more big hearted, generous and decent than perhaps all the others. We are always striving to improve and have an enormous capacity and talent for self-correction.

As a soldier during the Korean War, I marched in military parades and always felt a sense of profound participation, part of something bigger than myself. During that war I was ordered to the Pentagon to become the Washington Correspondent for Armed Forces Press Service. In that role I was able to provide important information of concern to the average Joe who served in all the branches of the American military.

It wasn’t combat, of course, but it gave me insight into the inner workings and psychology of the American military, which I found to be mostly decent, dedicated and talented professionals who have the awesome responsibility to defend us and run our wars. I found them to be compassionate and deeply concerned as they tried their best to weigh the price to be paid in American lives for every move planned to bring a victorious end to whatever hostilities they were engaged in.

To many, especially those who have not been involved in such experiences, my ebullience might sound jingoistic or emotionally naïve or an aberration of aging memories. I make no apologies for this feeling or my sometimes tearful sense of joyous pride watching a parade organized by my fellow citizens, and I am stirred to gratitude for my astonishing good luck in being an American.

How I Got The Idea For The Sunset Gang

2009-03-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure my father graduated from High School. He never told me. I think my mother graduated from Girls High in Brooklyn, but I’m not certain. She had come to New York in the hold of a ship from Russia with her mother, my Grandmother, who had six children in tow. My mother was three years old. My Grandfather had come a few years earlier to save enough money to bring them to the United States. It all happened in the waning days of the nineteenth century. That was the way it was done.

My father came to New York from London’s East End when he was ten years old. He was, I think, born in Poland and had come to England with my grandparents when he was eight months old. He rarely talked about his early childhood in London, but when he did he cited merely the names of boys with whom he had played. He never went back.

That is the sum total of knowledge that I gleaned from my parents about their early days. It represents a huge gap in my education. Perhaps it was my fault. I never asked. But they never told me. I didn’t miss this lack of knowledge until a few years ago. Now I hunger for it. Not only about their history but about the whole line of ancestors that came before me.

This is not how I got the idea for the Sunset Gang, but it is an element of memory that clearly connects with the idea and might be one of the subconscious reasons why I wrote these stories.

Late in life my parents retired to Florida. Somehow, after a life of hard economic knocks, they managed to scrape up enough money to buy a one-bedroom condominium for $13,000 in Century Village in West Palm Beach. My father had been a bookkeeper, mostly expendable and mostly unemployed throughout the great depression. Half our lives were spent in a small three-bedroom house in Brownsville, Brooklyn bought for my mother’s parents, my grandparents, by their sons who supported them. We moved in whenever we were thrown out of our apartment for not paying the rent. It was called being dispossessed.

My grandparents had no social security, no pension, no means of support except by their children. The house became a refuge for us and those of my aunts and uncles and cousins who had lost the means of their livelihood because of hard times. There were eleven of us who lived in this tiny house with one bathroom. I slept with my kid brother. My parents slept somewhere downstairs in the dining room.

I have no memories of deprivation or unhappiness. I loved my childhood and loved that house, but that is another story I will write someday.

Oh yes, the idea of The Sunset Gang. Century Village in West Palm Beach is a sprawling community which was populated in the seventies and eighties by mostly lower middle class people, many of whom were Jewish, who had found Valhalla after lives of tough sledding in New York City and other northern cities. It’s probably much changed these days. Most people who lived there then were, like my parents, immigrants. With their children grown, they trekked to the new promised land. Florida! This became the magic destination, with sunshine, perpetually blooming flora and fauna, swimming pools, a giant clubhouse for entertainment, vast areas for card playing, old comedians doing their Catskill shtick, cycling clubs, lectures, classes and, above all, gossip.

Gossip had always been the coin of the realm among these immigrants who had come to American as children. They had always lived in close quarters, always watching and listening to the people who lived around them. They were always observing each other, talking about each other, criticizing, commenting, bragging. They were a living pulsing version of today’s tabloids. They knew who was cheating on whose husband or wife, who was lying about their past lives, who was exaggerating about their children’s achievements, who was richer or poorer, who had been a crook or a gangster, who was in bad health, who was dying, which widow was on the prowl for a man and vice versa. Above all, they knew who had secrets and they passed them around to each other in strict confidence. “You shouldn’t tell” meant spread the word. They were more efficient communicators than today’s Internet.

The principal conduits for this word of mouth knowledge were the women. The “Yentas”. Yenta is a Yiddish word for busybodies, a term of derision and mild contempt.
My mother would have been appalled if she was referred to as a Yenta. In fact, no woman would ever admit she was, at heart, a Yenta. “Me a Yenta. Are you crazy?”

The men, too, were a form of male yenta, although I never heard them referred to as such. To them yenta was the ultimate put-down, a troublemaker, a female gangster. “Watch your mouth. The Yentas could be listening.” was the ultimate danger signal of all the men who I met at Century Village on my periodic visits to my parents.

This said, I must confess that all of the ideas that became the short stories in my books, The Sunset Gang and later with more stories added “Its Never Too Late for Love” came from the Yentas of Century Village, including my mother. I owe them a profound debt of gratitude.

I began this little essay with some background about where my parents came from. I am, after all, a child of their experience and their genes flow in the blood of my body and my brain. I know in my gut that these stories come from that fount, that milieu.

God, how I miss them.

I'm No Coward Mr. Holder

2009-02-27T14:55:00.000-08:00

Speaking frankly, I’m totally confused why Eric Holder, the new Attorney General of the United States called me a coward. Perhaps I am taking it too personally, since he accused the whole nation of being cowards.

Apparently, his accusation stems from some idea he has that there has not been enough truthful dialogue on the matter of race. This goes to the heart of my confusion. What am I supposed to say in such a dialogue? That racial discrimination is awful, that the blacks are descendants of slaves, a disgusting phenomenon that was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation more than a century and a half ago? That America has done its darndest to correct the horrors of bigotry that stemmed from that enslavement era by passing civil rights legislation that guaranteed equal treatment under the law for everyone, whatever their race? That we should be vigilant in the protection of those rights?

Am I supposed to say we haven’t done enough to right the balance after passing numerous laws to give a leg up to help level the playing field in education, housing and whatever? I had, as did most Americans, no objections to offer our help to those of different races that were the victims of discrimination. Are there still problems? Yes. Has Mr. Holder suggested any solutions? If he has, we haven’t heard any.

Indeed, most of us were quite courageous in breaking down discrimination barriers in the face of often intransigent opposition by those who continued to espouse outmoded and wrongheaded ideas on bigotry and discrimination. To tell you the truth, I am rather proud of giving my assent to all these anti-discrimination measures.

So what lines do I use in this dialogue? Do I respond to any questions raised in this so-called dialogue or say simply that “I agree?” The Reverend King had it right. A man should be judged by the quality of his character and not the color of his skin. What decent American doesn’t believe that, Mr. Attorney General? Just ask your boss.

Better yet, look in the mirror and ask yourself. What kind of a dialogue would you have with yourself? What would you ask someone like yourself on the top of his game? Was your skin color a hindrance? Does the sobriquet “coward” also apply to you?

To tell you the truth, I don’t believe for one minute I’m a coward and I am rather pissed off at your inference.

I’ve also believed that the goal of our society, as Dr. King posited should be color blindness. That’s why I hired one of the first black salesman in the radio business in Baltimore to sell time on the station I once owned in that town. I didn’t care about breaking barriers. I just thought he would sell like hell. I hired black people in my advertising business on the basis of competence not the color of their skin or to make some kind of a statement. I wouldn’t even use a racial designation as a reference point if the Attorney General hadn’t brought it up.

When my wife ran her magazine in Washington, the Washington Dossier, in the seventies and eighties, she reveled in the magazine coverage of the fabulous and successful black community that has been part of Washington society for more than a hundred years. She particularly enjoyed covering the great Jack and Jill organization and the black Chirological Society events in the Shoreham ballroom. You know what I mean, Mr. Attorney General.

We never felt the slightest bit of cowardice in our association with those groups. In fact, we felt it an honor to be invited to their events, enjoying the company of many in the group with whom we had long lasting relationships. For us, race wasn’t even an issue. It wasn’t even part of the social dialogue.

Yes, Mr. Holder, as you must know there was a vibrant group of black achievers, of which you are the beneficiary, who had found ways to succeed by showing their courage and ingenuity in the face of once crushing odds. And they did it before the civil rights laws changed the game and opened the gates of opportunity even further. In the end, its talent, imagination, focus and hard work, not race, that makes the difference between failure and success in America. Just ask Barack.

Look around you Mr. Attorney General. Not every white person makes it up the greasy pole of American success. And not every black person, but plenty do, and you can bet your biddy that there will be more and more people of every hue coming up roses in future America. And why not?

We compete in this country. Sometimes guys and gals who don’t deserve it get the prize, but on balance the good, smart, hard working, innovative, imaginative and focused guys and gals win. Sure it’s a tough fight. As time goes on there will be less and less reason to handicap the odds. We’re getting a lot closer to an even race than we were a decade or so ago. Not because we are cowards, Mr. Attorney General. Because we are brave.

I’m willing to bet you’re a decent sort of guy, smart, savvy, experienced and when all is said and done probably qualified to run the justice department.

May I suggest that you simply add this gaffe about America being a nation of cowards to your collection of Hail Mary Passes and get yourself a new copy of Roget’s.

The Politics of Apology

2009-02-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been impressed by people in public life who have mastered the art of the public apology. Some have couched their pleadings in terms of remorse as, for example Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle and Charles Rangel, throwing themselves on our mercy, hoping that the media and the public would buy into their “forthright” confessions of ignorance and innocence in the matter of their blatant tax evasion.

Their ploy is to publicly castigate themselves for their naiveté and stupidity or worse, hoping that their thespian qualities and careful scripting by public relations consultants paid or volunteered would carry the day. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t as poor Tom Daschle found out. Perhaps there was too much public resentment about Daschle using his Senate inner knowledge to make a killing financially, appearing to severely weaken his populist image.

One of the most artful tactics of apology came from Richard Nixon when he was the Vice-Presidential candidate running with Dwight Eisenhower. He had been accused of being the recipient of a so-called slush fund that was designed to subsidize him in his political career, a situation that seemed to seriously dance around the bounds of legality.

His television speech, forever dubbed as the Checkers speech, since that was the name of the family cocker spaniel, was an outright plea for mercy on the grounds of economic hardship and the perils and wonders of a Horatio Alger boyhood, still in vogue at that time. He cited his devotion to public service and the fact that his poor wife only wore a “Republican” cloth coat since they were, as he implied, unable to afford a mink coat. Apparently the public bought into that exercise in self-pity and justification and, as we know, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won the election.

He took a different tack during the Watergate scandal, a hard-headed refusal to cooperate with investigators and, despite a huge election win and a massive effort at damage control, couldn’t save himself from resignation, nor keep his enablers out of jail. He was forced into exile and did not emerge until pardoned by President Ford in what was characterized as one of the greatest political payoffs of all time. Ford offered no apology for his action but used “we must put it behind us” reasoning which, in the end, doomed his chances for a second term.

The most masterful public apology in history was the one perpetrated by young Senator Ted Kennedy, who with the help of family and an army of retainers, orchestrated a brilliant apologia that is hands down a text book study of a public relations coup. In that case, a young woman Mary Jo Kopechne was drowned in a car driven by Senator Kennedy after a party in the Chappaquiddick section of Martha’s Vineyard in Cape Cod. He had driven the car into the water and managed to escape while the poor girl was left trapped in the car and drowned.

One still wonders how he managed to escape without helping the young lady to safety along the same escape route he had taken. Worse, he did not report the accident until the next day and was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, a minor violation. There were rumors of heavy drinking but the Kennedy loyalists at the party appeared to have closed ranks against the allegation and the drunken driving accusation became sidetracked.

His apology on television was a tribute to his thespian abilities and the brilliance of the acolytes and public relations experts who fashioned the speech which was probably rehearsed many times before it was delivered. It was chocked full of confessional platitudes like dubbing his actions in not reporting the accident as “inexplicable”, a good word, which puts reason on hold and he was groomed for the event like a mature innocent choirboy. Clearly though, panic, fear and confusion after the fact trumped any accusation of intent to deliberately end the life of this young woman.

His television apologia one-upped the Checkers speech and proved its mettle by saving Kennedy’s Senatorial career for its forty year run where he had won accolades for his hard work and consistently effective work for populist causes.

Those with a more acute long term memory will note that he was not rewarded with the Presidency he worked so hard to seek, not being able to gain enough traction in the primaries. If one very reluctantly puts aside the horror of Mary Jo Kopechne’s aborted young life, and sets it against the terrible tragedies of the Kennedy family, one is conflicted but cannot ignore a measure of compassion and clemency for the youngest brother of this ill fated clan. Perhaps there are moments when redemption is called for, although it comes with the curse of Mary Jo’s untimely death.

Even raising the issue years after the event while Senator Kennedy might be on the verge of answering his call to the beyond comes with some reluctance and sadness that cannot be ignored in the context of this essay.

But the weirdest attempt at an apologia came from none other than Bill Clinton who insisted, in the face of all evidence and against all the known logic of human behavior that he “did not have sex with that woman.” Of course no one believed him, even his wife, especially since his definition of sexual congress was mystifying. Indeed, there are those that truly believe that his putting oral sex beyond the boundaries of sexual activity set off a wave of true believers, especially among teenagers who, in apparent response, measured by statistics and anecdotal evidence, put oral sex into a category of popular amusements no more harmful than monopoly or roasting marshmallows at a campfire.

He was impeached despite his breakup with his chubby teenage intern but somehow held on to his post until George W. Bush took over. His image recovery is nothing short of miraculous. His effort at denial was an astounding success and he is now a role model for those who aspire to high office.

President Obama had two shots at apologia and handled them brilliantly. The first was in the matter of Reverend Wright whose church he had attended for decades. His method was to deny that he had ever heard the good Reverend’s obnoxious sermons. Despite the raised eyebrows everywhere, he had by then established such an unblemished image of probity that he was able to rise above the noise of his critics.

His second was in the matter of having gotten an especially good land deal from one of his financial sponsors Tony Rezko, now in jail and awaiting trial on other corruption charges. During the campaign Obama called his decision to make the deal in the first place “boneheaded.” Of course, he wasn’t running for President at the time of the real estate transaction which increased the size of the land footprint on his house and certainly increased its value. Given the state of Illinois politics, such obvious influence dealing was par for the course. We fervently hope there is no other shoe to drop in this case.

The problem with apologies in public life is that one cannot go to the well too often. In the President’s case the public will quickly tire of his multiple admissions of “screw-up’s”. I’m sure he knows this and given the infancy of his administration, he will undoubtedly put the brakes on the apology of self-effacement as time goes on.

Ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich took the denial road. He mounted a PR campaign on television to tell people he did nothing wrong. Since he was also indicted for corruption and was soon to go to trial in Federal Court his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears and he was unanimously kicked out of office by acclamation of the Illinois legislature. If I had to guess what did him in in the long run, despite the damning evidence of his wiretapped rants, I’d say it was his hair. Something about that hair-do was off-putting.

Apology dramatics is an important part of a politician’s toolbox and the fidelity of the apology is directly proportional to the politician’s words and demeanor. Perhaps the secret of the Kennedy apology was his Catholic upbringing where confession is a ritualistic commandment and redemption a necessary response.

The truth is that a confession, especially if it comes with some histrionics, like moist eyes and the obvious facial ticks and body language of sorrow and innocence, can induce forgiveness.

But then, as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have proven, strong jawed and steely eyed denial can be a lot more effective in the short run. Perhaps in the long run as well.

Will a Historical Hitler Make a Comeback?

2009-02-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

In five more years, 2014, it will be one hundred years since the start of World War I. The chances are that there are few, if any, living humans who can bear witness to any of the events associated with that war.

Indeed, the virulent hatred of Germany and the Kaiser generated by that cataclysmic event has long receded. It is left to historians to dispassionately record the facts of that hatred as merely a background study of the attitudes of the populations who supported the allied cause. The hated villains of that era, the Kaiser and his mad Generals who instigated the slaughter, have long disappeared from living memory and become footnotes to the main drama of the killing fields and its disastrous aftermath.

Unlike the Hitler era, the Kaiser’s reign did not enjoy the technological advantages of sophisticated and heroic moving pictorial images, leaving historians and information consumers bereft of material to accentuate and propagandize his legacy on television, the internet and movie theaters.

No living creature, even those whose ancestors died and suffered at the hands of the Germans during that bloody conflict, can possibly be roused to raw unforgiving hatred for those World War I perpetrators with the same immediacy and power of those who actually lived through these terrible events. Time, that great leveler which can make grieving subside in the living, has the power to cool even the most persistent of hatreds.

It is now the turn of those who lived through the terrible events of World War II to pass slowly into oblivion. With them will disappear the living memory of a war that contributed to the deaths of possibly 70 million people, a bloodbath of unprecedented barbarism, savagery and destruction that spawned a state sponsored method of human disposal, which became known as the holocaust, and a massacre of millions of non-combatants.

To those who lived through it, the personification of evil, the monster of monsters behind that slaughter is the man Adolph Hitler. As one who was an eyewitness to those events through the vast media coverage and the actuality of the war and its effect on my immediate world and the people in my circle, my memories are vivid and enduring.

While I was too young to serve as a soldier in that war, I and everyone I knew was totally involved in the fervent support of the war, and I fulfilled my patriotic duty as a proudly committed teenager to the war effort. As a boy scout, I participated as a bugler on parade with my troop, dedicating numerous plaques that were raised in every neighborhood marking the names of all who served in the Armed forces. I collected newspapers, metal and contributed my limited pocket money to every cause that was marshaled to help our troops and the home front.

Both of my parents were air raid wardens. Without protest we took our ration books seriously, as well as the blackouts, the air raid drills and any other instructions we got from the government on how we were to conduct ourselves to win the war. It was, as I continue to remember it, a sacred mission.

As far as I could tell, everyone in America was committed to the winning of the war and our hatred of Hitler and the Germans was manifest in everything we did. We had no doubt that America was fighting the worst monster in history. My memories of those times are vivid. At the news of the final surrender of Japan and the end of the war, I rushed down to Times Square to shout my joy along with thousands of like-minded citizens. As a boy scout in our troop drum and bugle corps, I marched down Fifth Avenue in the Victory Parade, a proud and cherished moment.

The aftermath, the pictures of the victims of the holocaust was beyond description. The enormity of its cruelty still defies comprehension. But the pictures could not be denied. We followed the war crimes trials at Nuremberg. The missing man from those trials, the arch villain, the inhuman disgusting monster who perpetrated these cruelties had escaped through cowardly suicide. Our hate for this man was palpable. It still is.

We ridiculed the chorus of denials that came from the conquered German people. “We had no idea of what was happening” or “we were only following orders” was the accepted and frequent response. Of course, we dismissed such excuses. They knew. Everybody knew.

Who then were the ecstatic Germans who lined the streets and filled the auditoriums and sports arenas and hailed their hero at every available opportunity? Is it possible to forget the brilliant films of Leni Riefenstahl, showing magnificently staged Nazi rallies filled with images of frenzied crowds expressing their ecstatic admiration of the Fuehrer, cunningly portrayed as a living God? Indeed there is a huge and apparently unstoppable and continuing commercial interest in the filmed images of that era and a heroic Hitler as its principal actor.

As the years progressed and the German people began to accept the reality of their defeat and recovered their footing and commitment to freedom and democracy, we wished them well and still do. They, too, were zealous in drowning out the horrors afflicted on them by the man their parents and grandparents called the Fuhrer and who followed him blindly to the verge of Armageddon. On many levels we have reconciled with the German people, and the animosity inspired by the two World Wars has been dissipated by time.

But the eyewitnesses of the Hitler era are beginning to die off and there are disturbing signs of small changes on the horizon that suggest that perhaps the image of the monster could be softening. It took a number of years after the war for the Holocaust deniers to stake their claim. Is this a sign that the monster is making a comeback?

Despite the legal banishment of such denials, the voices seem to be gaining momentum, stoked by the ravings of what appears to be a Hitler wannabe President Ahmadinejad of Iran. There can be little doubt that his bombastic false assertions are gaining traction both inside and outside of Iran. Indeed, the media of the Arab world has taken a page out of Hitler’s book when it comes to anti-Semitism. One who remembers as I do, sees the same familiar words and images which were in vogue in Germany and Europe during the Hitler era finding their way into the mainstream Arab media.

The evil genius of Josef Goebbels who masterminded Hitler’s propaganda efforts could be getting the last laugh. His carefully crafted outright and shameless lies continue to resonate. It was Goebbels who proudly boasted that if you repeat a lie long enough it eventually morphed into a truth. While it turns my stomach to say so, he may have been on to something.

The once dismissed phony book “The Protocols of Zion,” is circulated throughout the Arab world as if it were a true account of the Jews attempt to take over the world. Worse, the influence of such anti-Semitic lies and distortions is flaring up again in Europe through the good offices of the growing Moslem populations of these countries adding fuel to the still smoldering ashes of that Continent’s entrenched anti-Semitism.

The drumbeat of this hatred goes far beyond a criticism of Israel. It is directed at Jews everywhere.

It has never ceased to baffle me, why the Jewish people, who number about thirteen million of the world’s population of more than six billion people, a minuscule number barely qualified to be a statistic, are scapegoated with such venom. The continuing catalog of lies about this people now amplified on the Internet is beyond my understanding and belief.

Worse, I note in the realm of popular entertainment, two movies: The Reader being one, where the old shibboleth of “I was only obeying orders” has raised its ugly head again. The main character of this book to movie effort, a former female concentration camp guard, is made sympathetic by emphasizing that she was illiterate and therefore not fully capable of realizing the enormity of her crime, a ridiculous assertion. Another movie, Valkyrie, suggests that it was a feat of heroism to attempt to assassinate Hitler, avoiding the brutal truth that it was only after the German officers who made the attempt had served the Fuhrer with blind loyalty until he was leading them to sure defeat. Where were they in the early days of his ugly attempt to Nazify Europe and the world and exterminate the Jews?

Indeed, the sudden reappearance of newspaper inserts from that period heralding stories and headlines of the Hitler era under the guise of being “historical” are flying off the newsstands. Am I being cynical to suggest nostalgia or yearning for the glorious past?

I am fully aware that I am hinting at a rather shocking prognostication and I do not lay claim to being a psychic. Perhaps I am overwrought by what I see happening, but I am concerned about what will occur when all the eyewitnesses are gone and the Hitler era becomes merely a historical fact, richly enhanced by the enormous media library portraying the action film hero Adolph Hitler as a near deity. Will a sense of nostalgia develop for the heady and allegedly glorious days of the Third Reich, clearly a high point in German history, a time when Germans ruled Europe?

Once the painful stings of living memory disappear how will history cast that moment? Will Germans of the future one day erect monuments and museums to mark that historical period and reclaim and celebrate those years when Germany was transcendent and the man who created the moment was a Godlike creature who, they might allege, was defeated by a Jew inspired mongrel rabble?

Will they further allege and amplify that he might have had the right idea and given them a taste of glory that they had never before enjoyed or imagined? Will those who hate and vilify Jews, a cursedly persistent and implacably weird phenomenon, band together to aid in Hitler’s resurrection, perhaps anointing him as a prophet? Stranger things have happened.

But when the eyewitnesses completely die off, the accuracies and nuances of living memory expires and what is left is the interpretations of dispassionate historians and, in this case, an astonishing record of edited movie images which, we have learned, have the power to distort memory and camouflage reality.

We can only hope that such a rehabilitation of this human monster never occurs. Such hope may be an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, those of us still living who were witness to these events, won’t be around to correct the distortions and rationalizations that are certain to emerge in the historical record.

A Brief Encounter

2009-01-24T06:35:00.000-08:00

Twenty years ago I attended a book party for a friend of mine, Nancy Holmes, who had just written a novel. She was being honored by an old acquaintance who had booked the party room at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, one of the long standing celebrity restaurants of that era, now defunct. It wasn’t a large group, no more than forty people, many of them celebrities and former high officials of the government.

The atmosphere was friendly and congenial. One of the guests was James Stewart, an iconic figure who had graced the silver screen for most of my life. He put out his hand and introduced himself to me.

“I’m James Stewart,” he said, as if I didn’t know.

Of course, I knew a lot about James Stewart and I was tempted to show my knowledge of his background by addressing him by his military title, General. I demurred and in those few brief moments of conversation, we touched on a topic that, for some reason, engaged us both in a strange male bonding experience. I can’t remember how we got into it, but it concerned the Boy Scouts. Imagine, here was one of the iconic figures of American movies, a decorated General in World War II and me, a former corporal and novelist drifting into a conversation about, of all things, the Boy Scouts, going back in decades of time.

Stewart seemed to light up when he recalled his Scout experiences which, like mine, continued to resonate in our lives as a quintessentially happy moment of adolescent camaraderie and joyful male bonding. The actor had been an Eagle Scout, the highest achievement attainable in scouting. I hadn’t made Eagle, only Life Scout, one rung below Eagle. I guess he was always a super achiever.

Being a serious Boy Scout required an enormous commitment for a boy, which for most of us was of a five year duration starting from age 12. There were numerous meetings, band rehearsals if a Drum and Bugle Corps was involved, day hikes, overnight hikes, summer camp and home study to learn the ropes for acquiring merit badges in numerous disciplines from outdoor cooking, bird study, first aid, camping, and the like.

During the discussion, my imagination conjured up a picture of a proud Jimmy Stewart as a lanky skinny teenager festooned in his Eagle Scout merit badge sash and his neat Boy Scout uniform. We took a great deal of pride in that uniform which announced that we were something quite special, and we believed implicitly in the values that the organization espoused, values that continued to resonate in the zeitgeist of our world view. It is no surprise that James Stewart was the first famous Hollywood star to enlist when America went to war against the Nazis and the Japanese. Unfortunately, I was too young to have made such a grand gesture.

It was obvious that both of us really loved the experience. I had no doubt that his memory recalled halcyon youthful days when the world, to both of us, was still a young and hopeful place. Indeed, we shook hands again with the Boy Scout handshake as if all the years between then and now never happened despite the fact that his scout troop was in the Midwest and mine was in Brooklyn. Such is the power of connection, especially when it comes to adolescent memories.

The sense of commonality continues to connect and whenever I see an old movie with James Stewart or hear his name, that odd experience pops into my mind.

I can still recite the scout’s oath and the scout law. I bet James Stewart could as well. Against the background of what the world has gone through since Stewart and I were Boy Scouts, the 12 points of the scout law are worth revisiting again, after years of maligned neglect and criticism. Indeed, to many, the Boy Scouts have often been dubbed as a relic, a naive anachronism that had long been left behind in the laissez-faire new world of anything goes. I fervently disagree.

The 12 points of the Scout Law were quite simple and usually recited with a three finger raised right hand to brand it as a solemn pledge. It went like this: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Recite that to a rebellious hippy of the sixties or a hip hop singer of the new millennium or the gaggle of misanthropic and boneheaded executives and politicians involved in guiding us through the shoals of our recent past and current misfortunes, and they might regurgitate at what they deem as empty clichés. Maybe it’s time for them to swallow a vatful of antacids and confront the real source of our national folly, their own timid politically correct rejection of these values.

However you might characterize these 12 points of the Scout Law, I have come to believe that, despite what a rough ride they have gone through in my lifetime, they represent the magnetic arrow of the moral true north. In an age when we are confronted with daily affronts to these bedrock virtues, they somehow seem stronger and more resilient than ever.

Think of how the moral compass struggles against the magnetic north. While our language is lofty and inspiring and we thrill to read such titles as “The Audacity of Hope” and “The Purpose Driven Life” and the inspired stories they represent, the moral compass at times seems to have lost its bearing.

How is it possible that our financial system which must operate on trustworthiness, the first point in the scout law, has produced such tawdry violators such as Bernard Madoff and his ilk, and the liars and greedy fools who operate the systems we all must depend on like the banks and brokerages on main street and Wall Street.

And look at all the Hail Mary passes being handed out by Congress, even as our new President struggles to maintain a high moral tone. A treasury secretary who evades taxes, a secretary of state whose husband accepts donations from countries of dubious moral intent with whom she must negotiate, the head of one of the most crucially important committees of Congress avoiding taxes and soliciting funds for a personal venture on the people’s stationary. And on and on.

I don’t mean to be partisan or nasty minded, only contemporary. There is enough moral baggage floating down the Potomac in the wake of the last administration that would be too numerous to mention in a limited essay. But there are moments when I do gulp hard and try my best to believe in redemption. The memory is long and if the name Chappaquiddick still resonates, you know what I mean.

I like the idea of being courteous, helpful, kind, friendly and cheerful, five other points in the Scout Law. Witness the way people reacted during the inaugural of our new President. That enormous crowd that shoehorned their way into Washington D.C. was a real tribute to these qualities. Indeed, it is possible, to obey these simple virtues.

Obedience, another point in the law has its place. Ask any teacher. And being thrifty has been a virtue ever since old Ben Franklin championed the process back before we were a country. As for clean, my generation was brought up on the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness. I never quite knew what that meant, but apparently my mother knew since she repeated the phrase ad nauseam and I can still feel the pressure of her washcloth on my ears.

And what of bravery? Are we not the land of the brave and the free. Anything wrong with that concept? There are lots of ways to define bravery. We who served in the Armed Forces know its meaning but there are millions of brave acts being carried out each day by ordinary people acting out of simple and unheralded dedication, decency and self-sacrifice. Who doesn’t believe that being brave means being noble and fearless in the face of adversity?

As for reverent, there is room in our system for both believers and non-believers as our new President intoned in his inaugural speech. Indeed, as a lover of words, I am a great fan of lofty rhetoric, although I do occasionally listen with a jaundiced ear as I beat down a tendency to be jaded and somewhat cynical at times.

I am well aware that in certain sophisticated circles, this essay might sound cornball and naïve. Who cares. Yes, I do know how conflicted the Boy Scout leadership is on the issue of gays and I don’t pretend to have a solution. But I believe in my soul that the Boy Scouts gave me something precious which has stayed with me throughout my life and I, along with the great James Stewart of blessed memory, knew it in the marrow of his bones.

Its just strikes me as strange and wonderful how a Midwestern bred film star and a kid from the roustabout streets of a vanished Brooklyn had a brief encounter, a moment of commonality that continues to linger in memory as an odd personal beacon of light in a troubled world.

Who Can We Trust?

2009-01-12T09:35:00.001-08:00

My normal level of skepticism is reaching paranoid proportions. Who can one trust, truly trust?

Can you trust the regulatory agencies charged with protecting you from thieves like Bernard Madoff who got away with his Ponzi scam for decades?

Can you trust the idiots in Congress who allowed Fannie and Freddie to get away with buying mortgages that were clearly credit unworthy, while the executives of these institutions enriched themselves with giant-sized compensation?

Can you trust the incompetent government intelligence services who failed to detect the truth about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs?

Can you trust the bankers and brokers who sliced up credit unworthy mortgages, packaged them with allegedly more secure mortgages and sold them off to other banks and investors who are equally guilty of stupidity?

Can you trust the pharmaceutical companies who pay off doctors to plug their wares, doctors who don’t reveal their ties to these companies? Worse, can you trust them to advertise their products on television with the absurd caveat to consult their doctors on the basis of their advertising claims? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Can you trust the endless barrage of propaganda coming from governments that manipulate photos and create vast fictional accounts to promote their point of view?

Can you trust the media to tell you the truth about anything?

Can you trust most of the advertising with which you are bombarded on a daily basis, especially those who use celebrities as spokespersons who are merely paid to lie about the wonders of the products they are endorsing?

Can you trust the endless stream of misstatements and a vast array of misguided opinions proliferating on the Internet, where anyone who can speak or type can offer anything as if it were the truth? (I yield to the judgment of the readers of this blog. Nevertheless, I cling to the belief that my essays are more questioning and cautionary rather than bombastic or ideological.)

Unfortunately, buried in this clutter of outright lies, half-truths, obfuscations, exaggerations, canards and deceptions are some genuine bedrock truths that get short shrift in the avalanche of what passes for information. How is one to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Remember the days when most of us gave our unqualified trust to priests, politicians, stockbrokers, scoutmasters, teachers, doctors, and a whole array of authority figures? Who has not been shaken by recent revelations and discoveries of malfeasance, manipulation and downright cruelty and deception by those who once basked in our confidence?

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there: our parents, grandparents, siblings and others in our extended families and social circles who have our interests at heart and whose trust and love we treasure. Nevertheless, even in these relationships, trust often goes awry and there is enough evidence of horror and betrayal to question one’s absolute devotion to the idea of the loyalty of friends and family. I’ll drop anchor on this one. It is just too scary and dangerous to surrender to total cynicism. Once you lose your optimism even Little Orphan Annie won’t be singing about the sun coming out tomorrow.

Short of dispensing truth serum to the chattering masses or planting a lie detector chip in everyone now living, I offer my own protective prescription.

Believe nothing at face value. Do as much due diligence as possible. Attempt verification. Ask questions. Get second opinions, third and fourth if you are not completely satisfied. These activities are time consuming and perhaps wasteful, but think of yourself as being a perpetual target who must protect yourself from harm and the deliberate rifling of your money and trust.

Beware of the proverbial “man on the white horse” who has the solution to all the ills of mankind. He or she doesn’t exist. Everyone is fallible.

Recognize that human nature has its dark side. Think of yourself as a human junk filter, not unlike the junk recognizer in your computer program. It may not catch all the junk, but at least it tries.

Of course, you are still subject to be fleeced and manipulated. I know I’m being preachy and have painted this essay with a very broad brush. Sometimes I feel that I’m baying at the moon, merely making sounds of anguish into the night sky.

So who can we trust?

I call your attention to the motto on our money, “In God We Trust.” Substitute whatever non-human supernatural force that suits your faith or fancy and keep your eyes open and your fingers crossed.

The E-Book Vindication

2008-12-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

The recent front page story in the New York Times confirming that the e-book concept has finally caught on and is surging, has prompted many of my friends, colleagues and readers to e-mail me expressing kudos and congratulations for my so-called perceptive insight, expressed a dozen years ago, that electronic books will one day dominate the publishing world.

Yes, I have been flacking that concept for a little more than half a generation, ever since I re-acquired my entire published library of 30 novels and short stories and digitized them in every known format. In that time, I have been excoriated by my foolhardiness, castigated for daring to predict the ultimate demise of the paper book, and being cast as a pain in the butt by the publishing establishment.

In that time I have watched the body count of like-minded advocates, as they lay strewn along the highway of commerce like insect infested logs. As the numerous essays in my long catalogue of blogs will attest, I have been hammering this drum relentlessly despite the cacophony of naysayers whose vision was inhibited by nostalgia and stubborn resistance to the notion that, in the end, content would trump its delivery system.

What was wanting in this scenario was a more reader comfortable device that would be competitive to the long dominance of the paper book. With the Kindle and the SONY Reader, and more gadget makers joining the fray, the sun has at last risen on the concept and it will remain in the sky forever.

Some publishers still cling to the notion that sales of e-books are still a fraction of total book volume and continue to resist the conversion to digital, which brings to mind the image of the fiddling Emperor Nero ignoring the destruction of Rome. They are, as they say, dead men walking.

As a long time lover of the paper book and a practitioner in the supply of fictional content, I had little doubt that the swift emergence of digital technology would, one day, supplant the paper book. In fact, I used to predict that by the middle of the 21st Century the paper book would be a relic, a collectible antique, as dead as the record and tape industries.

I am now revising my estimate by twenty five years. At its present speed of acceptance, I predict that the paper book’s demise will be at the tipping point by 2025. With other book lovers, I will mourn its passing in advance. Being right has its satisfactions. It has its downside as well. Yes, I will miss the tactical feel of the paper book and its unique effluvia of ink and cellulose. I will miss the views of my old friends who will no longer be stacked like retired soldiers on my bookshelves, which even now groan with the weight of years of collecting.

The ramifications of this revolution will be profound in many ways. The impact on brick and mortar stores will follow the well-trodden path of retailers in the Tower Records mode. The visual displays of book covers in these stores will be sorely missed, as will the joys of browsing the stacks and sampling at leisure the content of the displayed books.

Although the digital devices like the Kindle cleverly offer sample chapters before making a purchase and are an excellent form of browsing, they come up short against the physical act of browsing allowed by the bookstores. Nevertheless, this form of browsing electronically will prevail. While the initial investment of upwards of three hundred dollars to buy these devices seems pricey, the cost of the content is lower by more than half and on the Kindle, never exceeds ten dollars and, for classics, much less.

Major publishers will seriously have to revise their business plans and pricing. While they will garner extraordinary savings by severely reducing warehousing and productions costs, they will encounter marketing obstacles because of the severe reduction of newspaper space and the proliferation of the Internet and television channels. This means that there will be no giant all encompassing conduit for advertising their wares. This will not be merely an obstacle in the book business but a severe rethinking for all products seeking to attract ears and eyeballs.

On the other hand, there are many who believe that the marketing of books among battalions of readers is far more dependent on word of mouth than on advertising and publicity. They may be right. While there is no scientific measuring stick to prove the point, I am inclined to believe that there is a mysterious content recommending virus that passes from inspired reader to inspired reader that may be the reason some books get read more than others.

Publishers generally will, if they choose to stay in the business, become primarily the gateway to content and will have to concentrate on developing more innovative ways to market their wares through digital channels if they want to stay financially viable.

The entire system of textbooks will be totally revised to accommodate the electronic publishing revolution. The day of the backpack will disappear. Libraries, too, will revise their programs in ways that will result in a radical change of services. The breathtaking plan of Google to digitize every book ever published is certainly a broad clue to the future that is fast engulfing us. But while these changes are obvious, the rules of unintended consequences will kick in and further embellish the profound changes in store for us.

Indeed, even I have discovered an unintended consequence in the use of these devices. I have, for example, bought and read more books since acquiring the devices than I have ever read before. They seem easier to read and faster, but this could be my imagination.

From the point of view of economics, a dedicated reader like myself who can purchase as much as 50 books a year, both fiction and non-fiction, the cost of the device becomes a minor expense and the convenience and immediacy of the purchase cannot be matched. Indeed, the Kindle download takes less than ten seconds for most books, there is no hassle or lines at the cash register and one does not have to use a connection to a computer to search the Kindle store. The SONY reader still requires a computer connection to its store to make a selection, although a new model has been promised that will eliminate that inconvenience. Also, the SONY is not yet connected to the Apple platform, but I assume that, too, will one day be corrected. The exclusivity of these devices will change as well as more and more competitors join the fray.

Futurists will, of course, have additional ideas on how digitization will affect the publishing business, but these few prognostications are pretty obvious and absorbing its meaning will be the challenge of every one involved in the business evolution of publishing. Pervading these predictions is the prevailing opinion and hard research that young people are reading less and less, and this will have grave implications for the future of content, however it is delivered.

Despite the surveys, I do not share the gloom and doom that predicts the further diminishment of the reading public, especially among the young, who have sold their souls to computer games and the visual arts.

I have great faith in the ultimate future of literature and the value and importance of storytelling and acquiring knowledge through the artful use of words, now migrating from paper to electronic screens. So far, I have not seen a replacement for the human imagination, the so-called theater of the mind, which embellishes and enriches the word and spins its yarns in ways that cannot be replicated by any man-made visual contrivance.

What Was Madoff Thinking?

2008-12-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

While the curious, the inquisitive, the lascivious and the various investigators and detectives of enforcement focus on what Bernard Madoff was doing as he bilked investors out of billions, I have been exercising my novelist’s prerogative by concentrating my speculations on why Bernard Madoff was doing it.

Just in case you were vacationing on planet Mars in the last few weeks, Madoff is the 70-year-old con man who is the mastermind behind the bizarre Ponzi scheme that cost friends, family, clients and charities 50 billion, give or take, in vanished funds. The scheme, named after a former practitioner of the racket pays out alleged dividends not from legitimate earnings but from fresh funds contributed by new “investors.”

By all accounts Madoff was a pleasant looking, low-key, soft-spoken fellow who oozed integrity and modest authority. He was apparently regarded as a financial whiz and a man of great wisdom and compassion by his peers, who inhabited his social realm of country clubs and philanthropies. He was worshiped by an army of sycophants who sought his counsel, market wisdom and especially access to his remarkable investments that returned fabulous steady earnings in good times and bad.

He had earned the trust of numerous fund operators who used his alleged expertise at getting high returns as their calling card to lure huge international players into the Madoff net. A kind of sucker virus took hold and spread across borders.

So what was he thinking as he doled out these lavish returns knowing that he was cheating family, friends, charitable institutions, banks and countries? Did he believe he was helping people by providing returns that actually dwarfed what similar investments were paying? Did he revel in the praise of his peers as he basked in their awe and respect? Did his ego require such constant iteration?

What was his justification? I am tempted to think that he might have actually convinced himself by simple arithmetic that he was doing good deeds. If, for example, one had “invested” a hundred million with Madoff say ten years ago, one would have garnered, at a minimum, a hundred and twenty million return. Who would not think that Madoff was a genius? A charity might be doing somersaults having such wonderful returns to dispense their good deeds.

An elderly couple, who had placed a large sum with Madoff and lived prosperously off the proceeds, might have felt that they had discovered nirvana by this association with the mild mannered super fellow that befriended and supported them. And Madoff might have told himself how wonderful he was to supply these people with such largesse, enjoying the applause and believing, really believing, that he had become a human Santa Claus.

Did he have trouble sleeping nights? Did any ripple of conscience disturb his tranquility as he enjoyed the proceeds of his own entitlement, the numerous lavish homes, the yachts, the jets, the joys of being a generous respected Dad and Grandad, the recipient of kudos and awards for his celebrated contributions to the downtrodden and diseased? Once a lifeguard, he might have easily believed that he was still in the business of guarding lives.

Did the joys of oversized respect and admiration trump any tiny pangs of guilt, as he knowingly screwed his new “investors” by using their money to provide a continual flow of cash to his older investors? Was it not one happy family, his own included?

He was, of course, a man who knew the markets intimately. Perhaps he had reasoned that at some point in time, he would find a way to refund the coffers that he had rifled with his own bloated assets and what must have been optimism gone amuck. Perhaps he had tucked away huge bags of gold coins and artwork, waiting for the moment that he might cash in his horde and repay his funds. Perhaps he had stashed billions in overseas accounts or secret vaults hidden from investigators that he planned one day to retrieve and pour back into his empty money pit?

Touted as a family man, can one believe that he was really outed by his two devoted sons or, as many have speculated, a plot was contrived by the three of them to have good old Dad take the rap for the kids? Every avenue remains open in trying to assess how this man’s devious mind operated. Is it possible that behind the façade lurked other gossipy scandals, mistresses with outsized appetites, mafia dons who found ways to launder money through Madoff and other strange encounters with a shadowy underworld? Who knows?

Think, too, of the so-called “respected” money managers who begged him to take them on, throwing due diligence to the winds in the race for greater and greater returns. And what of the money managers who put all their clients’ funds with Madoff and took their usual commissions while doing not a lick of work to earn them? Never mind the obvious losses, think of the massive amounts of legal fees that will be enjoyed by that profession as everyone sues everyone else. The dominoes will fall for years as the big ego guys who made piles of money try to reclaim their tattered reputations in the law courts, a dubious proposition at best.

Most of all, people are speculating how Madoff was able to concoct such a massive fraud right under the noses of what could only be characterized as the brain dead SEC. If your own ox wasn’t gored, watching this crime unfold can be a form of entertainment. It would not surprise me if Madoff is currently fielding massive publishing and movie deals to satisfy the public curiosity about how he did it. And why? Look at me. Here I am spending time and mental treasure trying to figure out his motives?

Does Madoff feel any remorse? Perhaps this requires more expertise about the criminal mind than I possess? Interpreting the pictures of him being accosted by reporters and cameras as he walks along Madison Avenue, I see a cryptic little smile as if he is laughing at these hordes of busy bodies trying to probe his innermost secrets. From seeing that picture and my own reading of events surrounding Madoff, I’m willing to bet that in his heart of hearts, he feels no remorse or pity for the broken promises and wounded lives his scam has caused. I doubt if he feels anyone’s pain.

On the contrary, he may feel elation at having carried out this cleverly orchestrated scheme that escaped detection for decades and drew in people who considered themselves brilliant winners in the game of life, especially in the amassing of giant fortunes. Was he laughing at their greed and stupidity, celebrating his guile and cunning with his own internal laughter?

As for the ruined lives floating aimlessly in his wake, one cannot help but feel sorry for those who depended on these so-called returns to maintain their lifestyle. If they had any doubts about the origins of their good fortune, the avalanche of fat checks surely tranquilized their doubts. Indeed, if they had the temerity to question the source of their good fortune, Madoff was quick to cut them out of the roster.

To further prove his “integrity” he eagerly refunded principal, the origins of which came from entry-level investors. Wasn’t that a brilliant ploy to advertise his sterling reputation as a man of honor? This man was beyond shame.

As for the super rich who got their various appendages caught in the ringer, I feel no empathy for their bruised parts and crumbled egos. In fact, one has to cheer for their comeuppance and the explosion of their self-righteous worship of the Gods of Greed.

There is, however, a subliminal casualty of this strange affair and that is the earthquake of distrust that Madoff has inspired in these hard times. Without trust, we are all doomed to suffer the arrows of misfortune that people like Madoff take from their quiver to arm their bows. Without trust, the foundation that underpins our lives becomes a vulnerable house of cards.

Unfortunately, the punishment of Madoff will never fit his crime. His cunning lawyers paid for with the fruits of his ill gotten gains will game the system, and Madoff will become a star and advisor to fellow cons in the country club prison circuit devised for white collar criminals during what is sure to be a short penal vacation.

Perhaps it might be worth quoting the parting wisdom of that old rascal Carlo Ponzi, whose dying words characterized how he viewed the experience of his victims and sundry observers.

“Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."

Was it worth fifty billion? You tell me.

The Fallout

2008-12-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

With the elections over and interest in news faltering, the media has suddenly gotten lucky and like sharks converging on blood, they have found a new killing field that will keep them chomping on raw meat for months if not years.

I refer to the appalling shocker of Illinois Governor Blagojevich offering, among other abominations, to sell the Senate seat made vacant by President Elect Obama. It is manna from heaven for the beleaguered journalists and their vast army of wannabes who seek the fame and fortune of Woodward and Bernstein.

No amount of media bias of whatever flavor is going to keep this story under wraps. Journalist ambition always trumps ideology. Think of all those ambitious journalists suffering from job anxiety and election withdrawal in a declining industry, who are suddenly confronted with an opportunity to make their bones and secure lucrative publishing contracts and movie deals to tide them over the present bloodbath in the news business.

The aftermath of this once in a decade story has all the temptations and insinuations of a potential Watergate, Lewinsky or OJ tsunami. I pray I am wrong, but my gut instinct is that there is no way to contain it. Even if it rises to the level of Whitewater which nearly crushed the early days of the Clinton administration, it will register high on the journalism Richter scale.

While every effort will be made to keep the new President from the quicksand and stench of the Chicago politics that nurtured him and, indeed, everyone involved has gone out of their way to keep him free from the predicted fallout, proximity alone will seduce every investigative journalist assigned to the story to look for a connection. We hope none is ever found, but the very fact of the probing could open wounds where none existed before. Yes, life is unfair. But politics in America, especially at this point in time, is a cruel and ruthless blood sport.

Just look at the initial cast of characters. A neanderthal Governor from a state and city where political corruption is a way of life and the main exit strategy of that office is to keep from exchanging the State House for the Big House. Names like Rostenkowski and Rezko, familiar with the interior furnishing of a jail cell, have already surfaced. Perhaps people of long memory will invoke the name of another Chicago celebrity, Al Capone.

Chicago is home base of the President elect, his new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the mastermind of his political fortunes David Axelrod and others in their circle, including Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. President Obama’s campaign co-chairman and others yet to be revealed.

The sad fact is that all of these people have political and social ties to the actors in this tragic drama, and, however much they attempt to dig a moat between themselves and the governor, the ambitious media battalions will throw anyone under the bus if it inhibits their search for the story that could assure one’s future fame and fortune. As if that were not enough, slings and arrows to point in the direction of our new President, think of all those on the rightist side of the media continuum sharpening their knives and probing for the soft underbelly of the new folks about to operate the levers of national power.

It is, indeed, sad that the promise of this new administration and this young man, who offers so much hope for change and decency in government, has to be distracted by such a sordid story. He doesn’t deserve it. Worse, the once admiring media, in my opinion, will show him no mercy. The mere fact of his association by geography and occupation will draw him into the bonfire. Our hope, of course, is that the smart people who surround him will shield him from the heat, a tough chore in today’s laissez-faire information roundelay.

Perhaps I am overreacting to my own personal experience and memories. I lived in Washington during the Watergate fiasco. Every day a front-page story bylined by two young reporters appeared in the Washington Post, revealing some new aspect of the situation. It started out as a minor irritant to the people in power, at first speculative and only vaguely accusatory. It was doled out by the Post editors like a suspense thriller, which it was. The exposure was a weapon in itself. More people stepped forward with more information. Other news organizations joined in the fray. The law of unintended consequences kicked in. An ex-boxer judge got suspicious and the elaborate protective hull of the ship of state sprung leaks.

Richard Nixon, who knew he was being recorded since he was instrumental in setting up the system himself, was a willing participant in his own political assassination. He began to panic, confessing to his tape recorder. His people panicked. Some jumped ship. Like Blagojevich who suspected also that he was being recorded, he was not constrained from engaging in his own political self-annihilation.

Such stories are mother’s milk to journalists who are a driven lot. They will spare no energy or expense to crawl into every dark corner to satisfy the insatiable public maw for this sinister type of public entertainment. The fact that there is a connection, however dubious and unfair, to the highest political officer in America, whets the appetite of the media fame seekers who seek to expand such stories into Shakespearean epics.

These scandals have a tendency to become an industry. Watergate spawned hundreds of millions of dollars in publishing and movie deals and made Woodward and Bernstein and others rich men. Having observed the Watergate story first hand from its inception, having known most of the actors including the principals of that great political drama, some intimately, some peripherally, and having written my own fictionalized spin off of the event, “The Henderson Equation”, I can say without reservations that this story, unless contained at its root, a Herculean task, has an ugly potential to distract the new administration at a time when all their energy and concentration must be focused on righting our faltering ship of State.

It is highly doubtful that Blagojevich will go quietly into the night. It seems obvious that he will be just as reckless in his defense as he has been in perpetrating his own criminal intent. He will not be above attempting to involve Obama and many of his Chicago people. He will make wild allegations and they are bound to spill their poison over the new administration.

It will take great skill and candor on the part of our new President to protect himself from the fallout. I’m sure most Americans, as I am, are rooting for him and hoping that this ugly incident will leave him unscathed. I know, too, that such thoughts offered at this sensitive time in our national history will be considered feckless and inflammatory by many. Perhaps I am exercising too much blogger’s license, but I am certain that as this story unfolds this aspect of the drama will be injected copiously into our national conversation.

Obama and his Chicago friends can expect no mercy. Journalists are bloodhounds. Right, left or center, they will follow the story where it goes or where they want it to go, taking no prisoners as they burrow in to get out what they believe is the so called truth or their version of it. Expect every scandal mongering detail to emerge. Where there are allegations of corruption, sex is sure to follow. The media will spare no expense of their dwindling purse to search for ears and eyeballs.

Unfortunately in the rush for exposure and revelation, everybody will try to get into the act. Hearsay and lies will appear within quotes. Everybody and their brother who had even the most trivial and dubious tie to this story will seek his or her fifteen minutes of fame. Some people will believe them. Conspiracies will be hatched. Reputations made and lost.

Perhaps there might even be a silver lining to all this. Obama could seize the opportunity to mount a massive, gargantuan, monumental campaign against all political corruption, not merely as an empty gesture but with the kind of sharp teeth commitment to an ethical standard and punishment that can truly eliminate the power of money from the political equation. Fat chance you think? Here again the laws of unintended consequences might work in the new President’s favor.

But then, given the present national climate, it is very difficult to be optimistic. At best the fallout from this mess will be, for lack of a better word, challenging.

Some Ivy is Poison

2008-11-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

As the Obama transition team announces their appointments of people to run the government in the next four years, I note with dismay and a shiver of jealousy, that the preponderance of his picks are mostly graduates of the Ivy League colleges. Indeed, an Ivy League education is undoubtedly an automatic leg up and a badge of entitlement signifying to those in this elite cadre that they are superior in intellect and achievement and truly fit to enter the exclusive domain of the group that runs things for the rest of us.

After all, these are the golden boys and girls who probably got double 800’s on their SAT’s and were surely valedictorians or close to that vaunted status when they graduated high school. Unquestionably they are the celebrated best and brightest, vetted by their peers and the parents of their peers, polished and preened to be the chosen ones. Admittedly some of them are heritage kids, automatic enrollers into the high precincts of Ivyhood by blood lines, and the sons and daughters of super wealthy contributors to their bloated endowments.

Throw all those egalitarian pre-election promises into the rubbish heap Barack. These are your guys and gals right out of the elite and super-achiever playbook, your ex-classmates and the ex-classmates of ex-classmates who attend their self-congratulatory reunions and toast themselves on their achievements in the real world. Many of them quite marvelous. Indeed, note how they dub each other “brilliant.” To be a graduate of these schools is the highest honor to be bestowed, a charter membership in America’s most exclusive club. It's hard to argue the contrary.

I guess that most of the rest of us are considered the dumb kids, especially those of us underachievers who never could get into the Ivy League schools, who had to take second, third or fourth best, who labored in two year community colleges or State Universities because of some perceived shortage of brainpower, aptitude, funding or background.

Just look at the lineup of Ivy League graduates that have held high office and you’ll see a preponderance of Ivy Leaguers bunched at the top. Obama, Bush, Clinton, are just the last three. Take a tiny peek at the roster of their wannabe opponents of recent vintage, Senators Kerry and Clinton for starters. At times in some past elections, Kerry versus Bush for example, resembled a fraternity food fight between Yalies. And Obama’s drumbeat against Bush could be likened to a lethal spitball attack at a Yale -Harvard football clash.

And if you want to really nitpick, take a peek into the educational backgrounds of the people in the media, another aspect of our society where the Ivy League network and the old school tie is alive and well. How is that for diversity?

If some disgruntled reverse snob wanted to prove his point, he could take the time to research all government appointees and business movers and shakers in American history, and come up with a vast majority of Ivy Leaguers that would make one’s head swim. No wonder their endowments are bursting with billions.

The Obama team is stacking up to be no exception in its appointment strategy. Is this what is called ready on day one, to pack the team with Ivy Leaguers, a safe credential bet since some of those hayseeds in Congress, many from State schools, are roundly intimidated by this elite cadre of super-achievers? Hell, if they graduated from one of those big shot schools, don’t they have to be smarter than the rest of us? Not that our dismal recent history and screw-ups led by battalions of Ivy Leaguers is any guide to future success.

Strange isn’t it that many of the architects who helped create or at the least passively approved those wacky financial derivatives and other risky instruments, are now the principal economic advisors to the new President. You guessed it. Most are Ivy Leaguers. When they screw up big time, their brothers and sisters in the media hasten to forgive them, and a recent New York Times editorial proclaims a fervent hope that “they learn by their past mistakes.” If they had graduated from Squeedunk U, you can bet your booty that the Times would have called for their permanent exile to purgatory.

As every parent knows an Ivy League diploma puts you immediately at the head of the line, and they will try, short of murder, to get their kids into the Ivy League feeder private schools. Who can blame them?

Put me down as a disgruntled reject from the Ivy League culture, riddled with jealousy and green-eyed envy, resentful that I am not eligible for their charmed circle, or considered the best and the brightest by the Ivy elite. Can you feel the moisture of my crocodile tears?

To tell you the truth, my marks in high school were lousy and I was too busy working odd jobs after school to find the time for extra-curricular brownie points. My chances for admission to an Ivy League school were somewhere short of nil. With the exception of English, my college transcript is an embarrassment. How can I make my point without revealing my credentials?

The fact is, I was an underprivileged, unfunded and odd job working depression kid who lived at home and traveled to college by subway at a time when the only school that deigned to enroll me was NYU, now a hot number in the University pantheon.

Nevertheless, I loved my teachers at NYU, particularly in the English department, the subject of my major, and I am eternally grateful that I was inspired by my freshman English Professor Don Wolfe to be a lifetime novelist. Bless him through all eternity.

I’ll bet that most of the Wall Street geniuses who screwed up the economy were mostly graduates of the much touted Ivy League business schools. Now there was a badge of entitlement. What the hell did they teach in those schools? Was there a course in greed? What hot B school Professor taught how to con the suckers or some polite version of same? It sure as hell worked, at least for them, but not too well for us dumb guys who couldn’t survive the admission process and entry into the network.

In all fairness, while I cannot ignore the outstanding achievements of the vast pool of Ivy Leaguers who have contributed to our country’s greatness in every field of endeavor, I am not prepared to worship at the Ivy League shrine on all matters, especially government service. I’m sure the defenders of the Ivy League culture can topple me easily with their eloquent debating skills, their airs of elitism and entitlement, and put me down as a resentful ingrate. But then, not all Ivy is verdant and pretty. There is such a thing as poison ivy.

I am here to cheerlead for the rest of us, we unwashed and unpolished lessers who never graced their pristine lawns, and for whatever reason were forced to be educated down a rung or two from the great spires of their campus culture. Nevertheless, I’d like to leave this field of contention, surely pursued by the invective and insult of the vast battalions of aristocratic and haughty Ivy Leaguers with the following parting thoughts.

Our two greatest Presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, never went to Ivy League colleges. Indeed, they never went to college at all and were both self-educated. And the two Presidents who made the most important decisions in recent history: Harry Truman, who authorized the use of the atomic bomb that ended World War II and saved Europe from soviet domination with the Marshall Plan, never went to college, and Ronald Reagan, who graduated from tiny Eureka College, an institution that most Ivy Leaguers would dub as far below their lofty standards, was instrumental in helping to crush the Soviet Union. To borrow a show business phrase; “that’s achievement!”

Before the Ivy leaguers screw it up yet again, I would suggest to the President elect that it might be a good idea to expand his vision and put some folks on the payroll who went to school in the boonies and maybe even a few from that most famous college where three out of four of our greatest Presidents aforementioned got their degrees, The College of Hard Knocks.

The Obama Miracle

2008-11-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

Whatever your political leanings, there can be no question that the election of Barack Obama is a miracle of self-realization, an inspiration to all that self-discipline, singleness of purpose and creative imagination can achieve astonishing results.

The arc of Barack Obama’s narrative is dazzling in its implications. We all know the story and marvel at its denouement. One can find parallels in history, both ancient and recent, in which the will and determination of a single individual finds a way to achieve what is truly an impossible dream.

“Yes, we can,” was exactly the right slogan for the Obama campaign. He certainly proved that he can indeed and his victory against extraordinary odds is a historic event that will be cited and celebrated for years to come. If all of the self-help and inspirational books ever written were piled to the moon, they could not convey how this man achieved the most powerful and most coveted political prize in history.

While we marvel at his achievement, many of we questers who seek through art or science to find the key to human behavior, puzzle over this miracle of aspiration. How the hell did he do it? To me, discovering that link to his inner world is the most interesting aspect of his victory.

Like most of us inspired by his journey, I yearn to know the crucial secrets of the inner man. Who on earth wouldn’t want to emulate him? To all of us, he is the ultimate role model.

I look for clues, unique symbols, characteristics, actions, words, body language and relationships. After all, I am an outsider to his world. I never met him and all I know about him is what his campaign let us know, what was reported to us through various information outlets, the television images of him in action as a campaigner and through his interviews and speeches.

Admittedly, my analysis of the inner man is purely subjective, reflecting my own life experiences and the projection and insight that is fundamental to the novelist’s art. Taking a crack at what goes on in the mind and heart of another human being is a risky endeavor indeed and I do it with some trepidation, although there might be an attempt to put a political spin on my analysis. No way. I assure everyone reading this essay that it is politically neutral.

For some odd reason I find Obama’s choice of clothes, particularly the white shirt, the ubiquitous white shirt he wears, one of the most important clues to his character. A white shirt is a unique symbol of self-discipline. Making color choices detracts from focus. It tells me that anything that interferes with his single-mindedness is simply unworthy of his time.

I’m sure a psychoanalyst might find another explanation, but I cannot get away from the notion that this is a man whose determination is so acute that anything that does not serve his focus is rejected. I do not say this in a pejorative way. Nothing great is achieved without total focus and I frankly and enthusiastically admire him for such discipline.

Then there is the matter of his exercise routine. He knows the true meaning of keeping his body tuned and alert and what we have learned is that nothing, absolutely nothing interferes with his exercise routine. How many of us yearn for such physical discipline?

I am also fascinated by his walk, the cool graceful manner of his walk. There is something totally unique in the way he moves. In some ways, he reminds me of the late John Wayne, an actor with a manner of moving that stands as a marker of his heroic character.

Observe his cool demeanor as he slowly moves to the stage to confront countless thousands. Imagine your own reaction when faced with such a normally intimidating and formidable situation. Think of the self-confidence required to perform this feat. What does he feel inside of himself? I truly believe that his self-confidence knows few bounds. Here is a man who truly believes in himself and is completely comfortable in his own skin.

His facial presentation is also unique. His smile is broad, attractive and exudes charm and ingratiation. It captures his magnetism and allows him to be self-deprecating about his big ears and other features of his face. I found it perfectly acceptable and interesting to characterize himself as a “mutt”, citing a biological diversity that we know from our DNA, is ubiquitous in all of us.

His speech is deep and soothing and the delivery of his words and phrases is impeccable. His oratorical ability has surely been carefully self-trained and his eloquence is formidable. With his resonant voice and phrasing, his speeches have been honed to hit the right notes at the perfect moments and they truly move people, an absolute attribute for a great leader.

It is also worth noting that his choice of mate offers yet another lesson in discipline. He is matched with a formidable, brilliant and strong woman who has quite obviously been extremely helpful in his rise, someone who is a true believer in his uniqueness. You can easily see that the discipline and work ethic that they have lived by is being transferred to their two daughters, both of whom they are trying to make as super achievers as themselves.

As a role model to all of us and especially to people of color, he can be inspirational by showing us what self-discipline can achieve, how a focused outsider who believes in himself and his mission can, with luck, astonishing luck, make it to great heights of success. He shows us by example that the two parent family offers the best alternative to rearing the next generation, a severe dysfunction in the African American community where most child rearing is done by a single parent. If his example makes even a small dent in this area, he will have gone a long way to improve the lot of his brothers and sisters of color.

Whatever he achieves in his governing, his message to all of us is profound. Indeed, he has already carved his legacy into the public consciousness.

It is no wonder that people are clamoring to witness his inauguration. If I were a person of color, considering their horrendous history, I would be camping out in front of the White House even now to get a glimpse of this man in his moment of glory.

When I think of the daunting problems that face him as President, I begin to despair for him and the rest of us. At this moment in our national history, the act of governing seems untenable. The issues debated during the campaign did not even begin to address our problems, some of which may be impossible to solve.

For example, the population of this country doubled in the last 50 years and is likely to double sometime in the next four decades. How can a country that is now 300 million cope with a population that will be 600 million in the lifetime of many of those now living. When you contemplate that situation, you realize that our country’s future is in peril and we will have to be enormously creative when we consider immigration, health care, our economy , our infrastructure, energy and the big elephant in the room, terrorism.

Worse, there are so many people needlessly slurping in the public trough, locked into entitlements that are not sustainable and others who are dependent on the public purse, that extracting them from this habitual form of largesse will be close to impossible. A largely incompetent and unpopular Congress is facing an avalanche of states, corporations and seekers of all stripes with tin cups looking for handouts.

Obama will need to call up all his reserves of self-discipline and persuasion skills to tame the appetite for giveaways by a dysfunctional Congress and the greed and endemic selfishness that is corrupting every aspect of our system. Shifting the balance to protect the truly needy will be a challenge, requiring steel nerves and restoking the talent of persuasiveness Obama brought to bear during his campaign.

For the record, I did not vote for Obama. As someone even older than John McCain I am, admittedly, locked into the ideas that have sustained us through the great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. I understand that mindset and the echoes and slogans of those historical moments. In that arena I was in sync with McCain. Unfortunately, my idea of change is to look backward and contemplate the changes that have occurred in my lifetime. Future change is not a happy concept for a senior citizen whose stake in the future is in the worrisome fate of his offspring, rather than the prospects of his own life on which the curtain is descending.

Nevertheless, the old fashioned verities still persist in my zeitgeist. One of these is respect for our President and the patriotic notions of flag and country. As a soldier I marched under that flag and followed the orders of my Commander in Chief and I will continue to do so under our new President.

With all sincerity, I wish him Godspeed and good luck on the treacherous journey ahead of him. …and us.

The E-Book Revolution

2008-11-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

Twelve years ago, I took the astonishing step of gaining the reversion of all my books from my English language publishers and converting them into digital formats. Most people thought I had lost my mind, since there was no user friendly portable reading device even remotely on the horizon and the books had to be read on either laptops or immovable computers.

My motives were twofold. I did not want to suffer the fate of so many of my fellow authors whose books were declared out of print by publishers while existing copies were moldering on shelves in private homes and in libraries where they would be eventually discarded. Another obvious motive was an attempt to keep my authorial name in the public eye for the foreseeable future.

There is, of course, a great deal of ego involved in such an investment of time and money, but as every author knows, the writing of a book whether it be a work of the imagination, opinion or scholarship, is essentially a product of an inner voice that is determined to be heard.

Before the age of digitization there were few options for authors to preserve their work for future generations. Now that digitization makes such preservation possible, there is no reason for any author to accept the extinction of his or her work through unavailability.

Of course, keeping these works alive and available does not mean that anyone will ever read them in the future. Even the most popular writers of yesterday disappear from public view at astonishing speeds, a fate that is sure to be shared by most contemporary best sellers. Digitization will not guarantee readership and many digital books may simply float aimlessly through cyberspace until the end of time, a lonely exile into infinity.

While that long time bet remains in force, digitizing my books involved a shorter term bet as well. I felt certain that, despite all the numerous failures and the dashing of high hopes which ravaged the e-book dream, that reader friendly devices, would one day emerge from the brains and skills of our electronic engineers and eventually reward both readers and entrepreneurs.

I knew in my gut that this would happen and it has. The issue has always been convenience, portability and reading clarity. That issue has been resolved and will now be improved upon exponentially. The first generation Kindle, the Sony Reader and variations of smart phone technology will in a few short years surpass the paper book as a method to distribute content.

I have been making that statement for more than a dozen years. I have been excoriated, pummeled, insulted and cajoled for making such a statement in various public forums. Time and again, people have extolled the technology of the paper book as the only acceptable format for conveying content.

People would declaim:“I love my paper book, the tactile feel of the it, the smell of it, the look of it. I will never abandon my love for the paper book. For me it will be the only way to enjoy stories and absorb information.”

It was difficult to deflect such a view since I, too, love the paper book. My passion is books. Reading them, writing them, savoring them not only for their content but for the beauty of their appearance, the feel of them. For me they represent one of the joyful wonders of life. Admittedly, there were moments of doubt, not doubt about the ultimate clarity and portability of content, but whether or not the human mind would accept the transference and absorption of digital content in a way that would provide people with a satisfactory experience that could rival what one achieved through the paper book.

Even with those devices currently on the market, particularly the Kindle, all of my doubts have been put aside. In fact, I can say with absolute conviction that reading books on this new device has increased the pleasure and absorption of content that not only rivals but in some cases surpasses the experience of reading a paper book. It has even made the act of purchasing the book more convenient and user friendly. I can make my choice, sample it first with excerpts, then buy it at a huge discount from what I would normally pay for a paper book and download it to my device in a matter of seconds.

There are still some obstacles to book selection which may never be overcome, although there are attempts to inform and review the various books that are offered by the companies that dispense them. Unfortunately wading through the hype and the lack of credibility and bias among the reviewers is an enormous problem and my instinct is to ignore them and make my selection based on the downloaded samples and excerpts.

Frankly, although she is widely respected, I do not take my reading cues from Oprah and I have long eschewed reviews from the media and the roar of the publishing company flacks and their profusion of buddy blurbs.

I have no doubt that the day is coming when these portable devices will dominate the educational system. Backpacks will disappear. Libraries will morph into other uses connected with books. Brick and mortar stores will change their focus. Newspapers as we know them today will fade into other forms. Digitization will take over as the method of conveying all forms of information in every profession. It is easy to be carried away by such prognostications.

Unfortunately not all of this orgy of digitization will be good. A new addiction will begin to inflict us, if it hasn’t already, information glut. Too many incoming information missiles assaulting us. But that is a matter for another discussion.

There is nothing, nothing, more wondrous, more powerful in their capacity to teach, persuade, inform and amplify the imagination than words. Stories form the very basis of our civilization. The imagery they insert into the human imagination is the power that fuels the engine of humanity. How these words are delivered may not be as important as the information they impart, but I am happy to report that the e-book method of delivery has surpassed my wildest dreams.

How I got the idea for my novel NATURAL ENEMIES

2008-11-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

The Fall 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest

2008-10-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Fall 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest from Warren Adler on Vimeo.

Enter your short story by clicking here. Good luck!

How I got the idea for The Henderson Equation

2008-10-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

The Blame Game

2008-10-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

While the smoke continues to pollute the environment in the worst economic conflagration most of us have seen in our lifetime, it is time to confront the issue of who to blame. Here is my blame list.

I blame all the sad dreamers who believed you could buy a house for little or no money down and the rest on borrowed money, absurdly convinced that the market for this house would continue to rise. Like any commodity real estate goes up and down. Nothing goes up forever. Worse, the purchase of a house is the first step in an avalanche of expenses, furniture, appliances, carpets, TV sets, things, lots of things. If people who bought a house they couldn’t really afford and all the things that went into it, how did they think they were going to pay for it? How did they buy into the notion that they were entitled to such largesse?

I blame all the pandering and plundering politicians of both parties for passing the laws that made it so easy to purchase these houses for little or no money down. They just threw the faux red meat to the gullible crowd on the premise that the more you give away, the more people will vote to keep you in office. Beware of a politician’s promises. They have one goal that motivates them: to get elected and re-elected. A politician’s office becomes an election campaign headquarters the moment he or she gets elected.

I blame all the lobbyists for bankers, mortgage brokers, stock brokers, housing advocates, the real estate industry, the credit card industry and all those who would profit from the never ending tsunami of profiteers who were paid to persuade (make that bribe) the clueless politicians to pass the laws that made it possible for people to buy a house for little or no money down that they could not afford to sustain.

I blame the army of greed-driven brokers, bankers and lawyers who cut themselves fees from the people who bought the houses for little or no money down, then sliced the mortgages which paid for them, then mixed them up with allegedly safer mortgages and sold them as “risk free” certificates to suckers all over the world.

I blame the politicians for taking the money from the lobbyists in exchange to do their bidding. Never believe a politician who takes this money and says it won’t influence his or her vote. I blame the voters who don’t do their due diligence on the politicians who seek their vote. If they elect clever manipulators who have invented themselves out of whole cloth, who are modern day snake oil salesman interested only in their own personal ambition and ego satisfaction, then they have only themselves to blame. Don’t look for solutions from people like these. Invariably they will make things worse.

I highly recommend an obligatory course in legislating and governing for every politician in the country presently in office or any future aspirant, and declare ineligible any potential candidate that doesn’t get a get a high passing grade and has submitted to a lie detector test. My estimate is that more than ninety percent of the present crop of politicians will flunk the course.

I blame all the fools who paid for things by credit card and extended the debt on these cards, paying ridiculously inflated interest rates resulting in a process from which they will never ever catch up. Indeed, they are going up the down escalator and they will almost never reach the top. Anybody that lets debt mount on a credit card needs a refresher course in simple arithmetic.

I blame the credit card companies for promoting these plastic time bombs to people of all ages who are persuaded and manipulated to take these cards and can’t afford to pay the debt they incur within thirty days. Credit card issuers make their money on the debt from the poor saps who allow themselves to continue to pay these pony interest rates that will eventually destroy their ability to ever get credit again.

I blame the parents of kids ignorant of the realities of debt who allow them to get credit cards to instantly gratify their adolescent desires. And I blame these stupidly indulgent parents for not teaching their children the value of thrift and savings.

I blame the educators and the bureaucrats who run the sadly dysfunctional educational establishment for not creating programs to teach young people about economics, the dangers of overextended debt and the value of thrift. It is an essential ingredient of a good education to prepare a child for real life. While we are at it, how about similar programs for adults?

I blame the pompous and self-inflated idiots on the boards of companies who receive high payments to serve on these boards and reward the CEO’s of these companies with astronomical high pay. The people who they screw are the stockholders they purport to represent and, of course, the rest of us. As for the stockholders, why are they not storming the ramparts?

I blame the advertising industry and all the manipulators in the media for persuading people to buy things whether they can afford it or not. Beware of the words free, bargain, discount, special sales, once in a lifetime and all those soothingly false pictures of people allegedly living the good life. Check it out. Be wary. Be alert. Never buy anything endorsed by a celebrity. Their praise is pure baloney. They are trying to get you to part with your money. If you buy into it and you can’t really afford the product they tout, the consequences are your own damned fault.

As for the current election, maybe the best course for all of us is to vote present. It seems to have worked for at least one candidate.

Most of all, I blame the DNA of the human animal that has made us slaves to our desires, dreams, hopes, aspirations, yearnings, fantasies, pleasures and cravings. Somewhere in that double helix construction there must be a yet undiscovered fault line that is responsible for an errant stupid gene floating aimlessly somewhere in the brain.

All that said, if you really want to find the true culprit, look in the mirror.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

The End of Influence

2008-10-05T16:02:00.001-07:00

It used to be that the main sources of credible and allegedly reliable political information came from the major big city newspapers, the three major TV networks, the two major news magazines and, more recently, the two competing cable channels CNN and Fox. I do not wish to denigrate newspapers and television in other markets throughout the country, but most people will acknowledge that the lion's share of influence came from the sources I have cited.

By far the movers and shakers of the political world pored over the New York Times and the Washington Post as the bibles of the wise world view, the quintessential oxygen of the zeitgeist.

The mighty Washington Post had the power to bring down Presidents, and the newspaper of record, the old grey lady, the New York Times was the major news source with the clout to seed every important major media in America and, arguably, the planet.

Staffed by a dominant cadre recruited from the elite feeder colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia and others that could be shoehorned into that category, the major "elite" media became a kind of branch of this closed shop of contemporary academic orthodoxy and entitlement. Like ethnic groups who felt more comfortable in their neighborhoods with similar neighbors, the so-called major media became more comfortable with their own kind, those educated in these colleges and universities underline once again the old birds of a feather cliché.

It became true of all power clusters in America, from Wall Street to law and other major wealth producing occupations that an Ivy League old school tie was and, arguably, still is the major gateway to fame and fortune. As an aside, one cannot fail to mention that those recruited from the business schools of these great institutions led the disastrous charge on Wall Street that heroically bugled us all over the cliff into the greatest American financial debacle of all time.

Ironically, it might be unseemly to point out that three of the most powerful of our founding fathers, Washington, Franklin and Hamilton, never graduated from college, although the latter dropped out of King's College, the precursor of Columbia.

While working in the media does not offer the heady awards of wealth, it does offer a far more seductive aphrodisiac, power and notoriety, the ability to amplify one's alleged wisdom through the bullhorn of the printed and spoken word. The psychic satisfactions of the power to influence cannot be exaggerated. It is the Holy Grail of ambition.

Alas, this power to influence via the traditional media is deteriorating rapidly under the onslaught of technology, which has spawned a Tower of Babel Internet culture where the number of voices has expanded exponentially and the pool of influence has become an angry ocean of riptides making the old methods of navigation impossible. We are being informed more and know less. Everyone seems to believe that everyone is entitled to everyone's opinion.

What was only a few years ago called the "major media" is quickly losing its monopoly of influence. The signs are everywhere. Newspapers are losing circulation at an ever-accelerating pace. The once vaunted three networks have become shadows of their former glory. The news magazines are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The bottom line, of course, is that advertisers, whose only measure of effectiveness is how many eyeballs they can attract and where they can pinpoint their message, are fractionalizing their ads and spreading them over a wider swath undermining the economic base that fuels this media.

On television, the three major networks have long peaked in influence and offer their news messages to an older and older demographic, slicing away people under sixty from their range of influence. In a few more years they will join their print brothers in the influence cemetery of the extinct. Even the cable networks with their self-hyped authenticity and increasingly inarticulate talking heads increasingly cater to an ever more aging demographic. Look where their ads are pointed, to the incontinent, the erection disabled, the sleep deprived, the diabetic, all markers of the ravages of aging.

The people who run these enterprises are not fools. They are discovering that playing to people with the same biases is their only business lifeline, especially in New York City and Washington where the educated elite huddle together in an easily targeted and self-important, although increasingly leftist, segment. I suspect that if, for example, the Times took too a big a step right, they would lose enough subscribers to push them that much closer to a Bear Stearns finish. It is probably true of the other former big guns of the mainstream media.

The Times, however, does have one saving ace in the hole. It provides the most extensive and comprehensive coverage of the Big Apple's vast array of cultural activities. Frankly, as an avid consumer of such information, I hope it will give them enough revenue to sustain them in some fashion for the long haul, although I am not optimistic. The Washington Post, on the other hand, serving a less culturally charged entertainment scene, may have a more difficult time getting traction and will attempt to vastly increase its local service coverage to keep afloat.

As for real influence, the kind they enjoyed for decades, the Times is already in free fall on that score despite its vaunted slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" and their promise to be "a newspaper of record." The truth is that for decades they did fulfill those goals. In the last few years their focus has been too narrow and blatantly biased to make that case.

I can imagine how many focus groups they have enlisted to try to reverse their dreary business prospects. They probably were obliged, based on their research, to double their op ed cadre of conservatives, adding neocon William Kristol to join with David Brooks to give them a patina of fairness, especially since these writers are part of the intellectually acceptable conservatives in the mold of William Buckley. I doubt it will help improve their bottom line. Most of their centrist and moderate right subscribers have probably already gone.

Indeed, it seems at times that desperation rules the roost among the Times editors who support the strident outpourings of Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert and their roster of like-minded columnists who clang the pots for the disadvantaged and put-upon, few of whom are readers. One wonders if this clique is in the wrong pew, considering that the advertisements for upscale jewelry and super luxury products that can only be afforded by the folks they rail against continue to fill the adjacent space in the newspaper.

The most hopeful survival sign in the media influence department is the Wall Street Journal, which the canny Rupert Murdoch bought as his flagship newspaper outlet. The Times pretty well abdicated its money coverage giving Murdoch the perfect opening to buy the Journal, whose theme is "Money," a universal subject. The Journal is more conservative in outlook, largely because people who deal in money are less comfortable with vituperative lectures by unsettling voices of grievance.

Note how the Journal is moving into the mainstream of traditional journalism, rowing cautiously down the center and adapting some of the Times' mindset from its glory days when its approach to news gathering was more impartial. It will be interesting to see if it transforms itself under its "money" umbrella to become some hybrid that eats its way into the Times' once dominant turf. As an avid Journal paper and website reader, I am deeply impressed by their imaginative effort at transformation.

The fact is that I sorely miss the old influential culture of the once great media outlets. Perhaps I am simply being nostalgic, but I did respect what passed as the elite media of yesteryear which, I sensed, gave me a more factual and balanced picture of our world than they do today. I believed in their news coverage. I believed in the honesty of their columnists' offerings, even those with whom I disagreed. I now take everything they say with a giant grain of salt, and I ignore the pretentious faux sagacity of their editorials.

Worse, as a former newspaper editor, I can easily recognize the bias of their headline writers and the subtle ways they place their stories to cater to their committed readers. Thankfully, my experience has given me the ability to filter out all the hogwash.

That said, I will never give up my paper subscription to the New York Times, which I have been reading since I was twelve years old. I know how to interpret their politically tinged news stories and their columnists' offerings, which I read diligently but without conviction. They amuse and entertain me, and I do occasionally learn something of interest from their efforts.

But the non-political content of the Times is unbeatable and, for the most part, well written, wide-ranging and wonderfully diverse. It covers a vast panorama of the local, national and global community. It offers the best coverage of the arts anywhere on the planet, and I cannot conceive of not seeing the paper at my apartment door every morning.

Yes, their political influence has declined and they have certainly lost traction among those who do not follow their political line, but I can understand the business decisions that they must have made to continue their bias. They have been dealt a terrible technological blow that might one day bring them to their knees and are trying to cope with this onslaught as best they can by gathering together the prime adherents of their bias.

As they say in politics, they are being loyal to what has become their base. Indeed, I have the sense that any dissent to their policies from within their ranks is met with tolerant contempt and, worse, the threat of expulsion.

I wouldn't deign to predict how this decline of influence of the once powerful media will play out. Indeed, it is impossible to embrace the dizzying spiral of information being hurled at us through cyberspace. I just hope and pray the center holds, but I'm no longer as certain as I was.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Sarah

2008-09-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

Of the four candidates running for President and Vice President of the two major parties, Sarah Palin has been glorified by her supporters and vilified by her detractors more than any candidate for high office in recent memory. While her defenders are many, the pundit aristocracy and the so-called mainstream media have subjected her to a drumbeat of shockingly offensive, insulting and angry criticism.

Having lived in Washington for three decades up until the middle eighties and known many of the political players of the day, I have seen a sea change in the way politics is conducted. It has become a brutal and angry game of “gotcha,” a sinister and cynical conspiratorial process that makes a mockery of civilized political debate.

Perhaps we are going through an angry phase in our national life. I see it everywhere. On the Internet hate and anger of extreme virulence seems to be proliferating. Just browse through the comment sections of the various blogs on any subject, but particularly politics, and you will see venomous, hateful and scurrilous opinions that are nothing more than emotional, mean-minded and hateful rants that have little relations to factual and reasoned discourse.

In face to face conversations, political views have hardened to such an extent that one fears to incur blind wrath and nastiness by expressing anything that challenges the prevailing views on either end of the political spectrum. Which brings me back to Sarah Palin.

As a supporter and committed believer in equal rights for woman, especially in the workplace, I am confused and a bit appalled by the virulence of the attacks on Governor Palin by other women, particularly those who profess the same commitment she has to the upward mobility of women, of which she is a shining example.

She has been attacked for her faith, for her parenting, for her hair-do, for her supposed lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, for allegedly censoring library books, for her having been badly educated in state schools, for being too aggressive as an athlete, for not aborting her challenged fetus, for being a hunter and for being a hockey mom to only one of her offspring and, to top it off, too cute. Underlying the contempt of her critics is an unspoken prejudice of self-appointed elitists against people brought up in a blue collar environment, the sons and daughters of plain folks who work with their hands and do the heavy lifting for the rest of us, who fight our wars, police our neighborhoods, put out our fires, drive our trains and buses, clean our streets and build our houses and our infrastructure.

She has been put down for being Mayor of a small town and the Governor of an “insignificant state.” She has been portrayed as a cornball hick, as trailer trash, as a dumbed down “good ole girl,” as an empty-headed wannabe, as a liar and a fraud and as unfit to govern at any level, especially as an eventual President. In short, she has been crucified by what passes today as the best and brightest in media land, the thought police who believe in the infallibility of their judgment.

She has been dissed by the spoiled and overpaid Hollywood crowd who dispense advice as if they really were those heroic images they mimic on the silver screen. Her detractors don’t just dislike her, they hate her with what can only be described as homicidal passion.

To have become the Governor of Alaska, the largest land mass state in the union and a key repository of hydrocarbon energy reserves, a state which is merely a shade below the population of Delaware, from which Senator Biden hails, and to be dismissed as inconsequential in the pecking order of politicians seems to me bizarre and insulting to all women.

Dismissing Alaska’s importance as a State and becoming its Governor as a minor achievement, Sarah Palin’s critics seem bent on making her seem somewhat lesser than other politicians. Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader in the Senate, came from South Dakota, a less populated and arguably less important state than Alaska, and few have criticized him for attaining his once vaunted and powerful position. Indeed, like him or not, the present Vice President hails from Wyoming, a state even less populated than Alaska and South Dakota.

To me, such criticism is not only ugly but the height of hypocrisy. As for her faith, talk to me about that when they take “In God We Trust” off our currency and excise the words “we are endowed by our creator” from the Declaration of Independence.

In terms of parenting, talk to the pillars of the feminine movement about juggling priorities and “having it all,” which has been their mantra. And which parent has the magic know-how to successfully discipline their children on sexual matters when the hormones start to rage? Try discussing the challenges of parenting with Gloria Steinem.

Some of her more hateful critics have gone so far as to say she is not a real woman, that she is merely a womb, that she is a religious nut, a far right wacko and a lousy mother, that she doesn’t have the brains or the experience to occupy any political post. Tell that to the people of Alaska and eighty percent of them will want to lock you in an igloo. I well remember when Roosevelt picked Truman to be his Vice President and the critics raged that he was just a dumb failed haberdasher and a corrupt machine politician.

As for her experience in foreign affairs, I wonder what the chorus of female naysayers might have said if an acknowledged expert on foreign affairs, such as Condoleezza Rice, was chosen by McCain to be his Vice President pick. As for her education, it is true that Ivy Leaguers and their “old boy and old girl networks” get an automatic leg up in the race for fame and fortune, but that exclusivity loses steam when they confront the real world and have to compete with the so-called lessers who got their bones and street smarts in State colleges or in the school of hard knocks where Harry Truman got his mojo. And what college degree is displayed on the walls of Mount Vernon, the occupant of which laid the foundation stone of our Republic? In this context, how about all those MBA geniuses whose overconfident arrogance and greed screwed up Wall Street?

The fact is that Sarah Palin needs no defense from me. Having lived in the near West for more than a decade, I have met lots of women like Sarah: tough, smart, outspoken, authentic, independent women comfortable in their own skin who say what they mean and mean what they say. They are brimming with life, love their country, their parents and their extended families and revel in the energy of the world around them, and, although they might be loath to admit it, they are like the pioneering women of the early West who built this country with their tough optimism, their mothering, their sacrifice and their boundless energy and good humor.

I know. I know. There will be those who might take this essay as an exercise in political persuasion. No minds will be changed. No way. I glory in female achievement. Like many of us, I am the son of an adored mother with an abiding respect and a cheerleader for her gender. Yes, it was a cagey political move for Senator McCain to pick the Governor of Alaska as his running mate. Indeed, Barack, in my opinion, made a fatal error in not offering the Vice Presidency to Hillary Clinton. Now that would have been something, seeing those two tough ladies go head to head.

The fact is that I would rush to Sarah’s defense no matter which side picked her. Win or lose she deserves a fair shake and certainly not the ugly calumny heaped upon her, especially by her sisters. I don’t agree with her on every issue. Who does? And I’d fight like hell if she tried to tell me how to run my life or by legal coercion change my views about religion or a man or woman’s right to make choices that are important to them.

In fact, as a Governor of Alaska she has not tried to impose her personal views on Alaskans and, more importantly, she has not made these views part of her governance. Nor has she tried to hide them. Besides, Alaskans are independent, stubborn, free-wheeling and strong-minded, and many live in that rough climate by choice. For those very reasons, they would likely balk at any attempt by her to reign in their attitude by sending her packing by dog sled to the North Pole.

In Alaska she bucked the system and threw the rascals out. We could use some of that courage in today’s appalling political climate. What’s wrong with a lady who knows how to use a broom (and I don’t mean to fly on it)? And for those interested in irony, she was, as students of the Bible know, named after the right woman. My advice to the voters is to give the lady some space and, if you disagree with her, fight her fair and square.

It might be of interest, too, to assess the qualifications of other Vice Presidential picks in American history, both winners and losers. With a few exceptions, they were a dreary lot. Many were political hacks designed to balance the ticket geographically. Some, like Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, were great. On the other hand, Aaron Burr was eminently qualified and a murderer.

If I were Joe Biden, I would armor myself well for his debate with Sarah. If he’s not careful, he might go home with a very clean clock.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Contest News

2008-09-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Voting is now open until September 15 for our Summer 2008 Short Story Contest. Our five finalists will now be submitted to the general public for voting, and the winners will receive cash prizes based upon the number of votes they attract by their work. Many of the stories were quite wonderful, and a great deal of effort and angst was applied in choosing the winners. We have strived to put originality as the gold standard of our choices. By its nature our judgment is purely subjective. Our advice to those who have submitted is to stay with it. Not being among our top five is by no means a rejection. Thank you so much for submitting your work. We look forward to hearing from you again when we launch our next contest. Our motivation in creating our contests is to enhance and promote the art of the short story form and to encourage other writers to embrace it.

State of the Short Story

2008-09-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that, as Stephen King once alleged, the short story has declined in popularity. Once a staple literary form, evolving from the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century and morphing into the multitude of more respectable magazine media led by the once dominant Saturday Evening Post, the short story was a highly paid and sought after creative endeavor.

Even the less commercial marketplace through a large network of small literary magazines was once a highly prestigious and well-read enterprise. The short story was the entry-level form for most literary wannabes. I attended creative writing classes at The New School in the forties and fifties with Mario Puzo, William Styron and others of equal talent who cut their eyeteeth on the short story form. It was considered the curtain raiser to the big first novel.

The good news is that it is coming back big time thanks to the Internet and the declining time allotment to reading that is fast becoming a national affliction. Call it another manifestation of unintended consequences, but the short story form is the writing example of choice in the more than 200 university writing courses in the United States and the thousands of ancillary writing courses that dot the instructional landscape.

Short story writing contests are exploding on the Internet, including my own Warren Adler Short Story Contest, which has just ended its third successful installment. It is an extraordinary explosion of creative effort. Writers are being taught by example the efficacy of compression in the artful creation of character, plot, narrative drive, description and mood that is at the heart of the short story process.

Writers with unquenchable dreams of becoming the new Poe, Chekhov, Maupassant, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and countless other masters of the short story are honing their skills at a fast clip and creating a marketplace that, in my opinion, will grow into an explosive avalanche of awareness and a path to greater recognition for themselves as well as offering special joys and insight for the reader. Indeed, for many novelists, including myself, the short story was our first ticket to a literary career and continues to remain so.

I am not alone in my affection for the short story form and my attempt to promote its value and expansion as a literary enterprise. Thanks to Mr. King, and other practitioners like him, the short story renaissance will, in my opinion, not only regain but exceed its place in the literary pantheon.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Second in a series: How I got the idea for my novel MADELINE'S MIRACLES

2008-08-13T19:07:00.001-07:00

As a confirmed skeptic I do not believe in anything that is outside the orbit of logical reality. I eschew anything new age, strange repetitive rituals and self-professed gurus who allege they have "the answer" and demand obedience. I do not believe in anything in the supernatural, realm and that includes fantasy, Fairy Godmothers, angels, superheroes, weird conspiracy theories, miracles, doppelgangers, Dybbuks, and the thousand other mysterious ideas and imagined events that fall into this genre.

Hordes of people will disagree with such skepticism. It would be pointless to argue the point since there is no empirical evidence to the contrary, and the end game of the argument will always remain unresolved.

Nevertheless, I do believe in the power of the subconscious, which is essentially a mystery, although science continues to uncover more and more empirical evidence on the inner workings of the human brain. As a novelist, I know I am drawing on this still mysterious subconscious power although I cannot explain how or why it works. I accept it since I know it is the essential tool in the fiction writer's art.

There are insistent people who will cling with fervor to their belief in one or another aspect of the supernatural. Try to argue with someone who truly believes he has had an out of body experience, or has heard God's voice, or believes that Kennedy was murdered by Johnson, or the CIA brought down the twin towers, and any other of the hundreds of conspiracy theories that trigger unambiguous certainties. The list is endless, and the way in which these stories are conveyed, armed with the power of passionate belief, can be dangerously persuasive.

In every field, people will cite supernatural forces as having intervened in their personal narratives. Since I truly "believe" in the idea of "luck," I stand ready to be accused of hypocrisy. I suppose one can attribute a lucky break to "divine intervention" or somesuch, and we do know from the "what happens next" aspect of storytelling that events do happen without notice or foreshadowing, but I don't let myself go too far into the unknowable and resist all efforts by people to explain it by alleging that they had received some miraculous gift of foresight.

That said, there have been moments in which self-interest or, admittedly, blind fear, trumped logic, and I found myself willing to buy into a bizarre supernatural mindset. This recounting goes to the heart of that persistent question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

I got the idea for Madeline's Miracles from this ubiquitous fount. A friend of mine had lost an adult son, probably to AIDS, and was having a "death" celebration at the home of a friend in Beverly Hills. I had never been to such a themed event, and I was seated at a table next to an attractive woman who greeted me warmly. When I gave her my name, her response was: "I know." I had never met her before and was somewhat confused by the response.

Without missing a beat, she announced that she was a "psychic" and that she was certain that I would have a successful career in Hollywood. I was dumbfounded. I had been in Los Angeles less than a week when I was invited to this event by the mother of the deceased. I was, of course, both baffled and flattered. I had never met an acknowledged "psychic" before, and here was this complete stranger predicting my success.

Of course, she was playing into my aspirations. One of my books, The War of the Roses, was in the early phase of development, and I had relocated to Los Angeles in the hopes that I could speed the process and perhaps interest the movie crowd into optioning my growing collection of fiction. I was, of course, completely skeptical. After all, this was weird and woolly Hollywood. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by her assertion about my alleged future success. Who wouldn't be? To make the matter more baffling, she then told me that she could actually pick which of my books would be the next one to attract Hollywood producers.

Against my better judgment, I found myself going along, figuring that this was yet another creative hustling ploy in La-La Land. Mostly out of curiosity, I made a date to meet for breakfast at the Bel Air Hotel the next day. She instructed me to bring four of my books for her "analysis." What the hell? I told myself. I decided to go with the flow.

When I arrived at the Bel Air she had with her a female executive from 20^th Century Fox, which greatly enhanced her credibility. She then took each of my books, closed her eyes, put the flat of her hand on the books in some mysterious incantation, and after this strange ceremony handed one of the books to the studio executive. "This is the one," she told the executive. It took great discipline on my part to hide my astonishment.

Suddenly she stiffened and seemed to go into a trance, then rose from the table remarking that she "sensed" that a person in this dining room was a hit man assigned to kill one of her clients. She rose from table and told us that she had to phone her client to warn him. The executive from the studio hardly reacted to this strange behavior. I was, to say the least, bewildered. It struck me as an Alice in Wonderland moment, challenging my concept of reality. She returned to the table and the conversation went on as before. The executive from Fox seemed to treat this woman's action as perfectly normal. Did they know something I didn't? Worse, I felt my entire belief system challenged.

Another luncheon meeting with the psychic was arranged at which the book was discussed, and I was assured that an impending sale was being arranged. The female executive was present at this luncheon and told me that it was happening, that the studio powers were on the cusp of a decision, and that she would call me soon to announce the purchase of the rights. The psychic nodded her approval. Despite all my previous skepticism, I sensed that my previous logic system was being challenged. I felt myself becoming a believer.

After this luncheon I was ecstatic. I had no doubt that what was promised would happen. It seemed so credible. My skepticism had miraculously vanished.

I waited for the call that was going to announce that the deal was sealed, convinced in my gut that these people were on to something that had eluded me all my life. I was hooked and knew it. I was completely convinced that another movie was in the hopper. I waited. Be patient, I told myself. It was a done deal. I continued to wait. And wait.

I never heard from these people again, although I tried reaching them, but they never returned my calls. Because I was in thrall to this supernatural circumstance, I began to believe that somewhere down the line I had thrown out bad Karma that scotched the deal. After awhile logic began to surface again, and I returned to the normality of my skepticism. Why such an elaborate charade? I am still baffled by the experience. I felt like a fool, a naïve and gullible idiot. I still do.

I know this story strains credibility, but it is absolutely true in every detail, and it gave me the idea for Madeline's Miracles, a novel in which a family becomes the total pawn of a psychic who eventually dictates their every move. And yet, even today, I ask myself: Did this woman really believe she had a psychic gift, or was she merely manipulating me for her own profit, a naïve wannabe in ambitious pursuit of his hopes and dreams. There is a lesson here that still resonates and raises a red flag on the road ahead for anyone with outsized aspirations. More importantly it shows how easily our vulnerabilities can be manipulated by people bent on gaining their own rewards. Anyone who has ever had an experience with a cult will understand the dilemma this incident poses.

Still, even as I condemn myself for my naiveté, a tiny window of believability refuses to close completely. By some measure, one might say that I have done pretty well in Tinsel Town. I have overall sold or optioned ten of my books to Hollywood. Three have been made into movies, including a trilogy on PBS. Does that constitute "success" as predicted by this psychic? I'm not sure.

The book chosen through incantation by the psychic was never made. Perhaps someday…

Read the first chapter of Madeline's Miracles NOW!

Obama in Berlin

2008-08-06T18:21:00.001-07:00

If Barack Obama loses his bid to become President of the United States, he can trace the beginning of his demise to his campaign's boneheaded idea to speak in Berlin. While on the surface it might seem to offer a resounding image of popularity and approval, the historical memory it provokes and the powerful and sinister images it recalls to living memory is an ominous reminder of events that continue to resonate among older Americans.

The spirited young Obama people must have huddled around the planning table blinded with the brilliance of the idea that their candidate's speaking in Berlin would trigger memories of President's Kennedy's stirring remark that gave hope to the beleaguered people of that surrounded city, "Ich bin ein Berliner," and would offer the double reminder of Ronald Reagan's "Tear down that wall" speech a few years later.

They must have reveled in the creativity of such a ploy that, they believed, would anoint Obama to be the heir apparent to such illustrious forebears. Unfortunately, the decision and its aftermath suggests that the vaunted brain power of Obama's inner circle is suffering from severe limitations of historical memory. The context of the Kennedy and Reagan eras was totally different. The battle then was between freedom and repression. We were in a very different time, in a war that literally had split Europe in half, and we were standing with allies against a tyrannical and nuclear armed state with serious designs on us and our European allies. Kennedy and Reagan were the cheerleaders for the good guys.

What Obama did, first in choosing to make his speech on the site of one of the principal monuments to German nationalism, and secondly in declaring that "This is our moment," against the background of a cheering and adoring crowd provoked memories of a German leader who through oratory and charisma stirred similar emotions and instilled the belief that he was the anointed one, the man of the moment whose magic would lead his people into a paradise of wealth and privilege over which they were destined to rule for a thousand years.

While such a comparison is odious in its implications and subjects a fine, idealistic, decent and eloquent man to be in sync with a monster, it suggests that his campaign strategists subjected him to a fatally flawed mission that forgot or overlooked or dismissed the power of historical memory. We know, of course, that the Germany of today is not the Germany of the thirties and forties, far from it. But long term memories are, as neurologists will attest, the last of the brain's complex functions to deteriorate.

What the Obama people failed to consider was that there are millions of people among the American voting public that are still haunted by memories of World War II when Americans considered Nazi Germany the most hated country on earth.

There were nearly 300,000 battle deaths in that war and nearly 700,000 wounded. Many of today's nearly forty million people over 65 lost grandfathers or fathers in that ghastly war or lived with wounded or disabled relatives. There are still more than three million of living American veteran survivors of that war and more than four million people 85 or over, voters all, who bear intimate memories of those times.

Consider too the millions who have seen Leni Riefenstahl's films depicting mesmerized sycophants of the Fuehrer, sieg heiling in robotic frenzy, and the millions born after who have studied those 13 years of German history. Then there was the Holocaust, an event that continues to resonate and stir bitter memories of horror and disgust.

Perhaps the youth oriented Obama people failed to understand the lingering influence of such imagery or took a calculated risk that such memories were swiftly fading into oblivion. That kind of misstep might be indicative of another mental hole in their ranks, the danger inherent in dismissing the aspirations and dignity of older Americans. I wonder if these elders are as hungry for "change" as our younger citizens. Considering the limited time horizons of older Americans, one can speculate if "change" resonates with a more ominous meaning within this considerable voting bloc. Be forewarned Obama strategists. Beware of using the "age card" against McCain.

The McCain people, earlier dismissed as clueless over-the-hill dolts, were quick to understand the real implications of the Berlin venue and the speech. Perhaps their retooling has borne fruit.

At this point let me stress that I am discussing process not partisan ideology. Campaigning is all about manipulation, and the two principal levers that strategists pull are based on hopes and fears. When we see these talking head strategists on television, they are characterizing the candidates they are paid to serve as products. They are immersed in the technology of campaigning based on statistics, polls, focus groups and image making. They are not advocates, but technicians. When Hillary Clinton talks about "playbooks," she is correct. Each side works from its own playbook, and one side inevitably is at war with the playbook of the other. Think football.

In the case of the Obama in Germany play, the opposition came up with what I believe is a brilliant counter strategy, creating matching commercials that got more exposure on the Internet and on televised news shows than their limited paid ad schedules. The first compared the crowds that came to hear Obama to the adoration of the mindless multitudes who worship on the altar of the celebrity culture, mostly the young, who the Obama people believe is their prime target audience. The second compared Obama, as his German oracular speech clearly spelled out in his "This is the moment" declaration, to the biblical prophet, Moses, but cleverly illustrated by the Hollywood actor Charlton Heston in the role. The implication is that Obama has received the call and is fated to lead us somewhere where magical change is supposed to happen.

The real message of those subtle and cunning ads was comparing Obama to you know who. It was not about Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or Moses, and anyone who thinks so is naïve and has not grasped the significance and subliminal effect of the powerful suggestion inserted into these two commercials. That message was designed to stoke fear and doubt, fear that Obama was insinuating to a giant crowd of mesmerized German onlookers that he was operating in the context of some self-generated messianic mission and doubt about the content of his words and his judgment in failing to assess the power of historical memory.

I cannot believe the very clever Obama pros and the candidate himself did not see that one coming. In one swoop it cast doubt upon Obama's content and eloquence and suggested a comparison to a man who created one of the greatest bloodbaths in human history and who used words and eloquence as his principal weapons of mass persuasion.

The reaction to it telescoped the message that the McCain people are no longer as lackadaisical and out of touch as they have been portrayed.

Were the ads negative? Depends on whose ox is being gored. It was certainly a putdown of deliberate Obama campaign manipulation. Wasn't the Berlin speech an attempt to trash the Bush legacy and spread manure all over the McCain candidacy? It was staged to illustrate the alleged low esteem that some Europeans have for the present American administration and by inference John McCain. Good in theory. Bad venue. Clueless speech.

These campaigns are not playing tiddlywinks. They are engaged in combat in a war for the greatest democratic prize of all, the Presidency of the United States. All their debates, their utterances, their commercials, are a form of combat, and they have enlisted armies of officers and foot soldiers to win their war. If you have any doubts, just plug into the blogosphere and survey the hostility and anger in the war of words that motivates the followers of both candidates and what is sure to see slashing counterpunches to this blog. I stand prepared. It's an old cliché to shoot the messenger.

Even in the fast moving battleground of a contentious presidential campaign, the McCain people will surely wield its weapon again and again to reinforce the blunder of Obama in Berlin. What does one remember of the Goldwater campaign if not the Lyndon Johnson "Daisy H bomb commercial," which you can find on YouTube, or go all the way back to the Dewey campaign and the image that characterized him as the "little man on the top of the wedding cake?" I could go on and on. You see, historical memory matters and political campaigns are often won and lost on imagery that can act like a vampire sucking the blood out of an unwitting candidate.

Expect both campaigns to make errors of judgment as they progress. The McCain people have already made their fair share of dumb moves, but their counter to the Berlin speech indicates that there are some very shrewd and canny people who have just come aboard the Straight Talk Express.

This is not to say that the Obama braintrust has lost its way. There are many talented and hard eyed professionals in the upper ranks of the campaign. And their candidate is certainly attractive, astute and, despite disclaimers, calculating and politically combative.

But they had better not start believing their own publicity and not let the generational divide blind them to the reality of the folks who dine on early bird dinners, wear hearing aids and spectacles, and know that George Patton wore pearl handled pistols, can remember cars like the Nash and the Hudson, that Clark Gable was once the king of Hollywood and that the Hula Hoop once swiveled the hips of a nation. However haltingly, these folks are ambulatory enough to vote, even in those new fangled voting machines.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys. Read more of his blogs at The Writer's Life.

The Loaded Query

2008-08-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

Oblique and often innocent questions can reveal character traits that I have found useful in my fiction. I ask the following question often since it reveals the level of a person’s expectations.

What is your number?

This means what is your comfort zone in terms of your net worth. I have asked this question of people of all economic categories from the very poor to the super rich. Obviously those with the least net worth answer that their level of satisfaction would be a million dollars in liquid assets.

As we ride up the scale, most people think five million is more than adequate. Sophisticated and well-off people who have reached the five to ten million mark will set their comfort zone between fifteen and twenty million.

A large category places the comfort level at 25 million, but this answer comes from people who have attained that figure. Of course, for many people to whom I have posed this question, their answer has been “The sky’s the limit.”

Usually they follow this up by saying that extreme wealth is more a report card of achievement than a comfort zone. Some tell me that acquiring wealth is merely a game or that they enjoy the process of giving their money away, which they call “giving back.”

To many the process of “giving back” gives them a high from being honored and butt kissed by the recipients of their largesse. They never will admit this. Nor will they ever admit that having extreme wealth gives them perks and power and the ability to buy bigger and better toys.

I have not found any difference in their level of happiness or self-worth. Indeed, many of my super wealthy friends and acquaintances have just as many psychological problems as those who have a lot less.

I have also found less envy of the super rich by the less than rich, although the very poor are naturally angry with their circumstances and vocal about the inequality.

What do you think?

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Hey out there, what do you think about Graphic Novels?

2008-07-30T16:50:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid I used to read what were called the funnies. Smilin' Jack, Dick Tracy, Mandrake the Magician, Gasoline Alley and many, many others. They were, for the most part, serial stories, and I followed them with religious fervor. The New York Daily News building where I later worked as a copy boy gave guided tours, the highlight of which was to show us what was happening in the future to our favorite "funny" characters. Then came comic books with stories of Superman, Batman, and on and on.

I gave up reading them in eighth grade. By then I had switched to real books, haunted libraries, read every young boy's adventure story on the shelves of the Stone Avenue Library in Brooklyn. Then I upgraded to the genuine classics and contemporary novels and stories. To me reading is a way of life. How can one write if one doesn't read?

Perhaps it is the essence of this writer's snobbery, but I am definitely not a fan of the so-called graphic novel. It is nothing more than an extended comic book with drawn images and word balloons designed to tell the story. It demeans the word "novel," abuses it, makes it seem lesser, kid stuff. Maybe it's the category title that bugs me. I'm not saying it doesn't have its place, but I can't see how it enhances one's ability to read and understand how the imagination enriches the word pictures of the mind created by the writer.

Am I an old meany? A curmudgeon? A purist? Or just plain cynical? I would love to have your comments, but please be nice.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Writing Contest is No Joke

2008-07-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of those days that make you think my life is a gag, a sitcom, a dirty joke? Put it on the page! Submissions are coming in fast, but there is still time to enter the Summer 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest. The contest will remain open until August 15, 2008.

See complete details.

First in a series: How I got the idea for my novel Trans-Siberian Express

2008-07-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

Of all the questions asked of fiction writers, the one most common is: Where do you get your ideas? It is a crucial question that goes to the heart of the storyteller's art. One might generalize and assert that it comes from an amalgam of one's life's experiences, stories told by others, books read, movies seen, dreams and fantasies, and the molten mix in the cauldron of one's imagination. This is one writer's attempt to pinpoint the spark that ignited the idea that became the story and its aftermath.

I was having a drink in a Pub in London with a British diplomat who was on leave from his post in the British Embassy in Peking in the mid seventies. It was at the height of the antagonism between China and the Soviet Union, and a hostile relationship existed between China and the West.

In those days, in the midst of the Cold War, we lived in a perpetual state of tension and uncertainty with the threat of a nuclear disaster always alive in our minds as an existentialist threat. The media was inundated with confrontational possibilities with the Soviets and Chinese, both real and imagined, and the spy stories of John Le Carre and others dominated the bookshelves and movie theaters.

From various subtle hints conveyed by my friend, I suspected that he was involved in highly classified intelligence work for his government.

I had met my friend years before in Washington where he was on assignment to the British Embassy in some capacity that he never defined, but which I intuited had some cloak and dagger aspect about it. I was a young soldier then, assigned to the Pentagon as the only Washington Correspondent for Armed Forces Press Service.

We had kept up our relationship, which included our wives, and had kept in touch as he traveled from various assignments in many countries. When we reunited in London where my son was attending a summer course in acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, I had already published a number of novels and my trained inner antenna was geared to trolling for ideas for stories.

It must be said at the outset that a committed novelist, like a prospector searching for gold, is always on the lookout for an idea that will spark a story. Every observation, every person he meets, every episode in his life, every thought, memory, reflection and cogitation is geared, consciously or subconsciously, to the concept of what will make a story. Everything in the zeitgeist was and is fair game.

Since China in those days was a closed society, I was anxious to hear about his experiences in this world and, after a pint of two, he was happy to oblige. Most of his stories were gossipy. He had played frequent tennis games with George Bush, the elder, when he was a representative in China during my friend's multiple assignments. He told me about how his oldest child was fluent in Chinese courtesy of a Chinese nanny, about the poverty he saw all around him, about the food and how the diplomatic community was deliberately isolated by the Government.

Then it came. The ignition spark. He described how he had periodically hand carried the Diplomatic pouch to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia twice a month. He explained that his route was to take the railroad journey from Peking to Mongolia and explained how the Trans-Siberian Express was linked to this line and that he had taken it himself from Moscow.

As he described his journey on the Trans-Siberian Express, I became more and more intrigued. He told me it was the longest railroad trip in the world, a 7,000 mile journey through numerous time zones, that it's original route was from Moscow to Vladivostok, the latter a naval base that was then off-limits to foreigners. He told me that the Russian track gauge was wider than the world standard, and the carriages had to be raised and the new wheels attached to ride the rails outside of the Soviet borders.

He told me that sleeping compartments were assigned without regard to gender and that the food was ghastly and the third class passengers had to buy their food from vendors along the route through Siberia. He told me about the monotony of the Siberian tundra, the various ethnic groups that used the train as it traversed the route and that the train was pulled by giant steam locomotives, the largest in the world at the time.

One must relate this eureka moment to the context of the times and my world as a child growing up in the earlier part of the twentieth century. The train was the principal mode of land travel in those days. Railroad travel was exotic and far-reaching. The celebrity culture was built around trains and boats. Photographs of celebrities disembarking trains was a common media event. Railroad stations were palaces. Grand Central Station in New York City was a work of art, one of the most celebrated structures in the world.

Model trains were the ultimate toy for a boy and department stores featured elaborate displays to hawk these toys. Railroad travel was exotic and romantic and were featured in books and movies. Staterooms were shown as the height of luxury and private cars were the ultimate in luxurious travel. Graham Greene's novel Stamboul Train and the movie The Lady Vanishes, among many others, offered exciting stories about train travel. I was a child of those times, and when my friend spun his yarn about his experiences on the largest train ride in the world, my head began to swim with story ideas.

The idea had everything, Cold War intrigue, spies, staterooms assigned without regard to gender, the paranoia of the times, the closed world of the Soviet Union and China. The setting that filled my mind was a novelist's dream, and my imagination began to conjure up a story that would take place around the centerpiece of a journey on the Trans-Siberian Express.

My friend saw my enthusiasm, and when I shared my wish to take this journey, he offered his help. He told me that when he returned to the Embassy in Peking, he would send an official request from the Embassy for me to visit Peking. We both knew that it wouldn't assure me a visa, but it would be worth a try.

I was enraptured by the idea and presented it as a possibility with my publisher at Putnam, the late Clyde Taylor. He too had grown up in the days of romantic train travel. The title "Trans-Siberian Express" was enough to sell him. "Write it," he said. The world of publishing was quite different in those days. The corporate bean counters and impersonal international conglomerates had not yet taken over.

By then Nixon had opened a tiny door into China, and the Chinese had opened a mission in Washington, D.C. a few miles from where I lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I received the invitation to Peking from the British Ambassador and with great hope applied to the mission for a visa. While I waited I absorbed myself in research. I researched the history of the Trans-Siberian Railroad which began construction at the turn of the century, and I delved into all the literature of Siberia that I could find.

Living in the Washington metropolitan area and involved in the life of the capital city, and a political junky by inclination, I had a pretty good handle on the politics of the Cold War. The local media was filled with information. In effect I was living in the background of what I needed to give heft to the political intrigue required to form the basis of my story.

In those days, a writer could roam the stacks of the Library of Congress, and I was able to tap into their vast supply of titles that were germane to the subject. I visited with experts on train travel with specific reference to the Trans-Siberian, how their carriages were configured, how the on-board service in all classes were carried out, what cities were on the route, what their stations looked like, the climate in Siberia, and ferreted out as much material as I could gather on the mind-set of the Russian people and their leaders.

The Soviets and the Chinese were at each other's throats at that point in time. Both had an atomic arsenal. The thirst for Soviet hegemony was well known, and it was no secret that what they wanted was world domination. Unfortunately, the Chinese, despite their slow emergence from isolation, were still in thrall to their leaders penchant for secrecy and their paranoia about any foreign influence. Unfortunately, I waited in vain for an answer to my visa request and ultimately I gave up hope of every being allowed to make the complete journey on the Trans-Siberian Express through to Peking.

With my hopes for eyewitness research on the Trans-Siberian dashed, I had to recreate the journey through my imagination hoping that my research would give it authenticity. The awesome power of the human mind never fails to amaze me. Frankly, it defies analysis, and I would rather not tinker with its explanation. The point is that it must work since I did receive numerous letters from people who had taken the journey and pronounced my take on it as accurate as their own.

With all the ingredients for an exciting story in place, I began to develop the characters in my mind. Every novelist has his or her own technique. Mine is to conceive the characters and the venue and allow them to work out their own destiny. In my mind they become real people and create their own story. I know that sounds a bit mysterious and it is. Harold Robbins once told me that he channeled God to write his books and my old novelist friend Rod Thorpe once told me that he wouldn't be able to write a novel if he knew in advance how it would end.

There was another aspect of the story that was forming in my mind. In all my novels, my obsession with "love," the mystery of attraction and its implications, is one of the consistent themes, and the idea of staterooms being assigned without regard to gender offered an opportunity for me to explore this theme. Most great and enduring stories, from the Bible through Shakespeare and all of the world's most memorable novels, in some way, deal with this theme.

Without going into the intricate details of the plot, a log line might be that my novel can be described as a love story on a train against the background of international intrigue. It was a resounding success, translated into many languages and garnering the first of my ten options and sales to the movie industry.

It was optioned, then bought by a prominent group of producers that included the late Sir Lou Grade and the famed producer Marty Richards, who later produced Chicago and many hit films and plays. Unfortunately, it was never made, which is the fate of the overwhelming majority of books bought for film adaptation.

All books have a life of their own. My novel The War of the Roses has become a classic movie that plays all over the world with astounding regularity. Another film adaptation, Random Hearts, continues its life on the screen as well.

But the soul of this narrative is geared to answer the question about how ideas emerge in the writer's mind and become full blown stories. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but the question is posed so often it seems an essential bit of information for anyone who seeks a career in writing fiction and for those who read the result of these ideas which emerge as stories.

I confess that I find the process interesting enough to me to explore how other ideas became my novels, short stories and plays, and I hope it will be interesting and helpful to others. My intention is to go through my work and try to pinpoint the tiny spark that lit the fuse that became the story.

Read the first chapter of Trans-Siberian Express NOW!

The Pursuit of Happiness

2008-07-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

One of the first things you learn as a parent is the fidelity of a promise. If you promise something to a child, you had better well keep it or he or she will bust your chops for not keeping it. This basic moral contract is the foundation of all civilized transactions.

Unfortunately such purity of intent gets short shrift in practice and the child's view is quickly hammered by life's experiences. In the marriage ceremony people pledge to stay together. Fifty percent renege on such a promise. In the law courts people swear on a Bible to tell the truth and often violate the oath. Contracts are written to confirm a transaction but are often broken in practice.

Sadly, the Latin phrase Caveat Emptor, "let the buyer beware," is the more accurate interpretation of what being honest means in real life. If you truly believe in the concept that a man's word should be his bond, you are dubbed a naïve fool. Ask any cop, prison guard, lawyer, diplomat, salesman and countless others in every walk of life and most will laugh in your face if you profess belief in such a concept.

So why get all excited when it comes to politics when you know in advance that a politician's word is not worth, as Yogi Berra might say, the teleprompter it is written on? A politician in campaign mode is merely a conduit for the erratic crowd mind, which shifts its focus and allegiance based on the manipulative skills of the campaign. Forget labels. Forget all the verities like honor, conscience, fidelity, conviction. A politician in a campaign is like a windsock. He promises wherever the wind blows.

Bottom line: He is selling you on his version of what he can offer that will make you happy, happier, happiest. He is zeroing in on your hopes and dreams, your expectations, feeding your optimism that his views, his talents, his experience, will offer you the magic pill that will best solve all those pesky problems that interfere with your happiness.

This was a rather roundabout way to get at the main theme of this essay. Happiness.

Jefferson, by some strangely mythological insight really, tapped into something. He wrote that "the pursuit of happiness" is a self-evident truth. We know that he did have a little editorial help and, after all, the signers had to debate the text, but it baffles me how "pursuit of happiness" was shoehorned into the text of the Declaration of Independence. It seems so jarring, so seductive, so obviously pandering for such a political manifesto.

And yet so true, so right.

What was really meant by the insertion of that phrase in the founding document of the rebellion against its British overlords which subsequently formed the basis of the American experiment?

As near as I can interpret it, it meant that happiness and its pursuit is a universal yearning. All people, all of us, without fear or favor, should be allowed to live a long healthy, safe and secure life without pain, without discomfort, without displacement, enjoying all the benefits and joys of freedom, personal fulfillment and pleasures of the mind and body, and to pursue our hopes and dreams to their full potential. The implication, of course, was that only after the bonds with Britain were cut would the citizens of the thirteen colonies be able to pursue happiness and that we, the signers, held the key to unlock such unfettered pursuit.

To me it is the key phrase of the Declaration of Independence. That other stuff about all men being created equal, as we all know, is a bit of rhetorical overkill for political purposes and hardly the prevailing view of many of the signers. In the age of the double helix, the idea of "creative" equality has lost its cache, not to mention its accuracy.

But that "pursuit of happiness" phrase endures because it carries an essential truth. It is the assertive wish of all mankind and is the bottom line of all political systems, especially ours. Everything is about the pursuit of happiness and every promise made by any political leader is geared to that idea.

The key word, of course, is "pursuit," and the more leeway you have in pursuing happiness the better chance you'll have to attain it. Where repressive leaders reign your chances are a lot slimmer. But in a people's choice democratic government like ours, even with all its flaws, at least you'll have a reasonable shot at attaining it in some realistic measure. It doesn't mean you'll catch the big "H" in all of its manifestations. Chances are you won't. But with luck you might get a piece of it, even though you know it can never last since we all know that this life's final lap isn't much fun.

Of course, there are those who believe that earthly happiness is an illusion and that the real reward, the real happiness, is attained elsewhere. Just ask any suicide bomber, providing you ask him before he wiggles the toggle. Of course there are those who believe in the path to an afterlife that does not require mowing down your fellow man to enter. That is a debate we'll leave for another time, but for now, I'd prefer to stick to events that transpire on planet earth.

Getting down to the concrete in today's political terms, our choice is, as always, between which of the two major candidates, Obama or McCain, will make it easier for us to "pursue happiness." Whatever vision of the future they propose, whatever programs they espouse, whatever promises they make, whatever words they employ and however they're hyped and parsed, it will all boil down to that one very simple idea that found its meandering way into the crucial document of the American experience.

It would be interesting to know how others define the phrase "pursuit of happiness." As for me, I'm running as fast as I can.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.