Just a quick observation: In a country that has produced political rhetoric on the level of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, The Federalist Papers, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, the “Cross of Gold” speech, the Fireside Chats and JFK’s inaugural, what does it mean that today’s rhetoric includes words like “Shrub”, “Slick Willie” and “Idiotarian”?
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A day of pseudo-mourning: rejection slips for my three stories that were at market all came in this week. Ugh.
In a sort-of related note, I watched the premiere of American Idol the other night. I doubt I’ll watch much more of the series, since they seem to have winnowed things down to the people who have at least some talent, and judging by what little I saw of the show’s original incarnation last season, they are concentrating on that “Top 40” style of pop-music that is not remotely my cup o’ tea. However, as I watched all of these unbelievably horrible singers step up, give it their all, and then act utterly stunned when they didn’t make it (and, in some cases, getting indignant about it), I was thinking: I am watching the pop-singer equivalent of the slushpile.
Every fiction magazine gets an immense amount of submissions each month, numbering in the hundreds. Since each market only prints a small handful of stories each month — seven or eight, at most, for the larger fiction markets and fewer than that for magazines that only publish fiction intermittently or as just one feature among others — the vast majority get rejected. From what I’m told, in most cases, the vast majority even, the decision not to publish is a no-brainer. We’re talking ineptly written stories with ghastly prose, cardboard characters and clicheed situations. In cases like these, the editors or editorial assitants or first-readers going through the slushpile need only read perhaps a single page of the story before they can safely toss it aside. That’s what we saw, primarily, on the first episode of American Idol: the horrible “singers” who either had no voice, no ear, no performing presence, or (in the worst of cases) none of the three. These are the people who would be cut off after singing for about thirty seconds, receive a tongue-lashing from Simon Cowell, and be sent on their way.
In fiction writing, though, there is no Simon Cowell, really. There’s really never a moment when an editor sends a rejection slip reading, “God, man, you are horrible. Please channel your efforts into burger-flipping, gravedigging, or political action; but for the love of All Things Good and Pure, do NOT pick up the pen again.” All there is for us would-be writers is, “This doesn’t meet our needs. Good luck in the future. Thank you.” Of course, Simon Cowell simply saying “I’m sorry, but we can’t take you this time. Next!” would not make for particularly compelling television; but I wonder a little if maybe he’s not doing these people a favor, because some of them really, truly, are awful.
That’s what made another phenomenon so surreal. Since we would-be writers don’t know if we’re any good, really, until we actually make a sale, all we can do is file our bland rejections (or throw ’em out) and keep on writing. But these people on American Idol, the ones who really are terrible, walk away from their public, brutal, and nationally-televised rejection still convinced that they are talented and that they will make it sometime. They are operating on precisely the same assumption that keeps us would-be writers going, even though they have far less reason to do so.
I’m generally confident in my writing, but occasionally — once in a great while — I will wonder: if there were a Simon Cowell of the fiction-world, would he look at my writing and say something like, “If this were 2000 years ago, they would have stoned you” or “If you were to win here, you would be the end of the American publishing industry”. I prefer to think that I’m one of the people who clear the first round, and thus far I’ve just not been able to get farther in the competition. I like to think that, and I have to think that. Even when three rejections come in the same #$^%&@!! week.
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It’s positively balmy in Syracuse today: highs in the lower 20s. Zowee! It’s enough to make the more heavily-traveled streets and roadways wear down to actual pavement, instead of the semi-permanent ice that’s covered every byway for the last week or so. The problem, though, is going to come when it finally warms up sufficiently for some actual thawing (next week, perhaps). The snow-pack on the ground is now sufficiently deep that there will likely be some flooding when the thaw hits. (This was an annual concern in Buffalo, as well.)
Oh, and speaking of Buffalo, I was forwarded a news item by a friend of mine (Aaron, who is one of two people I know who really should have a blog of his own) about a new scheme that Buffalo is considering to raise some money. You know how credit-card statements and such will come with some advertising material stuffed into the envelope along with the actual bill? The City of Buffalo is considering doing this with its own mailings. I guess this can’t hurt, aside from increasing the amount of junk mail in Buffalo citizen’s garbage cans and recycle-bins, but still: I’d love to grab some of these guys by their suit-jacket lapels, shake them a bit, and scream, “What are you doing to increase the city’s tax base, you twits?!” (Actually, they are considering selling a city-owned set of high-rise apartment buildings to a private company, which would result in some welcome tax money for the city. Of course, who knows if this will be an actual help or merely a drop in the bucket, expecially to offset the tax hit the city is likely to take when they turn over control of some downtown real estate to the Seneca Nation of Indians, for their damned casino. Arrggghhh.)
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When I was a more active Usenet participant, I noticed a curious phenomenon beginning roughly two years or so ago: whenever the subject of gun control would come up, in just about any newsgroup, some anti-gun control person would post a message that simply read, “Just read John Lott’s book”, as if the mere citation of this book were sufficient to quash all debate. Somehow More Guns, Less Crime had become an authoritative source on the level of, say, A Critique of Pure Reason or Copernicus or some similar canonical tome. So, it’s interesting to watch as doubt upon doubt about Lott’s methodology and post-publication conduct get piled on in recent weeks. CalPundit has been tracking this pretty well.
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IMAGES OF THE WEEK
Some weeks I have to look around a lot, and think about what interests me, in order to find my Image of the Week; other weeks, though, the choice is obvious. This is a case of the latter, as I pay tribute to two of the finest illustrators of the twentieth century.
Caracaturist Al Hirschfeld, whose work I have admired for years, died this week. He was very prolific, and I doubt very much that there is an American who is completely unfamiliar with his work. I always loved his use of curves and intricate lines, and his willingness to employ white space, as he does here in this drawing of Adolph Ochs, publisher of The New York Times. Of course, the most famous aspect of his work is his concealment in each drawing of his daughter’s name (“Nina”), and I confess that I never encountered a Hirschfeld drawing that I did not scrutinize for the “Nina”‘s. He was a wonderful artist whose work epitomizes the urbane wit that I associate with Broadway and New York.
“I guess it’s okay. The replacement center says he comes from a long line of infantrymen.”
Then there’s Bill Mauldin, who died yesterday.
I’ve been meaning to read Mauldin’s book, Up Front, for several years now; I’ll probably bump it up into the On-Deck circle pretty soon. It’s kind of sad that so often I end up exploring the work of these amazing people once their death puts them in the front of my consciousness. Mauldin’s illustrative work, most famously his single-paneled cartoons depicting the wartime trials and tribulations of “dogface” GIs Willie and Joe, are masterful vignettes that capture the grittiness of life for the front-line soldiers, the concerns they have, and the particular world-view they end up taking when immediate, violent death is an omnipresent possibility. Mauldin’s career didn’t end with the conclusion of the war, though; in fact, he went on to doing political cartoons, eventually winning a Pulitzer in 1959. (It was his second Pulitzer; his first came for Up Front.)
Mauldin’s work is not anti-war, but neither is it pro-war; instead, it’s an unflinching appraisal of the human side of fighting in war.
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Ken Follett isn’t one of my favorite authors, but he’s a guy whose work I will occasionally pick up, as his books — thrillers, mostly — are invariably competently written, with quick-moving plots and decent characters. Generally his works are set amidst the backdrop of historical events, and are much of the time inspired by little-known facets of the histories.
Such is the case with Jackdaws, a thriller set in World War II that involves a team of female saboteurs whose mission is to destroy a secret German telephone exchange in France, thus bollixing Nazi communications as the Allied invasion, rumored but still secret, takes place. Meanwhile, a ruthless Nazi agent who is bent on destroying the French resistance catches wind of something going on, and thus the book alternates between the progress of the all-female team and that of the Nazi agent. It’s a fairly tightly-written book, and I enjoyed it as such. I did have a few complaints: a lot of the “female team” chapters are devoted to the team’s formation, so there isn’t as much action-in-the-field as I would like, and thus the level of actual intrigue in the book is less than I would hope. The main character is a woman named Felicity, which is a fine name; unfortunately, she goes by the nickname “Flick”, which is the name Follett uses almost exclusively in referring to her. “Flick” just isn’t a name that helps cast the spell of a superior intelligence operative. (Imagine if Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca had been named “Clarence”, instead of “Rick”. “Everybody comes to Clarence’s” just doesn’t do it.) And finally, I would have liked to have seen more about the French resistance itself.
The strongest parts of the book, strangely, are the ones focusing on the German agent; he’s the most developed character and the most interesting — which is disturbing, given his skill at torture. He comes up with some means of torture that are fascinating for their psychological impact. It’s not all about bamboo-shoots under the fingernails; he comes up with one way to torture a sweet little old lady that is devilish and monstrous, and it involves never laying a finger upon her.
Jackdaws isn’t the best Ken Follett novel I’ve read, but it’s pretty good.
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I’m not a superstitious person, who thinks that things happen in threes or that one should be wary of patterns that are emergent in certain events.
However, if I were William Goldman I would be a tad nervous right now. Goldman is a prolific screenwriter whose most notable work is the script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Thing is, in the past month the Butch Cassidy director (George Roy Hill), executive producer (Paul Monash) and cinematographer (Conrad Hall) have all died.
As these were behind-the-scenes folks, I think that Paul Newman and Robert Redford can sleep easy. Maybe.
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So, we’re down to this: the Oakland Raiders versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Observations galore:
:: I know that the Buccaneers have been one of the league’s better teams over the last three or four years, but my football-fan “coming of age” was during an era when it was the Bucs who were the standard-bearers for hapless football franchises (much like the Bengals or Cardinals of today); when the proper response to someone saying “I’m a Bucs fan” was “BWAAHAAHAHAHA!!”; when if at the end of the season a Bucs fan said, “Man, we had a great year this year!” you knew that the Bucs had gone 7-9. So, it just feels…weird to me that the Bucs are NFC Champions. Oh well; at least they’re not wearing orange pants anymore.
:: A hearty “Well done!” to Team Geritol, the Oakland Raiders, for their AFC Championship. They managed to shrug off the AFC’s home-field curse to become the first AFC top seed to get to the Super Bowl since the 1998 Broncos, and only the third since the 1993 Bills.
:: Odd symmetry: both starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl XXXVII are former Vikings.
:: My original Super Bowl prediction, cast in cyber-stone back in August, became officially false yesterday when the Eagles lost. I predicted Steelers-Eagles; I got Raiders-Buccaneers. Oh well. At least both of my picks won their divisions, with one exiting the playoffs in the second round and the other in the NFC title game.
:: I started watching the NFC game in the second quarter, when the Eagles were down 17-10. I was shocked, almost from the time I started watching, at the lack of spark they showed. The Buccaneers yesterday looked like a team that wanted to win and get to the Super Bowl; the Eagles just looked like they didn’t want to lose. That, plus their rigid adherence to an overly-conservative game plan, is what I think doomed them.
:: As for the AFC game, the outcome wasn’t really surprising. Tennessee’s plan was “Keep it close and win in the fourth quarter”, but as the game wound on I could see that the Titans simply didn’t have enough gas in the tank to win it in the fourth. Even with the bye week in Round One of the playoffs, the Titans were just too banged up, too hurt, too riddled with injuries to win an AFC title game on the road with a game plan that called for a war of attrition. Hence, exeunt the Titans. (I’ll say this for the Titans: they are a gritty bunch, and Jeff Fisher is, in my opinion, curiously underrated as a head coach.)
:: OK. If grown men can show up at a Raiders game dressed as extras for an Alice Cooper concert, and that’s perfectly normal, then no one gets to laugh at me when I wear my Phantom Menace t-shirt in public. Got it?
My thoughts on the Super Bowl, specifically:
:: History doesn’t seem to favor the Buccaneers, since teams making their first appearance in the Super Bowl have traditionally tended to lose. But, on the flip side, the last team to make its first Super appearance — the 2000 Ravens — won their game, and they happened to ride the same basic modus operandi to their championship: the league’s stingiest and most physical defense, coupled with as unspectacular an offense as you’ll find. (Those Ravens, you’ll recall, had a stretch of something like four games during the 2000 regular season in which they failed to score a single touchdown; but that didn’t matter, since they had a defense that set an NFL record for fewest points allowed.) Recent Super Bowl history offers another reason to favor the Bucs: four of the last five Super Bowl champions (1997 Broncos, 1999 Rams, 2000 Ravens, 2001 Patriots) were teams that, to that point in their franchise history, had never won a Super Bowl before.
:: I’ve been thinking about NFL parity a bit lately, and I have some thoughts on that which will wait for another essay, but I want to note that one effect of parity has been that the Super Bowl — once a traditionally lousy game more notable for the commercials — has become a better sporting event since free agency began and whittled away the last of the old dynasties. Up to Super Bowl XXIX, the average margin of victory was 16.9 points (and, if you take out Super Bowl XXV, in which the Bills lost to the Giants by a single point, that number goes up to 17.4). Since then, the average margin has been 11.4 points. The only real blow-out since then was Super Bowl XXXV, when the Ravens pummeled the Giants 34-7. Two of the last three Super Bowls were decided on the final play (last year’s field goal that made the Patriots the champs of SB XXXVI, and the Rams’ goal-line tackle that kept the Titans from tying SB XXXIV), and a third was decided in the final two minutes (the Broncos’ stop of the Packers as they were driving to tie the game in SB XXXII). Finally, the most competitive Super Bowls have historically been the ones where there was only one week between the Conference Championships and the big game. That’s the case here.
:: We’ll probably hear a lot about the league’s Number One Offense (the Raiders) matching up against the Number One Defense (the Bucs), but I think the reverse may be the key matchup. I think the Bucs defense can contain the Raiders, so if their offense can score — say, twenty points — the Bucs should win.
:: And at last, prediction time. The old adage is “Defense wins championships”, and the Buccaneers have the defense. I expect a surprisingly low-scoring game, decided by less than ten points — and I expect that, when the clock ticks to zero in the fourth quarter, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Unless, of course, the NFL comes to its senses and lets the Steelers and Eagles play the game.