Category: Ramblings

PW asks: Where are the Badly Behaved Writers?

I answer, this is a good place to start looking.

The article, written by asks a simple question: why have writers cleaned up their acts?

First off, let’s start with something. We haven’t. Not really. I’ve been to plenty of writer workshops and conventions, gotten loud, drunk and / or obnoxious with plenty of writers, poets, and editors. I’ve seen famous authors tramp around cross dressed, I’ve had to distract hotel security while parties were disbanded. I’ve had to search college grounds for hours for a fellow passed out poet.

Writers haven’t changed. Not really. Something else has changed, something has risen up which the author, Ms Amy Shearn, tries to get to, but doesn’t seem to find is, it is not the writers, but the business, the entity the THING that is publication has changed.

I dare say a lot of Bukowskis and Keroacs are being left forgotten in this climate. The Gonzo journalists and the over the top playwrites are side stages and personal blogs. What has happened is that the publishers aren’t taking those risks anymore.

Frankly, there is no reason too. Just like big music signing 10 small bands in hopes that two make it, why not just publish 10 unknown authors? Quantity over quality. Does that happen all the time? I have no idea, I am outside, unpublished. I have an advantage though, writing is not my job. Will it be one day? I can hope, yes?

At some point the greatness of an artist can overshadow their bad behavior. But at the same time, an artist’s bad behavior can very easily overshadow their art. In the business of making money, great art doesn’t really amount to anything. It is great sales that are important. If you are selling better than your behavior, or your behavior is contributing to your sales, then carry on. Otherwise…

Add on to all of this the propagation of blogs, micro-press, online publication, even Twitter and Facebook. No longer are books the only way a creative piece can get out. The issue with this is that no longer are people just buying books to find stories. You can be entertained instantly online.

So what has changed? There is more content. BIG publishers expect you to be well behaved (as Ms Shearn asks, are you TV presentable?) and more importantly, they expect you to produce. The audience has been distracted by the internet. Hold on, gotta check facebook.

Back.

Produce? Sure. Behave? Why? If I can’t make a living as a writer anyway (as many professionals have told me) then why clean up my act? (my act is no Chinaski, btw, but I have considered it before. Sometimes you get in a scrappin’ mood, you know? Except a poet gets into a scrappin’ mood and runs home to write about it rather than actually, you know, scrap.) And I would not be the only writer out there causing a ruckus, drinking until late hours.

So where are all the badly behaved writers? They are out there Ms Shearn, I promise you. Behaving badly probably as I type this.

But then again, if this bar didn’t have WiFi, I’d be doing something else.

P.S. As a postscript I’d like to talk to all the boring life writers out there. Go out and live. Seriously. Do you have to drink and party and sleep with strangers? Only near me. Go live. Hike. Travel. Learn and instrument. Dance with strangers. Stop and smell the flowers. Plant the flowers, and some vegetables. Learn about something hard, like calculus or the history of rope. Go to Horror conventions (see point number one). Live. Live. Live. Otherwise you’ll find yourself lost and writing about writing. Live, experience things.

The Mac Taketh Away, but Giveth Back (Almost)

Nothing is perfect. Not even my Macbook Pro. Yes, I know, that is hard to believe. It has taken me several hours to just get used to the idea.

I got a music CD for Valentine’s. I put it in to rip it. The CD spins a few times and then ejects. WHen this happens, it gets a huge straight scratch along one side.

Now I already do not like or trust slot loading CD/DVD players in computers. Even in my Mac it seems to be the cheapest part of the who thing. My car, my Wii both have the same technology, but seem to excel where the Mac just barely meets standard.

Ok, so my CD has this huge scratch, which will not just wipe off. It skips in the player now. And I am not too happy.

So I put it back in, put ‘error correction on’ and started the import. what I got was better than nothing, but not perfect.

Tracks 1-4 were hit the hardest, and are not all there. The rest, however, was imported flawlessly. So iTunes was able to save 60% of what the slot loader took from me.

Not back. Not good, but not bad.

the CD is great, btw.

The Culture of the Book

From an interview with Larry Mc with Chronicle books editor Fritz Lanham:

Q: What will you talk about at Rice?
A: The end of the culture of the book. I’m pessimistic. Mainly it’s the flow of people into my bookshop in Archer City. They’re almost always people over 40.

I don’t see kids, and I don’t see kids reading. I think little kids love to have stories read to them, but when they get to 10 or 11 or 12, they run into this tsunami of technology: iPod, iPhone, Blackberries.

They don’t resist it, and it’s normal that they wouldn’t; it’s their culture. I’m not so sure they ever come back to reading. Some will, but most won’t.

My comments and thoughts:

Book culture’? When was that? When was this mystical time period that human beings read?

Since the invention of writing, it has been an exclusionary thing. Then comes gutenberg, makes it so the mass can get books, right?

Right?

So they get excited, sometimes. (Harry Potter, I am looking at you) Still books are seen as a ‘learnin’ thing. The average person was not so much a reader. Bible? On Sunday?

Sure.

And yes, there were riots for Dickens novels, there was the unprecidented popularity of Jack London, all the way through the Beats getting challenged on the first amendment all the way to the Supreme Court.

But in the end, you would never fill a stadium for a poetry reading. As a culture, books have always been in the back ground behind things like movies, TV, sports.

College kids read. Dorky kids read. Smart people read. See what I mean?

So are we reading less? Ask JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer. Indeed I would say that now we are reading more than we ever were. That now, today, we as a species are producing, distributing and reading more works of prose/poetry/non-fiction due to the internet, due to print on demand, due many things.

So maybe we aren’t all sitting around reading high literature all day, but keep in mind, most of ‘high literature’ at the time was just pop culture (I’m looking at you Shakespeare).

End of the book culture? I don’t think so.