The First Rough Draft of History

Yesterday I was reading the New York Times when a correction caught my eye. It was for errors made in an obituary. An obituary for Lt. M. K. Schwenk. They got his first name wrong (Milton, not Melton) and a few other facts in the original were in error.  So the newspaper's editors dutifully published a correction.

One hundred and twelve (112) years after the fact.

"It's never too late to set the record straight. If journalism is indeed the first rough draft of history, there is always time to revise, polish and perfect..."
James Barron
Writing in the New York Times

The story is worth tracking down (or you can click the link above) if only because Barron goes on to tell the story of how difficult something that seemed on the face of it to be a relatively simple task. To verify and correct the historical record about a man who lived and died at the end of the 19th century. To "revise, polish and perfect" the story as it will be recorded for posterity.

Just a reminder if we need one that those things that go unwritten go unremembered.
 

Does the iPad Free Us from the Tyranny of Creation?

or: Is the iPad Really the Evolution of the Personal Computer or Is It the Advent of a More Interactive TV Set?

As you all know by now, I'm sort of a tech guy.  Not in the sense that I have to own every new wireless widget to come down the pike.  Far from it, in fact. But I make it my business to know what's going on so I can have an informed opinion on exactly how it's sucking the souls out of our lives...

Of course, I'm just kidding.  (Sort of.)

So over the weekend, the age of the iPad dawned . . . on the 150th anniversary of the Pony Express.  (I don't know that this is significant, but it's worth noting all the same.)  And as usual, I think the press surrounding the thing missed the real story.

This morning's story on NPR made the iPad sound like the death knell of the free internet.  The spark that sets alight a million free-content websites.  As the masses swarm to the "gated community" afforded by Apple's restrictive content controls and the industry adopts its usual posture of chasing Apple... where does that leave us?

That depends upon how you view media.  In other words, are you a creator or a consumer?  Let's face it, Lev Grossman's assessment of the iPad in this Time Magazine article is pretty dead-on: the iPad is purpose-built for consumption of media, not the creation of media.

I take exception to all the many articles and news stories (seriously, could there be more hype?) that call it the evolution of the laptop computer, or even the "end" of the laptop.  This is just a platform for delivery, as many people describe it it's basically just an enormous iPod Touch.  In my view it's the newest incarnation of the television or radio, not the latest evolution of the laptop.  You've spent your entire life with such devices and Apple's new device just makes the things interactive.  I don't know a single author, blogger or other sort of "content creator" (as we are now called) that is ditching his or her Macbook or PC in favor of the iPad.

Why?  Because typing on a big sheet of glass that won't or can't multitask sucks.

But I think that's just fine.  Seriously, there's not a darn thing wrong with that.  Why?  Because without consumers, what are we creating content for?  Whether it's a more interactive e-reader or a delivery system for cleaner HD NetFlix downloads or just a way to read the digital newspaper, this device isn't a disruptive technology.  Far from it.  NPR is right, this is a device that harkens back to the era of hardcopy, a chance to preserve the old paradigm of "We create, you read" that has seen us through the centuries since before Gutenberg went out and MacGyvered a winepress and started printing Bibles.

I know a lot of people see the wild and woolly, freewheeling internet as the height of human social development.  Those are generally the same people who complain about all the "clueless n00bs" clogging the pipeline and generally getting in their way.  The wild west is great as long as you're one of the gunslingers, but all those pesky civilians just get in the way.

The simple fact is, there are too many content creators already.   Andre Codrescue once warned that we are a nation of exhibitionists that is running desperately short of voyeurs.  The iPad is tailor-made for voyeurs.  (As long as the exhibitionist isn't using Flash) and I say more power to it.  The iPad gives content creators the chance to create content and it relieves those who would rather consume than create relief from the tyranny of that keyboard that seems to haunt far too many with the imaginary onus to do something with it.

I posit that there are those in the world who shouldn't have a keyboard handy.  I'm sorry if that sounds elitest or not at all the PC thing to say (pun intended) but there are simply too many people who feel that they HAVE to tell their story and get out there only to find that they don't actually have a story to tell.  These are the people who Tweet their every bowel movement.

The iPad is a gated community.  It takes away the keyboard, along with its implicit exhortation to type something even if you don't have anything to type, and it restricts what you can view to Apple-approved content.  With all the constraints that Apple puts on their devices, don't be surprised if the Federal Trace Commission eventually tells them to knock it off.  The things they got away with when their market share was too small to create waves that way will eventually get them in trouble just as it did Microsoft.

But in the meantime, I think this device is going to ultimately clear the pipeline of a lot of people who would rather not have the QWERTY keyboard staring them in the face, tempting them with all the banality they can Tweet about.  The iPad creates audiences and if you're one of the exhibitionists... more voyeurs is good.

Anyway, this sense of the iPad as either the beginning or end of something new and frightening is nonsensical.  We've had gated communities on the internet before or have we forgotten AOL?

Spring Cleaning (Or Not...)

So, I read the New York Times almost every morning as part of my daily ritual of going through the rooms and corridors of my brain, flipping switches and powering-up the machinery.  (There's also some coffee involved.)  And sometimes I don't like what I read.  Sometimes it forces me to think about stuff I'd just as soon ignore.

The problem with "thinking too much" (a fault I've often been accused of) is that sometimes you think about something awful, something you never EVER want to think about.  And the friggin New York Times has a reputation for 'asking those tough questions' which often translates into 'making us think about the things we want to ignore'.

And now those rotten jerks did it again.  I've tried to ignore the story but it keeps cropping up in the lower corner.  They. Just.  Won't.  Let. It.  Rest.

Well, it's Easter morning and one of the rites of spring is supposed to be cleaning and getting your house in order.  So I guess it's high time I dealt with this uncomfortable subject.  Confronted those shadowy corners of my subconscious...

Those jerks at the New York Times posited that one might actually want to... much less actually have to... (deep breath) occasionally get rid of some books.  Those sick, awful journalists asked a bunch of authors about culling their personal libraries and what books they absolutely could not part with.

The horror!

So in the event of a library fire -- assuming the safety of loved ones, pets, irreplaceable antiques, photos and the family Bible -- what do you grab on the way out the door?

I suppose that it would too ironic to grab A Gentle Madness, Nicholas Basbanes ode to book collecting, or Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, though I re-read both of them all the time.  I have some signed first editions that would not be so easily replaced and some children's books both antique and modern that I adore and someday hope to share.  Poe and Tolkien and Conan Doyle all have their place on the tops of my lists as do the more modern voices of Zalazny, Chabon, Eggers, Newson, Lehane and Gaiman...  but any of those could still be replaced at your local bookstore.

The book that taught me most has to have been my Complete Works of William Shakespeare. No library should be considered complete without it and there is precious little about storytelling that you cannot learn from those hallowed pages.  But my Riverside Shakespeare can be replaced at any used bookstore and anyway, it's too easy.

And by the bye, anyone who tops their desert island list with Robinson Caruso should be horsewhipped on principle (I'm sure Defoe would back me on that).  Anyone who doesn't top that list with a stack of survival guides probably isn't going to live long enough to sit back and enjoy reading Ulysses while sipping homemade rum from a hollow coconut.

So what would I grab?  Doesn't my hypothetical library have a fire extinguisher?

Maybe a better way to tackle this is the way they did, as a meditation on spring cleaning.  What books could I - at least theoretically - do without?

The home improvement books would free up a shelf or two and in digital formats dictionaries are easier to handle, if less satisfying on a tactile level.  I have a lot of detective novels and miscellaneous paperbacks that I'll probably never read again.  My wife and I have been going through those and slowly donating them or shipping them off to good homes where they'll have a second life.

No.  I give up.  This is too hard.
Bring me a fire extinguisher and call the fire brigade, I'm going in...

Books We Can't Part With

Published: December 27, 2009

Six authors read favorite passages from books they would never discard. What would you throw out and what you would keep?

Mightier than the sword...

Start by reading this short post in the New York Times sent to me by my friend Denny:  
Why Handwriting is History
http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/why-handwriting-is-history/?partner=rss&emc=rss

This is today's "Big Idea"? Handwriting is dead, long live the Blackberry! Stop teaching kids to write things by hand, man, that crap's old hat. Teaching handwriting skills is clinging to a romantic and Luddite notion of things best allowed to die. “Thus for monks, print was capricious and script reliable..." and all attachment to handwriting is romantic nonsense. Sentimentality that just slows us down, impedes our thoughts.

Next you'll tell me that painting is "dead" because the sable brush is inferior to the brush tool in Adobe Illustrator.

To begin with, I can only assume that the scholar being quoted knows that the monks purported distrust of the printing press is is much the same as auto workers distrust of robots. It's not about sentimental attachment or reliability, it's about being replaced by a machine. Gutenberg's press was the death knell of the monastic scriptorium. The printing press turned books from a rich man's plaything into an exchange of ideas accessible to the burgeoning middle class.

I'm sure that on the level of the scribes themselves, there was a great deal of sniffing about how fast a Bible could be produced debasing the meditative act of carefully crafting each page, etcetera. But on the macro level, the ecclesiastic objections to the printing press wasn't about speed or a misplaced sentimentality about handwriting, it was mostly about losing their monopoly on the transmission of ideas. It was about a loss of control.

Speed wasn't the enemy of the scribe. Shorthand has been around as long as writing itself. It seems that no sooner was the first alphabet codified than some jerk was figuring out a way to make it quicker. Formal texts have always been beautiful creations just as the books on the shelves behind me bear little semblance to the notebooks of the writers that created them. The workaday writings of the early scribes were likewise utilitarian in nature. Early scribes used wax tablets as notebooks because the wax could be 'erased' by rubbing out the marks. Cuneiform arose out of a need to create account books and receipts. The mental image of writing as a mystical act played into the power dynamics of the Babylonians and Egyptians and on down through the ages to the advent of Gutenberg's press. But in truth, it was a largely utilitarian affair. Carolingian court documents are almost illegible because each monk had his own peculiar blend of ligature, ideogram and symbol to get him from the top of the page to the bottom. Medieval monks weren't nearly so prissy about scripts as the article implies. They weren't skeptical of speed, they were skeptical about the idea of teaching the common people to read and write at all. To say otherwise is to betray an ignorance of history or far worse in my mind, to be misrepresenting history in hopes no one will notice.

As a rule, I hate sweeping generalizations. Many notable writers today (including the futurist Neal Stephenson, mind you) hand-write entire manuscripts before they're ever committed to a computer. Dismissing the practice as worthless sentimentality is absurd. The faster road is not inherently superior to the slower. Cormac McCarthy chooses to write his award-winning novels on a typewriter. There's something that happens in the writing process that binds the creator with his or her work, and making any sweeping claim that one method of creation is better than all others just because it's newer and faster is an unsupportable thesis. And the idea that transmission of thought into text should never slow you down ignores the fact that this is part of its function and benefit. The additional conceit that teaching legibility is somehow wrong is also anathema to me.

Nevertheless, I say you should write your stories on a Blackberry, typing with your thumbs, or carve it into a clay tablet or scribble it in a Moleskine with a pencil or type it in the usual fashion on typewriter or laptop as most of us do. If you're creating words from electrical impulses jumping around your cerebrum, no one gets to tell that you are doing it wrong. The writing should never be an obstacle to expression of ideas. That much we agree on. But likewise it should not be an obstacle to understanding the idea. Any thought that is encoded in illegible gibberish will be an idea wasted. Legibility at a faster rate -- that was what Parker wanted for his students. Typing can give us that. But to cease teaching handwriting altogether is to remove a valuable tool from the table, and that we should never do.

We should learn from the artists who may add tools without taking the old ones away. Pens, pencils, brushes, palette knives, fingertips, pastels, charcoal and even the brush tool on their computer's drawing program are equally valuable as they search for the one that best suits their personal expression. No one is inherently better than the other and the artist who uses canvas and brush is not a romantic sentimentalist, inferior to the computer animator. Whatever tool you choose, wield it wisely and well. And if you get a chance, use it to poke people who tell you it's just so much romantic nonsense.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of historical suspense. His current novel is The Palimpsest and is working on a new project tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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Mugshots

About a month ago, I started a ritual of posting a picture every morning of my morning coffee ritual. Similar to the "Project 365" meme, this is very specific. If you want to share a cup of coffee with me on any given morning, join me on Daily Booth and post your photo response. (Free membership required, instructions for posting on the site) I love the idea that the internet can join us all in a global kaffeeklatsch. There are very few problems that cannot be solved over a steaming mug of Joe. If nothing else, these little rituals help get a writer through his day... This morning's Mugshot (And PSA) Writing causes wrinkles. They never tell you that in school, so consider this my PSA. Beware the wrinkles of writers! Had a dear frind of mine who happens to be a photographer tell me once that it was "okay for guys to look craggy" in our publicity photos. Love it. (Good thing too.) In other news, the New York Times validated my lifelong approach to education: NYT - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules

Three presenters at the PNWA conference last weekend told us to go look up Elmore Leonard's column from the New York Times's late and sadly discontinued "Writers On Writing..." feature. So here it is for everyone, some of the best, most succinct advice I've ever seen on writing great fiction. (For copyright reasons, you'll have to click the link to read the whole thing)

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle
By Elmore Leonard

Published: July 16, 2001

"These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over..."

Hooptedoodle. You have to love any headline with "Hooptedoodle" in it.

If you're curious about the rest, you can read some of what he left out (because 13 rules didn't sound as cool, I guess) at his blog: ElmoreLeonard.com or in his book on writing also called Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules on Writing. (Sadly, the hooptedoodle was apparently left out of the book.)  

Caveat lector! Something I think about this every time I recommend a book on writing, whether it's Larry Block or Anne Lamotte or Stephen King. Reading about writing doesn't make you a writer, writing makes you a writer. There's a point where you have to stop reading books (or blogs) about how to write and actually sit down to do it.

---

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of humor & suspense. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.   Email: swalkerperkins@gmail.com

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Frank McCourt in memorium

Lawrence Block said it best: "It's not enough to be a genius Arnold, you have to be a genius at something." Yesterday, we lost a man who was truly a genius at something... he was one of those gifted souls for whom the English language sang a special song, for whom the alphabet danced like notes in a score. Writer, educator, wordsmith, Pulitzer Prizewinning writer of unforgettable memoirs and a master of his craft: Francis "Frank" McCourt died Sunday in a Manhattan hospice, reportedly of complications from Meningitis. Beginning with the harrowing tale of his coming of age in Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt killed us slowly and then revived us one-by-one. Breathed life into his past and through the eyes of his upbringing, shed new light into dark places. McCourt worked as a New York City school teacher for thirty years, eventually ending up at the famed Stuyvesant High where he taught English and eventually Creative Writing. In an April 2002 Op Ed in the New York Times, McCourt spoke eloquently of dragging these kids out of their middle-class stupor and into a world of stories. A world where everyone has a story to tell, no matter their background...

"I assured them that ''Once upon a time'' was good enough for the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault and even James Joyce. My students resisted. They were comfortable and middle class and everything was programmed and they were in this school because they were strong in science and mathematics. They would graduate from high school to the best universities and have no adventures because that's the way it was with their families. They had no stories to tell, and in their lives there was no once upon a time. They envied me my miserable Irish childhood and wished (almost) they could be poor so they'd have something to write about." -Frank McCourt New York Times 14 April 2002

I don't know how many of my readers are McCourt fans or how many fully realize the loss that our culture suffered yesterday with his passing. He was every bit the storyteller that Updike was, just in a different vein and a unique context all his own. I spent some time last night trolling through my books and the collected 'wisdom' of the Internet, looking for some exemplar of his talent, some tidbit of writing that I could point you to that would give you the measure of this man's genius with the language. I decided that you need to read all of it to really get the measure of him. However, you could do a lot worse than reading that 2002 New York Times Op/Ed I mentioned earlier. If brevity truly is "the soul of wit" as the Bard tells us, then this is proof. In the abbreviated eloquence required by the medium, McCourt lays out his educational philosophy, his wonder at how students inform the teacher and how to tell stories. Any story. If all else fails, tell a story about last night's chicken. Just tell your story. Thank you Mr. McCourt. For your words, for the thirty years you gave to the education of young minds. And thank you for the glimpse inside your life that you showed us, for reminding us that even the most deplorable of basic circumstances can be overcome.

"The last thing a writer needs is answers -- the end of thought and the dream. [...] Where are the dreams and fantasies of childhood? The heads of adolescents are clogged with media images and sounds. The teacher, then, is the Knight or Fair Maid of the Imagination and the battle lines are drawn. Pull the plug, cut off the juice, let the batteries die. Just sit there and dream. And when in doubt, tell a story." - Frank McCourt "REFLECTIONS ON CREATIVE WRITING CLASS: THE TEACHER; How to confront 30,000 words a week of teenage angst and ecstasy." Editorial. New York Times 14 Apr. 2002. 20 July 2009

They're on to us!!!

Red Alert! Red Alert! Red Alert!!

Our spies at the New York Times are reporting that the jock-strap crowd is finally catching on to our secret weapon!

It's almost nice to see that someone is finally noticing something writers, academics & philosophers (you know... nerds) have known for centuries. Think the introduction of coffee corresponding with the advent of the enlightenment was a coincidence?

Oh, I forgot. The (thoroughly caffeinated) nerds are the ones assigned to keep track of that kind of thing. We can make you stronger, faster, better than ever before! We have the tools, we have the technology... we have the espresso machines. Steve Austin wasn't really bionic. We just patched him up, handed him a Starbucks Card and sent him on his way, pocketing a cool ten million (minus the cost of bandaids and Steve''s Latte addiction).

Who knows where this epiphany might lead? The International Olympic Committee needs to hurry up and ban this "newly-discovered" performance-enhancing drug before all of our star athletes are sitting around in cafes, drinking lattes, talking and generally trying to make actual, measurable contributions to society.