Musing

I often read columns on the Poynter Institute website, among them “Chip On My Shoulder: Inspiration & practical advice from Chip Scanlan, other writing coaches & fellow journalists” Chip’s latest column is about blogging and he has enumerated seven reasons why he does it. I, too, like the freedom and diversity. And yes, it is also a great marketing device. But I think one must resist the urge to sell too much, too often, too hard, especially with respect to one’s own wares. Connecting readers to the wares of others, however, is one of the best things about blogs, at least to me as a blog reader.

The pressure to post daily (at least weekdays) can be a bit intense, and it has proven to be a double-edged sword for me. The downside is the pressure itself, which sometimes seems to freeze my brain. But the upside wins out: I am writing more, composing faster, and seeing some improvement in my own skills. Chip’s point about lower standards is also well-taken, providing you read the whole paragraph; he’s not saying that freedom = immunity.

The scariest line in his piece is this:

“Like most writers, I harbor the dream that an agent or publisher may see commercial possibilities in my work.”

If he, who I look up to and believe to be “successful” already, is hoping to be discovered, what chance is there for me? I might as well hang it up, pack it in, and move on down the line. Not that I would (hang it up, that is), I’m way too stubborn.

P.S. Chip’s blog is called The Mechanic and The Muse.

The Publisher Made Me Do It

From time to time writers discuss the veracity or reliability of quotes in books that were co-written or ghost-written, and even those in newspaper and magazine features. Did the subject actually say the words as printed on the page? What are the ethical considerations and boundaries for handling quotes. Academics and historians, in their quest for primary source material, find it shocking that some writers have no problem putting words in the mouths of their subjects. I know writers who will tell you that it is a common practice in the world of journalism. It is not a practice that I endorse, but there may be some murky areas. In light of the ongoing Frey fallout, my experience with the writing and publishing of “Men Women, and Girl Singers” seems timely all over again.

When wearing my journalist’s hat, my allegiance is to the reader. I will put quotation marks only around a subject’s actual words. Yes, I edit out the “ums,” but if they have trouble stringing a sentence together then I’m forced to paraphrase and weave in quotable descriptive clauses whenever possible. However, this is not the stance I took when writing John’s life story. Why? Because journalism and nonfiction are different entities; all journalism may be nonfiction (one hopes), but not all nonfiction meets the requirements of journalism. And ghost-writing is even further removed. If I were to stand in the shoes of a ghost-writer, I think my allegiance would have to be to the subject, using my skills to achieve his or her desired goals, provided those goals did not include an intentional distortion of the truth.

My experience writing John’s story is a little strange, in that I do not feel that it was ghosted in the usual way. Still, in the end, it is perceived to be John’s autobiography. In the early 1980s, after John and I first discussed the idea of a book, it became quickly apparent that he was not comfortable being interviewed, by me or anyone else. He is simply uncomfortable in the spotlight. I did make a few early tapes, getting him to reminisce with friends, but such talks yielded little. As any writer can tell you, lengthy passages of verbatim transcriptions of spoken prose don’t hold up in print.

I did do a lot of interviews with other people, and then the files sat in boxes for several years. By the time I came back to the project, John and I had been together for many years; I not only knew the stories, but I also knew and understood his thoughts and feelings about people and events. I decided to write the book “in John’s voice,” using first person point-of-view as a literary device. John read the manuscript when it was finished, and he requested a handful of changes and corrections. The cover page of the original manuscript read: “Men, Women, and Girl Singers: John Levy’s Life as a Musician Turned Talent Manager” by Devra Hall. It was a biography, not an autobiography.

For better or worse, the publisher accepted the manuscript on the condition that it be marketed as an autobiography. So together we added a one-page Preface in which John endorses the content, but says clearly that the words are not his. I know that this will not stop people from “quoting John,” and that bothers me, but only from an academic standpoint in that he did not actually “say” those words. On the other hand, and it may be ironic, the best compliments I received for this book were from people who really know John well, and say “it sounds just like him.”

As a reader, I prefer to judge each book in light of what I perceive to be the contract proffered by the author(s) — I appreciate prefaces or author’s notes that describe the process and explain what liberties, if any, were taken in creating work. A certain amount of responsibility then rests with the reader, who hopefully will be aided by knowledgeable reviewers and critics.

Against the Tide

“The American public is incredibly demanding in the diversity of books it seeks. The big publishers couldn’t possibly fulfill those wishes, so the small presses collectively fuel the industry with their breadth and passion.”

So says George Gibson, president of Walker Books and consultant to the Mellon Foundation and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, in an article commissioned by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. In that same article (“Independent Presses and ‘Little’ Magazines in American Culture”) writer Gayle Feldman also quotes past NEA Director of Literature Cliff Becker:

“it becomes more and more important to American culture that there are these alternatives for literature, that there is a structure to combat the potential short-term myopia of the marketplace.”

Is it myopia or greed that drives the marketplace? My guess is greed-induced myopia.

I hope that the little guys — the alternatives — can stay afloat. I spent all day today working on a grant proposal, looking for some philanthropic funds to support worthy stories. I know I’m being a bit vague, but if and when I have some good news I promise to spill all the details.

Jump From Frying Pan Directly Into Fire…

So I correct one mistake and make two more, kind of like taking a step forward and two backward. Geez.

I was just about to close up shop for the weekend when I heared from Just Muttering. My friend who wrote in correcting me did so with “love and laughter” and not in the spirit of perfectionism, but I agree with JM’s philosophy so I am happy to give her the last word:

Although I am a perfectionist, I am trying to get over it and be able to explore thoughts and expression with greater freedom. In particular, I feel that blogs aren’t published for posterity – although they are, in some sense – and that we should suspend some of our extreme critical criticism therefor (which is one of my favorite not-misspelled words). I guess some people live in grass (yes, I mean grass because they don’t break) houses since they can spell “grievous” wrong (or perhaps even say it wrong – eek) but freak out about “mia”. Maybe Mia Farrow had dome something. Shall readers point out every missing word in everyone’s posts (you “blogged bright early” but probably meant you blogged bright *and* early, and the note was undoubtedly “sent by one of [my/your] best friends”). We are all, sadly, regretably, lamentably, human. When someone can show me that perfectionists are more caring and kind human beings than mistake-makers, I’ll let myself care about these things again. Our lives are too short and kindness all too rare….

Haste Makes Waste, But It Was Mia’s Fault

I was in a hurry yesterday morning — it was 9:13 and my appointment was at 9:20 — so with one foot out the door, I clicked on the Publish button that posted my blog entry for all to see. I had that vague gnawing sense that something was not quite right, but there was no time to think. Off I zoomed while self-administering a quick pat on the back for having blogged bright early. The day was full and fruitful, and I never got a chance to check my email until late evening. Here’s a note sent by one of best friends (and the only message I received on this subject):

Please consider my correction of your blog’s headline as honoring the (holy smokes!) spirit of former Vice President Dan Quayle. Mr. Quayle is appropriately disrespected partly for his inability to speak “Latin” in Latin America.

Those of us who grew up Roman Catholic may have a slight advantage when it comes to recognizing famous Latin phrases…but I think the phrase you were praying for was “mea culpa,” not “Mia culpa.” The salient difference is whether you were claiming that “it’s my fault” or “it’s Mia’s fault.”

I don’t know whether Mia is a regular subscriber to your blog or not, but you have to be careful about throwing around unsubstantiated accusations these days. Well, unless you work for a network news department.

Your replacement headline should be, by all rights, “mea maxima culpa,” I think. Not having a Latin dictionary on your bookshelf is indeed a most grevious [sic] error.

Actually, more grievous is having a dictionary and not using it. Double oops.

I hope that Mia is not feeling litigious. As for the rest of you, I pray that you will forgive me too.

Mia Culpa

I remember vividly the day I got caught. It was during my first residency for my MFA in Creative Nonfiction. There I was, in my dorm room at Goucher College, arguing the finer points of narrative arcs and story complications and turning points, when my girlfriend, no doubt looking for a fine example to make her point, reached over, picked up a paperback book from the floor near my bed, and shrieked: “How could you?!” My deep dark secret had been discovered – I liked to fall asleep reading “junk,” a/k/a dime-store novels or what some might call trashy novels, certainly nothing that qualifies as Literature and therefore not something that requires I pay much attention or recollect anything when I’m done. In fact, I remembered so little of these “quick reads” that too-often I purchased one only to find after the first chapter that I’d read it before.

OK, maybe I’m taking a little Frey-sian license here, as my memory of this event is not all that vivid – I do not remember which book she discovered, or even who the author was (maybe Nora Roberts? I know it wan’t Danielle Steele). I’m not even sure that she shrieked, although I am positive that she never let me forget about it…even to this day.

So what brings on this memory this morning? It’s Janet Maslin’s review in The New York Times, juxtaposing new books by Joann Harris (“Gentlemen & Players”) and Jackie Collins (“Lovers & Players). “In Playgrounds Tweedy or Seedy, It’s All in the Game” (the article’s title) Maslin says “gamesmanship may be sexier than any of the above”, where any of the above refers to such things as booty, politicking and name-dropping.

I read one of Harris’ books, “Chocolat,” and liked it (I also liked the movie), so I may well read this new one. I stopped reading Collins awhile back, so I’ll pass on her latest. But don’t get the wrong idea about me. I’m no more high-brow today than I was back then, it’s just that I traded in the bed-time paperbacks for one-hour tv-dramas, feeding my current addiction with CSI, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, Numbers, and, on the lighter side, Grey’s Anatomy.

Factually

I have been silent thus far regarding the Frey flap. You know I abhor liars who perpetrate their untruths upon unsuspecting readers. Frey is not alone in his guilt; I rather suspect that the agent and/or publisher may well have been complicit in this little duplicity as well. (“Did Nan Talese Lie to Oprah?” and “Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly”) Plain and simple: today, memoirs sell better than novels. And there is always the convenience of blurred or selective memory, alternate realities where no two people see the same thing the same way, yadda yadda yadda. Convenient, of course, because there is some truth to it. In his autobiography, All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life, Loren Eiseley wrote:

In all the questioning about what makes a writer, and especially perhaps the personal essayist, I have seen little of reference to this fact; namely, that the brain has become a kind of unseen artist’s loft. There are pictures that hang askew, pictures with outlines barely chalked in, pictures torn, pictures, the artist has striven unsuccessfully to erase, pictures that only emerge and glow in a certain light. They have all been teleported, stolen, as it were, out of time. They represent no longer the sequential flow of ordinary memory. They can be pulled about on easels, examined within the mind itself. The act is not one of total recall like that of the professional mnemonist. Rather it is the use of the things extracted from their context in such a way that they have become the unique possession of a single life. The writer sees back to these transports alone, bare, perhaps few in number, but endowed with a symbolic life. He cannot obliterate them. He can only drag them about, magnify or reduce them as his artistic sense dictates, or juxtapose them in order to enhance a pattern. One thing he cannot do. He cannot destroy what will not be destroyed; he cannot determine in advance what will enter his mind.

Okay, but back to Frey — basic facts that one has not forgotten, like the length of one’s stay in a jail cell, or the method by which someone you know committed suicide (it’s hard to confuse a cutting with a hanging), should remain factual…unless you tell us it’s fiction. And no, you can’t hide under the covers of “creative nonfiction” either. The Writer magazine ran a piece titled “The Ethics of Creative Nonfiction” (December 2005) in which they interviewed ethicist Bruce Weinstein, Ph.D. — here’s a snippet of what he had to say:

The term ‘memoir’ should be applied only to works that reflect the truth as best as the author can find it. This is not to suggest, of course, that it is impermissible to change the names of real people for the sake of protecting their identity; this may not only be ethically permissible but obligatory. What should be out of bounds, however, is intentionally leading the reader to believe that something happened that did not (or its converse).

Pardon me, folks, but isn’t this common sense? Common courtesy? Common decency?