Aspiring novelist Alix Christies wrote something recently that sounded a lot like the description for this blog:
"We live in a time of extraordinay openness, when anyone with an internet connection can publish. Everytime I go online or step into a bookstore, I am overcome by this tsunami of freshly published words. This torrent of expression inevitably provokes existentialism in a writer. What makes any of us think we have something to say that others need to read?"
Her article, published in Intelligent Life, is titled "We Ten Million," referring to the number people in the world (by her estimate) who right now are working on novels they will submit for publication this year. Only 250,000 or so will succeed.
This week I listened to an interesting interview on a related theme, by the way. Laura Miller of Salon.com was criticizing National Novel Writing Month (ever heard of it?) on a show called Q (an excellent program, BTW) on CBC radio. NaNoWriMo, as it's known, encourages people to complete a novel, of whatever quality, in 30 days. Some 165,000 participated last year. Miller thinks this is a waste, given the fact that studies show that as many as a half of Americans last year read less than one book for pleasure. Eighty-two percent, meanwhile, said they wanted to write a book some day.
On the show's website, articulate listeners (writers, no doubt) responded to the interview in opposite ways. Some agreed with Ms. Miller while others said, "anything getting young people to write instead of play video games, etc., is good." Check out the discussion thread or listen to the interview here. To read Laura Miller's original article on this topic, go here.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
The Daily Beast and Newsweek merge and why writers should care
I was alerted to this story when clicking on the latest column by David Brooks. (He writes for the New York Times as well as appearing as a regular commentator, along with Mark Shields, on the PBS News Hour. Brooks and Shields debate issues with logic and civility, providing an alternative to the great number of media boors who daily shout their heads off at one another to great applause.)
First I must confess that I didn't quite know what The Daily Beast (warning: some material on their website is not what I would call "edifying") was. Wikipedia tells me it's an online clearinghouse providing links to news, feature, and opinion items as well as having original content. The writers are top notch as is the editor, Tina Brown, who used to run The New Yorker. Newsweek I knew as a boy, though I've not looked at it much lately. Our family subscribed to it and I used to pore over it from junior high school onwards, enjoying well-written pieces on a range of topics.
Anyhow, it seems both Newsweek and The Daily Beast have become huge money losers but recently decided to join forces. For starters, if you go to newsweek.com from now on, or soon, you'll be directed to The Daily Beast. Most commentators, it appears, think this merger is a dumb idea and bound to fail, but Brooks sees it differently. Brooks, I find, tends to think outside the box more than most and believes the venture may have a chance. Referring to 19th century intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson (apologizing, as it were, for doing so, realizing how irrelevant most Americans would find any reference before, say,1980) Brooks presents the philosophy behind magazines like Newsweek when they were founded. Emerson thought people in a democracy should know about the great western cultural tradition and it was not unusual for ordinary people--butchers, bakers, etc.--in those days to own and read the classics. The original Newsweek, Brooks thinks, followed that belief in the need for a "liberal education" (in the old sense of the term) by dealing with high art, science, and literature as well as politics and train wrecks.
Such breadth of coverage lost favor in recent decades and gradually was replaced by a concentration on "news you can use," or news to amuse: stuff designed to boost our egos along with videos of people running into walls on bicycles and the like. (This is an extremely broad brush summary, a caricature if you will, of what Brooks was getting at.)
Bottom line? Brooks thinks the public may be ready to once again learn stuff that is more than on the surface (material that is the intellectual equivalent of Moe whacking Larry with a pipe wrench to the sound of a metallic ping, etc.) As a reader and writer, I hope Brooks is right and that maybe, just maybe, our society could be starting to trend away from its shallowness and incivility. English society at the end of the 18th century was crude, rude, and cruel (slave trading, cockfights, etc.) but began to get better in the next, thanks in part to reformers like William Wilberforce.
Change can happen. Let's pray that it does.
First I must confess that I didn't quite know what The Daily Beast (warning: some material on their website is not what I would call "edifying") was. Wikipedia tells me it's an online clearinghouse providing links to news, feature, and opinion items as well as having original content. The writers are top notch as is the editor, Tina Brown, who used to run The New Yorker. Newsweek I knew as a boy, though I've not looked at it much lately. Our family subscribed to it and I used to pore over it from junior high school onwards, enjoying well-written pieces on a range of topics.
Anyhow, it seems both Newsweek and The Daily Beast have become huge money losers but recently decided to join forces. For starters, if you go to newsweek.com from now on, or soon, you'll be directed to The Daily Beast. Most commentators, it appears, think this merger is a dumb idea and bound to fail, but Brooks sees it differently. Brooks, I find, tends to think outside the box more than most and believes the venture may have a chance. Referring to 19th century intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson (apologizing, as it were, for doing so, realizing how irrelevant most Americans would find any reference before, say,1980) Brooks presents the philosophy behind magazines like Newsweek when they were founded. Emerson thought people in a democracy should know about the great western cultural tradition and it was not unusual for ordinary people--butchers, bakers, etc.--in those days to own and read the classics. The original Newsweek, Brooks thinks, followed that belief in the need for a "liberal education" (in the old sense of the term) by dealing with high art, science, and literature as well as politics and train wrecks.
Such breadth of coverage lost favor in recent decades and gradually was replaced by a concentration on "news you can use," or news to amuse: stuff designed to boost our egos along with videos of people running into walls on bicycles and the like. (This is an extremely broad brush summary, a caricature if you will, of what Brooks was getting at.)
Bottom line? Brooks thinks the public may be ready to once again learn stuff that is more than on the surface (material that is the intellectual equivalent of Moe whacking Larry with a pipe wrench to the sound of a metallic ping, etc.) As a reader and writer, I hope Brooks is right and that maybe, just maybe, our society could be starting to trend away from its shallowness and incivility. English society at the end of the 18th century was crude, rude, and cruel (slave trading, cockfights, etc.) but began to get better in the next, thanks in part to reformers like William Wilberforce.
Change can happen. Let's pray that it does.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Ted Koppel on Olbermann, O'Reilly and objectivity in journalism
This article by Ted Koppel (host of ABC's "Nightline" for 25 years) explains what has changed in the TV news business in the United States over the last 40 years. In a nutshell, increasingly viewers only want to watch news that reinforces their beliefs, exemplified on the left by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and on the right by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. They don't want to be bothered anymore with boring old newscasts that dig deeply into facts and strive to be unbiased. No--they'd rather listen to hot heads (or cool heads) pummeling the oppostion. Much more entertaining.
I recognize this tendency in myself, by the way, particularly when it comes to online commentary. I have two (quite biased) websites about public affairs I go to over and over. Seldom would I want to know what the other side might have to say. Part of my reason for this is that, generally speaking, the other side (like my side, but more so--in my opinion!) is just shooting its collective mouth off.
Neverthless I do believe that on U.S. television there remains at least one bastion of relative objectivity: the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I know many will say that the bias is clear. But I disagree. Relatively speaking, interviews and reports do not tip left or right. The fact that Lehrer is chosen so often to moderate presidential debates supports this view.
Journalists who work to find out where the truth lies instead of just spouting opinions, I believe, are on the side of the angels. They are doing their part to "get the truth out there" (see post for Oct. 16).
I recognize this tendency in myself, by the way, particularly when it comes to online commentary. I have two (quite biased) websites about public affairs I go to over and over. Seldom would I want to know what the other side might have to say. Part of my reason for this is that, generally speaking, the other side (like my side, but more so--in my opinion!) is just shooting its collective mouth off.
Neverthless I do believe that on U.S. television there remains at least one bastion of relative objectivity: the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I know many will say that the bias is clear. But I disagree. Relatively speaking, interviews and reports do not tip left or right. The fact that Lehrer is chosen so often to moderate presidential debates supports this view.
Journalists who work to find out where the truth lies instead of just spouting opinions, I believe, are on the side of the angels. They are doing their part to "get the truth out there" (see post for Oct. 16).
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Write to bring calm
The above title is inspired by a writer, Elisabeth Elliot, who, I find, often brings a sense of calm in her devotionals. Elliot, 84, author of many books, is best known to older Christians for Through Gates of Splendor, the story of the death of her husband Jim and four others in 1956 while trying to make missionary contact with a remote tribe in Ecuador.
Elliot's devotional today (titled "Stillness") while mainly about quietness before God, also articulates concerns about the proliferation of noise in the world. She quotes C. S. Lewis in Screwtape Letters (his classic book purporting to be correspondence between Screwtape, undersecretary to the Devil, and his nephew Wormwood) in this regard:"My dear Wormwood: Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell...no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise...But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress." Elliot then adds, "C.S. Lewis died in 1963. Research in noise-making has made considerable progress since then, don't you think?"
The problem of noise impinges on writers in this way: to write well, we need calm and quiet-- time to collect our thoughts. But the stimuli of new technologies mitigate against allowing ourselves such periods ("Instead of staring out the window, you could have answered that e-mail--or added another 400 words to your manuscript!"). However, books that will still be read in a hundred years, I think, will be those written by those who took the time to write thoughtfully and well. I wonder if those also are the books that tend to minister a sense of calm instead of noise--particularly when the author has, like Elliot, also taken the time to "be still and know that I am God."
Elliot's devotional today (titled "Stillness") while mainly about quietness before God, also articulates concerns about the proliferation of noise in the world. She quotes C. S. Lewis in Screwtape Letters (his classic book purporting to be correspondence between Screwtape, undersecretary to the Devil, and his nephew Wormwood) in this regard:"My dear Wormwood: Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell...no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise...But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress." Elliot then adds, "C.S. Lewis died in 1963. Research in noise-making has made considerable progress since then, don't you think?"
The problem of noise impinges on writers in this way: to write well, we need calm and quiet-- time to collect our thoughts. But the stimuli of new technologies mitigate against allowing ourselves such periods ("Instead of staring out the window, you could have answered that e-mail--or added another 400 words to your manuscript!"). However, books that will still be read in a hundred years, I think, will be those written by those who took the time to write thoughtfully and well. I wonder if those also are the books that tend to minister a sense of calm instead of noise--particularly when the author has, like Elliot, also taken the time to "be still and know that I am God."
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