Tag Archives: Writing

DASH & LILLY

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This 1999 movie (A& E, Granada) about Dashiell Hammet (Sam Shepard) and Lilly Helman(Judy Davis) starts at the beginning of the relationship. They have three activities in life – drinking, writing and love.

I have no idea why either of them loves the other especially in the early years, through 1945 after Hammet is discharged from the military. After Dash’s power to write fades, the tone of the movie changes. Lilly displays her mothering instincts. “I love him.” “Why?” The answer is in the stars, or Dash is no longer a mate; he is helpless.

The next activity is drinking, which is an everyday activity in his life; she isn’t far behind. She makes the point that drinking affects her powers to write and she is stopping. He is not interested. She returns to the bottle. There is no development on this point – how alcohol (or any other drug) might affect the relationship or writing.

Next comes writing. When he writes at the beginning, she cannot write. When she writes in the second half, he cannot. Neither of them do what writers do – read, talk about ideas, discussion words and visions. There’s very little reading of books. He spends three years in the army during World War Two and apparently doesn’t keep a diary or a notebook. The idea of writing from each of them seems, I like my ideas and writing to come spontaneously. There is no link between the decline of writing and booze.

There is a scene where he gets her into writing plays, but except for successes that process is not developed and constructed. Later when he suggests changing dialogue at the end of new play, she throws a fit. Every writer knows or should know editing, rewriting, rereading are not the same work on draft ten as on draft two. Yet, Lilly’s character reveals a complete lack of understanding of this comprehension. Indeed, one must wonder if the screenwriter knows, or the screenwriter was required to remove all the writing stuff, which makes much of the script unintelligible.

There is no love, and no understanding of writing but loads of drinking. There is a concentration on the Congressional blacklist hearings which is not a big part of the relationship. The script fairly depicts that writers in Hollywood were careless and ignorant. Hammet allowed his name to be used for an organization he had never met with. When a Writer’s Guild gathering is made during the Thirties, a clown is talking about Karl Marx. No one needs to know anything about Marx to start a union. Contract law is a much better beginning.

The sets are good, the camera work is fine, the direction is first rate. The movie might be improved if it were longer, more stuff about writing, loop those themes around to pick up the love and liquor.

AfterWord, Dale Salwar, Ed.

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University of Iowa, 2011

The editor has collected articles of essays and fake interviews with various writers, each piece being a communication with a dead writer.

Various literary means convey the writings but usually by dialogue which is poorly written.

There are questionable assertions:

“Do you accept the view of Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, that you were the first indigenous American to write about American manners rather than European ones?”

EDITH WHARTON: “That’s probably quite true…”

WRONG. Mark Twain wrote about American manners when Edith was a girl. Perhaps the questioner was actually asking about the American Eastern pretense to manners, but other American writers also wrote about those before Edith.

EDITH WHARTON complains (p. 151) she had no formal education. Melville had no formal education. Twain went into the sixth grade. But I agree that WHARTON would have been a far superior author if she had taken the Creative Writing Classes at the University of Iowa.

Edith could have done that. Her family was filthy rich. Edith’s maiden name was Jones and because neighbors like the Rockerfellers and Whitneys always tried to keep up the pace, “Keeping up with the Jones,” became a cliche.  The Jones were the first family with electricity, telephones, flatscreen TVs, and iPads. They never saw an app they didn’t like.

In her interview Wharton complains that Pearl S. Buck got the Nobel Prize and she didn’t. Sour grapes. “Edith, Willa Cather didn’t get a Nobel Prize, either.”

There are statements in some chapters demonstrating an appalling lack of knowledge about the author: Joseph Conrad, who is not all Heart of Darkness. Conrad had no humor in his books. Anyone who hasn’t read Lord Jim should not be writing an essay for this compilation entitled, AfterWord. Anyone who doesn’t know the butterfly chapter in Lord Jim, God help them.

SUMMER INTERRUPTED

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I had a house sitting assignment out of town for three and one half months. I would be comfortable but isolated. No TV; internet was hard to come by. Good time to write. I finished a long novel and entered it into word processing.

I appreciate doing a handwritten draft following by a quick word processing draft. Sometimes I cannot read my own handwriting, but I replace the illegible words with something that makes sense, as though I were editing at that spot. I accomplish with the two drafts a better understanding of the novel, and what may need rewriting or reworking.

Housesitting allowed me to review a novel I wrote a long time ago and entered into word processing in 2014. I was delighted that spelling mistakes, word choices and grammar were the only editing that the novel needed. I was disappointed late last month when I discovered word choices, spelling mistakes and grammar were still needed in the novel. Stupid me, I keep forgetting I’m a fool.

I rolled through a novel, adding words and got it out to a reader, just as part of the summer’s work.

In the middle of June I began a murder mystery, police procedural story. It was short, 41,000 words with little chance that the manuscript would get appreciably longer. I finished the word processing on that novel by the middle of July. So the writing of it went well.

One benefit coming from the summer? I don’t watch as much TV.

HOWEVER, the homeowner came one seven weeks early, and I had to leave. I’ve returned to a secure roof, but I’m somewhat at a loss how to put my state of mind in order. It was pleasant being alone and writing. Since, there have been diverse activities,  people around and other demands. I’ve must adjust to write the third novel, which I intended to put into draft, this summer.

ANNOYED

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ELIHU ROOT – Philip C. Jessup, Dodd Meade, 1938

This biography (two volumes; 1050 pages) should not have been published. Elihu Root was an eminent New York City lawyer, an excellent Secretary of War, a fabulous Secretary of State (under Theodore Roosevelt) and a Senator from New York.

The writer did not know how to write this story; the organization is sloppy. When Root was appointed Secretary of War (President McKinley), the author spends ten (10) pages on the appointment and wraps up with paragraphs about people who did not want Root to accept the appointment. Note there is no background or telling of the affect on Root: What was the effect on his law practice? Just get up and go and leave clients to their own devices? What was the effect on his family – what did they think? What was the effect on local government government matters he was working on when Root went to Washington? None of these questions are explained.

For his personal life and his law business [which Root loved, liked or had grown tired of], the book provides insignificant background: By example a local matter describes competing transit companies in New York City, but did does not explain the transit market, competitive forces and the personalities being affected by the sage lawyer.

There is more to writing a biography than stringing together quotes from letters, some of which cover a page and a few go a few pages. This biography puts Root in the middle of a crisis or a situation, and based upon that placement of Root the reader is supposed to understand the crisis or the situation. When the Spanish left Cuba (1898), there was no sanitation, an illiterate population (96 percent), no institutions, no education, no law enforcement and no economy. There was the church. Note as Secretary of War Root was in charge of Cuba reconstruction because the U.S. Army was the agency capable of performing. According to this biographer the Cuba situation, circumstances and crisis were handled by exchanges of letters, actions and decisions made by Root, Theodore Roosevelt in Washington D.C. and Leonard Wood in Cuba.

I don’t know what the U.S. Army was doing in Cuba or why. In lieu of reading more about those Washington D.C. actions for 100 pages, I stopped reading at page 320. The remainder of the biography would get no better.

two pages.

COSMOPOLITEAN ADULTERY

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Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution

This it not a book to read all at once. Of the first 75 pages there are passages of brilliance, but discussing the nits, grits and specificities of Russian politics before World War One and during that war, Trotsky is vague, general and cliched. They are revolutionary cliches:

“The semi-annulment of serfdom and the introduction of universal military service had modernized the army only as far it is had the country – that is, it introduced into the army all the contradictions proper to a nature which still had its bourgeois revolution to accomplish.”(p. 17)

That sentence, so full of promise, is meaningless. It is followed by general omissions found in many armies – from the officer’s corp to supply to training. It should be observed the Soviet armies were as ill-equipped and misled at the beginning of World War Two as the Tsar’s armies in World War One. Trotsky’s gross generalization lacks any foundation in history, except it states the obvious: Armies are usually under supplied whether the country has had a bourgeois revolution or not.

This cliche is mean to tell readers, familiar with Trotsky, exactly what Trotsky means, but apparently no one else. Those understanding readers will accept his historical fallacies because Trotsky can always say, “I was in a real revolution.”

Such cliches aside, Trotsky has used words and derived terms which should go into the language today. Cosmopolitan Adultery referred to pre-World War One royalty and nobility, their relations and activities, not always undercover. TODAY, there are numerous individuals in entertainment, elsewhere and wherever in America and around the world to whom this term may be applied. Use it!

Meanwhile, I’ll read further in this history, but not all at once.

THE COMING WAR WITH JAPAN

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George Friedman and Meredith LeBard

This book came into my possession in late April at a bag sale at a library book sale. So it cost a dime or perhaps eight cents. It was new and unread. It has a naval ship on the cover that looks of World War Two vintage. I was overjoyed. A book written in the 1930s about the American War with Japan. In a red banner across the top of the cover read in white letters: The #1 Bestseller in Japan. Wow, I was truly amazed at my luck. A book about World War Two written before that war and read by both sides.

NOPE. The book was published in 1993. The Coming War between Japan and the United States will have to wait, forever. What can be said about the hackers, George Friedman and Meredith LeBard. Like Richard Nixon, they’re selling used cars. Would you buy a used War from these tricks? Don’t bother buying a used book. On Amazon there are a few hundred at a penny a piece. These authors are emblematic of the 1990s – speculative, fantasy laced makers of drug ridden nightmares, and liars: “I did not have sex with that woman…” If Monica is coming back because she needs to be paid again, bringing back The Coming War is justified.

Note the book’s comments on the back:

Tight logic, superb research, clear writing. Friedman& LeBard don’t bask in the warmth this side of the cold war; they look ahead to the chilling possibilities that can follow [including Martian invasions and galactic explosions]. Lt. General Anthony Lukeman,, Executive Director, Marine Corp Association.

“…demonstrates with surprising thoroughness why their interests with diverge more and more…the underlying analysis of why Japan and America will change from their current partnership to more and more open rivalry may well seem prescient [for people who are maxed out on drugs]. James Fallows, The New York Review of Books.

“Friedman & LeBard make a persuasive case for the startling proposition that the U.S. and Japan are on a collision course leading to war within a generation. In an exegesis all the more chilling for its understated scholarship and wide angle perspectives, they predict an honest to goodness shootout…A thoughtful and thought-provoking what-if audit of the price of domination.” Kirkus Reviews. As always Kirkus says the most and says nothing. Kirkus Reviews uses big words – exegesis. What is a “what-if” audit. What-if the Yellowstone volcano erupted? Kirkus would be toast.

While President Bush prepares his series of high-flown speeches on the new world order…his advisers are reading a more down to earth analysis on the chances for world peace…The Coming War With Japan…” Peter Stothard, The Times of London. I know that President Bush was more low-down with the Japanese. Didn’t he toss his cookies into the lap of the Japanese President?

“…one of the most thorough and systematic analyses in recent years of the diverging interests of these two Pacific Basic superpowers. Peter Wiley, San Francisco Chronicle. This may be the most intelligent sentence the Chronicle has ever printed.

In one impressively researched section, they detail the ways in which the air, sea and land forces of Japan have been shrewdly and carefully built up, exploiting ambiguities in the country’s anti-war constitution. Christopher Hitchens, Newsday. Let’s hope Christopher Hitchens is correct.

There is a new book with the ominous title, The Coming War with Japan. It’s thesis is that Japan and the United States are victims today of the same historical forces that were at work in the 1930s and that another military clash is unavoidable. Lee Iaccoca, Chairman Chrysler Corporation, Los Angeles Times. In his imperious position at Chrysler, Iaccoca ignorantly misunderstands that totalitarian Japan of the 1930s differs greatly from the democracy there in 1990, and flourishing today.

Note the appalling quality of criticism. In this country criticism – this is wrong, that is correct – is not the point of the blurbs of any book. Instead the American public is delivered highfaluting, overstuffed phrases from names who likely have not read the book. Non-fiction criticism should be direct. It is not. It suffers from the same inept, poorly read, ignorance that is frequently found in the books themselves. Write a review, attach your name. Then, the next sloppy book by that set of reviewers will be favorably reviewed.

JANE FONDA – HANOI OR HOLLYWOOD

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This week’s Internet has carried reports that Jane Fonda is sorry for the 1972 picture and film of her sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery, laughing and otherwise joyously carrying on. North Vietnam was the enemy during the Vietnam War, itself a huge, costly mistake that never needed to be fought. That War with more than 58,000 deaths brought out the super stupid in two Presidents, Johnson and Nixon, and their stooges – generals, secretaries of state, national security advisors…

Now Jane Fonda says the pictures and the film were huge mistakes. What was her first clue?

Jane was in the movies, going from glamour puss to excellent actress while arising from a gaggle of Hollywood brats. She believed in the Hollywood hype – I’m on film. I have money. I am famous. Everyone loves me. Nothing can happen to me. In early 1972 she won an Oscar for her role in the 1971 film, Klute. Thereafter, she went to North Vietnam for her photo shoot.

The current Internet has incorrect and omitted quotes of Jane Fonda and boyfriend (eventual Hubby), Tom Hayden. This list is incomplete but it represents her state of mind after returning from Vietnam and after the return of American prisoners of war e.g. John McCain. “Walking through the streets of Hanoi with their heads bowed in front of a woman with a bayonet might be torture,” Jane said, Daily Californian, April 12, 1973, p. 1; see Berkeley Barb, April 13, 1973, for more Jane Fonda opinions on the torture of American POWS; Holzer, Henry Mark and Erica, Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, McFarland & Co. Hayden, Reunion, p. 455: Either Tom or Jane about the time of the 1973 Peace Treaty, “the POWS were ‘liars, hypocrites and pawns in Nixon’s efforts to rewrite history.’” Jane and Tom were among a group of myth-makers, see Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will, NY, 1969, “Trip to Hanoi,” p. 205, 208, “The North Vietnamese genuinely care about the welfare of the hundreds of American pilots and give them bigger rations than the Vietnamese population gets ‘because they are bigger than we are…’ and ‘they’re used to eat more meat than we are.’”

[These citations are from my novel, Bitch., 2013, iBookstore.]

The time to correct misimpression’s, miscommunications and mistakes was when the quotes first appeared in 1973, or whenever they were made. 2015 is too late to go on TV and apologize. I cannot take Jane Fonda seriously. She is not sincere. She acts like the same stupid little Hollywood girl she was in her first movies in the early Sixties.

Entertainment disapproved of that war. John Wayne’s Green Berets is the most ridiculous pro-war movie from the mid-1960s. There were no similar films except for POW and POWS-left-behind films after the peace and departure in 1975. I imagine in Jane’s own family, brother Peter, a fine actor whom I’m always happy to see on film and her father, the venerable Henry Fonda opposed the War. I doubt if Henry let his views to break up his long friendship with Jimmy Stewart. Both Henry and Peter had a maturity in 1970 which Jane has yet to exhibit.

Jane left Tom Hayden in the early 1980s, did the exercise tape thing  and was the subject of wonder on supermarket tabloids: Which sexual orientation did she want? It’s publicity. She ran off to Ted Turner but wasn’t sure she wanted to do the tomahawk chop at Atlantic Braves games. CNN, the Braves, buffalo ranching and Time-Warner were all too much. She left Ted.

Now it’s all make up and plastic surgery. Today Jane looks like she’s forty years old. But what’s in her brain? She’s in her mid-seventies, and it appears she wants to compete with Anne Hathaway and Heather Graham, actresses born after Jane made her most damning statements.

Jane Fonda is not a little Public Relations’ problem. She wants to be known and respected as a good person, although much she had done has left her living on the same street as Charlie Sheen, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, and Jane is the most notorious of the neighbors. Jane cannot write another book, like the one she released in the last decade: Throughout it, anyone could read I’m lying; I’m a dishonest person. I want you to love me.

This is her conundrum.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT – Carleton Putnam

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This is the best and most complete biography of Theodore Roosevelt (TR) 1858-1886. It is a life and times book, the times include New York politics in the early 1880s (who knew they could be interesting), academic life at Harvard and the life of a mid-continent (Bad Lands) rancher. In the end TR’s energy seems inexhaustible. He has written three non-fiction books; he has been in the New York legislature fighting for reform and immersing himself in local and state politics; he has begun friendships with prominent men in other states. He is no bully himself, but he takes no gruff from anyone, fellow legislators, other ranchers and outlaws.

None of these activities are told in isolation. The book is chronological and detailed, much more so than later-published prize-winning TR biographies. Take one activity – hunting. He would travel 500-1000 miles, and each step seems conveyed to the reader in the grind of stalking and chase. TR always had an experienced man with him who was a dead shot; he himself always carried hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Tales of TR and Man of Experience (written 40 years later) make for informative, comparative reading. It is easy to imagine TR being a poor shot, shooting and missing, chasing and reloading and repaying the process while the experienced man accompanies. They go after grizzlies. TR presents his stories; the experienced man others. The biographer favors TR, but there is enough in the biography to judge the experienced man is correct.

[It turns out that hunting stories are like fishing stories, especially the size of the fish and the fight involved.]

Through out the activities, TR marries. He is in the New York legislature getting multiple pieces of legislation passed. He succeeds on most, but TR’s work is interrupted by a telegraph. He rushes from Albany to New York City. His wife has just given birth to his daughter but is in bad shape. Hs mother is also ill. TR arrives home, sees his wife but must rush to his mother who dies in his presence.  He returns to his wife who dies in his presence the next day. The short chapter of seven pages telling of the trip from Albany, of the deaths and of the funerals is the finest piece of fiction or non-fiction on this subject I have read: Emotions, grief, loss, despair, absence emerge forcefully.

In the 1880s Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, publicly supported a candidate. Roosevelt went after both the candidate and Davis, who took offense. Davis was an old man ready to die. He had never regretted anything he had done: Slaveholder, promoter and defender of slavery, being part of the Southern Civil War leadership, The biographer explains and jumps in taking the side of Jefferson Davis. Davis had no qualities except hate, bigotry and resentment.

In the end the biographer took those traits from Davis. The book was published in 1958 near the beginning of the well-known Civil Rights Movement activities. The biographer was a founder-executive of Delta Airlines in Atlanta. He sided with the country club set, Southern Ladies and Gentlemen trying to preserve Anglo-Saxon society. That society had already been polluted and degraded mostly by Irish and Scots-Irish, all born enemies of the Anglo-Saxons. But blacks were anathema to whites in the South. The author spoke against the Civil Rights movement.

There was no market for a volume two of TR’s biography from this author. Every word he wrote on matters of race had to gag him. [Black Jack Pershing either did or did not lead black troops during the Spanish-American War; they fought well.] The author could not accept TR’s primary position – former slaves and their decedents should advance economically.

These circumstances are unfortunate because this book reveals a talented artist who slid to the dark side and by accepting hate, bigotry and resentment, he lost the ability to be original and creative.

GULLIGAN’S ISLAND

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I follow the news closely, but on the whole I’d rather watch reruns of Gulligan’s Island than the PBS Newshour. Sometimes it is better to be stuck on an isolated, desert island where everyone has enough space, there is food for everyone, and clean water is plentiful. It is a much cheerier locale without Internet or telephone connections than the dismal, unchanging island and inhabitants advanced in William Goldman’s Lord of the Flies, an episodic novel much like a TV show.

It is important and improbable to appreciate Gulligan’s Island. On the week before Christmas who would have thought that Mary Ann’s photograph wold be printed on the first page of Not Born Yesterday – News for Smart & Savvy Adults. Mary Ann looks terrific. Anyone who is eighteen years or older should stand and salute.

The interview with Dawn Wells aka Mary Ann (have you ever noticed no woman is named Dusk) gives some personal details. Dawn Wells was athletic but had bad knees (not evident on the show). Her youthful activities were jettisoned except canoeing and archery (neither evident on the show or she alone would have rowed to other islands and gotten help). When growing up she wanted to be a pediatric surgeon (not useful on the show). She went to college and onto the University of Washington where she became a theatre major (which is what a lot of people in Hollywood do).

Dawn Wells has now co-authored a book What Would Mary Ann Do? A Life Guide. I hope its tales and advice comes from the real life experiences of Dawn Wells, and not from the TV show. In the interview Dawn Wells is frank about the show: “If you’re a ten year old kid watching…, there’s not much to date it ‘ a desert island is a desert island.'”

I’m happy to learn that the rivalry between Ginger (Tina Louise) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) was only fable; Natalie Schaffer, Lovey Howell, was a real human being. Dawn Wells has credits in 150 TV shows and films and 60 theatrical productions since her Mary Ann role.

It is a Hollywood storied career with a book along the way – be positive, have friends, keep and generate new interests. That is good advice for every member of the human race. And for Dawn Wells, Mary Ann could have done much worse.

Dawn

IS THIS RIGHT?

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Yep, but it is daunting. A few blogs ago, I mentioned that I was reading and came up with subjects for three new original novels to write.

I now know which one I’ll write first. Spotting the subject, I promptly staked my claim, but I wouldn’t worry about it until January. Unbidden waters rose, and I could not stop the flow. I had to control it, regularize my thinking, add rigor and rough it out. Write the general subject of each chapter. It took less than five minutes to write 50 words, also giving subsidiary issues within chapters.

That productivity was fun and elating: Family, profession, pressures, sibling rivalries and marriage, in-laws, children – all over a 40 year period. I did not finish the chapter subjects but I realized this isn’t 50,000 words. I sense it is 100,000 or more.

Yet the hooks of that story are in me. To get loose, I have to write it.