While I empathize with the main point that NY Times’s editorial columnist Maureen Dowd makes in her article “Attention, Men: Books are Sexy!” summarized in her column’s title (I certainly read a lot more than I write, so I’m not guilty as charged), I disagree with her implication that men should be reading irrelevant and obscure classics (especially not Jane Austen’s novels, the best cure for insomnia that I know of). I’ll also point out that on the whole neither women nor men read much anymore—the younger they are, the less they read!—because streaming video and computer games have stolen their souls.

What all people need to be doing in these troubled times is reading the non-fiction books that expose the fascist takeover in the US, including the war on culture, and the fiction books that treat variations on that theme. We learn about ourselves not by reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare, or other “classic authors” unless we translate their lessons about the human condition into modern contexts. It is far easier to read and relate to modern works that already make that translation for us.

We have to be a bit broad-minded—more so than Ms. Dowd, obviously—about what we mean by “modern,” of course. Gabo’s Autumn of the Patriarch isn’t modern, but his amalgam of banana-republic-like autocrats describes the man in the White House well. The double-speak of 1984 isn’t modern either; now we call that “alternate facts.” And we haven’t even had our Kristallnacht yet, but January 6, 2021 came awfully close.

Current fiction can remind readers about how easy it is to lose democracy, freedom, and our individual rights. It continues to provide valuable lessons and warnings that are educational, anti-fascist, and informative. Sometimes the NY Times and other news outlets can help in that process. But sorry, Maureen, you and that venerable rag blew it this time! Jane Austen isn’t going to solve any of our current problems! And, if you and they can’t see that, you’re part of the problem.

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules listed on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

“The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” This trilogy of novels, Muddlin’ Through, Silicon Slummin’,,,and Just Getting; By, and Goin’ the Extra Mile, illustrate what I mean in the post above: Ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo Melendez fights dangerous various criminal groups and fascists in these tales, fascists from China, Russia, and the US, setting an excellent example in fiction for anti-fascism warriors everywhere. Way to go, Mary Jo! (Okay, at times the MECHs help her. They’re Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[I was cleaning off my book shelves and found a hardbound I’m definitely offering up to some school book fair.  They might get a buck for it?]

By the Book.  Pamela Paul, ed.  (New York Times, Henry Holt, 2014).  The long subtitle is “Writers on Literature and the Literary Life, from the NY Times Book Review.”  First objection: most of these people aren’t writers by my definition.  Lena Dunham?  Not exactly a prolific writer.  Neither are Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emma Thompson, Sting, Carolyn Kennedy—you get the idea.  For the most part, you have personalities where the Times has sent faux-interview-like questions about literature and the literary life like “What book would you recommend that the president read?”  This is the Times doing its pseudo-intellectual masturbation in grand style.  At $28, it’s a rip-off, unless you’re a one-percenter who thinks it will create some conversation sitting on your coffee table.

Among the 65 people responding, I’ve read books by only 9 of them.  That sounds like I’m an illiterate clod, but remember, most of these people aren’t writers.  Celebrities like Powell, Sting, and Schwarzenegger probably used ghost writers; Bryan Cranston doesn’t even have a book.  The real writers in the group should feel insulted.  Many are academic, or pseudo-academic types like Malcolm Caldwell, who write for other academics; many write non-fiction; and others write “literary fiction” (whatever that is, I don’t read it).

Most real authors here aren’t prolific.  Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific writer, but she recommends that the president read Moby Dick.  What does she want to do?  Bore him to death?  He’ll already be there when he leaves office and doesn’t have McConnell and Ryan to enliven his existence.  Lee Child, who’s become formulaic with his Reacher novels, lauds Cruise’s portrayal of the famous stud.  Huh?

I guess a third of that subtitle is real: these people are talking about reading, so maybe they all have a “literary life.”  The rest is false advertising on the part of the Times.  I got this book for Christmas two years ago—well-intentioned, I suppose, because I am a full-time writer.  I would never have bought it otherwise, though.  You shouldn’t either.  And you can get 7-8 ebooks for the price of this monstrosity.

***

May Day Sale.  It might still be going on.  It’s not clear what the Amazon cut-off time is for a Kindle Countdown Sale.  Mary Jo Melendez has been inviting you to that sale all week.  Her stories, Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, were on sale through today, May 6, for $0.99 each; they might still be.  But don’t worry: they’ll just revert to the original $2.99 price, which is still a bargain.  Want more summer reading?  Check out my entire catalog: here’s my Amazon page.  Three more series, twenty more recent books, all save one for $3.99 or less, including my new sci-fi/fantasy novel, Rogue Planet, for $2.99.  What are you waiting for?

In libris libertas (just not the Times’s)…      

[Note from Steve: I’m not superstitious, but, for those who are, have a safe day today.  Did you hear about the guy who went looking for the 13th floor in a hotel and fell into an open elevator shaft, all on Friday the 13th?  There: who said I can’t write a horror story!]

Item. Celebrity books.  Or, should I say, public confessions of the rich and (in)famous?  Do you read them?  The bookstores are full of them, if that’s any gauge of popularity.  There’s Trump’s new propaganda piece containing no more meat than his campaign speeches, just another spiel saying, “I’m great, I’m handsome, I’m rich, I’m smart, and I can save America!”  Some are informative: George H. W. Bush’s (the father of Dubya and Jeb), says a few things about Trump, but mostly looks back, verifying what I always knew: Cheney and Rumsfeld had their own hawkish and nefarious agendas and tried to impose their will and further their on agenda in Dubya’s administration.  And others are just ploys to make some money: Leah Remini’s exposé of Scientological shenanigans has become a book tour through talk shows—she needs the money, I guess, but I wonder why people care about her making more money.  Or, worry about a cult.

When people ask me if I’ve read celebrity so-and-so’s book, I usually look at them like they were idiots.  I’m very selective in my reading, and I generally find the practice of a celebrity cashing in on their ready-made brand name a despicable practice.  One of Obama’s books was the last celebrity book I finished (one written even before he became president).  I started one of O’Reilly’s Killing X books (I guess he’s not very inventive about titles), didn’t like it, and stopped (I guess that’s a mini-mini-review—I started because I read some history now and then).  But O’Reilly is just another celebrity author cashing in on his brand name.

(more…)

The media has become fixated on spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson (the so-called “God particle,” a name that would surely make Mr. Higgs cringe).  The Higgs mechanism (i.e. the spontaneous symmetry breaking) is necessary to give mass to some of the vector bosons in the electroweak or weak and electromagnetic interaction theory.  Forgotten in all this media hoopla is the theory that led to the idea of quarks and gluons, the Eightfold Way of symmetries popularized by Mr. Gell-Mann.  (Note that I refrain from using the term “discovered.”  In theoretical physics, the math is “out there.”  You just have to figure out what math matches up to the experimental data.  Experimental physics is where “discoveries” are made.)

Now that I’ve had some fun imagining your eyes glazing over as if you’d just had tequila mixed with sleeping pills, let me say that this post is not about physics.  (My eyes are glazed too, because the above is hardcore physics, and I’ve been sipping my Jameson’s while writing like a madman.)  The Eightfold Way I consider here is the shining path that leads you to a finished novel that someone might want to read. It’s my distillation of rules for writing a novel—a distillation that is not the quality of a fine Irish whiskey, but I’ve put some thought to it and would like to share (I’d like to share the Jameson’s too, but the internet hasn’t discovered e-drinking yet).

(more…)