MARCH 17 2014: BOOK LOVERS ARE PREDOMINANTLY WOMEN—BLESS YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT—BLESS YOU ALL FOR BEING WOMEN

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”

Nora Ephron (1941-2012)

Author of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY—and much else besides.

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I am currently engaged in setting up a network of fellow authors and book bloggers—and have been much impressed by the fact that most seem to be women. We men are represented, of course, but we are noticeably a minority.

Why is this? I don’t know, as yet. My subconscious is working on the matter. As you may have read before, my subconscious does all the heavy lifting where my mind is concerned. I’m merely called in at the end to communicate its findings. My subconscious is pretty smart—but can’t type worth a damn.

What is it about women and books—and, now I think about it, what is about women and male writers? Here we are trying to focus on the noble art of worsmithing (courtesy of my friend, John Drewry)—with the dedication of Knights Templar (who were supposed to be celibate) and there you are distracting us with beauty, charm, and that inevitable frisson of sexuality which makes virtually all relationships between the sexes just that little bit more exciting—and not always a little bit.

Photo is of the wonderful Nora Ephron

MARCH 16 2014: AUTHOR PHILIP ROTH ON WRITING: “ALL REAL WORK IS HARD” (Writing certainly is—but is also deeply satisfying to the point of being joyous—at least as far as I am concerned. V.)

“Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. It was also my good luck that happiness didn’t matter to me and I had no compassion for myself. Though why such a task should have fallen to me I have no idea. Maybe writing protected me against even worse menace.”

Philip Roth during an interview with Daniel Sandstrom, the cultural editor at Svenska Dagbladet, for publication in Swedish translation in that newspaper and in its original English in the New York Times Book Review.

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Back in my pre-writing days, I vividly recall arriving for work at Doyle, Dane, Bernbach Advertising (DDB)—it was my very first day there—and encountering the extremely sexy receptionist, totally engrossed in Philip Roth’s PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT.

I received not a glance as I walked by.

The book, in case you haven’t read it, features a sexually obsessed protagonist who masturbates at every conceivable opportunity—and who eventually encounters a woman—called The Monkey (if memory serves)—who will do anything.

Roth somehow managed to write a sexually explicit book—which bore more than a passing resemblance to pornography—but which was marketed and accepted as a literary work. And that was then, when acceptance of the graphically sexual was less far advanced.

Chutzpah indeed! But he got away with it because he is a very fine writer—and it’s a pretty good book. It is also an honest book in that it describes how we actually think and behave as opposed to what we pretend. For some strange reason—which I don’t adequately understand—we are remarkably dishonest about sex; yet we all have sexual desires and fantasies. We may privately think some are really weird—but if we were more open about sex, I suspect that most would be not.

I’m coming around to the view that we should drop the sexual taboo completely, and worry much more about issues such as egregious corporate corruption, social injustice, and the degradation of our system of governance, which really are corroding our way of life.

Somehow, I don’t see sex—in all its pleasurable variations—as an existential threat to this Great Nation. We have—so to speak—got our priorities screwed.

Sexual explicitness is, when you think about it, no more than honesty—and that’s a quality which, like integrity and empathy, really is in short supply.

Sexuality—of whatever sort—is as natural breathing, And it represents love—a reaching out for affection--so why do we fight it?

Damned if I know. To have, to hold, to caress, and to love is nothing short of wonderful.

It is why we are here,

to

One way or another DDB—a famously creative agency I had first read about in the book MADISON AVENUE U.S.A. was quite an experience, and PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT an appropriate introduction.  It was a sexually charged, hedonistic environment—but out of it came some truly incredible creative work.

MAD MEN? With desires and women to match.

MARCH 15 2014: WHY?—ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS IN THE WORLD

What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course.

Marilyn Monroe

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Many years ago, I formed a little club called THE WHY CLUB to discuss the great issues of our time—and hopefully come up with solutions. It was also an excuse to have one really good meal a month in one of the best hotels in London, England. The hotel in question was the Connaught, an impressively stylish place in Mayfair, with prices to match—just a couple of blocks away from the U.S. Embassy.

It is the kind of place where royalty, the most senior politicians, the ultra rich, and movie stars stay if they want to be discrete—and, suffice to say, we had a lot of fun there.

Many of the women were so drop-dead gorgeous it was hard to concentrate on either one’s smoked salmon or saving the world. Those were the days…

I was reminded of THE WHY CLUB when I ran across a reference to the WHY Code at www.whycode.com

What is the WHY Code? Let me answer in the site’s own words:

The WHY Code - a fundamental code of knowledge

The WHY Code is a form of knowledge representation - readable by both humans and automated processes. The representation for human consumption is a type of cognitive map called a WHY Map.

The WHY Code help users:

• Better externalize, document, and share knowledge
• Better orchestrate an organization
• Better search and navigate information
• Learn faster and more effectively

The WHY Code improves on conventional text, conventional process maps, and other methods in helping users achieve the above goals. It provides simplicity and clarity. It helps avoid ambiguity and verbosity. It enables users to discriminate between those that know and those that don't. It's focused on the fundamental learning questions WHAT, HOW and WHY.
Because of it's simplicity and power, the WHY Code can act as a standard protocol for knowledge codification and sharing.

There is a lot more—and its fascinating stuff! Fundamentally, it is a communication methodology which is just up my alley. And it it incorporates things called WHY Maps.

How cool is that!

MARCH 14 2014: I HAVE A WEAKNESS FOR THE SWISS—AND THIS INTERESTING WEBSITE—bohbow.net—STEMS FROM THERE

“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

From the movie THE THIRD MAN as spoken by Harry Lime (Orson Welles).

It’s grossly unfair to the Swiss—but it makes for marvelous movie dialog. The screenplay was written by famed author Graham Greene—but the ‘cuckoo clock’ piece was added by Orson Welles. In fact, the cuckoo clock is a German invention.

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I have a weakness for the Swiss because I have been there many times,  enjoy the country, have been very well treated by the many Swiss I got to know, have had three Swiss lovers (all women, as it happens), and set a large part of my first book, GAMES OF THE HANGMAN, there. I also love both Zurich and Bern—particularly Bern—and have many Swiss friends.

And some are bears.

Do they have any characteristics in common—apart from being Swiss? Yes, they are all intelligent, well travelled, and a pleasure to be with—and all have a sense of humor. Some are creative (I love talent) and some are cops. Others span the gamut.

Cops—in my experience—make exceptionally good friends. Some abuse their power;others are corrupt; most do an exceptionally difficult and dangerous job well. The camaraderie of such people is a truly wonderful thing. Worth dying for. Many have.

Apart from that, I respect the way they run their country. Their system is not perfect—but they do a great deal better than many nations—and their economic success is well deserved.

If I had had any sense, I would have married one of my Swiss girlfriends—a truly beautiful spirit—but that’s another story. By the time I realized how much I cared for her, she had married someone else. I called my younger daughter after her.

Throughout my life, I have had much more success with lovers—and some relationships were over decades—than my wives.

Actually, I have only only been married once—now I think of it. Will I ever get married again—and I’m including living together?

Well, I enjoy my independence, and am pretty self-contained—but recently a thoroughly delightful Christmas with some very special people has made me re-think. And I enjoy the company of women. I have the suspicion that they/you are brighter than us males.

But, I am deviating from the point.

The point is that I think the website www.bohbow.net looks interesting. Its proud boast is:

“Anyone can be a writer. You are welcome to share your history about your childhood, your parents, your friends, your country, your town, your love, your experiences, your experiments…Write what you want…

Communicate with the whole world and get interesting responses and feedbacks…”

I’d like to think that anyone can be a writer—but the truth is that all too many of us have a hard time turning thoughts into words. But, I’m all for anyone who wants to try.

Go for it. Writing is your soul speaking. It is beyond wonder.

By the way, THE THIRD MAN was set in Vienna, Austria. If you haven’t seen the movie, you haven’t lived.

Interestingly, part of Orson Welles’s early career was spent in Ireland. If I can paraphrase Julius Caesar—‘He came, he saw, and he conquered.’

MARCH 13 2014: E-READERS & TABLETS ARE GAINING GROUND—BUT THE PRINTED BOOK FIGHTS ON (I’m delighted to say)

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.  Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.

Christopher Morley

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I’m so busy these days that my book reading has actually declined—I’m ashamed to say. However, I live in hopes that I’ll get back to my norm of a couple of books a week when my current project is more advanced. I’m still reading as much as ever—arguably more—but much of the content is web based so I’m reading off my computer screens (I have two—one for reference material, and one to write on).

Strangely enough, I don’t have either an e-reader or a tablet—an omission I intend to remedy shortly. I had an early Kindle, but, sadly, it died. I’m all for e-books, but hope they co-exist with traditional books for a long time to come. Printed books are truly wonderful things and have enriched my life more than I can say.

Bookstore browsing—an acquired skill—is one of the great pleasures of the world. Such visits are voyages of discovery, and I am rarely disappointed.

Quoting the Pew Research Center, an article in www.digitalbookworld.com comments as follows:

The increase in the proportion of Americans who have read an ebook could be explained by increased device ownership. Both e-reader and tablet ownership increased markedly in 2013. Now, 50% of Americans have either a tablet or e-reader, which is up from 43% in Sept. 2013, and even more significantly from 2012.

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Fahrenheit 451—the title of Ray Bradbury’s famous book—is the temperature at which a book burns.

MARCH 12 2014: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS (only a rumor) AGATHA CHRISTIE & SHAKESPEARE HAVE SOLD TWO BILLION BOOKS EACH! This infographic is worth getting a magnifying glass for.

If I can hit No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, I'm thinking of having the entire list tattooed on my body somewhere. It would be fabulous.

Camilla Lackberg

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MARCH 11 2014: GOOD GRIEF! GLOBAL INTERNET FROM SATELLITES CAN BE YOURS—THE THING IS CALLED IRIDIUM GO & THEY CLAIM IT’S AFFORDABLE—THE WIDGET ITSELF COSTS $875—I HAVE NO IDEA OF THE RUNING COSTS

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Mark Twain

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Last I checked, Satellite phones—and the cost of calls made over them—was extremely expensive. That said, it would be a fine thing if Iridium really have managed to bring the price of truly global WI FI down.

Unfortunately, affordable is a relative term—so I remain skeptical. Still, it shows the direction that things are going.

Thought you should know.

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WHAT MY READERS THINK

Victor,
I am halfway through your Hangman book. It is definitely a thriller. I appreciate it and if you have anymore, please let me know. They are a good read. Where did you learn so much about international terrorism? I guess 9/11 put guys like you into the forefront. You will have to tell me how you got so involved with the Pentagon one of these days.
Thanks,
Sam

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