Odds and Ends

The big family project this week is cleaning out the sunroom so one of Grandpa's brothers can turn it into a downstairs bathroom. There was a lot of stuff in there, including some books from my first undergrad stint and some writing I'd done back in middle school and  high school.

The biggest lesson I learned from reading a few of the old stories is that, no matter how bad you think some of your writing is now, it was worse when you were 12-14. To be fair, though, I could see the complexity of the subject matter going up in the high-school stuff, even if the writing style was still woefully bad.

Some of the old books from literature classes stirred up some memories. I came across a book containing three plays by Bertolt Brecht. The only one I had read was Life of Galileo, for a class on the depiction of science in literature. I randomly opened the book to Scene 4, in which Galileo debates a bunch of old-school Aristotelian philosophers and mathematicians on standards of evidence and the search for truth. I'd forgotten how brilliant some of the dialogue in the play is. One of the best (or most effectively translated lines) was "Why try to be clever now that we at last have a chance of being just a little less stupid?" If any utterance echoes through the decades (or even centuries, if one believes this line reflected Galileo's thinking to some extent), this is it.

I decided to keep a translation of Friedrich Duerrenmat's The Physicists. It's a great play, but my most vivid recollection of it is a mistranslated line. I had read untranslated scenes from this play in a second-year German class, and then read the full English translation for that science-in-literature class. When I saw the English line, "The world has fallen into the hands of an insane female psychiatrist" (Act Two, p. 92 of the 1991 Grove Weidenfeld edition), I cringed. It's an accurate literal translation of the line, but the literal translation ruins the spirit of the line in English. In German, you can't talk about somebody's occupation without indicating their gender. Every word for an occupation has a masculine and feminine version. Duerrenmat wasn't trying to draw attention to the crazy psychiatrist's gender; the irony is the fact that the insane newly minted dictator of the world is a psychiatrist.


Then there were several books from a class on the modern English novel (meaning the modern period in the first half of the 20th Century). My most vivid memory from that class was how everybody thought the teacher was crazy. He had some eccentric ideas about education, including a tendency to put bizarre minutiae on exams. For example, we all joked that we'd never forget what the captain in Joseph Conrad's Typhoon called his umbrella ("the blessed gamp") because of this guy's obsession with it. The class was no problem for me, since I'm the king of useless, irrelevant information, but it was problematic for some of the other students.


My biggest problem is that I'm not optimally efficient at sifting through this material at this point. Recent developments in my life have made me more likely to reexamine my past in a new light. That slows me down, even though I now have the ability to say "enough is enough" and move on after following a tangent for so long. As opposed to my early undergrad stint, when research papers took me forever because I would read all kinds of off-topic material at the library.

Thoughts on "The Decision"

(Note: This was originally posted somewhere else on July 14)

I haven't commented anywhere on LeBron James' decision about where to play next year (except to register my correct guess on Facebook the day before). A lot has been written, pro and con, since then. A lot of it has been hilariously ill-informed (sports columnists are often worse than political pundits). For example, there's this gem from Sports Illustrated's Michael Rosenberg. Suddenly it's an incredible betrayal to want to play with your friends and win championships, and Michael Jordan's career decisions bind every other free agent until the end of time. In case  you can't tell, I have no problem with James' decision to sign with Miami. I do have a problem with the primetime special used for something that should have been a press release or, in this day and age, a tweet on Twitter. It's possible that "The Decision" was ESPN's idea, and that James only went along with it for the charity money, but there's no definitive evidence that this was the case.

The thing that actually prompted me to write about this whole situation is the news I just saw on the ESPN screen crawl. Apparently, Zydrunas Ilgauskas is signing with Miami now. Z has been with the Cavs forever and is the only current Cavs player who predates the LeBron James era. Because of his longevity, and his pre-LeBron years as the best player on a string of mediocre Cavs teams, he's beloved by Cavs fans. This signing is probably not going to improve Dan Gilbert's mood.

So now the question is, how much is Miami going to raid the Cavs' roster? After all, Miami's still got about 4 roster spots to fill just to get to the minimum of 10, and the Cavs have a lot of relatively cheap talent. Is Anderson Varejao next? Well, okay, that's not likely because Miami's front court is pretty crowded at the moment. But what about one of the young three-point shooters, like Jamario Moon? I can see this getting ugly pretty quickly. Last year, I figured that the Cavs had about a 4th-5th seed playoff team without James, just because of the number of talented players they signed before and during the season. But this off-season, the East looks to be getting stronger, and if the Cavs lose too many players off their roster, their place in the pecking order could suffer even farther. To the extent that LeBron James talks Cavs players into coming down to Miami with him, the hatred in Cleveland could only get worse.

David Brooks Gets Honest

In his latest column, David Brooks makes the case that books are better than the Internet. This is hardly a revolutionary claim, but the arguments Brooks uses to back up the claim are disturbing and indicative of the heart of the conservative movement. He begins by recounting a couple of studies that show that school children given books over the summer perform better in the next academic year and that the expansion of broadband has resulted in a decline in math and reading scores.

I'm not going to dispute the studies. There are many reasons why books may be better at intellectual stimulation than the Internet. People might spend more online time Facebooking than looking up classics at Project Gutenberg. The Internet, because it is consumed from a screen, may encourage skimming rather than long, in-depth reading. However, Brooks, while he mentions the shallow skimming theory, doesn't think that's the main problem with the Internet. We get our first glimpse of his real beef with the web in this paragraph:

A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.

This sounds harmless, and even laudable. Surely some books are better than others. The trouble starts when Brooks contrasts the qualities of the Internet:

A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. New media are supposedly savvier than old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, anti-authority disputation.

Translation: The real problem with the Internet is that it encourages the questioning of traditional sources of authority like the "old media." Note that, though I linked the Dayton Daily News' version of the column, Brooks actually writes for The New York Times, the flagship of the beleaguered "old media," a formerly sacrosanct journalistic authority that is now frequently questioned from both the right and left.

And just in case you didn't get the point, Brooks doubles down:

But the literary world is still better at helping you become cultivated, mastering significant things of lasting import. To learn these sorts of things, you have to defer to greater minds than your own. You have to take the time to immerse yourself in a great writer’s world. You have to respect the authority of the teacher.

My problem with Brooks' analysis isn't a rejection of all hierarchy. I believe there is a hierarchy of ideas. Reason dictates that some ideas are better than others (e.g., more logical, more in line with observed reality). However, Brooks doesn't really believe in a hierarchy of ideas; he believes in a hierarchy of people ("greater minds" or "your teacher"). In his world, you're not supposed to respect a philosopher like Plato because of the quality of his ideas, but just because he's Plato. He slips up and admits a key tenet of conservative thought: the rabble must not be allowed to question their "betters." We can't have a world in which cartoonists/bloggers can criticize almighty authorities like NYT columnists. And naturally, the "betters" always include some group the conservative either belongs to or identifies with (in this case, "old media"). After reading this column, my hatred for all the jerks on the Internet has abated somewhat. After all, I'd rather live with idiotic commenters than the button-down world David Brooks envisions.

As inadvertent conservative confessions go, this one's not as bad as apologizing to BP or calling for higher taxes on the working class, but it is revealing nonetheless.

First Night at the Adventurers' Guild

Friday night, I went to the Wright State Adventurers' Guild, having found out that the tabletop gaming club I'd gamed with as an undergrad had been reconstituted and that alumni were still allowed to play. I was looking forward to my first live gaming since a one-shot in somebody's Gen-Con hotel room a few years back. That didn't quite work out for this week, but I've still got my fingers crossed for next week.

I set foot in Oelman Hall for the first time since about 1989, the last time I took one of those huge, 200-person gen-ed classes in 109 Oelman. Oelman is one of two WSU quad buildings that hasn't been extensively remodeled. In fact, the floor tiles look like they're probably the exact same ones originally laid down in the 1960s. (Yes, every time I go into one of the old buildings for the first time this go-round, it always generates a nostalgia trip or comparison of how much things have changed in 15-20 years).

So I took the elevator to the third floor, and with some help from lounging Guild members waiting for the rest of their group to show up, I found the room the officers were in. Then I spent the next hour and a  half waiting and discussing things with the low-level officers who were actually present. Apparently, even though the start time is officially 6:30, few of the groups actually get rolling until about 8 (that, too, brings back memories).

I found out that only two out of the several groups at the Guild are playing 4e, much to my relief. Apparently, most of the gamers at WSU have had the bad (or at best indifferent) reaction to 4e that I've notice among sane people. Though my greatest fear was abated, I ran into the problem of the transition between quarters. A lot of the groups had wound down their campaigns for the academic year, and many didn't even show up, having decided not to try to start summer campaigns until next week. It was probably a good thing. I was in such a hurry when I packed my little RPG book bag that I just shoved in whatever happened to be lying around. Basically, I had a D&D 3.5 PHB plus the following random selections:

• Two Mongoose Runequest books, which were already in the bag for some reason
• The GURPS 4e Characters Book
• The Star Wars Saga Edition core rulebook
• The Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplay core book I bought at Half-Price Books a while back.

Unfortunately, the Guild seems to be heavy on d20 games, but not on Star Wars, so my selection wasn't a good match. The fact that I also forgot my dice would have also been an inconvenience, albeit a mild one since most gamers have a gazillion dice to lend if necessary.

Anyway, I spent most of the evening reading the Guild president's rough draft of a science-fiction novel. It wasn't bad for a beginner. There are some ways in which the guy could sharpen his writing, but he's avoided a lot of beginner mistakes (e.g., writing about ideas instead of characters, writing information dumps instead of scenes).

Odds are that I'll end up joining a d20 Modern group next week and actually get to play.

Feedback (Not the Rush Covers Album)

So I went into the workshop Monday with a fantasy story that was barely more than a rough draft. I felt like, in places, the writing was a little better than my average rough draft, but it still left a lot to be desired. I also knew there were major issues like places where I'd summarized instead of writing scenes just because I was on a deadline and in a hurry. Then there were the places where I'd forgotten to include information and written inconsistent information. Sometimes my rough drafts are little more than brainstorming sessions where I throw ideas against a wall and see what sticks, and I don't always go back and correct earlier sections with the new information. I figure I'll make sense out of this mess during revision. Unfortunately, this time all I had time to do was go back and try to fix the worst of the inconsistent information, and maybe spare the class the three different names for the village in which the story is set and the two different names for one of the major characters. I was finishing this up on Sunday about 6:00 p.m., and if I didn't get it posted in time to give my classmates Sunday evening to read it, I would basically derail everything.

My disappointment in not being able to at least edit the word choice and grammar mingled with my normal anxiety when I'm going to be the center of attention in class (see my worries about my exercise facilitation). By class time on Monday, I was too insecure about this particular draft to do a reading. I was afraid if I tried to read, I would spot some bad writing every few seconds, and my reading would would go something like this: "Lorem ipsem--D'oh!--e pluribus unum--Gah!--que sera sera--Dammit!" Basically, it would sound like Tourette's Syndrome Theater Presents: Dramatic Readings of Amateur Fiction. 

Fortunately, at this point in my life, I've advanced past the point where I can differentiate my writing from my own ego, so I was able to smile and nod as the critiques came in:

"Too much summarizing" (Fair)

"Love interest isn't well-developed enough for the main character to accidentally kill his whole village over her" (Totally fair)

"Main character doesn't have much of a reaction to killing off his village" (Yep, I was really in a hurry writing that last scene)

"All the magic's in the last half" (Yeah, definitely dropped the ball on that, given that one character uses magic in his everyday life)

Etc., etc., etc.

However, I did get a few ideas I had never thought of. Most notably, there was the idea that the content of this story, fully realized, would be the first few chapters of a novel, not just the opening chapter or the first of a series of linked stories. Now that I think about that, I can completely see it.

The written feedback was also helpful. Just tonight, I started going through all the questions about the plot and the setting that my classmates came up with and writing answers down. This gave me the opportunity to do some more detailed world building than I'd even done before. In particular, I was able to sit down and really examine the magic system. The world in which this story is set was originally supposed to be a D&D setting, but since I'm using it for fiction first, I decided that I should go down the list of D&D conventions (I'm talking pre-4e, BTW) and decide which ones I want to keep.

When it comes to magic, the first major tropes to go were

• "Fire and forget" Vancian magic. This system was added to D&D for game mechanical reasons and isn't found in non-D&D fiction outside of Jack Vance.
• The planes as a source of magic power. I guess this one isn't a standard D&D trope, but I had originally had a system where my spellcasters got their powers from different planes. I decided that talking about things like the Ethereal Plane in non-D&D fiction, even though WotC doesn't claim to own any intellectual property in them, would be a little like talking about dilithium crystals in any sci-fi setting other than the Star Trek universe.

Having started to slough off the conventions foisted on the original setting by archaic game design, I'm now liberated to think about things in terms of what makes a compelling fictional universe and what works for the kind of stories I want to take place in this world. The only problem is that, once this class is over, there are still going to be at least a couple of other projects ahead of this one.

New Old Story

So it turns out that my boot camp attendance was for naught, at least as far as generating a story for class is concerned. Though I've decided I'm going to finish that story and submit it somewhere (maybe to Nexus just for fun; it's not the kind of story that's going to make money anyway), it's probably way too short for the length guideline. And the other story I was considering for this purpose isn't revealing itself to me fast enough for the deadline. So, given the choice between two unpalatable options, I'm going for Option #3.


Option #3 would be this old story I'd started on, which was set in a world I'd tried to create as a D&D campaign setting. I'm about as far along on it as I was on the other story at the end of boot camp, but this one has so much more waiting to happen. Now I just have to finish getting it all on paper by Friday.


In other news, I apparently nailed that exercise facilitation I mentioned in my last post. Nine out of ten. Shocked the hell out of me. I have never felt less confident about anything while I was doing it than I did about that exercise.

Anger

I had to lead a writing exercise in class today. While looking for ideas about an exercise to get people writing courageously (a vague, amorphous concept not conducive to easy ideas), I looked at this self-help book for writers called The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. While it didn't have any exercises that were appropriate for a class, I did manage to take enough inspiration to come up with a half-assed, serviceable exercise on my own.

One particularly interesting passage dealt with the role of anger in a well-adjusted person's life.

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.

"Blast him! I could make a better film than that!" (This anger says: you want to make movies. You need to learn how.)

"I can't believe it! I had this idea for a play three years ago, and she's gone and written it." (This anger says: stop procrastinating. Ideas don't get opening nights. Finished plays do. Start writing.)

"That's my strategy he's using. This is incredible! I've been ripped off! I knew I should have pulled that material together and copyrighted it." (This anger says: it's time to take your own ideas seriously enough to treat them well.)

I would add that when you're angry about your job, the anger isn't saying, "Kill your boss" (no matter how evil and narcissistic your boss actually is). It's telling you it's time to get out of dodge and work toward doing what you really want to do with your life. And it only took me about 4-5 years after first getting that feeling to act on it. This passage represents the thing I most wish somebody had told me 10 years ago.