Surreality Check

One of my first overt acts of teenage rebellion—ok, I got a late start, I preferred subversion—was an album purchase twenty-six years ago this week. I still have it. The Dark Side of the Moon is a watershed in a lot of ways. It's the first recording with non-musical elements behind the music that received both critical and popular acclaim. (John Cage doesn't count; "popular" is not the word for anything he did.)

August also marked the last month before school began (just after Labor Day where I grew up, running until mid-June). That meant a lot of things needed to get done. The "Welcome Back to Hell" issue of the underground newspaper needed to be ready to go. The boss had to be placated so that my schedule at work would match up (at least somewhat) with school. And so on.

August also became the time for my all-day pilgrimmages to the UW libraries in search of debate materials. I was a high-school debater. A good one. Of course, that often involved a few side trips into used book stores and the literary sections of the stacks. I'd say that 60-70 percent of my education while in high school came on those August trips. (Yes, that is a slam at my high school system.) The joys of reading Mann, and Goethe, and Rilke in their (and my) native language!

That's right. I'm not a native speaker of English. Over the years, I've probably become more competent in English. My German has deteriorated a bit since I haven't had to use it daily, but it's still fairly good. So, if my sentences seem long and involved; if my verbs seem all too often at the end to fall; if my writing seems formal even when I'm trying to be colloquial—now you know.

Aren't you sorry you asked?

I just wasted the evening with "Weird Al" Yankovic. VH1 profiled him on Behind the Music, then followed up with a video compilation. It's startling to realize that he's been at this for 20 years. He's been parodying Star Wars^tm for almost as long. It's fairly sad that Al's parodies have better internal consistency than George's movies.

I haven't written much fiction over the last week or so. It's not writer's block as much as ill health. It's darned hard to write when one's energy goes into such frivolities as getting out of bed. (Reread the previous paragraph.) This should improve as the heat drops. I suppose this is what I get for spending time in tropical areas. Too bad it's not covered by the VA.

That doesn't mean no thinking about fiction, though. Perhaps no coherent thinking, but we'll just have to see, won't we? Not much in the way of words on paper or on screen, but it's sort of like taking a block of electrons and chiseling away all the parts that don't look like a story. There's a certain amount of rough work that has to be done first.

I've slowly come to the conclusion that I'm probably not going to sell much short speculative fiction. The short fiction that I write is far too experimental and frankly off the wall for the current commercial markets, and I'm far less satisfied with it than the longer pieces (over about 15k). It's virtually impossible for a "newcomer" to sell novellettes and novellas these days; it's actually much easier to sell novels. All it takes is a manuscript and the willingness to do unspeakably vile acts in the dubious privacy of an agent's office.

Tomorrow is going to be a bad day for fiction. Tina Brown's new magazine Talk hits the stands. She managed to destroy The New Yorker's fiction during her editorship; that magazine may never recover. I anticipate much the same hypertrendy, no-civilization-west-of-the-Hudson, we-don't-need-plot-or-character, I-won't-print-it-unless-it's-multiply-self-referential bullshit as we saw The New Yorker turn to in place of real fiction. That, of course, will influence more than just fiction markets; it will influence the teaching of fiction and "creative writing." And that is bad. One does not jump straight to abstract art without some grounding in representational art. There are certain drawing skills—for lack of a better term—that artists need to master first. Defining the void requires the ability to describe it—somehow—in the first place.

Tina Brown isn't some demonic figure. She's just terribly misguided and has terrible taste. Unfortunately, she has managed (rather like Andy Warhol) to convince a lot of people with money that she has good taste. There's a big difference between Louise Nevelson and Jackson Pollock (and it's not just the media with which they worked).

Just a few words on writing contracts. It appears that the nasty (unacceptable) indemnity clause is becoming more and more popular. There's a very simple means that authors have to deal with it: strike it out. That's right. Draw a heavy line through the entire paragraph and initial both ends of the line. If you're feeling generous, you can substitute a paragraph that only transfers liability under the circumstances I've mentioned previously, and requires the parties to cooperate in defense.

Talk isn't as bad as I feared. It's worse. But why should speculative fiction writers care? Aren't we our own little ghetto?

Precisely.

The term "speculative fiction" should give away my bias. So should some of my other comments, both in this journal and elsewhere. To be as blunt as possible, literary ghettos are bad for the residents and the exterior. We don't need continued consolidation in "respectable" markets, because that has a trickle-down effect on the markets for our "less than respectable" speculative fiction. The "average" story in Asimov's, F&SF, and Interzone is better as literature than the "average" story in The New Yorker. Think of the old Negro League ballplayers, and how they compared to the so-called "major leagues."

The Old Guard is welcome to its ghetto—the space opera that is nothing more than a Western with ray guns, the media and gaming tie-ins designed not to threaten pre-adolescents, the IFS that are nudging in on straight "romance," the "nursey novel," and "sweeping family sagas." The ghetto walls have been built from both sides. I will not be a party to it. Neither will I be a party to allowing commercial interests that do not actually read to destroy literature.

Here's the kicker: Get all of the marketing people from HarperCollins into a room (and I'm just picking on HarperCollins because its ultimate owner is so antiintellectual). Separate out the ones who have responsibility for selling fiction. Ask how many of those salesbeings have actually read anything they're selling. Repeat for the legal department. Repeat for corporate management.

At least Detroit executives drive cars.

Now that I've got that out of my system, we'll return to other stuff with the next entry.

Not much to report here. The last two days were spent in a difficult negotiation over some intellectual property rights. Neither side wanted to go to court, because it's iffy enough that an adverse precedent could cost millions. On the other hand, there was more than chump change at issue here, too. I think I banged enough heads on my side of the "v." to get this resolved without a court battle, but we'll just have to see.

There's a huge window of opportunity for a privately held (or at least non-SEC-reporting) company to establish itself in fiction publishing (especially, but not only, speculative fiction) and be positioned to make a mint in the early part of the next century. Paper costs are at a six-year low, and look like they're going lower; the distribution system is becoming more direct, which reduces warehousing costs; the slave-labor pay rates for the people who actually work with the material are, on an inflation-adjusted basis, lower than any time since the late 1960s, particularly outside of New York; and other electronic production systems are reducing both production cost and production time. So, how about it, Mr./Ms. Deep Pockets? Or are you chiiiicken?

</SARCASM>

All seriousness aside, this sort of thing happens every generation or so. Riding out the storm can be very difficult, but I think (paradoxically) that things are already starting to look up for two to three years down the road. For those of us who read tea leaves, SEC filings, and goat entrails—the last of which is usually the most reliable—some of the intracorporate culture clashes involved in recent media conglomerations are already resulting in dissatisfaction in both editorial and sales/marketing personnel. There's a lot of venture capital out there that doesn't want to chase internet IPOs; all it's going to take is some matchmaking, and there are some subtle signs that some Jewish aunts are working overtime in the shtetl.

I don't really know what all that means, but things sure sound better than at this time last year. Unfortunately, it won't make much difference to authors for 18-24 months, or perhaps longer.

Twenty-five years ago today, we had a brief moment of democracy.

Then, at noon the next day, we had a moment of madness. When Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as President of the United States, it marked the only time in which the acknowledged leader of the United States (Hillary, Nancy, Eleanor, and Edith don't count) had never been elected to national office. Instead, Jerry Ford had been a member of the House of Representatives prior to his appointment as Vice President, in place of the convicted tax-dodger Spiro Agnew.

No shots were fired. No bombs were thrown. No poison was slipped into the overly opulent meals of government leaders at another meaningless banquet. No duels were fought between pretenders to the crown.

And yet, in many ways, our system of government was under greater threat in early August of 1974 than any time since the ratification of the Constitution, including the "Civil War." (There is no greater oxymoron than "civil war." "Honest politician," "honest lawyer," and "a little bit pregnant" are all far less self-contradictory.)

But we survived. Had Richard Nixon not resigned, I'm not certain that we'd be reading and writing these journals. A fair number of science fiction writers of the day were on Nixon's "enemies list," or at least the list of people vying to get on the "enemies list." Jimmy Carter could not have won election in 1976 under those circumstances. (Can you imagine Don Segretti handling Bert Lance's finances?)

So, the next time your galactic empire, or fantasy kingdom, needs a change of leadership, remember that it can be done without either primogeniture or revolution. Sometimes without even an election.

Another mail day, another few rejections. That's life in the "somewhat academic" business for those of us without a permanent university affiliation. The so-called "independent scholar" is largely a myth. Popularizers have room for Barbara Tuchman, but there are too many struggling assistant professors trying to get tenure and grad students trying to get a job at all for the "independent scholar" to be taken seriously. I say that having sat on the editorial side, too; an "independent scholar" is just not likely enough to produce the second, the third, the fourth scholarly book. Unlike fiction, that's where the money is in serious nonfiction.

So, I have to "write down" a little bit. Instead of a legal economics article that demonstrates that the Truth in Lending Act has led to a more, not less, efficient market for used cars, I take the material and write a book proposal for people who don't want to get ripped off financing their cars.

What does this have to do with speculative fiction?

How many crooked megabusinesses are there in science fiction and fantasy?

Just a few opportunities for conflict, side plots, plot complications, background, world-building, etc. And that's before we get into the Evil Merchant Princes, or even the Good-hearted Merchant Princes.

I'm studiously ignoring the events at the summer camp in Los Angeles.

For all the fire and thunder of Inherit the Wind, most Americans forget a very simple fact:

Scopes lost; he was convicted of violating the Tennessee state law against teaching evolution in the classroom.

The Kansas school board voted yesterday to make "evolution" the equivalent of "fuck" in the school curriculum. No, not quite; perhaps worse, because, as far as I know, the Kansas board did not prohibit the Advanced Placement English examination, the reading list for which includes several books that mention the Anglo-Saxon fricative. However, science books can no longer include the word "evolution." Does that mean that Inherit the Wind is out of bounds, too? How about Brave New World and 1984?

This is allegedly because "evolution" isn't fact, only theory. There are several problems with this explanation.

The most obvious problem is that this is a complete misrepresentation of "evolution" as a scientific theory. Evolution is an explanation of mechanism, not of instigation. There is no contradiction at all between a Supreme Being's creation of life, even complex primate life that depends on other life for its food chain, and the scientific explanation of how forms of life change. The Alpha Point is a conjecture; the theory of evolution does not pretend to determine it. Certainly Occam's Razor points to a "primordial soup" Alpha Point if one accepts all aspects of evolutionary theory without question, but Occam's Razor has been wrong before, and will be wrong again. Ask Einstein and Dirac.

As a less-complex example, one can predict the velocity of a perfectly round rock rolling down a hill when it reaches bottom. However, from the bottom of the hill, one cannot determine whether the rock started rolling from the hilltop because it was struck by a falling meteorite or because Jehovah gave it a small push. It doesn't matter; I still need to know the Newtonian physics of large-body behavior, because they explain other natural phenomena and have predictive value. But there is no contradiction here. I can believe in both Jehovah's push and Newtonian physics.

Politically, though, this nonsense should remind the historically astute of Medieval and Renaissance Catholicism more than anything else. The Kansas school board has defined evolution as heresy, and a particularly dangerous one that we cannot even mention because it will destroy the minds of even faithful children coming from good Christian families with strong family values who attend church every Sunday and read the King James Bible every night before bedtime. We must keep the Devil out of the Republic of Gilead, out of Salem, out of Rome.

In other words, it's not about religion, or faith, at all. It's about power, and the ability to make other people believe that those who are in power are right(eous) and invincible. The Sons of Ham, and of Isaac, are evil, because they look different, and think/believe different things. One must wonder whether the next step is revising the history books to remove awkward references to Judaism as a philosophical, cultural, and historical ancestor of Christianity. After all, one thing that American "social conservatism" has excelled at over the last couple hundred years is ignoring or suppressing uncomfortable facts and issues. "Separate but equal"; "three-fifths of all others"; "No Irish Need Apply"; the cross of gold; smallpox blankets; the purity of our bodily fluids.

Unfortunately, there is an intolerant right-wing strain in speculative fiction that seems to agree all too readily with the Kansas school board. (There's an intolerant left-wing strain, too, but that's for another time.) From Heinlein's cryptofascist pseudolibertarian bullshit to the latest quasimilitary corporate or imperial stormtroopers churned out by the novel-writing pornography machines in pursuit of the last dollar on Earth, the irony of this position seems to be lost on the writers, the editors, and the marketers. It's just like goldy or bronzy, but made out of iron. Or, as the case may be, antimony.

On Professionalism

In the next few days, I'll post a more-detailed essay over on the reviews page. If you intend to mailbomb me, I suggest waiting and reading the essay. But, in the interim, I'm going to sacrifice a sacred cow. Those of you who are offended by the particular sacrifice need to think about why you're offended.

As an attorney and military officer, I am perhaps more aware of and more sensitive than the average bear to the power of definition, and dangers of misdefinition. So much of this rant may seem hypertechnical; it certainly challenges the conventional wisdom. For those of you who'd rather avoid legalisms, I commend you to the Rule of Names, modern and postmodern cognitive science, and the history of the civil rights movement. Take your pick.

The SFWA's definition of "professional" is wrong. So is Writer's Digest's. And, in the long run, that definition—basically, that one is a "professional writer" based upon meeting certain minimum levels of payment for one's writing—is bad for literature, for books and publishing, and for authors. As shorthand, I'll call this the "paraeconomic" definition of professionalism.

There's nothing wrong with a "trade" or a "craft." There's also nothing wrong with trying to establish a profession, and taking the steps to do so. There's something insidious, however, in calling something a profession when it's not, or at least not yet.

It takes a helluva lot more than payment to make a professional. If one looks at the "traditional" professions, such as law, medicine (and nursing), engineering, teaching, accounting, and so on, one finds several factors in common that are completely absent from the paraeconomic definition. In no particular order:

• Admission to a profession is almost entirely judged by existing members of the profession. The bar exam and other licensing exams are just the tip of the iceberg. That is simply not true of the paraeconomic definition. For example, of the major short-fiction markets in speculative fiction—and, due at least in part to organizational politics, the SFWA won't even state in public what they are—a majority are edited by individuals who are not otherwise qualified for membership in the SFWA. Long-form fiction is far, far worse. Whether this is "good" or not, it's not "professional."
• A profession has a code of ethics to which it gives at least lip service. Although seldom stated, the fundamental assumption of these codes is that the customer always deserves the best efforts of the professional. There's no such thing as "good enough to sell," or the sale of substandard work based on a brand name (such as "by Bignameauthor"). That's for used car salesmen.
• A profession has established standards for ejecting members who fail to meet professional standards. Whether those standards are enforced is a side issue; I've yet to find any in the so-called profession of writing, though.
• A profession sticks together. The AMA and ABA lobbies are notorious, and actually represent (much of the time) the interests of a significant proportion, if not a majority, of the members of the respective professions. If there's an equivalent for authors, I'd like to know about it. There is no visible organization that can claim to represent more than a couple percent of authors, and most of those organizations are far from coherent and rather ineffective in dealing with the regulatory environment.

So, with all due respect to the gurus of "professional writing"—no, without too damned much respect—they're wrong. Professionalism is more than getting paid for one's work. That is a trade, or a craft. But it is not professionalism, and it is less than intellectually or ethically—or "professionally"—appropriate to insist otherwise.

I'm sure that certain advocates of the paraeconomic definition are going to disagree with me, perhaps violently. Some of them may even choose to use their not-inconsiderable influence in inappropriate, ad hominem ways. That is not paranoia; remember, I am a counselor at law (although not an attorney in the pejorative sense), and I could identify some of the skeletons in the closet if not otherwise bound by professional ethics. Of course, such attacks would demonstrate the maturity level normally found on the elementary school playground. Professionals learn from their mistakes, and are supposed to be detached enough from their work and politics to admit error in the first place.

"But it moves."

Which leads, in a circle, back to the first paragraph in today's entry.

Cynicism

Sunday night, Roger Ebert spent his entire half-hour on Star Wars^tm, including several interview segments with George Lucas Himself. I would have laughed the night away if I could have picked my jaw up off the floor.

At one point, Lucas tried to explain his theory of mythmaking—a theory, one might note, which bears little resemblance to either anthropological and literary evidence about myth, or even Joseph Campbell's oversimplified explanations—and destroyed his own myth with what he left out. His comment was something like this (sorry, I don't have a VCR):

"Star Wars is a modern myth. It's a bit Pollyannish and based on the idea that we need something hopeful that's not cynical. Everything today is so cynical, and mean-spirited, and vicious."

It's hard to imagine anything more cynical than the Star Wars empire, with its plastic toys and plastic tie-in fiction, paid for with plastic money. Especially the money part. This is an example of pretention turning around to bite the pretender. For all of Lucas's glib references, and Ebert's uncritical acceptance, he betrays no understanding of the material to which he's referring. This is especially rich coming from the creator of American Graffiti, which bears less relationship to the reality of American society in the early 1960s than William Morris's creations did to the reality of the Middle Ages.

At a broader level, it's hard to accept a Hollywood producer's criticism of anything as "cynicism." Lucas's readings apparently have not extended to the concept of self-parody, nor to the contracts and compensation arrangements imposed on writers. In legal circles, there's a mocking aphorism that when the facts are against you, argue the law; when the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table. Between Lucas and Ebert, the table got splintered.

Writing has actually gone well this week (since Saturday), although as of this morning I've only got 7,800 words to show for it. Whaddaya mean "only" 7,800 words in three days? The majority of it is nonfiction; that's what lawyers do. Or lawyers with my kind of practice, anyway. It's also what academics do. In any event, it's only 325 words an hour based on an 8-hour day (yeah, right), which works out to 5.4 words per minute. Considering that my actual typing is over 80 words a minute while composing at the keyboard, it begins to look spectacularly unproductive.

But, just like a high-level athlete, "game time" is only a small fraction of the time one spends writing. An international-caliber soccer player will actually play somewhere around 100 hours of competitive matches in a year, barring serious injury or other problems. An international-caliber soccer player trains, both physically and mentally, for 20 to 25 hours per week, and spends another 5 to 8 hours a week on travel, media relations, etc.—in other words, at least 1,300 hours a year. All that time writers spend researching, outlining, revising, and so on is like an athlete's training sessions. One cannot maintain a high level of competency without that stuff, which few people credit in "how many words I wrote today" calculations.

<WHINE>Make the little men with the hammers go away! I didn't even get drunk. And while you're at it, fix the L4/L5 and L5/S1 discs, whydoncha. I've given up on the nice Jewish girls; I suppose that's fitting, since they (rightfully) gave up on me a couple decades ago. I demand pepperoni and extra cheese on my pizza, after a nice Shrimp Louis.</WHINE>

Morrie, check granny's pulse. Meshugah—every time I mention goyfood.

Don't ever jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I'm still paying the price for one bad night landing.

Today's routine of sitting up to work in twenty-minute spurts, followed by a half hour trying to hold an ice pack in place, is enough to make me wish for a Jewish grandmother bearing bowls of chicken soup (made with the feet, of course). I'd almost put up with the sniping and "advice." Then again, since my ancestors in Europe didn't work for a living—they owned things—my grandmother probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference beween a kosher wing drummette and real Buffalo Wings with extra Roquefort cheese in the sauce (gad, that dish is about six violations).

I wonder if elves keep kosher? That would explain a lot in The Hobbit. The peculiar meals at the Last Homely House and in the elven King's woodland palace have always bothered me. Maybe the elves are the Lost Tribes . . . . Oh, that's right. I forgot. That was David Gerrold's theory on the origin of Vulcans. (Really. It's somewhere in The Worlds of  Star Trek.) Anyway, they've all got pointy ears.

I don't think Tamela needs to have the rabbi come and check up on Bambi. If a pirate shows up and demands a bucket of blood, though, she'll have something to give him. I do think I should lay off the Passover wine. Well, if I'm drinking it now, it's obviously not going to make it to Passover, is it? Maybe I'll just stick to the prescription painkillers. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Sophistry and rationalizations come naturally to lawyers. That's our job. Alcohol abuse is merely a sideline.

The Food Chain

Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?
A: One of them is a scum-sucking bottom dweller; the other one is a fish.

Well, given that, I guess I'll claim some expertise on food chains. Paging through the back of the August WD the other day—one of the best ways to keep current on borderline publishing ethics is to read the ads in WD—I found a couple of interesting ones; one today, one tomorrow. Today, we'll look at the Lee Shore Agency and its undisclosed apparent affiliates. Bear with me; this is an appearance that can be inferred from the advertisements.

Lee Shore's ad itself isn't bad. What is interesting is comparing addresses. Lee Shore claims to be at 440 Friday Road, Pittsburgh. Its ad is under "Literary Agents." On that same page, under "Manuscripts Wanted," one finds an advertisement for Sterling House Publishers, also claiming an address of 440 Friday Road, Pittsburgh. Gee, those are the same street addresses, aren't they? Not even different "suite numbers." The inference that one can make is that there is a business connection between these two organizations. It should surprise nobody that a visit to Lee Shore's website indicates:

• A strong bias in favor of self-publishing, and even subsidy and vanity publishing, allegedly because commercial publishers seldom understand the efforts of new authors
• Stated sales only to non-commercial publishers (self publishers, subsidy presses, and vanity presses), such as Press-Tige
• No mention whatsoever of Sterling House, which from all appearances (and a check of LMP) is not a commercial publisher

If Lee Shore Agency was instead a law firm, and there are in fact common ownership interests between Lee Shore and Sterling, this would violate the (admittedly seldom enforced) Rules of Professional Conduct, Rules 1.7 through 1.10. Rules 1.7 through 1.10 try to prevent harm to law clients by prohibiting a lawyer from representing both sides in a transaction or lawsuit.

Agents are not subject to lawyers' rules. However, since lawyers and agents have much the same function, agents damned well should be subject to similar rules. The failure of agents to establish enforceable rules of ethics along these lines—and merely getting kicked out of AAR is not sufficient—casts some doubt on the professionalism of the agent community as a whole, although not necessarily upon individual agents. An "agency" that also acts as a "publisher" is representing both sides of the transaction. (I'm not interested in any form-over-substance illusory corporate separations; even the Rules of Professional Conduct concern actual ownership.)

It is within the limits of possibility that Sterling House merely shares a mailing address with Lee Shore. If, however, the appearance reflects reality, the relationship should be disclosed somewhere in a public location. A disclosure on the "publishing" contract, which is what I would guess is the most an author can realistically expect, appears to be (barely) legal under Pennsylvania law, questionable under the FTC Act, and fails to meet appropriate ethical standards. There's plenty of chance to disclose—or deny—common interests on Lee Shore's website (which extolls the supposed virtues of subsidy, vanity, and self-publishing). Even realtors have to tell you who they represent! In my experience as a litigator, even used car salesscum are more likely, as a group, to tell the whole truth than are realtors.

Of course, nobody who reads this journal depends on purchasing services or products from WD's ads, do you?

OK, so it's not tomorrow. So sue me.

Another borderline ad—or set of them—in the August WD: the 12²/₃ pages of ads for acknowledged WD products. That, folks, is 17% of the page count for the issue, including two of the three prime ad locations (the inside covers). Fortunately, I don't pay for the magazine; I'm a library rat. (As a lawyer, I'm certainly some kind of rat.)

One or two pages, maybe even three, wouldn't be a problem. But this is over twice the space allocated to any individual article in the issue! It's also disingenuous, to say the least, when measured against the cover price. Let's see, now. At $3.49 an issue, that means that a newstand purchaser is paying $0.58 just for WD's own ads! How would you like it if the average ninety-minute videocassette came with not just the typical five minutes, but fifteen minutes, of ads for other movies by the same distributor? And nine minutes of the ads were for foreign-language films? Then there's the additional ten minutes of ads for stuff from other distributors.

This is merely the latest example of borderline conduct at WD. It's not illegal; it probably doesn't even cross the line to "unethical," by itself. But . . . a detailed examination of the content of the ads might lead to a different conclusion under the FTC Act.

The fabulous T is, as Diana points out, entitled to lose a few pounds. She doesn't need to for appearance, but then I am NAW's certified Dirty Old Man. (She looks great as is.) As long as the goal isn't Twiggy, that's probably a healthy impulse, and its relationship to personal body image is irrelevant. I could certainly stand to lose a few pounds myself. Then, I don't have much personal appearance to protect. Sort of like an honest "personals" ad:

Overweight balding middle-aged professional man, NS, D/D free, no criminal record, borderline personality, no sanity. Enjoys fine literature, fine music, fine wine, and fine arguments. Anti-Marxist liberal. ISO single female, 22-35, compatible politics, great brains, great body, infinite desire. Naughty nights first, relationship if we get around to it. Reply to box 1789 with candid photos.

OK, so maybe I need a copywriter.

Various people have suggested that it would be all to the good if no novels were reviewed at all. So it would, but the suggestion is useless, because nothing of the kind is going to happen. No paper which depends on publishers' advertisements can afford to throw them away, and though the more intelligent publishers probably realize that they would be no worse off if the blurb-review were abolished, they cannot put an end to it for the same reasons as the nations cannot disarm—because nobody wants to be the first to start. For a long time yet the blurb-reviews are going to continue, and they are going to grow worse and worse; the only remedy is to contrive in some way that they shall be disregarded. But this can only happen if somewhere or other there is decent novel reviewing which will act as a standard of comparison. That is to say, there is need of just one periodical (one would be enough for a start) which makes a specialty of novel reviewing but refuses to take any notice of tripe, and in which the reviewers are reviewers and not ventriloquists' dummies clapping their jaws when the publisher pulls the string.

I take no prisoners when reviewing books. That may result in some bruised toes and egos. People feel free to condemn, say, a quarterback's performance in The Big Game. Why should the rest of "entertainment" be different, if fiction is nothing more than entertainment? I can't be the "one publication," but I can try.

Which leads to another question: Why so few reviews of late? Partly just plain fatigue. I don't linger over books that I intend to review. In summer heat, I cannot sit and read for long sessions. (I refuse to pay Illinois Power's exhorbitant rates for six more degrees of air conditioning.) Partly the decreasing proportion of inexpensive new non-tie-in books. (Knowing what I do about publishing economics, I refuse to pay a $12 premium for an "average" hardback when $9.85 is solely attributable to the inefficiencies of the book distribution system.) Which reminds me—I'm going to have to get around to converting the rest of the article on media fiction and posting it. (Fortunately, I don't have to get permission. I always retain that.)

Now there's a frightening thought. I can say "chronically enlarged liver" all I want, and everyone else will say "beer gut."

It's a bird—it's a plane—damn, it's in the 6 p.m. O'Hare landing pattern.

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