March 10, 2016--Dangerous Election

The most recent issue of The New York Review of Books includes a cautionary article by Michael Tomasky about the presidential election, "The Dangerous Election."

He attempts to ferret out and explicate the concerns of voters from both parties.

Here is the heart of what he has to say--

The developments within both parties reflect the long-standing anxieties that liberals and conservatives feel about the country, anxieties that have only grown sharper as time has passed. For liberals, the chief concern for thirty-five years now has been about the unfairness of the economy—virtual wage stagnation for most workers, huge gains for the top 1 percent, and the lax regulatory and enforcement regimes that have permitted those outcomes, along with slow recovery from the most recent recession. 

For conservatives, for about the same period of time, the main worry has been what is broadly called “culture,” by which we really mean the anger and resentment felt by older white Americans about the fact that the country is no longer “theirs” and that their former status and authority no longer seem what they once were. This rubric takes in a number of issues—immigration, especially illegal immigration; same-sex marriage; a black president in the White House; all the things that conservatives bundle under the reviled label “political correctness.” In their minds it is some sort of taint that has infected every institution in this once-great nation and is destroying it daily before their eyes.

What's wrong with this is that it is full of stereotypical thinking. 

As common on the left as the right.

According to Tomasky, liberals are interested in economic issues while conservatives are concerned primarily with those that are cultural.

This is so oversimplified as to make his analysis useless. Actually, harmful.

Conservatives are as interested in economic issues as Democrats. Manay may have a different perspective--less focused on inequality and more on tax policy and deregulation--but since by no means are all conservatives affluent, those in the middle class have also experienced wage stagnation since the 1970s. And are as frustrated about this and feeling as betrayed as those on the left.

And to imply that liberals do not have passionate cultural concerns suggests one has been oblivious to the powerful agenda pursued by Democrats to assure equal rights to women--the right to choose is as cultural an issue as the fight to overturn it. Further, the ongoing campaign to expand and protect the rights of various minorities from people of color to those from the LGBT community are also cultural  Affirmative action and the right to marry who one loves for many progressives trumps economic concerns.

It is important not to mischaracterize those with whom we have differences. If we want to heal the social divide and find ways to work with those with whom we disagree, we need to avoid such superficial thinking. 

If we feel that there are social maladies that require addressing, that this, in Tomasky's words is "a dangerous election," it is essential to begin with a carful diagnosis. Promoting stereotypes is the opposite of being helpful.

October 7, 2015--Rules of Writing

Somehow I never got around to reading anything by Elmore Leonard.

I enjoy Raymond Chandler so I can't quite say I dislike detective novels, though they are not among my favorites.

But Leonard has escaped me except for a few movies such as Get Shorty that are based on his novels. And I haven't been that impressed by them.

But when less than a month ago The New York Review of Books published a major piece about him--"The Elmore Leonard Story"--I ordered and read Out of Sight. Not bad, but still not for me Raymond Chandler.

Though I liked what Joan Acocella in the NYR had to say--

Elmore Leonard, who died two summers ago, aged eighty-seven, became famous as a crime novelist, but didn't like being grouped with most of the big names in that genre, people such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett or, indeed, any of the noir writers. He disapproved of their melodrama, their pessimism, their psychos and nymphs and fancy writing. He saw in crime no glamor or sexiness but, on the contrary, long hours and sore feet. His criminals didn't become what they were out of any fondness for vice. They just needed the work, and that's what was available.

I confess, the things Leonard dislikes about Chandler are among the very reasons I like him!

There is, though, one brilliant scene in Out of Sight.

When Jack Foley, who has just broken out of prison encounters a beautiful deputy U.S. marshall, Karen Sisco, who, by chance is parking outside the gates when the breakout occurs, though there for other business, Foley takes her captive, puts her in the getaway car's trunk, and joins her there, not for hanky-panky but, for among other things, to talk about movies. Especially ones in which Faye Dunaway stars!

That alone is worth the price of the book.

In his lifetime Leonard wrote more than 30 novels and because of the sparseness of his prose and vivid dialogue became a sort of writers-writer. So much so, and obviously relishing it, he took to issuing rules of writing, including these ten--

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues.

3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said."

5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000  words.

6. Never use the word "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

7. Use regional dialect, patois sparingly.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9. Don't go into detail describing places and things.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

He added, "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10."

And, my favorite, "If it sounds like rewriting, rewrite it."

As much as I like most of these, and would add, "Show, don't tell," I need dispensation to use more exclamation points. In this piece alone I've used up more than my lifetime supply!