The Great Room

Page 39, "I [Will] followed Henry into the Great Room and plopped down on the bench..."

This great room isn't so big, but it is great in every other sense. This continues the bit about going into narrow openings and finding a larger world beyond. Like Alice sliding down the rabbit hole or Dr. Who entering the tardis, which looks like a phone booth, but is a time/space ship that is a universe inside.

It's this travel through time and space that's so fascinating in classical music. You listen to Beethoven or Bach and you're transported to their world. Actually, it's a world that you and the performer, and they make together, their selves filtered through their personality give to us filtered through the performers, the instruments, and your own filters. What's left after that process is completed is indeed a joint creation.

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

The Kearney World

On p.39, Will says: "Henry led me through a narow door into the middle of a small auditorium."

This tells you what a tiny entree people have into this world Henry operated in all those years. Yet some of the greatest performers played there. Kreisler, one of the great violinists of the 20th century. This is, of course, modeled on the Curtis Institute where some of the greatest music ever made is made.

You know, if I were rewriting this, I'd say, "Henry unlocked a small door and led me into the middle of a small auditorium..." That would reemphasis the key thing. But, you can't relive your life, and you can't rewrite your book.

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Henry on Teaching

On pages 38-9 Henry tells Will that Ben was one of the most gifted piano students Kearney ever had.

Will asks how Ben got that way. Henry says Ben's teacher, Wenger, was very abusive: "Wenger insisted all his students wash their hands before playing. He's merciless to his students. He belittles them constantly. Tries to make them so mad they'll play better." [p. 38]

Will asks him, "You didn't teach that way, did you?" Henry shrugs and says some students thrive on it. "Wenger's had some great ones," Henry says. Will says he can't even imagine Ben's demons.

[Not hard to believe; Will can't even imagine his own]

Finally, Will says, "I know why he keeps his gloves on." [p.39]

We should consider these gloves a little bit next time.

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Letting the Story Run

Sometimes you just have to let the story run. In basketball, it's analogous to dribbling the ball down the court rather than passing it.

After we got done characterizing Ben on p. 37, the story starts to speed up. Henry has just said good by to Ben. Here's how it went:

Ben looked up at Henry. "Mr. Harrier?"

"What, Ben?"

Ben moved his hands faster. "I saw that thing."

"What thing, Ben?"

"Where Mr. Kearney fell on his head."

Henry bent closer to Ben. "You saw Ian Kearney fall off the balcony?"
Ben described Ian's fall in exact detail."

Detail, but the reader doesn't see it.

Characterizing slows down the pace of the story. So you have to think about what the story needs. How fast does the story need to go. Don't slow down when it needs to run fast.

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

The Meaning of Keys

As I was thinking about what I wrote yesterday, I got to thinking about how what the word "key" means to each of these three characters really sets them apart.

For Ben, piano keys kill. They're threatening, and he's afraid of them. Maybe afraid of success. Afraid of the bullying teaching techniques Wenger used on Ben hard-wired into him the association of piano keys and pain and torture. Keys could kill, they certainly killed his spirit.

Henry associates piano keys as entry points. They unlock the wonderful music of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and any of the other composers who contributed to the vast literature written for the piano. Keys give us access to that repertoire which has given such meaning to Henry's life. They're not a threat to him, they're a fantastic ally.

To Will, the key he's looking for could be his salvation. He thinks if he can just find the key, he will give it back to Ian. He'll cut himself loose and be able to put his life back together. For Will, the key locks away stuff. Do you think Will's expectations will be met? Will Ian let go of him? I have my doubts.

Isn't it amazing how there's a whole story embedded in the way one word means to different people.

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Keys, Locking Devices, Killers and Meaning.

Ben says on p. 37, "Those keys, nothing between me and them, I die." Henry asks him where he got that idea. From Professor Wenger, his teacher, Ben says. Then...

"Those keys are your friends," said Henry, sounding even kinder.

Ben shook his head. "Keys kill. Keys kill." [He senses danger in the keys, that the music so unlocked with consume him. He's afraid of that. Wenger once said the those keys would kill him unless he worked on developing his skill, an awful thing to say.]

"Well it was nice to see you again, Ben," Henry said.

What Will must have been thinking is not revealed to us. In fact I just realized that there's a link here between Ben and Will: fear of keys.

For Ben, keys are things that operate a piano, that unlock the music. For Will, keys are things that unlock doors. Of course music is a door to another world, but that's another thing.

There's an idea for a book: a music student who takes a job in a locksmith shop to support himself and he studies to be a concert pianist.

And there's quadruple meaning here. Keys unlock doors. Keys allow playing the piano. Keys access the emotional depth of music. Keys are islands, as in the Florida keys. What do they unlock?

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Music and Mental Illness

There has always been some connection between music and madness. The composer Robert Schumann spent the last years of his life in a mental institution. Beethoven exhibited characteristics of an unstable person. Mozart was certainly a case.

This has gotten into films. Geoffrey Rush played a pianist who had been ruined by mental illness. The real character made a comeback, but fell short. A recent book, The Soloist profiled a very talented cellist who's a schizophrenic. There was a segment on him last night on Sixty Minutes.

When I was doing research for this book, I ran across a teacher who was very hard on her students. One one of her students I used as model for the homeless man, Ben:

Henry bent over him [Ben]. "When are you getting back to your piano, Ben?"

Ben played an imaginary piano with his hands, "They don't want me to."

Are artists a little on the edge of sanity?

What do you think about this? Can we talk about writing here? Post a comment.

Writing is, to me, an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my writing. For my entrepreneurial course, Entrepreneurship on Line, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com. For entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

More on Hats

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, says:

A hat is a head covering. It may be worn for protection against the elements, for religious reasons(such as the Papal tiara), for safety, or as a fashion accessory. In the past, hats were an indicator of social status. In the military, they denote rank and regiment.

Regarding hat-wearing customs,

The general rule with removing hats in Western culture is that men do so frequently, while women do not, because they traditionally wore much more complex headgear, often requiring hatpins to hold down, making removal hard. Men remove their hats when entering a Christian church, for example, and women do not.

An older custom in fact requires women to cover their heads in church, often with a scarf, which is still followed in some places, such as Germany or southern America. Similarly, when being introduced or talking to a woman, a man would always remove his hat, and "tip" it (a brief touch to the brim) when briefly acknowledging a lady but not conversing or meeting another man.

Hats are removed by men when indoors, except in public or open places, such as stations, stairwells, lobbies or shops. Removing a hat can also be a sign of respect, so it was traditionally required in various other situations, such as public speaking outdoors.

In Eastern Orthodox cultures, it is customary to remove one's hat in the presence of a religious icon. Traditionalist Catholic women wear a headscarf or veil when entering a church or, more generally, during prayer. Religious Jews wear a head covering at all times, indoors and out. When entering a synagogue, men and married women must cover their heads. Upon entering an Islamic place of worship or religious learning, headscarves are required for women.

Because of changing associations of hats, for example their use as gang indicators, they may now be forbidden in certain contexts, such as schools.

Will of course does not take off his hat when he is indoors, a habit which marks him as challenging convention a little.

I've done some informal counts, and except in Winter when it is cold, the small minority, perhaps 10%, of men wear hats at all.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Again With The Hat

Again with the hat, on p. 36, Will observes:

Outside, getting into the taxi with no hat, I felt cold and exposed. The day had become brighter, but no less damp, and the clouds persisted. The Christmas lights smiled at me on the way over. I asked them why they had to be do damned cheerful.

A decidedly grumpy Will, nothing is going well for him. He can't find the key. He's stuck feeling exposed from his situation. He wants to go home to Julie. He doesn't want Henry to find out what he's been up to. Poor boy.

This part doesn't come from me. I don't know where he got it from. These characters, like your adult children, are taking on lives of their own.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Barbara Hurd,'s Stirring Mud

A lot of Will is below the surface, an area of his psyche he'd rather not look into

I just picked up a copy of Barbara Hurd's Stirring the Mud; on Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). I commented a few weeks ago on another book of hers, Entering the Stone; On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

I haven't begun to read it, but I want to. For example, on p. 3 she says,

When the German poet Rilke tells us to leave our houses and enter the enormous space outside, surely what he means is to...drop our knees in algae, push hands into the fringed and seepy edges into which pieces of our lives have sunk, places were year after year the crust grows thin, too thin, and finally, to mask the sense that underneath this unkempt border something else is breathing: the origins of our worlds, wiser afterthoughts, the whispering asides of the spirit.

This is amazing writing which takes us right into the mud and bogs of our own minds. Do we want to go there?

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

What Writers Owe Readers

Nathan Blansford asks what writers owe readers. My response is that writers owe readers what readers have always expected from writers. Good fiction entertains, informs, and moves. The reader should be different somehow when he or she finishes a good novel, short story, poem, or comes home from seeing a play or a movie. Anything short of that, the book is not living up to its end of the bargain.

As for writers selling their stuff directly to readers off their website, an incoming tide that will not ebb in the foreseeable future, they owe what any good business owes: value provided to the customer delivered according or exceeding what was advertised.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Will's Hat

Page 36, Will can't find his hat. He's perturbed because he always wears his hat. To not have on is to be vulnerable, incomplete, in some danger. Something's missing from your normal persona. He would no more leave his hat behind than forget to bring along his right arm: "I couldn't think of what to say. Imagine going off without a hat. It just didn't feel right."

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Harpsichords

Henry makes another joke on p. 35. Again, when Will suggests he talk with Julie. Changing the subject one more time. He says, "Do you know what is worse than a harpsichord?

If you don't know, a harpsichord is a keyboard instrument that, rather than producing sound by striking the strings with hammers as does a piano, plucks the strings with things called plectra. It produces a pluckier and janglier sound than a piano.

Someone once described (or rather denounced) the sound of a harpsichord as the sound of two cadavers having intercourse on a tin roof. How two cadavers could have intercourse has never been thoroughly enough explained to my mind.

Anyway, Will says he doesn't know what's worse than a harpsichord, and Henry says, "two harpsichords."

The harpsichord was commonly used in the 17Th and 18Th centuries, along with it's smaller cousin the clavichord, which actually struck the strings with hammers. In the late 18Th and early 19Th century it went through the process of disuse as it's tinier, tinnier sound was unsuited for larger concert halls and for the increased demands being placed upon it.

I got this stuff from Orlando Cole who once, when he saw a harpsichord in a colleague's studio, said: "Imagine, managing a career on that miserable instrument."

I've always like the sound, myself.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Light

On p. 34, Will and Henry have been working all night and are not quite done. Will says, "And it's starting to get light." Code for someone might see us, we're no longer operating under the cover of darkness.

Light stands for all kinds of things. Shed light on. Make light of. Light up a room. The light of one's light, "et cetera, et centra, and so forth!" as the King of Siam used to say.

I tried to use weather to deepen the story and the narrative by adding more layers of meaning.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Jazz

Also on p. 33, Will and Henry find among Ian's papers a proposal that the school train piano students in jazz. Ian was against this. So, should the school stick to classical music performing, or should they train jazz performers as well.

The issue is thorny one in real life because few artists can cross over from one to the other. Winton Marsalis does it as does Kieth Jarrett. A number of pop singers have tried their hand at opera. Michael Bolton put out a cd of arias. But that guy sings like his pants are too tight.

And there was some noise about Aretha Franklin going to Julliard to study opera. I never heard what happened to that. I suspect at that point in her career she had more money than God and decided she rather not go through it.

There's a hubris where someone, like Michael Jordan trying to play pro baseball, thinks because they excel at one thing, they'll excel at others. Turned out that though he was one of the greatest basketball players ever and an an excellent athlete, he was a pretty sub-par baseball player. Of course if you're him, and you say you want to do it, who's going to say no.

But back to Jazz, a lot of Curtis kids take up bluegrass and other genres of music performance. And they're pretty damn good at it. Maybe there should be some training in it. But Ian didn't believe there should be. But anyone who wouldn't move beyond Beethoven, has to be pretty conservative.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Mission

On p. 33, Henry and Will are going through Ian's papers, discussing different issues that are recorded in the documents.

One issue for educational institutions, whatever their stripe: what is the mission of the school. In this case it's to train classical music performers for careers in classical music. But how much academics should be mixed in and how far should they go.

There has been a discussion at Curtis of a number of things. First, some people want them to offer graduate degrees. Students graduate from Curtis and then go on to other schools, like the New England Conservatory, or to public universities with music departments like Indiana University, and get MAs and PhDs. It's thought that the training there is inferior to Curtis (don't know whether this is true or not) and besides they take the money elsewhere. Why not stay at Curtis and get further education and training there?

Another issue is whether or not to have dormitories. Curtis is about the only institute that doesn't have them. So, they're building them.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Shifting Nationalities of Students

On page 33, Henry talks about changes at Kearney since he started. This is straight from Orlando Cole. He told me these things as he was giving me a tour of the Curtis Institute when I started to work on the book.

It seems that there has recently been a slight shift away from foreign students coming to Curtis. Maybe it has to do with the restriction on foreign students coming to the US after 9/11. For whatever reason, it appears that the students' ranks are more often now populated by native born Americans, often of Asian descent, though.

I haven't done a statistical study of it, but it just seems that way from going to the concerts.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Will's Proximity Bias: "I thought everybody..." [p. 29]

Henry has just explained to Will that Ian did not like filing cabinets. He didn't want anything more things than would fit into his desk. Kind of a Procrustean thing.

Procrustes was a character who measured everything in relation to his bed. If it didn't fit in his bed, he didn't recognize it as anything. Like the Flatlanders who couldn't believe that there could be a third dimension to the world because they only saw things in two dimensions.

Will's surprised. He says, "I thought everybody had filing cabinets. Meaning, he did and could compartmentalize. He didn't anticipate that others would be different.

Aren't we all the same way? We suffer from proximity bias in that we think everybody is like us because the people we see, on a daily basis in a social setting, are. Once in a while something different happens and we're surprised.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Compression

When I look back at this sometimes I see where I could have written it better. When I first got my author copy in the mail I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I wanted to give it all up right then or change every sentence.

But I gave it a while and now that I look at it, I think it's really pretty good and I see how I've evolved in my writing since then.

But sometimes I have to shake my head: on p. 29 I wrote: "He nodded and said, "Something like that." I should have written, "Something like that," he nodded. From 7 words to 5, and more succinct and powerful.

Oh well, live and learn. I suppose I'll always feel that way about my writing.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Franz Kakfa's The Trial

What happens when you don't go to what's inside you, but it comes out when you least expect it?

Franz Kafka's "K" found this out in his novel The Trial [New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, p. 1] Here's how Kafka's insides came out:

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning...At once there was a knock at the door and a man entered whom he had never seen before in the house. He was slim and yet well knit, he wore a closely fitting black suit furnished with all sorts of pleats, pockets, buckles, and buttons, as well as a belt, like a tourist's outfit, and in consequence looked eminently practical, though one could not quite tell what purpose it served. 'What are you?' asked K., half raising himself in bed.

What a perfect discussion, in highly symbolic terms of course, of meeting up with your subconscious as though it were a person calling on you. Knocking at the door. Mirroring your own appearance. Not having a clue as to what it is. Joseph K spends the rest of the novel trying to get a handle on himself until he dies trying.

Kafka gave Max Brod clear instructions to destroy all his stuff upon his death. What a gift to us that Max couldn't do it. I would be a poorer man today with Kafka's work on my bookshelf.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Dostoevsky's Underground Man

Ellison drew much inspiration from Dostoevsky:

I associated him, ever so distantly, with the narrator of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, and with that I began to structure the movement while he began to merge with my more specialized concerns with fictional form and with certain problems arising out of the pluralistic literary tradition from which I spring. [Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, New York: Random House, 1981, p. xix]

As I reread this I'm impressed with the way Ellison's writing positively glitters. But I think Ellison's narrator owes more to the Underground Man than he lets on. After all, I think Ellison's narrator is the underground man reborn in a different place. Maybe we're all underground to some extent.

I wanted Will to embody some of this undergroundness displayed by the man with the diseased liver. Or is it diseased? If it is, let it be. If he won't do anything about it,

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Even More on Invisibility

Ellison talks more about invisibility:

Despite the bland assertions of sociologists, 'high visibility' actually render[s] one un-visible--whether at high noon in Macy's window or illuminated by flaming torches and flashbulbs while undergoing the ritual sacrifice that was dedicated to the ideal of white supremacy.[ See Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1981, p. ix.]

Ellison lived in the days of open KKK demonstrations, lynchings, rand other rampant racist attacks. He knew how blatant visibility meant you couldn't see what was really there. The flash bulbs going off blinded you to what was being photographed.

In our context, Will's attempts to be invisible don't really hide him.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

More on Invisibility

Ellison's invisible man has slipped inside his psyche and found himself. He lives in a basement to which he's connected power.

He says, "I found a home--or a hole in the ground, as you will. No don't jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a 'hole' it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole...My hole is warm and full of light...Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility." (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, New York: Random House, 1981, pp. 6-7.)

Ellison's man has come alive by discovering his essence. His basic invisibility. But Will has not become invisible to find himself. He's become invisible to escape from himself. Thomas Hardy tells us that we can't escape from ourselves. We come back to haunt us through the things we do that make us intensely visible.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Invisibility

What could be more going inside yourself than becoming invisible. There's Henry's compliment back on p. 15.

All of this leads me to Ralph Ellison's fantastic Invisible Man. He says,

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments or their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me.

I'm quoting from p. 3, of the 1995 second Vintage Edition, published by Random House. This book is a clinic on writing.

No one expressed the feeling of being ignored and thrust aside more eloquently than this man.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Barbara Hurd, Entering the Stone, Caves

Going where you aren't supposed to go--caves. Barbara Hurd recorded her experience with caving in Entering the Stone; On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

On p. 1 she explains,

"it's hidden space...an unexpected, inscruitable space. Strange things live in there--eyeless salamanders, albino fish, a prophet's ephanies....going into a cave might be like going into one's own mind, crawling around in the pitch-black, nook-and-crannied labyrinth of the human psyche."

For Hurd it definitely is.

I recommend Hurd's work highly. It's an example of very vivid writing as well as a strong feeling for what caves represent to us.

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Going Where You Aren't Supposed to Go

On p. 27, Will and Henry are about to go places they aren't supposed to go. To extend the analysis of subtext begun a few days ago in a post on Jennifer Toth's wonderful book,The Mole People, check out L. B. Deyo and David "Lefty" Leibowitz, Invisible Frontier; Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003.

In their foreword [p. xv], the authors say,

In 1996 L.B. (Laughing Boy) Deyo and I created Jinx, the magazine of Worldwide Urban Adventure. In it, we published articles about exploration of the city's infrastructure, from climbing to the tops of bridges, to spending twenty-four hours in the subway system, to searching abandoned Air Force bases. Soon we began to receive correspondence from other urban explorers all over the world. We had stumbled upon a burgeoning community. A New York-based urban exploration group called Dark Passage, had gained notoriety for staging a four-course meal in an abandoned tunnel in Brooklyn. Ninjalicious in Toronto had created the first handbook for the urban exploration movement with Infiltration, the Zine About Going Places You're Not supposed to Go.

Isn't that part of what draws us to fiction? It brings us into the places in our lives where we're not supposed to go?

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Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Black Box

On page 27, Will and Henry are driving through a sleeping world. Don't they inhabit a different world than anyone else's because of the errand they are on?

Last night on AMC, I watched a rerun of one of my favorite movies, Clint Eastwood's Mystic River. Eastwood's movies are fine. I thought The Unforgiven was probably the best Western I've seen since High Noon.

His work since then has been absolutely stellar, Gran Turino being only the latest. I grew up watching him on Rawhide, then when I got cable have caught up on his spaghetti westerns, which were made "waiting for the Rawhide pilot to sell. Though, his Dirty Harry movies I've liked not so much.

Anyway, in Mystic River, the story focuses on the lives of three men: Sean (played by Kevin Bacon; Jimmie, played by Sean Penn, and Dave (played by Tim Robbins). They were childhood friends from the same neighborhood whose lives were shattered when two men, one of who posed as a police officer (we're supposed to trust them right?), abducted one Dave, imprisoned him and abused him for a number of days before he escaped. Sean (Kevin Bacon) became a cop. Jimmy (Sean Penn) turned out to be a thug, and Dave married and had a son and remained a decent person but grew up confused and feeling like a man trapped in a foreign identity he can't figure out how to break from.

There's a lot to the film but one scene hit me last night. Dave (Tim Robbins) is talking to his son, who's asleep, and telling him he's living in a world different from anyone else's, and sees things they don't see, and by inference vice verse. If he could only get his mind right, he could get rid of this other boy and figure things out. This deepens our understanding of his character while it poses a question about the way we all live in the world. And it makes us more empathetic to him because of what happened to him all of those years ago. And it shows us how little power we really have in the world when in one minute, someone can whisk us away against our world.

My point is, don't we all live in our own little worlds? Weren't each of the boys abused by the act of the abuser? One became a controller, one an investigator trying to put the world right, and the other a destroyed person. We see things differently. We're each living in a black box in which other can see us, but we can't see them. Your characters should reflect this. Given all of this, how we we ever agree with anyone else on anything?

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post to this blog.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Mole People

Will's sliding through the sleeping city is the subtext of the story. Laurel Yourke defines subtext as: "The unwritten meaning that readers infer from what is implied rather than expressed through the dialogue or description." (Laurel A. Yourke, Take your Characters to Dinner, Lanham, MD: The University Press of America, 2000, p. 202)

In The Mole People, Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City (Chicago, IL; Chicago Review Press, ix), Jennifer Toth says:

The people of New York City who live underground are most commonly known as mole people. And it is no accident that the term conjures freakish image. I hope this book will reverse the horrible and striking image of 'mole people' simply by showing what I found.

The subtext of a city lies underneath the daily drama on the surface. Read this book and tell me it doesn't reveal a lot of the meaning of life up above.

But life underneath the conscious level isn't as awful and scary as we think, which is the subtext of this subtext.

What do you think? I'd like to know. And Christmas is coming. Order a copy of this book off this blog or go to www.amazon.com. It would make a good present for someone who loves classical music and murder mysteries.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Gloves as Symbol: "My hands were shaking so much..." [p. 27]

Using gloves, and the kind of gloves we wear, tag us in a certain way as they separate us from the world around us.

Finger tips provide information to the brain. They give us some of the data we need to do things. Wearing gloves interferes with the ability of the body to do it's job. When we put on gloves for cleanliness or for protection from potential damage or the weather, or to make some kind of fashion statement, we're cutting ourselves off from our outer world.

In an old Matlock TV rerun, last night, the killer used gloves when he strangled his victim. The program was pretty lame, but I've always liked Andy Griffith, from his first appearance in No Time For Sergeants. I still enjoy the old Andy Griffith Show reruns. There's a wisdom and authenticity about him which shines through despite his flaws. His character is cleverly contrasted with the bumbling Barney Fife. And he's the glue that ties the community together.

I don't like the Matlock character as much as Raymond Burr's Perry Mason in the old series. Not the newer revival programs which are also lame. But on this Saturday night, it was just about as challenging as my mind could deal with.

Anyway, the bad guy wore gloves when he did his dastardly deeds, so as not to leave finger prints, but also to separate himself from his victims.

No worries, Matlock got his man. Just like Perry Mason did.

What do you think? I'd like to know. And Christmas is coming. Order a copy of this book off this blog or go to www.amazon.com. It would make a good present for someone who loves classical music and murder mysteries.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog