MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS WRITING FICTION AND PAY NO TAXES!

How you ask?

It’s simple! And ANYONE can do it! Even you!

Here’s the simple and effective, sure-fire method:

First…get a million dollars somewhere.

Then--when the IRS audits your taxes--just say, “Hey—I forgot!”

 You’re covered!

Okay, I stole that bit from Steve Martin. But it does raise a salient point about writing, I think. Mainly: why the hell are we doing this?

As you can see from the egregiously shameless cover of my latest tome, I have completed another novel. Within the week (Nov. 2012) I’ll have completed one more, written with wife April Campbell Jones, for a total of twelve (count ‘em, 12) novels, including one short story collection, since we began writing ebooks for Amazon two years ago. That’s a lot of verbiage.

Before that I had approximately the same number of novels published by legacy publishers, some back in the 90’s when legacy still paid big advances. In between I wrote scripts for TV and Hollywood, and wrote (and drew) for the comic book companies, a lot of them. So far I have not come close to earning with Amazon ebooks what I did as a legacy, Hollywood or comic book writer. Yet I’ve eschewed all of those forms lately in favor of sticking with Amazon. Why? Because time is precious and I’m not, strangely, getting any younger.

And because I am insane.

Well, that goes without saying. But here’s the thing: I published my first novel back in (giving away my age here) the early 70’s and I’ve never really quit writing fiction since then. If you want to be really accurate about so boring a subject, I started at about age six or so and never let up. There have been gaps--especially when I drew or painted, which takes up a lot of time—or when I was writing TV or movie scripts Out There, which I don’t count for some reason (let’s not get into it now)—but sooner or later I always found time (read: MADE time) to write fiction. There were many ups and many more downs, but the compulsion, in the end, always won out.

I could say—having said all that—there are many perks to writing ebooks. No editor (unless Amazon finally invites me to join Thomas & Mercer), total creative freedom (not always a good thing), the ability to write anything I bloody well feel like writing (see last parenthetical), retaining the rights to my own work (something legacy publishers only MAKE you think you’re doing), no editor (did I already mention that?), no marketing platoon telling me why my book is not publishable, no two year wait before the book appears in print, no editor (almost sure I already mentioned that), the chance to have a say in my own covers, the ability to set my own price, no editor…well, you get the idea.

But also—so far—not a lot of money.

In short, I do not believe Stephen King goes to bed at night thinking: “That damn Jones guy, he’s crawling right up my back!”

He doesn’t do this because, for one thing, he has enough cash in his back pocket to have me killed many times over, but mostly he doesn’t do this because, assuming he’s even heard of me, I am not a discernible threat. Also, probably, because he’s a nice guy. I met King once out there in H’wood on the Warner’s lot, the set of The Green Mile. It was his birthday and the crew had arranged a cake for him, a piece of which King and I were sharing as we chatted between takes. I turned to him and said, “Mr. King, I’d really like your autograph,” and he said, “Sure,” and—being the wiseass I am—I pulled out my checkbook and handed it to him: “Just put in any figure that comes to mind,” I said glibly. And he got it, and we laughed about it a while and then went back to our cake. After a moment, he turned to me again with an earnest look. “Are you really short on cash?” he asked sincerely (I was). I told him no, of course. But the whole thing gave me pause. My point being that Steve King may be a rich and famous sumbitch but he’s not an asshole. Looking back, in fact, I think he may have been the most down-to-earth person on the set.

But I digress. What else is new?

The real point here is that rich or no, big shot or not, King and I may actually have one thing in common; that even without the fame and fortune, he would still be writing every day. And he’d be doing it for the same reason you and I do. Namely: we cannot do otherwise.

It’s what we love. It’s what makes us whole. It’s what gets us through the day…hell, sometimes it’s what gets us through the next five minutes, and that’s no lie. It can even get us through the worst kind of unimaginable grief life throws at us. It can make us believe, temporarily, that we’re going to live forever, even (impossibly) cheat death…which we do, I guess, in a way, if our stuff ever eventually gets before the public. The only downside to writing, it seems, may be the sneaky way it has of making time fly, even on our worst days. You know the feeling; you sit down at 9:00am and you’re really barreling along at the keys, and suddenly you look up and it’s 4:30pm! Where the hell did the day go? It’s almost time for Adult Swim and Cartoon Network!

Which, in turn, makes you wonder why you’re paying that expensive cable bill every month, you hardly ever watch the tube anyway. Which then makes you think: if writing speeds up time so much--makes the days go so fast—doesn’t that mean you’re really approaching death all that much quicker? Well, maybe. But as every heroin addict and guilt-ridden teenage masturbator knows… it just feels too good to quit. (Or for those of us who are blocked: it feels worse if you don’t start!) And anyway, if you write the kind of stuff I do, you’re likely to give death its due ten time over. Suspense writers are always thinking about death. The difference is they’re thinking about it--not worrying about it. Unless it involves the plot.

The simple truth is, I write every day because I’m afraid. Of the alternative.

It’s true. I’m afraid of death, yes, but more than that (hey, it’s inevitable, right, what’s to fear?) more than that I’m afraid of those hours, maybe days to come just before my demise. Afraid that I’ll lie there in bed, or be walking along just before the heart attack or aneurism, and start thinking about my life…and I’m just sure as hell bound to think what we’ll all think at such a time: what in God’s name did I accomplish here? I sure wasn’t any brain surgeon. I never really got the hang of rocket science. Fell a few votes short of making president. So what did I accomplish during my brief stay on planet Earth, what did I leave behind that made any difference?

Yeah, I know. My children. My wife. The friends whose lives I might have touched.

But doesn’t everybody sort of do that anyway, if even by default?

What I hope I think I left behind is a whole lot of scribbling. And the majority of it most likely won’t be that good, let alone stand the test of time.

But it does show one thing. I may have been a crappy father, maybe a crappier husband, maybe not the number one altruistic Boy Scout golden character my parents or God or the Cosmos or whomever may have wished. But when it came to writing—scribbles or not--I by God tried. Put my heart and soul into it every time and suffered the financial downs, rejections and otherwise heart-breaking baggage that went with it; because it felt worthwhile. The kind of worthwhile, maybe, that’s beyond my corporeal, earthbound self--beyond sex, and money and fame and possibly even breathing.

There was a reason they put that strange last line in the Constitution: “the pursuit of happiness.” When you think about it, that line really makes no damn sense at all, certainly not enough of one to found a country on. Was that Jefferson’s idea? Why in the world did he even put it in there? What was he thinking? I don’t know. But I do know Jefferson was a well-read man.

And it came to him when he was writing…

 

 

 

FEVER DREAMS: A BRACKEN AND BLEDSOE PARANORMAL MYSTERY

Look for our new Kindle offering on amazon.com, out today: FEVER DREAMS!

REVIEW: SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT—THE COMPLETE PSYCHO THRILLER (THE COMPLETE EPIC) by Crouch and Kilborn

The title says it all.

Which is not to say this will be immediately apparent to everyone.

Or even that the authors themselves are aware of the clever double extenders that make the title equal parts blatant pulp (and I mean that in the bloodiest sense) and self-servingly kitsch. The book’s real intent falls so neatly between crass commercialism and apparent satire that the line is blurred. But blurring, it would seem, is the operant theme here.

The authors’ peculiarly gathered concoction plays fast and loose not only with traditional literary form, but with that which makes literature readily available: publishing. For that reason alone it warrants our scrutiny. It’s easy enough to write the whole thing off as a sophomorically prurient exercises in money grubbing, sexually-charged egoism (as the clergy once said of Elvis); the trick is knowing when and whether these exercises are mere fodder for the gore-hounds or are a carefully conceived lampoon. The literary merits of Kilborn (J. A. Konrath’s horror pen name) and Crouch’s tome may be up for discussion, but clearly these are anything but stupid guys. This is not just a novel, friends, this is a marketing machine. The real question is: are the boys parodying as they pander—pedagogues as they prosper?

Look at that wonderful title again: there are exactly three (omitting my own ‘review’) words in the entire hilariously long heading that are not unabashedly sensational: ‘the, ‘the,’ and ‘complete,’ and even ‘complete’ is made attention-getting by its artless overuse. It’s like a one-sheet movie blurb Hitchcock would have loved to have used: SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT! Or even better: THE COMPLETE PSYCHO THRILLER! And just in case it missed a pore or two on your face: THE COMPLETE EPIC! Hey, can even a serial-killing-uncut-psycho-thriller be all bad if it aspires to be an epic?

Konrath and Crouch are the eReader equivalents of William Castle (a compliment). “If you suffer from anxiety attacks, nervous disorders, or nightmares,” warns the forward to the book, “you should …try…something else.” Isn’t that what the sign says just above the rollercoaster entrance? Not a warning as much as a dare. Yeah, maybe you should, but you sure as hell won’t!

To my mind the authors share an even more common antecedent in Bret Easton Ellis. More on the Bretmeister later, right now let’s quickly review the legendary tale of young bravado and colliding forms of publishing that seeded this infernal tome and labored through its gestation. It began as a 7500-word eBook short story called Serial, given away for free online in what some may consider an act of madness but which has, in fact, become a standard marketing tool. According to the authors, it garnered, in two years, 500,000 downloads, a film option and a garbage truck load of incensed reviews (but any review is a good review, yes?) This, reportedly, prompted the fleshed-out book version which came next: Serial Uncut. It should not go lightly noticed that NONE of this would have been possible under the straightjacket editing and edicts of a traditional publishing house. The Kindle eReader had arrived, and say what you will about the authors, they saw their moment and seized it. At this point, according to some, their little venture ceased being a short story or long novel or whatever and became a lyrically official milieu—at least in the minds of the authors. The characters (and there are plenty of them), if not intensely deep and intricately layered, are by anyone’s standards well-defined: “good” and “bad.” More importantly, they consist of mainly perused and reprocessed protagonists from both authors’ other novels (and there are plenty of them). To keep all this straight, each character is hyperlinked to a ‘Character Page’ which includes their initial appearance. This is neither a new nor a particularly bad idea—what IS new, and either bad or just cannily monetary, depending on your view, is the egregious use of whole passages and entire scenes of dialogue from the writers’ own previous works! Again, that niggling blur. Is this merely lazy writing or an authentic stretch of literary boundaries? Art or artless? Was it even preconceived one way or the other? In any event, these guys weren’t about to stop until they’d intertwined, reused and reincorporated “every major villain they ever created into one cohesive volume.” Not until they’d tweaked, reconstituted, dismembered, and outright plagiarized their own previous novels: DESERT PLACES, LOCKED DOORS, BREAK YOU (don’t ask) ENDURANCE, TRAPPED, SHOT OF TEQUILA, WHISKEY SOUR, BLOODY MARY, FUZZY NAVEL, CHERRY BOMB, SHAKEN, STIRRED (how’d 007 get in here?) SNOWBOUND, ABANDON, DRACULAS and RUN—wait a minute, this isn’t a book, it’s Saw VIII! (Ye gods, look at all the free advertising I just gave these guys!—each available at your local neighborhood Amazon.com Kindle store, by the way).

Whether all these athletic contortions signify a laudable achievement seems almost beside the point. It’s certainly marketing genius. Smarmy? Maybe, but then, let’s face it, so is the book, which is sort of the whole point. Smarmy as art. Listen, de Sade made it work, otherwise we wouldn’t still be discussed and debated his books in drawing rooms across the globe.

De Sade isn’t a bad analogy here in fact; not so much for his graphic level of sex and violence, but for the patchwork way he, and our two contemporary authors, spatter them willy-nilly throughout the book’s considerable length. One can, I suppose, make a case for the skill and intricacy—the sheer will--required to thread so many lives and convoluted events together into something like a cohesive form, but it’s ultimately an empty argument, and probably not even a germane one. Like de Sade’s Le Philosophe de Boudoir, this is a school for scoundrels, an unapologetic treatise wherein the bad not only win out over the good, but revel, shit, and bathe in it. A kind of highway safety film for your Kindle. How long, they seem to taunt, until you simply have to turn away, or when your own inner morality says you already should have? Just keep telling yourself: it’s only an iPad. Face it, titillation works. As with Hitchcock’s own Psycho, we’d all enjoy seeing Janet Leigh naked and helpless in the shower, trapped but for our own sense of decency and chivalry. Whether or not we’d then decide to take a knife and hack her to death with fiendish impunity is a matter of individual taste, I suppose--but, in the film at least, she is done in. And what’s left to identify with?--only the manically demented, sexually annihilated, flesh-hungry Norman Bates for the remaining three-quarters of the movie. Was this what Kilborn and Crouch had in mind: trap you in the belly of the beast until your nerves are so frayed you’ve lost all sense of direction (and morality?). Is the message here, that ‘morality’ itself is subjective? To paraphrase Dylan: “People are hungry, and everyone’s gotta cut somethin’.” Also: “The times they are a’changin.” Do we nowadays lock our doors front and back under the ubiquity of real-life serial killers?--or are real-life serial killers ubiquitous now because we (and the media) have helped them believe their own hype? Have we seen the enemy and he is us, victims of our own victimization? Is there something more sinisterly analogous in the authors’ blood-drenched book than might be apparent at first blush? Is there a cancer growing on the nation, Mr. President?

Or are the authors just laughing at our own base penchant for grand guignol, keyboard in one hand, more than a little old-fashion rebellion in the other? By his own admission Kilborn/Konrath has openly dismissed legacy publishing and its dubious contracts and spurious treatment of writers in general. Safe in their lifeboat as the publishing Titanic goes down, he and friend Crouch may be sticking it to the Man here with more than a little payback gleam in their gloating eyes, but perhaps sticking it as well to the oblivious nation of sheep that helped finance the Man lo these many publishing generations. And, just as clearly, the eBook format is allowing them to wallow a bit in this newly available climate as every fresh-born iconoclast is wont to do; and who can really blame them? Freedom of the press may well be our last real refuge from the DRM-obsessed greed of the corporate machine. Hollywood may control entertainment in anti-trust questionable totality--Theaters, Television, DVD’s, Streaming, Recording and your parents’ spinning brains--but not yet the printed word. Not yet. The publishing boat that sinks today may float an Amazon Titanic tomorrow. And nothing corrupts so absolutely as…

Some of this is old hat, of course. How many of you remember the initial publication of the then-scandalous Peyton Place? Hands? No? Okay, how about the 1957 release of Lawrence’s finally unexpurgated novel, Lady Chatterly’s Lover? Hmm, still no hands. Well, don’t tell me you didn’t read Playboy in college! You know, some would have it that Hefner only got away with that rag because he bookended the T&A centerfolds with pages of Hemmingway and Machen. And got away with it. Never, by the way, get into an intellectual or commercial argument with Hugh M. Hefner—you will lose.

There was the much-hyped school-banned Catcher in the Rye, of course, but the major literary audacity in recent memory (not counting the short-lived Eros magazine) was Bret Ellis Easton’s American Psycho. Roundly trounced by critics and readers alike (no pun intended—some critics also read), American Psycho, with that ever dependable Passage of Time, has since found great favor among academia, become a cult classic on campus, and (no doubt to his chagrin) now is considered Ellis’ magnum opus (he was just 27 when he wrote it). The book, which uses surrealism to convey a sense of postmodern dread, mixing absurdist comedy with a bleakly violent personal vision, is certainly noteworthy, warts and all. A member of the literary Brat Pack that included Tama Janowitz and Ellis’s “toxic twin” Jay McInerney, Ellis has always considered himself a satirist, his trademark technique “the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style.” He also shares, here along with Kilborn and Crouch, the concept (gimmick?) of linking novels with common, recurring characters. American Psycho’s chief protagonist, Patrick Batemen (motels, anyone?) is based on Ellis’ own abusive father and, again, reoccurs in other of his works in various guises and forms, a major character in one novel, a minor walk-on in the next. It’s that blurring again, what is real, what is not?--mixed with a healthy dose of disassociation and outright contradiction. This novelistic blur maintains a high level of ambiguity: devices such as mistaken identity are the norm, for instance. “Hero” Batemen also comes off as a, presumably intentionally, unreliable narrator who, like Norman Bates, keeps the reader uncomfortably off-balance and at loose ends: what’s a sane  mind to do? Whether any of the unspeakable acts in the book actually happened or were mere fantasies of the delusional psychotic Batemen is never satisfactorily addressed. Or is that also intentional? Is it also intentional, even the point, of Kilborn’s and Crouch’s work? Or do I give them too much credit? In his novel Less than Zero, Ellis includes a reference to Tartt’s forthcoming Secret History with the throw-away line: “that weird Classics group…probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals.” Like serial killers? But is it the characters--as in Kilborn’s and Crouch’s Serial--who are contradictory, psychologically damaged and disengaged, or the fission created by the novel’s quixotic and sometimes disengaging staging that causes discomfort? It’s worth noting that, after the death of his lover, Michael Wade Kaplan, Ellis was obliged to infuse Lunar Park (2005) with an uncharacteristic and wholly new (some would say refreshing) tone of wistfulness. For their part, Kilborn and Crouch eschew even the vaguest notion of wistfulness throughout the entire 120,000 blood-drenched words of Serial Killers Uncut. Can artistic style turn on a crisis of faith?

In the end, whether Serial Killers is a “good” book may be of secondary importance: what the hell kind of book is it? There’s no doubt it was written as an attention-getting device (no shame either; what book isn’t?) but to what extent and eventual evaluation does that have to do with any work’s essential worth? Someone once said, “A writer’s heaviest task is simply getting out of his own way,” finding that dream-like state which, like a sunny screen door,  lets the novel breeze-in without purpose or thought, guileless as an unexpected and probably undeserved gift…and always from “somewhere else.” It is possible Kilborn and Crouch were in such a commercial-hungry writing fever, donned with mental blinders, that they inadvertently blocked out all conscious affectation in the process? Or were they just having too much fun to notice or care? Like Ellis’ much-damned magnum opus, will Serial Killers—twenty years hence—be looked upon as a work of (albeit naively unaware) genius?

Or will the world’s ongoing brinksmanship of desensitizing anything and everything around us finally reach some unimagined point of diminishing returns, rendering literature itself as moot as the dinosaur, the corset and the evolutionary stunted eight-track? Along, naturally, with the eBook itself?

 

WRITING PARTNER—YES OR NO?

Not so long ago I’d have met that question with the clarity and conviction of a long rehearsed answer: NO!

The very idea of writing fiction with a partner was antithetical to everything I ever knew, learned or enjoyed about the concept of writing. Some of the happiest moments of my childhood were spent all alone in my room or the school cafeteria filling reams of spiral notebooks with fiction created by me, for me, without anyone but me. With nary a thought of even showing it to anyone else. I still treasure the memory of those days, writing for the pure joy of it without the hassle and ego-deflating strum and drang of agents, editors, publishers, et al. But now I tend to regard that time without the strawberry glasses of nostalgia, and the naiveté of my youthful ideas about creativity.

In 2000, after some twenty odd (very odd) years in the screenwriting vineyards of Hollywood, I moved back to the Midwest to dedicate myself full time to writing the novel. Anyone who’s ever worked the vineyards “out there” knows exactly why I did this: for the rest of you it can be summed up in that word ‘antithetical’ again. If novels mean (supposedly) total artistic freedom for the writer, the screenplay is its polar opposite. Everyone works with a partner in LaLa Land, even if they complete the first draft all alone in a closet. And most of these ‘partners’--from the studio heads right on down (the writer being the bottom)--are more than glad to remove your name from the project and take complete credit for most of what you wrote. But would-be screenwriters, take heart: considering the way most movies turn out, this can actually be a blessing. Also let’s not forget the soothing balm of money the industry usually provides. There’s gold in them Hollywood hills.

Anyway, that same year I moved away and back to my roots, Stephen (he’s the) King published On Writing and I picked it up (yes, published authors still do that—writers are never secure). The book discusses many things, perhaps the most salient being King’s work mode: find a room, shut and lock the door, turn off the TV, turn your computer from the window, park your butt in a chair and write. Also, never stop to rewrite until you’ve gone straight through to The End, and never show it to anyone in between. Given King’s ginormous and grindingly enviable success, I read this section with a small smile: that was the way I’d worked since grade school! Writing was, by God--along with music and painting and sculpture---a true art form! And art can only be achieved, even pursued, with a singular author’s singular vision, not with someone else getting in there and mucking things up with his own ideas! This is what art is. This is what I was taught art is in college. This is why the third floor of Strong Hall on the KU campus was divided in half:  Commercial Art on side, Fine Art on the other. And never the twain should meet. I, of course, pursued a degree in the latter and was damn proud of it…along with all those other poor, deluded freshman iconoclasts.

One thing I began to notice, though, around the time of my junior year, was the tendency for the commercial side to talk about money and marketing—talk about it a lot; whereas the very mention of money on the Fine Art side was tantamount to heresy. Now, I could tell you that I chose the Fine Art side originally because I was already a full-fledged elitist wrapped in a fine art banner, but the truth is, the curriculum on the Fine Art side didn’t require my taking another agonizing year of math. And what the hell, I could already draw, right? It should be a cinch.

Still, my mamma didn’t raise no stupid kids; I knew the realities of the work-a-day world around me way back in high school. A Fine Arts diploma might look great on my wall but it wasn’t going to get me job one in the real world. Which is why I headed straight for New York after school, to become a commercial illustrator, as opposed to becoming the next Jackson Pollack. Few Pollack, I knew, enjoyed wealth in their lifetime. Ah, New York! The legendary seat of publishing and magazine illustration! Never mind that magazine illustration had been moribund for years, supplanted almost exclusively by photography, and that just about the only steady work as an aspiring artist I could find was in comic books. Yet married, broke and determined to life creating something beyond kids, I hit the comic book houses. A few years of that and the next thing I learned was that writing comic books pays a hell of a lot better than drawing them. So I wrote too. It helped pay the bills. In between I sold a couple of novels to small publishers, which earned me an overall pittance compared to what the comic book companies paid a writer. But never mind, I was realizing my dream: I was a full time, working professional! I got paid to create! I was an artiste!  Maybe not with capital A, but I was creating, and I was doing it alone. By myself. No more shoe store clerk jobs for this kid!

Then I met the girl…

This is already getting long so here’s the short form: I hired this radiant beauty as a model for a photography book I was doing. And we hit it off almost immediately—in more ways than one. Did I mention we were both married to other people? You should probably know that.

We worked together all day, me and this girl April, and at the end of those hard work days found we still somehow wanted to be together, still had so much to talk about. Naturally both our marriages went to hell, but even before that and after the photo book was finished I realized that if we wanted to be together, this girl and I, we were also going to have to continue working together in some fashion, because the photo books weren’t selling.

So, for the first time I went dead against everything I’d ever believed in about writing and began plotting a few comic book stories with April. I did this under a mountain of guilt. First, I couldn’t afford to pay her much, second, I feared I was betraying all my artistic “singular vision” mantras, and third, I was terrified that the work itself couldn’t possibly be as good as before when it was just me at the helm because really, folks, who’s as good as me?—but mainly because I was simply having too much fun with the work. The great thing about plotting—just verbalizing, or ‘spit balling’, really—is that you can do it walking around a lake or over hamburgers or even at the local mall. To my surprise (and probably chagrin), my readers never seemed to notice. In fact, my comic book sales improved! And it soon began to dawn on me (horror of horrors!) not only was I a complete sell-out to my artistic instincts, but some of those stories  were better because I plotted them with a partner! Can you spell ‘confusion’? ‘Depression’?

Only it’s hard to stay depressed when you’re having such a good time. Sure, falling in love was part of it, but the ideas and plots fairly flew between us, some brimming to the surface almost magically! Also, my spelling improved noticeably. Life was good. So long as I kept the serious work (novel writing) to myself, door shut and locked in solitude, TV off, butt parked.

But the thing is, April was reading my books as soon as I finished them anyway, correcting my spelling and throwing in some editing here and there. What the hell, King used his wife, didn’t he?—so did a lot of pros—and my partner had already read and liked all my published books; it’s not like I was torturing her. Exactly. And more and more (after I’d completed the book) April’s input increased. I actually began listening when she dared suggest chapter 10 or perhaps the entire ending of the novel might be improved by doing things an alternate way. Silly girl.  I tolerated her whimsies. Reminding her constantly that this was, after all, still an art.

Then this thing called digital publishing came along.

And at the same time, because I was getting paid fairly well but hardly getting rich, April suggested maybe I should slow down with the dark, depressing stand-alones and try a breezier, lighter toned style. Duh.

Only I couldn’t think of anything breezy I wanted to write about. My books were about loner guys up against the wall, running through my latest literary idea of film noir hell. But April (bless her) persisted. “EBooks are the future,” she assured me, “also you don’t have to wait years for a company’s publishing schedule and press arrangements. Also, despite what the indicia in books published by the Big 6 says, you really can hang onto most of the rights.  Also, Kindle sales are waaaay up.”

She was driving me nuts. Because she was right. “All right,” I finally shouted to the gods, “here’s the title of my new series:  ‘Mitzi Magee: Vampire Poodle!’” Fortunately she laughed. But in a good way. Unfortunately I couldn’t come up with plot one for the first book. I was completely at sea. Actually blocked for the first time. It stank. Then one day, driving up to Borders Books and encountering a “closed” sign, I got this totally brilliant idea--this just colossal, stupendous idea I was so glad I had thought of all by myself. This really terrific, Artistic idea: ah, the hell with it, let April come up with the damn plot. Or at least plot with me the way we’d been doing with the comics. What’s the big deal about plots anyway? As they say, there’s only seven original jokes. Did Hemmingway sit around and worry about plots? He did not! So! That’s what we did, adopting the same methods we used with comic writing to the new series. I mean, I’d certainly learned the old axiom “two heads are better than one” was true, at least for me, so why not?

Turns out, there’s a LOT of reasons ‘why not.’

Heads up now, before you consider working with a partner in the writing biz:

First—and I can promise you this—there will be fights.

Actually, there should be fights. If there aren’t, you’re completely abandoning the “singular vision” ethic, and I don’t advocate anyone doing that. Every novel (unless you’re Faulkner and I don’t think we need worry about that here, right?) needs a strong narrative thread, a clearly accessible vision, a “voice,” if you will. But with a partner, you must constantly fight the dilemma of anything that sounds even vaguely homogenized (unless that’s somehow inherent to the plot—and I can think of few instances).  The challenge then, to me, of writing with a partner was even greater than writing in total singularity. A partner must trust you the same way you trust yourself, and vice versa. I’m not sure you need to be in love to enjoy the mysteries of a writing partnership, but you must, absolutely must, trust and—even more importantly—respect the person you’re partnering with. Because sooner or later, just like any marriage, you’re going to have to compromise.  My then-girlfriend and now-wife, April Campbell Jones, and I share that kind of symbiosis. She can fake my “style” (whatever that is) almost without faking it. I still do the majority of the Word Smithing--setting the story or novel down in type--after April and I, working in tandem, sort out the plot. When the actual writing is finished, I do a polish or two and give it to April. She does the editing and her own rewrite or two. We think the results read pretty seamlessly, but you may have your own particular modus operandi, it doesn’t matter. The point is to embrace the other guy’s ideas instead of shunning them immediately out of guilt or ego--and to create a terrific and, hopefully, more balanced end product. If it helps you to think that what you’re doing is pure, lowbrow commercial craft, go with it. Whatever works. The trick is learning that compromise can be a good thing, that your way is not always THE way. And really, at the end of the day (a phrase clearly over-used which I’m still guilty of), if you line up twelve different people to read your book, at least one or two of them are going detest it, no matter how many people did or didn’t labor over it. Which is why some writers employ the method of multiple private submissions to friends or family before sending their child out into the world. But that’s another topic.

Okay. I know what you’re thinking: yes-yes, but what about this Art you keep prattling about?

I’ve thought about that too…thought a lot about it. And most of my original ideas about the “singular vision” still hold true. Yes, writing can be an art—perhaps one of the very few things we have that actually qualifies, so perhaps, for you, it should remain a singular principled pursuit. But consider this: what is Art? What is it really? So-called “singular vision” aside, artists begin the same way we all begin life, by collecting (stealing?) the sights and sounds of the world and others around us. Copying is a natural progression toward learning to go your own way. My question is: do any of us really ever go completely our own way? Those of us in the arts don’t suddenly reach a point in life where we turn off the filters and stop absorbing the world out there. Ray Bradbury has advocated that it’s better to read not at all than read bad writing. Others believe, with the right attitude, you can learn something from anything. But does anyone really write alone? Is it even possible? You didn’t, after all, invent the alphabet, but as a writer you’re lost without it. Mere mechanics?  Maybe. Certainly what we do with that alphabet is the important thing. Still, for me at least, more and more the line between Art and Craft has become increasingly blurred over the years. What was taught with sober confidence yesterday can seem laughably naïve today. And though the glow of nostalgia may persist for personal pleasure, I’ll never be that ten-year-old kid with the reams of spiral notebooks again. A dead shadow from a life that will someday die altogether.

To my mind, experimenting on the page is the only way to grow as a writer. Perhaps experimenting, within reason, with our work habits can be another form of growth. One warning: I’ve suggested that having a writing partner can be fun. It can. I’ve always said that it can even improve the work. It can. Now here’s what it won’t do: it won’t make the art/craft of writing any easier. Nor should it. In fact, a partnership, for some, will make writing so much more a trial it becomes counterproductive, and that’s always a mistake. Partnering is not right for every project. Somethings must come from our own hearts alone, even if born crippled. An art professor of mine once said something I’ve never forgotten: we had a late night class together and I was filled with malaise one particular evening. He looked over my shoulder at my sketch but didn’t offer the usual support or advice. He said, “You’ve worked that thing to death, but you don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.” I confessed I wasn’t. He said, “Then go home. Try again tomorrow.” I was astounded. “Why?” I asked incredulous. “Because,” he said, “art should--above all--always be fun.”

With that I’ll leave you with a few real quotes that help explain why I love words so much and why I consider them one of the most important creations of mankind. Have fun.

“I never said actors are cattle…I said actors should be treated like cattle.”

                                                               Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 on the set of Vertigo

“I never said you should learn politics…I said you should learn parlor tricks.”

                                                               Harvey Kurtzman, 1954, Mad parody of Pogo

“I never said I was a libertarian…I said I was a libertine.”

                                                              Me. But only once. I think.

 

 

 

TEN PAGES A DAY

Mom died this week.

It had taken awhile. And taken its toll on both her and the entire family. 

Yet it also seemed to happen very suddenly, catching me looking completely the other way. I can’t explain it better than that. When someone you’ve loved all your life is dying, time makes its own rules.

I hadn’t written anything worthwhile in weeks, maybe months. And I knew it. But I kept at it, mostly, I’m sure, for the solace of escape fiction can provide. But never really fooling myself. I have never been “blocked.” As far back as grade school where Mom dropped me off every morning, I’d learned that the fastest way to beat the blank page was to get out of my own way, let myself fall into it: stop being the reality me and be another me. Now all I could think of was that Mom had stopped being the reality Mom. Permanently.

I wasn’t dealing well with “permanently.”

But I hacked away at the keys like always—“hack” being the operant word--convinced it was what she would have wanted. Isn’t that what they always say?

I had worked my way to Chapter 29 over the months, getting toward the end of the book. I was in the middle of this line: ‘The last thing she said to me was, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going

--and the phone rang beside me. And my sister-in-law said, “She just passed.”

I don’t remember what I said to Lynne, my sobbing sister-in-law; don’t remember anything but sitting there staring at that unfinished last line. This  ”unfinished” sensation  remained and became my general state of mind for the next few days. I moved through life like a shadow—the usual rooms, usual places—feeling always just slightly outside myself looking in. For the first time in my life I got absolutely nothing written, not a single word. I couldn’t even go near the computer. But I suppose that’s perfectly normal under the circumstances. Right?

Maybe not. I was aware of a slowly growing panic, which I thought was the realization I’d never see Mom again but which--knowing the size of my ego--was also the fear of finally experiencing that dreaded thing I’d always laughed at: writer’s block. 

But give yourself some time, I thought. Time wounds all heels, or something like that…you’ll be fine.

But I wasn’t fine. Only more and more scared and depressed. 

I told no one, not even my wife. Just kept convincing myself this would surely pass--that  ‘Mom would have wanted it that way’—want me to go on doing the one thing that made me happiest: writing. So, why didn’t I believe it? Why did I think something had been broken that could not be put together again. Also this: why was I not grieving? Not even crying! Hadn’t shed a tear. Telling myself that would come too when it was ready—even though my heart wasn’t buying it. 

I even tried staging grieving. A kind of forced sobbing that came out like a pig with hiccups. Tried my best to work up a real honest-to-God bawler. 

Nothing.

Every few hours for the next several days I’d wander into my study and look down at my computer and stare at that unfinished line: “The last thing she said to me was, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going

--sentence incomplete. Original thought and intent lost.

Chapter lost. Maybe the whole damn book lost.  I had no memory at all of what I’d been trying to write or what came next. It all seemed immensely trivial and pointless now, along with a lot of other things --like my own mortality. 

After a time I couldn’t look at the computer screen anymore: the unfinished words became more than just ironic, they seemed unfair, even cruel. “But you did go, Mom! And you took the best part of me with you! And I never even got the chance to say good-bye.”

Still, I didn’t cry.

Wasn’t allowing myself the relief of letting go. Something was holding everything in. Was I punishing myself? Was there a Freudian phrase for this? What was the last thing Mom said to me? I couldn’t remember. Nor my last words to her. And it seemed terribly important that I did remember…that neither the book nor anything else would be complete until I did. The panic grew, but nothing would come. Just a blank, and Lynne’s voice on the phone, “She just passed,” and that damn unfinished sentence staring back at me every day.

 If only I hadn’t stopped writing, if only my sister-in- law hadn’t called at that precise moment—maybe I could remember what I’d been thinking at the time, finish the sentence and--if not finish the book--at least get on with things again. But my mind remained on hold.

The panic eventually ebbed, replaced by a hollowness that was maybe worse. I felt lost. A stranger in my home. Everything looked exactly the same, but everything was different.

Then one morning I got up, had my coffee, stared at my handful of published books on the shelf like they were strangers, and wandered around the house again.

I ended up in my study before the computer screen. “Enough,” I thought, “enough of this!”  I reached for the delete key; but I hadn’t bothered putting on my glasses and hit the wrong one-- the backspace key--which only separated that unfinished last line from the rest of the paragraph, making it stand out even more.

In disgust I stuck on my glasses, sat down and put the unfinished sentence back where it belonged, at the end of the unfinished paragraph. I started to get up. That’s when Mom came to say good-bye. Or someone did. Someone reached out and completed that annoying last sentence and it didn’t feel quite like me. I typed just for letters, a single word: “anywhere” and put a period after it. “I’m not going ANYWHERE.” 

I sagged with relief. Sentence complete. Chapter closed.

Then I wandered back to the bedroom, lay down beside my sleeping wife and had myself the most wonderful cry.

 

MITZI MAGEE IS HERE!

SHE’S HOT! SHE’S FAST! SHE’S SEXY! AND SHE’S SPAYED!
When small town reporter Ed Magee wrote his latest small town story for his small town newspaper he knew he was onto something big! Maybe the biggest story of his life! But even Ed didn’t know he’d just written a life-altering article, even Ed wasn’t prepared for the reaction from his small town boss and editor-- who read the piece, smiled up at Ed, patted him on the back, and fired him immediately! 

BUT WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH—THE TOUGH GET GOING!
And Ed went straight to the top! The top of Topeka Blvd to Elsie’s Bar, and trusted friend and ally Jack Daniels! He was dead drunk in fifteen minutes! Yet no amount of alcohol could blur the vision of loveliness sitting down on the stool beside him…the soft, raven hair, the luscious red lips, grab-me dress and hypnotic eyes… that beckoned and teased a mesmerized Ed with bold and provocative promises! How could he know this dark witch was drawing him into a forbidden world of sinister pleasure and unearthly desires, a vortex of unearthly sensations more outrageously voluptuous than his wildest dreams! How could he possibly know this shadowy seductress would vanish in a huff and stick him with the tab?

THAT’S WHEN THINGS GET REALLY HOT!
Beaten? Down trodden? Fired from his job and jilted at the bar? Maybe. But that didn’t mean Ed Magee wasn’t suicidal. He trudged back to his little two room dump to lick his wounds…never dreaming, never conceiving, that someone would be there waiting to lick them for him. Waiting to lick him all over! The raven-haired seductress from the bar? No. The pert young secretary from his ex-job? No. The middle-aged landlord with the mustache and the tattoo on her left arm? No. She would come later at the first of the month. What awaited Ed now in his humble, rent-tardy bungalow was the last person on this Earth Ed Magee expected to see: his old boss and editor from the small town paper!

BACK ON TOP!
Ed had barely gotten the top back on the can of month-old Spam when he saw the figure waiting quietly on his living room couch. What was his old newspaper boss doing here--having just fired him an hour earlier? More importantly, how had he gotten in through the locked door? More importantly than that, what was he doing wearing Ed’s own suit? Even still more importantly why were his ex-bosses’ eyes glowing red now like a bat’s and when had he acquired those shiny white fangs? And why was he leaping across the room now to bury those fangs in Ed’s throat? All the while muttering about how vampires were taking over the town…in fact, the whole world! And would Ed be interesting in joining the movement? And would there be medical benefits, Ed wonders, if you’re already dead? And would the stacked brunette at the bar be there? And whose poodle just crashed through the living room window behind Ed’s ex-boss…and why did it have fiery red eyes and glistening fangs too! And who’s going to pay for that window when the landlord shows?

THE CURSE
Ed cursed himself for not paying the cable bill and keeping up with CNN--clearly there was a lot more going on in the world than he was privy to. But in the next few seconds, Ed Magee, ex-newspaper reporter and sometimes moderate-to-heavy drinker, would discover not only just how nightmarishly unbelievable the world had become, how there was a war going on that would put every person on Earth in peril, but that to fight that war--even without a job---he’d not only have to put his very soul at peril, but somehow afford a dog license!

CAN YOUR NERVES STAND THE STRAIN?
Can any sane person remain sane under the ceaseless horror awaiting him in the nerve-shattering pages of this novel? Only to realize he’s been totally ripped off because the real answers don’t come until well into the series’ third book! Only you, and millions like you—no, billions like you--can know the answers to these questions…questions that demand yet more answers that in return require yet more questions!

THE THEORY OF NOTHING

I’m writing this under the sometimes hallucinatory influence of a protracted case of mono, so you’ll just have to forgive all the typos, misspellings and the fact much of it makes little or no sense.

So, this Catholic priest is driving home from the church one night when he suddenly realizes he’s forgotten to say his Mass. Pulling to the side of the road, he cuts the engine but finds the car’s interior lights burned out. So he turns on the headlights, gets out, comes around, kneels down and reads scripture by the high beams. A passing motorist spies him, slows down and hails the priest. “Boy,” he yells, “that must be one hell of a good book!”

If there’s anything more annoying than a religious zealot, it’s an astrophysicist.

They’re both so neurotically myopic. (Don’t look it up—it’s just a fancy word for “near-sighted.)

Could things be worse? Congress is nuts, the President is ineffectual, the world economy is broke, climate change may be beyond repair…and now Stephen W. Hawking has proved there is no God. This from the guy who, in 2002, was convinced that if we can ever truly find a theory for everything, “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason; for then we should know the mind of God.” What?

Anyway, I guess this means we’re all atheists, or at least Stephen is.

Personally I have great respect for atheists, though I don’t necessarily count myself among them. It isn’t just the brevity, you know; it takes a certain amount of guts to believe there’s no one looking after us, no afterlife, that all is simply a cosmic crap shoot. It’s a lot easier to believe in God than not; at least those that do believe appear to sleep better at night. Of course, there’s that old foxhole adage. You know, the one about there being no atheists in them? Have you ever been in military combat? Have you ever watched a man die, or think he was going to die, in front of you? I have. And yep, they all say the same thing: “Please God, no,” or “Please God, help me,” or words to that effect. The phrase was rampant during WWII, “Please God, help me,” being second only to “Mamma!” just before the injured G.I. went into shock or died or both.

But, I suppose, that may be simply the old “fight or flight” thing, built into all things animal. I mean, when you see your intestines spread out on the dirt in front of you, who you gonna call? And, hey, for all I know God might be “Mamma.”

So. How did Mr. Hawking and most of the rest of the scientific community arrive at this theory/truism about no God? That’s simple. Mathematics! What, you didn’t know everything can be explained by math? Hey, grow up, there are great truths therein. Especially if you believe in physics. No, particularly if you believe in physics. Math works. Numbers don’t lie. Physics work, too. And who, beyond some insane Creationist, doesn’t believe in physics?

Yeah, I admire the hell out of atheists, but it pales beside my respect for religious scientists.  Those dudes are way out there. How do you even keep two such antithetical concepts balanced in your mind at the same time and call yourself anything?

Let’s talk about that. We’ll start with that age old story we’ve all heard:

A father is fishing with his son at a river. “Dad, where does the river come from?” the boy asks. “Why, from the rain,” dad answers. “Where does the rain come from?” the boy persists (you can see where this is going) and old dad, who knows his high school physics, replies, “Why, from the sun. It heats the oceans and lakes and creates rain-producing clouds.”  “So where’s the sun come from?” Dad is scratching his head at this point. Hmmm…something about hydrogen atoms… And junior’s already got his next question ready: “Where do hydrogen atoms come from?” Which-- when I was a boy--is the place Dad usually turned the conversation to the finer points of bass fishing.

Fortunately, a lot of dads today know the answer to sonny’s question. Hydrogen came from the Big Bang. Along with everything else. Now some bright kid, in this endless game of chicken-before-the-egg might well ask: “So--what came before the Big Bang?” Good question. And, until fairly recently, unanswerable. But that was before we discovered Black Holes. And how Black Holes are related to the Big Bang. One of the chief relationships being that of Time. Which is to say, in a Black Hole Time stops; or, if you prefer, doesn’t exist. Therefore, there can be no God.  Why? Because, there would have been no time in which God could have created the Universe. So the answer to what came before the Big Bang? NOTHING.

And the Universe, or universes, happened not by a thinking, sentient being--divine or otherwise--but by pure random chance. Cosmic luck. Or unluck if you don’t happen to like being alive. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t last--even the Ice Capades eventually end.)

Even today no one doubts that Einstein was a genius and that E = MC2 was a masterpiece of modern physics. What eventually became into doubt was physics itself.  Classical physics, that is. E=MC2 works fine for the world we “know”; that is, the world we all walk around and work and play in. The problem is it begins to fall apart at the subatomic level, the main culprit here being gravity. Way down below at the most tiny levels, things just don’t work like they do in the bigger world. Yet to have a Theory of Everything, the smallest things of life should dovetail with the biggest; but they don’t.  So Max Plank came along in 1900 and created quantum mechanics, which attempted to explain the behavior of matter and its interaction with energy on the scale of atoms and atomic particles. Plank devised the first model that was able to explain the full spectrum of thermal radiation; by using a set of harmonic oscillators his model showed that thermal radiation existed in equilibrium. The energy of each oscillator was “quantized”, the energy for each proportional to the frequency of the oscillator. The Plank constant: E=nhf, where n = 1,2,3. For this he won the Nobel Prize of 1918. So, was Einstein wrong? Well…not exactly; more like incomplete. Plank’s view of his own discovery was that quantization was purely a mathematical trick. Einstein took it to another level, suggesting it was not just a trick but that energy in a beam of light occurs in individual packets, which we now call photons. The energy of a single photon is given by its frequency multiplied by Plank’s constant: E = hf. Unfortunately, Einstein died never truly believing in the potential of quantum mechanics. Ever his worst critic, Einstein even admitted that the cosmological constant he introduced when trying to make a static model of the universe was the biggest mistake of his life.

None of which solved the problem that while classical relativity and quantum mechanics seem to coincide just fine on a “real-life” level, quantum (without which we would have no computers, or iPods or just about anything else discovered in recent years) just makes no sense at all. As Richard Feynman once remarked: “quantum mechanics deals with nature as she is absurd.” We still don’t comprehend quantum gravity even though we use it every day, or even which theory combines it with general relativity. This is where the stoic field of science engages in a whole lot of assuming. And, perhaps, even some fantasizing regarding time.

The history of the universe in real time, for instance, appears to start at some minimum size, equal to the maximum size of the history of what we’ll call “imaginary” time. The universe would then expand in real time like the expanding balloon “inflation,” model, grow to a very large size, then collapse again into the so-called “singularity” (Big Bang) where it began. Singularity insists the universe must have a beginning as described by quantum theory, therefore the universe could be finite in imaginary time, but without boundaries or singularities. Say, what? However, in the real time in which we live, there will still appear to be singularities. Right. I’ve got a headache.

This suggests that imaginary time is actually fundamental time, and what we call real time is just some crap we made up. In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down. But in imaginary time there are no singularities or boundaries. Keep in mind that a scientific theory is just a mathematical model we use to describe what we observe. It only exists in our minds.

Which brings us to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. You may remember it from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum refers to it as the inability to observe something without changing it. Quantum mechanics shows that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and speed, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision; in other words, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. The uncertainty principle shows mathematically that the product of the uncertainty in the position and momentum of a particle (momentum is velocity multiplied by mass) could never be less than a certain value, and that this value is related to Planks constant. Now I have a migraine.

What this pesky uncertain principle seems to imply is that the early universe could not have been uniform, at least not completely. There had to have been uncertainties or fluctuations in both the positions and velocities of particles. During the universe’s initial rapid expansion (inflation model), the uniformities would have been amplified until big enough to form the origin of the galaxies. So—all the complicated structures in the universe could be explained by the no-boundary aspects of its condition and the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.

And here’s the clincher. If space and time formed a closed surface without boundary it might make for some kind of definitive answer to whom or what exactly created it.

It’s generally accepted that the universe was allowed to evolve according to a set of laws, and that God did not intervene to break the laws. But the laws tell us nothing of what the universe would have looked like when it began. If one believes the universe was created by a singularity, one could also suppose that it was created by some outside force. But if the universe is really completely self-contained with no boundary or edge, it would have been neither created nor could it be destroyed, right? It would just…be.

So, why the need for God? Where is He in all this?

In fact, where is a complete unified theory of the universe? Is it all just fantasy, even as you and I, programmed perhaps by a superior form of homo sapien from some far away future or another dimension? Are we not, in fact, made of space dust-- but of (shudder) nothing?

Of course, this whole thing presupposes that the human mind is capable of even comprehending nothing-- something I’m not so sure about. I mean, if we’re only able to imagine five to seven objects at the same time in our minds, how can we ever hope to imagine something as implacably oblique as nothing? Even unconscious, even in our dreams, we live in a world of somethings. Again, you smarter folks feel free to weigh in here; I’m just a writer/artist behind in my income taxes.

Also there’s that term “random chance” theory of creation. By definition doesn’t that imply there’s something to be random about?

Between the Hubble space telescope and the Hadron Collider, however, we may well be on our way to knowing some very big answers very soon. Even any day now. In the meantime, what I’m experiencing here in my own tiny laymen’s mind is less and less a discrepancy between science and religion and more and more a commonality. To wit:

RELIGION: Can’t explain the Universe, so call it God. SCIENCE: Can’t explain nothing, so call it physics.

Einstein, who knew a thing or two, said: Religion without science is blind; and Science without religion is crippled.”  I’ll leave you to chew on that for a moment.

Lest anyone think I’m being hard on science, let me say unequivocally that I bow to no man in my respect for Stephen Hawking. I’m also aware of the fact that if I had been born with an exceptionally brilliant brain only to find the other physical parts of me slowly dwindling away, I might be a tad cynical about the concept of a loving God…might also be of a mind to pursue science instead of religion and tell God to stuff it. In short, pursue complicated mathematical theorems that took my mind off my depressing physical state rather than sitting there paying homage to something that defies definition and reason yet has the gall to resign me to a wheelchair and a voice like a strangled duck.

Which brings us back to the equality of scientists and theologians: the similar degrees of passion with which they pursue their so-called “opposing” vocations. Along with their tendency to be blind to anything ambiguous or abstract. But can we really blame them? Whether scientist or Methodist, somewhere past the age of, say 55, you really don’t want someone walking up and telling you that the thing you’ve spent your lifetime chasing after is pure baloney. It’s withering. And here is where science may appear, at least, to have the upper hand. Math and science do work, at least within the limitations of our human brains. Nothing is more addictive than problem solving once you get the swing of it; sports and TV pale by comparison. You also, inevitably, reach a place where you are, well…smarter than most people around you. Which can lead to a sense of elitism, which can lead to envy in others. And we know how much the Bible hates that. Indeed, it isn’t just the constant new discoveries that science affords, it’s those times scientists, for all their laborious calculations, can’t quite make the math work, the logic and physics fit. Like a game of chess, the more probabilities, the more frustrating the solution. But it’s also a scientist’s salvation: they don’t have time to sit around and feel sorry for themselves, they’re way too busy being convinced they’re pursuing a higher calling. I don’t know the ratio of depression in scientists but I’d wager it’s less than that of dentists.  Dentists apparently have the corner on suicide. Don’t ask.

Religion, on the other hand, can appear to be the easy way out.

Can’t figure it out? —ask God. Life treating you badly? – trust in God. Terrified of death? --hang with The Big Guy. Sick of Congress? —well, let’s don’t get carried away here, some things even God can’t fix.

I’m also ignorant of the ratio of suicide/depression in theologians, though I’m guessing it’s pretty low unless, somewhere along the way, one experiences a crisis of faith. Interestingly, theologians and artists pursue the same abstract lines of thought. Yet mortality in artists is infamously high, as is alcoholism. The blank page can be a terrible thing to face every day. Also, art may be a vaunted commodity but it never healed anyone or found any new planets; it’s basically a lonely, self-involved, self-serving pursuit wholly without rules or borders (like the universe?). No rules, in fact, are among the highest principals of art. Like scientists, artists share the isolationism of being ahead of the average mind. But scientists, at least, can compare notes, mingle and argue the same basic theories. The singular artist, however, constantly alone in his mind, wrestling with a boundless world of pure abstract imagination in a galaxy of ego…well, we all know what happen to Van Gogh.

Conversely (there’s always a damn “conversely”) even the most hard-nosed, pragmatic scientist will admit that some of the greatest advances in their field have were made through lateral thinking and the use of pure imagination, even flights of fancy—things that cannot be calculated, tested, written down or pigeonholed. They spring, sometimes fully blown, from the art of taking the abstract and making it cohesive. So. If religion and art follow similar paths of intuitive thought, how can science be a science?

 In any case, none of this diminishes or lessens the impact of what seems to be a basic human need for God, the atavistic craving for some kind of divine spirit inhabiting all of us. The foxhole thing again. God is the Santa Claus of our adulthood. We’d all like to believe. As we’d all like to be handsome or rich. Which again—for me--draws parallels between religion and science and maybe explains why some scientists still cling to religion. Can even hard science—the vast majority of which is rampant with pure theory anyway—ever really be proven? Can the existence of a God ever truly be unproven? Believing in God is a little like believing in flying saucers: you can’t prove it one way or the other—which is why the fountain of all great religions is, of course, faith. In fact, the point of all religion. And science major or not, we all rely, to a lesser or greater degree, on faith. We have faith we’ll get that raise. We have faith our spouse won’t cheat on us. I have faith I’ll finish this sentence and live to see tomorrow; I certainly can’t prove it. Assuming is a big part of what allows us to get onto the next nanosecond of existence. Is anyone ever truly agnostic? Or bi-sexual?

Science or religion? Religion or science? Science and religion? -- where do you stand? There’s no questioning the human propensity for both: humans have a nascent desire for some form of security, but are at the same time boundlessly curious, ever testing security’s limits. Can science and religion be opposite sides of the same coin? Where, then, does that leave art?

On the other hand, as science itself suggests, is there really such a thing as existence at all in the common sense of the term? Do we—or does anything –truly “exist”, unless someone is there to observe it/us? Do our wives and children disappear as surely as the idea of God the moment our backs are turned? Scary stuff.

There is one last form of refuge, of course.

Philosophy. In which you need neither science nor religion nor art, though they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Cogito ergo sum. “I think, therefore I am.”

When French philosopher Descartes examined his beliefs he found it is impossible to doubt that he existed. Even if there was a so-called “deceiving god,” one’s belief in his own existence would be secure, for how could one be deceived unless one existed in order to be deceived? How can something spring from nothing?

But even philosophy may not get us off the hook. Consider the nature of the step from Descartes “I am thinking” to “I exist.” The contention is that this is a syllogistic inference; it appears to require the extra premise: “Whatever has the property of thinking exists,” something good old Descartes failed to justify. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard argues that Descartes already pre-supposes the existence of “I”, and therefore concluding with existence is logically trivial. Descartes is merely “developing the content of a concept”, namely that the “I”, which already exists, thinks. To Kierkegaard, the proper logical flow of argument is that existence is already assumed or presupposed in order for thinking to occur, not that existence is concluded from that thinking. Oh, well…not surprising, I suppose, considering how the French regard Jerry Lewis.

Philosophy does have a great edge here, though. There are lots of regions in mathematics but mainly two that concern modern science: Euclidian and quantum mechanics. But hell, you can be philosophical about damn near anything. On the other hand, maybe that’s not such a plus.

Philosophy, in its own way, can be as dizzying as mathematics. There are many levels but for our purposes we’ll stick to the most commonly warring factions: the dualists and idealists, who believe that minds are made up of non-physical substance usually referred to as consciousness, and the materialists, who hold that what we normally think of as mental substance is ultimately physical matter. I once watched a materialist attempt to explore certain regions of the human brain in an attempt to explain the soul. It was a hoot.

Gottfried Leibniz believed that the mental world was built up of monads, mental objects that are not part of physical world. Monism (any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry), may be theologically syncretic by proposing that there is one God who has many manifestation in the diverse religious traditions. Dualism (a state of two parts or co-eternal binary opposition—in science the dichotomy between the observer and the observed) denotes co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality but diluted in general or common usages. Pluralism (the doctrine of multiplicity and the opposition of both monism and dualism) holds that many basic substances make up reality, whereas monism believes existence to be a single substance—matter or mind—and dualism believes two substances, such as matter and mind, to be necessary.)

Philosophy, as mentioned, is not exactly a stranger to religion.  Some examples:

Buddhist philosophy, which is suspicious of ontology. The Buddha himself as well as his disciples discouraged ontological theorizing for its own sake. Pluralism and monism are speculative views, the former associated with nihilism and the latter similar to or associated with eternalism. In Buddhist philosophy, the ultimate nature of the world is described as emptiness, which is inseparable from sensorial objects or anything else. Zen teaches that “All is One and All is Different.” I’ve no idea what that doctrine means.

Christianity maintains the Creator-creature distinction as fundamental. God created the universe ex nihilo and not from Himself, nor within Himself. So don’t confuse the creator with creation. He transcends it (metaphysical dualism—see Genesis); God’s desire was for intimate contact with his own creation. Some believe Christian metaphysics are dualistic because they describe the Creator’s transcendence of creation but they also reject the idea that it is eternally struggling with other equal powers such as Satan. Augustine argued that evil is not the opposite of good, but rather the absence of good, something that itself does not have existence. C.S. Lewis described evil as a parasite, something that cannot exist without good to provide it with existence.

Judaism holds that God is held to be immanent within creation for two interrelated reasons: a very strong Jewish belief that the Divine life-force which brings the universe into existence must constantly be present. Were it to forsake the universe for even an instant, it would revert to a state of utter nothingness (oh dear, the word again!) as before creation. Secondly, Judaism holds as axiomatic that God is an absolute unity and that He is Perfectly Simple. If His sustaining power is within nature, then His essence is also within nature. Still with me?

Islamic belief holds that “To God belongs the East and the West. Wheresoever you look is the face of God.” The Qur’an provides a monist image of God by describing reality as a unified whole, with God being a single concept that would describe or ascribe all exiting things. “He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward. He is the Knower of everything.

Baha’i teachings include a strong emphasis on social and ethical issues. There are a number of foundational texts that have been described as mystical. The Seven Valleys is considered Baha’u’llah’s “greatest mystical composition.” It was written to a follower of Sufism, in the style of ‘Attar, a Muslim poet, and sets forth the stages of the soul’s journey towards God. The Hidden Words, another of Baha’u’llah’s books, contains 153 short passages in which Baha’u’llah takes the basic essence of certain spiritual truth and writes them in brief form.  

When I was a young man in college, philosophy was the “in” thing. Anybody professing to attain true coolness could not graduate without at least a rudimentary course in philosophy. Halcyon days.

Alas, philosophy has slipped in stature from the public consciousness of late, or maybe more precisely been “eaten” by the scientific community. The “in” thing now is to develop new theories to describe what the universe is rather than to ask why. Today’s philosophers have a pretty rough time keeping up with the advances in scientific theories. Indeed, science has become so mathematically and technically confounding hardly anyone but a specialist can hope to grasp it. Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of the century, finally admitted “The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” Yipe! What would Aristotle have thought?

As a kid, I went to church every Sunday, without fail. Or rather my mother made me. Ten o’clock services coincided with The Adventures of Superman on TV so you can guess where my loyalties lay. But religion, like philosophy, began to fade from the American Dream in the Sixties for my parents and most Americans. Some of this may have been the increase in mixed marriages and thus couple’s early exposure; Judaism has been particularly hard hit on the ascetic level and race-wise, and thanks to American and Japanese tourism, we’ve all but managed to wipe out the true Hawaiians. But all in all, by mid-century, the nation simply seemed to become a more secular place. I’m not sure anyone knows the real answer, though I have my personal suspicions. It probably began sometime around the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, then got a big boost with the April 8, 1966 cover of Time magazine asking in bold red letters against a stark black background (the only time in history the periodical has ever had a non-image cover) “Is God Dead?” This was the brain-child of editor Otto Fuerbringer, who caught a lot of heat from readers and clergymen and also sold a lot of copies, even though the article itself, “Toward a Hidden God” only briefly mentioned the so-called “God Is Dead” movement. The thrust of the issue was the supposed problems facing modern theologians in making God relevant to an increasingly secular society. Science, it was felt, had all but eliminated the need for religion to explain the natural world; God simply took up less and less time in people’s daily lives. Various scholars were brought in and included the application of contemporary philosophy to the field of theology and a more “personalized” and individualistic approach to religion. In truth the magazine’s cover alone was probably the major cause of all the ruckus. In 2008, the Los Angeles Times named the issue among “10 magazine covers that shook the world.” Not to be outdone, second stringer Newsweek as late as 2009 ran an almost exact clone of the Time cover graphics announcing “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Better late than never, I guess.

In any case, what Time didn’t perhaps begin, the murder of Robert Kennedy and Dr. King combined with the nation-ripping war in Vietnam and President Nixon’s outsing eventually helped end. Disillusionment stalked the land. Religion may have remained a number of things, but hip wasn’t one of them.

In the end perhaps philosophy wins out. There either is or isn’t a God, but only those already dead know the answer. Or do they?

Wouldn’t it be just devilishly awful if, in fact, there is indeed a God who watches over us all now and takes care of us in his golden kingdom afterwards, but you can only get there if you believe? Otherwise, it’s the black nothingness of an empty cosmos for your sad ass.

On the other hand, obliteration may have its finer points: what we can’t be conscious for or comprehend can’t hurt us. And do we really want to meet up again with Aunt Tessie and Uncle Gus? When his local clergyman visited W. C. Fields on his death bed, the priest was amazed to find Fields reading the Bible. “What on Earth are you doing!” the priest declared. “Looking for loopholes!”  Fields replied.

Maybe there are some. It’s like the time the little boy asked his own reverend if there was really a Hell. “We know there is a Hell,” the good reverend replied, “because the Bible tells us so. But as God is all-forgiving, there’s probably no one in it.”

Why does my mind keep trying to form an analogy here with the recent debacle in Congress over the debt limit? Two factions, supposedly united under the same cause, behaving like selfish, self-serving children…whose biggest responsibility was only the entire nation—no, let’s face it, the entire world.

There’s a terrific little Stanley Kramer film starring Spencer Tracy called Inherit the Wind worth your attention. It’s a parable based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, a fictionalized account of the Scope “Monkey” trials of 1925. The play was conceived as a response to the hysterics of 1950’s McCarthyism--a trait it shares with another film, High Noon—and is critical of creationism. Tracy plays defense council Henry Drummond (patterned after real life Clarence Darrow), Frederic March prosecutor Matthew Harrison (real life William Jennings Bryan).  Gene Kelly plays E. K. Hornbeck (Henry Mencken) of the Baltimore Herald, who has personally seen to it that Drummond comes to town to represent the teacher in the case, Hornbeck’s newspaper and radio network providing nationwide coverage of a minor legal matter that would soon became a national sensation. All the stars’ parts are marvelous and the movie is packed with terrific scenes, especially when Drummond--backed into a corner by judge and jury--is forced to put Brady himself on the witness stand. Brady wins the trial but Tracy as Drummond wins the day by driving home the point that teacher Cates, like anyone else, demands the right to think for himself and teach science over creationism if he wishes.

For me, the best part of the film comes at the denouement when Tracy and Kelly are alone in the courtroom after the trial. A self-professed elitist and cynic (and presumably atheist) Kelly regales Tracy for showing March for the pious buffoon he is, and congratulates Tracy, who he feels is the true winner. The voice of reason throughout the film, Kelly (and we) are surprised when Tracy admonishes the newspaper man and actually defends the pious March. “He was a great man in his day,” Tracy says, “until he began to look for God too high up and too far away.” Kelly is shocked to find there might be any kind of religious streak in the science-minded Tracy, who has just fought a long trial decrying creationism. But Tracy only shakes his head sadly at Kelly. “What the hell are you?” he asks Kelly. “You don’t believe in anyone or anything, care about anyone or anything but yourself. And when you die, you’ll be all alone with your cynicism and disbelief, no friend or relative or anyone to come to your funeral.”

A sobered Kelly looks initially thoughtful for a moment-- but finally smiles back at Tracy. “No,” he replies, “you’ll be there-- defending my right to be alone.”

Kelly leaves and Tracy is alone to pack up. On the desk before him are the two books that formed the basis of the trial: Darwin’s Origin of the Species and the Holy Bible.  Tracy picks up the two books, one in either hand.

As a fifteen year old, comprehending most of what I just saw, I waited on the edge of my seat hardly breathing, waiting to see which book Tracy would take home with him. I mean, Spencer Tracy!--our greatest actor and everybody’s surrogate father; he even looked a little like the way I imagined God would.

Tracy looks at both books in his hands a moment, finally smiles, slaps the two books together under his arm, and walks out of the courtroom.