Breakfast with Pandora

Netflix Follies: "Mad Men"

I know, I'm about 4 years late. But think of the time I can waste.

 

Graphic found here.

 

Like many, I'd heard about "Mad Men", the AMC original series that will soon start its fifth season. It is now on Netflix streaming, so it is possible to hole oneself up in a mountain cabin and watch until the only option left on the red screen at the end of the show is "Back to Browsing."

 

And I might have done it, had I started watching earlier in the summer.

 

"Mad Men" is famous for its political incorrectness-- its willingness to depict a time, early 60's New York City, and workplace, advertising agency, where it was still okay for white men to diss everyone else.

 

Adding to the verbal naughtiness: inordinate amounts of alcohol, smoking (the actors are absolutely sacrificing themselves) and bed-hopping.

 

The period detail, especially the women's fashions, are a draw, but more enticing are the period attitudes. "Mad Men" takes place on the cusp of the feminist revolution. The post-World War II marriage and family boom is still in force; women still think the best and easiest life is to be married to a successful man. Successful men have the freedom to worry about whether they are successful enough; wives of successful men sit at home with the kids and go quietly nuts.

 

I have watched only Episodes 1-5 of Season 1, so I have no spoilers for you, but I did want to mention, for all three of you out there who have not seen this superbly imagined and executed creation, what may be the decisive aspect that makes "Mad Men" so watchable: Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm.

 

Draper is brilliant, great with words, confident with the women, flat-stomached, the go-to guy in the office. He is on the one hand kind of a jerk, but on the other a real knight in shining armor. He is also a decorated World War II veteran. But he is also a man of mystery, tortured by some unseen hurt in his past, which may or may not have something to do with the war. As the episodes have unfolded, we have learned bits and pieces about Don's past, but nothing terribly revealing. Who is Don Draper, really? That's the appeal of "Mad Men."

 

This type of story has the makings of a fine tragedy, in the style of "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles. In this ancient Athenian play, Oedipus is master both of Thebes and himself. A strong, intelligent king, he is also good-hearted, a good husband. But his past begins to haunt him, and as he investigates his past, as his past is revealed to the audience, the more he falls.

 

The opening of "Mad Men" depicts the silhouette of a man in a suit very much like Don Draper who puts down his briefcase in his office, which then fades out and leaves him falling between skyscrapers plastered with popular advertising posters. But he doesn't hit the pavement: instead, he ends up sitting in an easy chair, back to us, with a cigarette in his hand. An apt summing up of the story of Don Draper.

At least so far.

High brow, low brow, and the e-publishing revolution

In the past couple of weeks, I've received notice, via email or social media, of five new self-published novels.

 

Here's the latest.

 

Image found here.

 

Last year, I receive notice of exactly one.

 

Self-publishing used to be an admission of defeat, used to open an author up to charges of vanity.

 

Not anymore. Decisively.

 

What it is, is a gold rush. And like a gold rush, very few prospectors are going to strike it rich. But it will be fun trying, and maybe we'll discover a few things that will be worth keeping, like sourdough.

 

The gold strike is real, by the way. There are signs the e-revolution is driving up sales of fiction. So it's all good, right?

 

Maybe not. Genre fiction, especially in the YA market (fiction aimed at teens) is leading the way, at the expense, some would say, of real literature.

 

An online discussion in the New York Times produced these comments:

 

Let me get this straight. Adults are reading books at aimed at teenage-level readers, on top of the brain candy that are romance and mystery novels.

 

Some might say, well, at least they're reading. Some might also say, well, my husband's addicted to Snickers bars, but at least he's eating.

 

Is it any wonder that this country is in the toilet?

 

Then there's this one:

 

I fail to see why [previous commenters] don't understand why it's troubling to see so many adults reading so many mystery novels and romances but especially so many teen novels. A nation of adults constantly looking for entertainment and escape is a troubled nation. Our reading habits reflect who we are, and Americans are in dire need of some self-reflection. Literature provides that opportunity.

 

University English departments resolved this debate between "junk" and "real" literature in the 1990's.  For the purposes of university-level study, there's no difference (See also this book... BTW, priced at $15 as an e-book).

 

But away from the ivory tower, there's a marketplace where some serious rubber is hitting some serious road.

 

The lit market has always been tenuous. Always small, and clubby, has been the group of people who have valued books encouraging self-reflection. Or at least that made the author feel good about his or her erudition. It was really, really hard to get into this club, but those who were in had a wonderful time being passionate about their craft.

 

And the people in the club could feel good about themselves because they were writing stuff that was worthwhile.

 

Well, it's about time that the club disband and reform as something else.

 

There's something exhilirating about everyone in the world deciding to be an author. I know that doesn't square with Flannery O'Connor's view, but it's exhilirating none the less. 

Time was, we wouldn't have been able to manage a deluge of new fiction. If we were publishing all this stuff and putting it in a bookstore, the aisles would be stacked with whatever. 

 

 

But thanks to data aggregation and social media, we can categorize and differentiate. We can decide what's good and what's not. The best-- however that's decided-- can be recognized, and yet everyone can be in the game.

 

Don't decry the e-publishing revolution. Join it. Join it to get rich, join it to have an adventure, join it to do a service for our country. Just join it.

So here we go. I herewith announce a new category for Breakfast with Pandora blog posts: Sourdough with Pandora: the e-book revolution.

 

Fiction news in threes

As you might know, there is a popular superstition that series of things come in threes, so in that spirit, here is notice of three new pieces of self-published fiction that have come across my browser in the last couple of days.

 

A Place of Belonging, by Bob Mustin. Author of "The Blue Bicycle" touted on this blog, Bob reissues a revised version of an earlier self-published novel:

Stephen Banks looks up from breakfast at a Clarkesville, Georgia, diner to see a frightened and unkempt young woman climb from a truck. Who is she? Banks must find out.

The task is a daunting one – her name is Ginger, and she has amnesia. As Banks and Ginger leave Clarkesville in search of her past, they must also solve a murder – a murder of which Ginger stands accused. Their journey becomes one of loss, hope, and self-discovery as they travel the American South and Southwest.

I find it difficult to write contemporary fiction; I don't live in the present or value the present and you need to be able to do both to write this type of tale. Bob gets it-- the grittiness of much of today's world, and the imperfect, contingent grace.

BTW, if you are writing your own marketing copy for Amazon or wherever, shorter is definitely better, in my opinion. I like Bob's length here.

 

Fire: The Anzhelin Legacy, by R.G. Gilbert. A fantasy debut by a friend of a friend.

In an uncharted world full of magic and mystery, the Anzhelin family has reigned over the kingdom of Bryn since the days of the original outpost of Brynley, guiding the Brynnians’ evolution from a simple settlement into a small country, establishing their own near-legendary status among the people. Warrior-kings of past Anzhelin generations had always ensured Bryn’s survival in the face of danger, but now, after twelve years of peace, tranquility, and economic prosperity were shattered in the blink of an eye, Bryn’s survival – and the Anzhelin legacy – lies in the hands of an untested queen, a loyal guard, and a farmer’s son. 

 

Sounds like "Fire" will draw the interest of traditional swords and sorcery buffs. If "Eragon" was a success, this can be too.

 

The Children of Tantalus (Tapestry of Bronze series), by Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood. These authors wrote "Iokaste," about which I wrote on this blog some years ago. In three new novels, they retell the Greek myths of the Tantalid family using psychological-motivational techniques, something I think doesn't generally fit with Greek myths, but that I think a lot of contemporary readers demand and appreciate. These novels are well-written and remind me somewhat of "The Songs of the Kings," a mainstream-published novel by Barry Unsworth about the myth of Iphigenia that got a lot of attention when it was published.

 

With the rise of such movies as "300" and "The Immortals," there should be room in the national psyche for novels like these. But with the timidity of the current publishing industry it's probably an excellent idea for the authors to go it on their own. Besides having too many submissions, contemporary editors and agents probably find books on ancient subjects to be beyond their ability to judge, if there is any complexity to the work.

 

Self-publishing is now wide open. Advice remains the same: write the best book you can, and promote it to the hilt. Or be satisfied with sales to your friends and family.

"The Booth at the End": what do you really want?

Imagine a TV show where the only action takes place at a booth in a 1950's style southern California diner. A middle-aged man with ice-blue eyes sits all day at the booth, receiving clients who come to him for extraordinary wishes. They tell him what they want, he tells them what they must do, and if they do it, their wish comes true.

 

Such is the premise of the hulu.com TV show "The Booth at the End," written by Christopher Kubasik. In episode 1, a nun who wants to "hear God again" asks The Man who sits in the booth (we don't know his name) if there is any way to tell if he is the Devil or not. Nope, there's no way, says the man.

 

The tasks are often illegal and immoral, which makes the audience wonder if we are in fact dealing with the Devil. Sometimes, however, the tasks are just the opposite. One person is told she must rob a bank; another is told she must befriend a man with agoraphobia and coax him out of his house. The key seems to be not the morality of the task but the difficulty for that particular person in accomplishing it.

 

The deal makers are repeatedly told they are free to walk away from the deal at any time; they are also told that The Man does not cause the wishes to come true, but that the people's accomplishing the task effects it. The drama comes in the askers' decisions to act or not act.

 

It's a great idea for a story, and as with many stories, has been done before with variations. Stephen King wrote a similar story called "Needful Things." The screenwriter Mr. Kubasik, who helpfully posts online wherever comments are being made about the show, adds such precedents as "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson, "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and all the way back to the European deal-with-the-devil folktale, "Faust."

 

In the ancient world, we might add the story of Alcestis, the wife of the young king of Pherae in Thessaly, Admetus. Admetus is fated to die young, but because of his great hospitality to the god Apollo, Apollo makes him a deal. If he can find someone else to die in his place, he can live. Admetus asks his aged parents to die for him, and they refuse. Finally, Admetus' wife Alcestis consents to die in his place. Admetus then tries to find a way out for Alcestis.

 

I've always loved the story of Alcestis because it goes against the grain of typical Greek myths. The ancient world is dominantly fatalist, meaning that it often doesn't matter what you do, the result has already been decided beforehand. Alcestis shows a streak of defiance that I think is native to human beings.

 

"The Booth at the End" is purely about choice and action. One's fate is in one's hands, and even wildly unlikely things-- such as having lots of money-- become possible when The Man has made a deal with you.

 

Now, complications ensue for all the characters that make the choice-action-result less pure, but there is never a sense that what The Man asks is impossible or beyond a character's reach. This is strongly an American way of looking at the world; we are dreamers who want our wishes fulfilled, and we are can-do folks who believe if only we act, our dreams will come true.

 

Most of the time in American entertainment, the choices are moral and the outcome good for everyone except for the villain. "The Booth at the End" is blessedly more complex.

 

But aside from the (real) complications of life, there is more than a kernel of truth in the idea of choice-action-result. Recently I saw a poster implying that true happiness results only from actions taken to promote that happiness. If you're happy, keep doing the same thing. If you're not, but want to be, change something. Seems simple. And yet we tend not to see our own agency in our own happiness. Rather, we would like to blame circumstances or other people.

"The Booth at the End" distills everything in life down to a couple of principles:

1) If you want something, go after it. 

2) make sure that's what you want.

I like it.