tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-221652302024-03-07T19:29:29.662-08:00The Heart of the MatterBarry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.comBlogger377125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-55633680431073677472023-09-18T08:39:00.000-07:002023-09-18T08:39:14.470-07:00The Real Reason Voters Have Soured on Biden<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/15/biden-economy-bidenomics-poll-republicans-democrats-independents" target="_blank">numerous</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-BIDEN/POLL/nmopagnqapa/" target="_blank">recent</a> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/13/biden-is-selling-an-improving-economy-americans-dont-but-it-it-poll-finds/70729119007/" target="_blank">polls</a>, Americans believe the economy is in bad shape and don’t trust President Biden to manage it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In response, the president’s supporters have been arguing strenuously that the gloom is mistaken because in fact the economy is doing well—“extremely well,” according to <i>New York Times</i> columnist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/economy-inflation-negativity.html" target="_blank">Paul Krugman</a>; “astoundingly” well and “better than any other peer country in the world…Joe Biden’s America is on the right path to pull off one of the greatest macroeconomic policy tricks of all time,” according to MSNBC personality <a href="https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1679287290990931968?s=46" target="_blank">Chris Hayes</a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course, multi-millionaires telling hurting Americans that they’re feeling only phantom pain is inherently cringe-worthy, but I’m not going to argue about whether the economy is in fact doing well or doing poorly. In fact, I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that Biden’s supporters are correct and that the economy is in great shape. What really interests me here is the fundamental error continually made by these highly educated, heavily credentialed people whose sole ostensible job is to accurately and usefully explain to the rest of us what’s really going on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The error in question? Assuming self-reported reasons for political preferences are typically reliable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In my experience, humans tend to form conclusions based on emotional elements we understand only vaguely, if at all. But for whatever reason, we’re uncomfortable acknowledging that there’s no sound logical or empirical foundation undergirding those conclusions, and so we reverse engineer logical or empirical foundations that seem to provide a degree of solid support.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Weirdly, this universal human tendency is so underappreciated that when polls show something like “Seventy percent of voters say they disapprove of a politician because of X,” pundits take the purported explanation at face value. The pundits then energetically try to convince people that they’re wrong—in this case by lecturing them that in fact the economy is doing surreally and astoundingly well and that they should therefore be more appreciative of President Biden.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As a trivial but funny example of the phenomenon, a few years ago someone, I think in the Kindle Store, unfavorably reviewed my book <i>The Killer Collective</i>. The gist of the review was, “I didn’t like this book because nothing ever goes wrong for the protagonists and they never face any danger.” Immediately I thought, “That’s not true! What about that helicopter attack, where Rain kept missing with the .50 cal and they all almost died as a result? And I actually killed off a major series character, how much more danger could you ask for?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And then I laughed at myself, thinking, “What would happen if you could convince this guy that he’s mistaken, that things do go wrong and the characters do face danger? Would he suddenly say, ‘Gee, Barry, you’re right, I actually did like the book?’”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course not. The guy genuinely didn’t like the book, which is of course fine (though highly unusual!). There could be dozens of reasons for his dislike, or none at all—he just didn’t like it. But, being human, “I just didn’t like it” feels flimsy, so this guy did what humans do: he reverse engineered a sturdier-seeming foundation. And because the foundation was reverse engineered, undermining it would do nothing to change the conclusion it was placed under, a conclusion that was independent of the foundation and in fact preceded it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This is just how we’re wired as a species. And yet, when humans report, “I don’t like Biden because the economy is weak,” even (or maybe especially) the most academically credentialed and elite thinkers in the country instinctively respond by trying to undermine the stated reason for the dislike, rather than trying to divine what is really going on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Krugman in particular does a lot of this in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/09/12/exp-intw-us-economy-disconnect-paul-krugman-091201pseg2-cnni-world.cnn" target="_blank">a recent discussion</a> with CNN personality Christiane Amanpour, where paradoxically he comes across as both befuddled and incurious: “We don’t really understand why this [economic gloom in the face of a strong economy] is happening,” he says. “And I could come up with multiple stories, but it’s important to point out that there’s a real and profound and peculiar disconnect going on.” Whoever this “we” is—Nobel Prize-winning economists? <i>New York Times</i> pundits? Cognoscenti generally?—wouldn’t their proposed “stories” (presumably, explanations) for what’s causing the profound and peculiar disconnect Krugman describes be more useful than simply noting the phenomenon itself? And though Krugman, Hayes, and others do periodically point to partisanship, propaganda, and media failures as the underlying causes of voters’ incorrect belief that the economy is doing poorly, even if true such <a href="https://www.pnj.com/story/opinion/2016/06/12/viewpoint-duckspeakers-dominating/85788514/" target="_blank">Duckspeak</a> explanations still rely on the erroneous notion that self-reported reasons are inherently reliable.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But if I’m right in suggesting that humans aren’t typically good at self-identifying the real causes of their dislikes, then the entire notion of whether the economy is weak or strong is a distraction. I think something else is going on, not just in America, but in the whole western world. I think ordinary people have become increasingly aware that, as George Carlin put it in 2005’s <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLODGhEyLvk&t=443s" target="_blank">Life is Worth Losing</a>,</i> our rulers “don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Martin Gurri describes this phenomenon in his excellent book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0" target="_blank">The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium</a>.</i> Popular disgust with the ever-worsening “Let them eat cake” ethos of the ruling class has expressed itself in a variety of ways: Trump in America. Bolsonaro in Brazil. Brexit in the UK. Populist upsets all over Europe. The <i>gilets jaunes</i> movement in France. The Canadian trucker convoy. Day traders rising up against Wall Street titans just for <a href="https://www.racket.news/p/this-is-for-you-dad-interview-with" target="_blank">the joy of making them bleed</a>. And perhaps most tellingly in QAnon, which reifies the metaphorical parasitism of the ruling class into a belief in literal establishment cannibalism and child abuse.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNqaAYSUL6UOnIBmImwlVy6MDHIQYLsUQhXYe7grp7CedFa85GWlqZfDvCaFEBYYxBhGHGem7OEtbQgkDSogEG17frw6aMCaIk5bZjZWjy-Z_huCrxwd5xvNFb6FrGx7w0IIo9p147OAT8rUEh53lFS9NOii2nYjoEIKljcNIQxrCuQCpDlbw_3A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1012" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNqaAYSUL6UOnIBmImwlVy6MDHIQYLsUQhXYe7grp7CedFa85GWlqZfDvCaFEBYYxBhGHGem7OEtbQgkDSogEG17frw6aMCaIk5bZjZWjy-Z_huCrxwd5xvNFb6FrGx7w0IIo9p147OAT8rUEh53lFS9NOii2nYjoEIKljcNIQxrCuQCpDlbw_3A" width="162" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">So Biden’s problem isn’t so much that voters don</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">’t trust him on the economy, but rather that they just don’t trust him. And why don’t they trust him? Because whatever else you think of him, Biden is as much of an establishment insider as anyone could possibly be. He’s been a politician for virtually the entirety of his adult life, having been elected to a Delaware county council in 1970 at age 27 and to the US Senate two years later, where he remained for 36 years until becoming vice president for another eight. In fact, he’s so much an insider that despite his poor showing in the first three 2020 primaries, the Democratic establishment, fearing Bernie Sanders, united to install him as the general election candidate in 2020. The only politician who might rival Biden in establishment credentials would be Hillary Clinton, who the Democratic establishment also selected after sidelining Sanders in 2016 and who went on to lose to Donald Trump.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To put it another way: I doubt most voters distrust Biden specifically. My sense instead is that voters distrust him for what he represents. And while Democratic Trump horror and Covid proved just enough for the 78-year-old former senator and vice president to eke out a victory in 2020, in a world where the public is increasingly not just distrustful of but nauseated by its rulers, an establishment background presents an ineradicable taint.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But this would be a lot to articulate in a survey, and so most humans will attribute their dislike and distrust to something that feels discrete and defensible, such as “He’s not managing the economy well.” And then pundits like Krugman, his conservative colleague <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/biden-economy.html" target="_blank">Ross Douthat</a>, and Hayes will engage that stated reason, believing it to be the actual cause for discontent. In fairness, you can’t really blame the Krugmans and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/opinion/joe-biden-unpopular.html" target="_blank">Douthats</a> and Hayes’s of the world; after all, they’re all part of the establishment voters increasingly detest. For them to acknowledge how loathed their class is would involve a lot of difficult self-reflection, and in this sense they’re like West World’s <a href="https://youtu.be/o0iAY0f-BIM?si=G0JM72CYgYLEmT_-&t=1" target="_blank">Bernard</a>, who couldn’t see the door positioned right in front of him because he’d been programed to be blind to it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/o0iAY0f-BIM?si=boKrYaLKVfWg6D9H" width="480"></iframe></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Two things seem axiomatic to me: the public wants meaningful change, and neither wing of America’s political duopoly is willing to offer it. Maximum disgust will therefore be directed at an establishment incumbent like Biden, against whom almost any challenger will have some claim to relative outsider status.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The thing is, Trump isn’t just any challenger. Everyone understands that Trump is hated by the establishment, and after four years of Russiagate, two impeachments, and four (and counting) indictments, Trump is well positioned to blame any of his failures as president on the establishment—what Trump calls “the swamp.” By comparison, a candidate like Biden <i>is</i> the swamp.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The only way either wing of the duopoly might meaningfully mitigate the downside of running an insider would be to allow in an outsider. The Democratic wing has prevented such a thing twice in a row, while the Republican wing tried but failed, accommodating themselves to Trump as their leader after having done all they could to stop him. But regardless of the risks or the outcomes, I don’t expect either wing to become more open to outsiders. As the <a href="http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html">Iron Law of Institutions</a> posits, the people who control institutions care more about their power <i>within </i>the institution than they do about the power <i>of</i> the institution.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If I’m right about the public’s general outlook, voter pessimism about Biden’s accomplishments isn’t really what’s pulling him down. And in arguing that in fact those accomplishments are surreal or historical or otherwise stunning—even if true—is as likely to boost his numbers as my flapping my arms is likely to get me to fly.</span></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-32989400542501799462023-06-21T17:07:00.001-07:002023-06-21T17:11:31.344-07:00If You Care About Privacy...<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If you care about privacy, please stop referring to "privacy advocates." This reflexive phrase implies that certain individuals are trying to increase privacy or otherwise change the status quo--an uphill battle regardless of the issue at hand because most people instinctively distrust and even fear change.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In fact, privacy is under increasing assault by government and corporate deployment of new technologies. So the far more accurate--and tactically useful--phrase would be "privacy defenders."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sadly, when it comes to nomenclature, rulers tend to be much more clever than the ruled. Renaming the War Department the Defense Department was genius in this regard. Now even otherwise excellent journalists reflexively refer to "defense" spending, a phrase far less likely to trouble the citizenry than "war" spending or even "military" spending.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The government understands that "defense" makes good marketing. I wish whoever came up with "privacy advocates" were half as effective.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">More such own-goals <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ass-Poor-Receptacle-Head-Communication-ebook/dp/B0050O7VLW/ref=sr_1_1" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-82623316935972196822023-03-02T20:17:00.004-08:002023-03-02T20:17:48.806-08:00Talking MA, SD, Violence, and of Course Writing With Coach Tony Blauer<div><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Had a blast <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1CxwVRt_c0&t=4s" target="_blank">talking with Tony Blauer</a>, an innovator in self defense I've learned a ton from over the last 20 years or so.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As we discuss in the podcast, I first met Tony when he wrote to me around the time my first book was published. He praised me for my fictional depiction of various aspects of violence, and told me that in his opinion I was really getting it right. My response was, "I hope so, I read your newsletter and have learned a lot from you!" Following which a beautiful friendship was born, which has included several trips to Tony's seminars and a couple of memorable sushi meals, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Anyway, it was a treat to catch up this morning about various areas of common interests on Tony's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@tonyblauer" target="_blank">Know Fear</a> podcast. Enjoy.</span></p></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/m1CxwVRt_c0" width="480"></iframe></span>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-18694531116928914372023-01-18T19:56:00.001-08:002023-01-18T19:56:09.134-08:00Amazon Smile, No More<p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2018, at the </span>suggestion<span style="font-family: inherit;"> of novelist <a href="http://www.vachss.com/index.php" target="_blank">Andrew Vachss</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, I did what I could do </span><a href="http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2018/11/if-you-buy-from-amazon-do-it-at.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">get out the word about Amazon Smile</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f; font-family: inherit;">—</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">a program that enabled Amazon customers to direct a portion of their purposes to a favored charity. Mine was an organization Andrew established: t</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">he </span><a href="http://ldicp.org/" style="color: #47655c; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Legislative Drafting Institute for Child Protection</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">The good news is, you can still donate to the <a href="http://ldicp.org/" target="_blank">LDICP</a>. The bad news, per the email copied and pasted below, is that Amazon is disbanding Amazon Smile.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">***********************</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">Dear customer,</b><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">In 2013, we launched AmazonSmile to make it easier for customers to support their favorite charities. However, after almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible organizations—more than 1 million globally—our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin. </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">We are writing to let you know that we plan to wind down AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023. We will continue to pursue and invest in other areas where we’ve seen we can make meaningful change—from building affordable housing to providing access to computer science education for students in underserved communities to using our logistics infrastructure and technology to assist broad communities impacted by natural disasters.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">To help charities that have been a part of the AmazonSmile program with this transition, we will be providing them with a one-time donation equivalent to three months of what they earned in 2022 through the program, and they will also be able to accrue additional donations until the program officially closes in February. Once AmazonSmile closes, charities will still be able to seek support from Amazon customers by creating their own wish lists.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">As a company, we will continue supporting a wide range of other programs that help thousands of charities and communities across the U.S. For instance:</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /></span></p><ul style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/gp/f.html?C=2XBVBJU7E4OIU&K=1G13UMDIENSWI&M=urn:rtn:msg:20230119011226d51fcac2608242658f0bcb6be1b0p0na&R=2NLFW2B79DROE&T=C&U=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazonhousingequity.com%2F&H=ZVBY4KVAZ7DUAPFAUVPSCRSNGW0A" style="word-break: keep-all !important;">Housing Equity Fund</a>: We’re investing $2 billion to build and preserve affordable housing in our hometown communities. In just two years, we’ve provided funding to create more than 14,000 affordable homes—and we expect to build at least 6,000 more in the coming months. These units will host more than 18,000 moderate- to low-income families, many of them with children. In one year alone, our investments have been able to increase the affordable housing stock in communities like Bellevue, Washington and Arlington, Virginia by at least 20%.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/gp/f.html?C=2XBVBJU7E4OIU&K=1G13UMDIENSWI&M=urn:rtn:msg:20230119011226d51fcac2608242658f0bcb6be1b0p0na&R=HYW5BKTF1NKS&T=C&U=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazonfutureengineer.com%2F&H=6O6FWRKPGRYVPR0KBNJHDGXSKFCA" style="word-break: keep-all !important;">Amazon Future Engineer</a>: We’ve funded computer science curriculum for more than 600,000 students across over 5,000 schools—all in underserved communities. We have plans to reach an additional 1 million students this year. We’ve also provided immediate assistance to 55,000 students in our hometown communities by giving them warm clothes for the winter, food, and school supplies.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/gp/f.html?C=2XBVBJU7E4OIU&K=1G13UMDIENSWI&M=urn:rtn:msg:20230119011226d51fcac2608242658f0bcb6be1b0p0na&R=3CENR5C244CRY&T=C&U=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aboutamazon.com%2Fimpact%2Fhelpforhunger&H=S900AS88VLFAT9HJUY0OECQFJWEA" style="word-break: keep-all !important;">Community Delivery Program</a>: We’ve partnered with food banks in 35 U.S. cities to deliver more than 23 million meals, using our logistics infrastructure to help families in need access healthy food – and we plan to deliver 12 million more meals this year alone. In addition to our delivery services, we’ve also donated 30 million meals in communities across the country.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/gp/f.html?C=2XBVBJU7E4OIU&K=1G13UMDIENSWI&M=urn:rtn:msg:20230119011226d51fcac2608242658f0bcb6be1b0p0na&R=2TXIU2CMUD0IS&T=C&U=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aboutamazon.com%2Fimpact%2Fcommunity%2Fdisaster-relief&H=WGWAEOUKZSP9AX7W9XWEEYQPHJUA" style="word-break: keep-all !important;">Amazon Disaster Relief</a>: We’re using our logistics capabilities, inventory, and cloud technology to provide fast aid to communities affected by natural disasters. For example, we’ve created a Disaster Relief Hub in Atlanta with more than 1 million relief items ready for deployment, our Disaster Relief team has responded to more than 95 natural disasters, and we’ve donated more than 20 million relief products to nonprofits assisting communities on the ground.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/gp/f.html?C=2XBVBJU7E4OIU&K=1G13UMDIENSWI&M=urn:rtn:msg:20230119011226d51fcac2608242658f0bcb6be1b0p0na&R=84OJ6YG9ERU6&T=C&U=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aboutamazon.com%2Fnews%2Fcommunity%2Famazon-community-impact-report-highlights-2022&H=ANPBJZVFFQ4Y8A2LKBOPOP2SXD8A" style="word-break: keep-all !important;">Community Giving</a>: We support hundreds of local nonprofits doing meaningful work in cities where our employees and their families live. For example, each year we donate hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations working to build stronger communities, from youth sport leagues, to local community colleges, to shelters for families experiencing homelessness.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">We’ll continue working to make a difference in many ways, and our long-term commitment to our communities remains the same—we’re determined to do every day better for our customers, our employees, and the world at large.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(70, 74, 79); color: #464a4f;">Thank you for being an Amazon customer.</span></span></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-29449182772024660172022-12-06T08:31:00.002-08:002022-12-30T20:54:55.619-08:00Dox Origin Story AMOK, Out Today!<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Today’s the day—my long-gestating Dox origin story, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/AMOK-Dox-Thriller-Barry-Eisler-ebook/dp/B09C681LRX/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0" target="_blank">AMOK</a>, is available at last! Hardback; trade paper; Kindle; audiobook narrated by yours truly…whatever you prefer.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBBIxet_qIhyjJTWH2VTDo7600i5FMu_DQxWJRgFjAtaOy78GKW-jPhjBDvbdx00mcH3EXQkZyKMAMTmOAnmt3fG294pE40eGV_snVFmoR9mP1nSH-YW3xJo0xAYwsyqW-NAymuMf0zafweL8ImrBkSVuQxTuzlWoR25RLRI0Gh8uFY38Blk/s2550/Amok%20Cover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2550" data-original-width="1678" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBBIxet_qIhyjJTWH2VTDo7600i5FMu_DQxWJRgFjAtaOy78GKW-jPhjBDvbdx00mcH3EXQkZyKMAMTmOAnmt3fG294pE40eGV_snVFmoR9mP1nSH-YW3xJo0xAYwsyqW-NAymuMf0zafweL8ImrBkSVuQxTuzlWoR25RLRI0Gh8uFY38Blk/w264-h400/Amok%20Cover.jpg" width="264" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The gist:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>1991. A restless young man called Dox is back home in Texas. His friends have missed him and his mother and sisters need him, but after four years as a Marine and another two as a CIA contractor fighting alongside the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, small-town life in Abilene is a suffocating dead end. Another secret war, this one in Southeast Asia, offers a big payday and the solution to his family’s dire straits. But secret wars are never what they’re billed to be, and Dox is about to get the education of his young life—among the lessons, that the only thing more dangerous than a secret war is falling in love with your enemy.</i></span></p><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If you’re curious about how I got around the pandemic to research the Huntsville “Walls” Unit (yes, the same Texas prison depicted in the 1972 Steve McQueen movie <i>The Getaway),</i> life in Abilene and Tuscola, and Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, all as they existed in 1991, you can find my notes, a bibliography, and a filmography <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/books/amok/" target="_blank">here</a>—and of course in the book itself.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And some research photos from Abilene and Tuscola <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=barryeisler&set=a.697144908650474" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A small request: if you’ve read the book already via NetGalley or otherwise—or whenever you read it—please don’t be shy about posting a customer review <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09C681LRX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0#customerReviews" target="_blank">here</a>. For whatever reason, Amok didn’t get much in the way of pre-publication coverage, so the book will have to rely more than usual on word of mouth. Thanks very much in advance.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/AMOK-Dox-Thriller-Barry-Eisler-ebook/dp/B09C681LRX/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0" target="_blank">AMOK</a> is a thriller; it’s a love story; most of all, it’s a bildungsroman (even though my editor wisely declined the opportunity to put <i>A DOX BILDUNGSROMAN</i> on the cover). I laughed and cried a lot while writing it—of course I did, it’s Dox, and he’s never been better! Enjoy and happy holidays.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Cheers,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Barry</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-45273764851110373752022-08-30T20:09:00.002-07:002022-08-30T20:09:23.714-07:00Reading An Excerpt From AMOK On Lit With Lloyd<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Had a blast doing the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Iql4f-mes" target="_blank">Lit With Lloyd</a> podcast with KCAT Public Media! A wide-ranging conversation, including:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Craft: how to draw on experience, research, and imagination to create compelling characters.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Business: how the proposed Random Penguin/S&S merger is like the two wings of America's duopoly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And—EXCLUSIVE—I read an excerpt from upcoming Dox prequel AMOK.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Enjoy!</span></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/K4Iql4f-mes" width="480"></iframe></span>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-12542611087847489922022-08-08T14:46:00.000-07:002022-08-08T14:46:41.170-07:00How Do You Shape A Character Who's Had Experiences You Haven't?<div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Fiction involves a mix of experience, research, and imagination, with the first two both grounding and boosting the third. And if you’re familiar with the <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/endnotes/" target="_blank">endnotes</a> of my books, the <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/photos-places/" target="_blank">photos</a> I post of the places I visit for research, and my <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/mistakes/" target="_blank">Mistakes</a> page (because despite all my efforts, I sometimes fall short), you know I work hard in the service of accuracy and realism.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When I teach writing, I always suggest building characters on a foundation of what humans have in common, with what’s different or unique about the individual in question used more like a spice than like a fundamental ingredient. Of course differences are critical, but they tend to act on what we already have in common. Too much emphasis on differences and not enough appreciation of shared humanity can result in characters feeling two-dimensional or otherwise unrealistic and not compelling.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Some of my characters are more like me than others, and the more differences, the more I need to inform my imagination with research. It can be a lot of work, but I always feel the results are worth it. Some of that affirmation comes from within, but sometimes it’s delivered from outside. Here’s an example of the latter—from Chris Brainerd, who took the trouble to offer some thoughts about my <i><a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/books/graveyard-of-memories/" target="_blank">Graveyard of Memories</a></i> paraplegic character Sayaka and who gave me permission to post it here. Sayaka and I have a lot of differences. But I think starting with everything I know about humans, and shaping and sculpting that based on my research about the specifics, paid off.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />Thank you Cameron for suggesting a character in a wheelchair and for helping me get the details right. I think Sayaka is incomparably richer for it, and her romance with Rain more poignant. And thank you Chris for the email below. I’m proud of my my <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/mistakes/" target="_blank">Mistakes</a> page (journalists might consider employing something similar), but it’s good to get feedback that doesn’t belong there, too.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">* * * * *</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />Hi Barry,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />I’ve been on bedrest since November, with not a whole lot to keep myself busy. Fortunately, I stumbled across Rain Fall on a streaming service and that led me to looking up the character and realizing there is a series of books. For a couple months now, I’ve been caught up in every book I can get. I just finished <i>Graveyard of Memories,</i> and it made me want to reach out.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />I’m in a wheelchair and the character Sayaka really surprised me. I’m also a guy, so the parts about sex as a paraplegic woman I can’t comment on (haha), but damn! You nailed life in a chair. What I particularly found impressive was John trying to find common ground with Sayaka. Seeing her as any other person and doing his best to make sure he’d thought about how to treat her and get her around. And to make it more realistic, you made him miss things she had to teach him.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />And then, Sayaka relating (and achieving) her dreams. Not wanting to be stuck in one place and knowing she could do more. I felt you were either writing from experience or getting great advice from a wheelchair user. I was surprised and impressed that you pulled that off with just internet research.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />I wish Sayaka could be in further books, but I’m just glad you didn't kill her off!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />Anyway, just wanted to let you know how your books are helping me, and again, praise your tactful approach to disabilities.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />And as a proofreader and editor, I’d also say whoever you have doing these tasks is amazing. Your prose and dialogue are tight! I love it all.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />Have a great day,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Chris Brainerd</span></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-15046980900803155972022-08-05T10:19:00.000-07:002022-08-05T10:19:04.012-07:00Violence and the Principles of Good Storytelling, With Wim Demeere<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I had so much fun doing <a href="https://wimsblog.com/2022/08/podcast-episode-93-barry-eisler/" target="_blank">this podcast episode</a> with martial arts, self-defense, and violence expert (and fellow writer) <span class="bnpdmtie diy96o5h" spellcheck="false"><a href="https://wimsblog.com">Wim Demeere</a></span>. We discussed all the foregoing topics and more in the context of the principles of good storytelling. For example:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Why the fascination with violence generally? And how do you depict it compellingly on the page or screen?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Why did the Equalizer writers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfNU6JfDN_c" target="_blank">introduce Denzel Washington's character</a> the way they did...and what does that introduction suggest about character introductions generally?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Why was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iEQv1WGOSo" target="_blank">the bathhouse scene</a> in Eastern Promises so riveting...even though it was so unrealistic?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And much, much more!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/82wy2MEgLc4" style="background-image: url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/82wy2MEgLc4/hqdefault.jpg);" width="480"></iframe></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-23950327358872341202022-05-20T10:39:00.002-07:002023-01-12T17:33:54.600-08:00My CIA Instructor Dutch: The Life Behind The Legend<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span><b>Updated Below</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>If you’ve read my book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y31HNWR/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0" target="_blank">The</a></i><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y31HNWR/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0" target="_blank"> Chaos Kind</a>,</i> you might remember a certain CIA SOG (Special Operations Group) character named Dutch. And while I don’t write characters based on real people, that doesn</span><span>’</span><span>t mean none of my characters were inspired by them...</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">So yes, there is a real Dutch, who a long time ago I was extremely lucky to train under—and now you can read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dutch-Rising-Jihad-Decades-Service-ebook/dp/B09SFG48XD/ref=nav_signin" target="_blank">the story of the life behind the legend</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEioNP9omiWcp-PT9Qshpba8fYQNL1mfoGYQFU0XhxsmblBMTAic4Tx71BQ3S2sXJ-F1DELhp3Hj2fkTPUzWrF3tj8h_UJl5YdIrD4frFpRrxqX_2VWy0FiLha7vVtSutvec3HK6FmmsUxuuC0AlAz7EIFQpTwh4Hr2Ayrd_lxI12A5Zo4FklR0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1849" data-original-width="1164" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEioNP9omiWcp-PT9Qshpba8fYQNL1mfoGYQFU0XhxsmblBMTAic4Tx71BQ3S2sXJ-F1DELhp3Hj2fkTPUzWrF3tj8h_UJl5YdIrD4frFpRrxqX_2VWy0FiLha7vVtSutvec3HK6FmmsUxuuC0AlAz7EIFQpTwh4Hr2Ayrd_lxI12A5Zo4FklR0" width="151" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The other instructors I trained with at the time, who knew Dutch better and in a different context, treated their colleague with reverence and even awe—but also with great affection because Dutch inspires all those reactions, and more. But for me, Dutch was primarily a teacher, and one of the best I’ve ever had.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What makes Dutch so special?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I would say: his combination of deep knowledge based on extremely hard-won experience; his ability to translate that experience to make it comprehensible to people like me who had never been through anything remotely similar; and his patience with, and compassion and affection for, his students. All driven by his determination to impart to his students skills that would make them more capable in their roles, and on which if things went badly they would be relying on to save their lives.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My fellow trainees and I spent barely two months under Dutch’s tutelage, and yet thirty years later we still talk about him and our memories of our time with him—he makes that much of an impression. Thank you Dutch, and thank you Kim for writing this book!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>Update, January 12, 2023</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Dutch <a href="https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/williamsburg-va/jan-wierenga-11099212" target="_blank">died this week</a>. Many will miss him but no one could lead a fuller life.</span></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-63684589335879662552022-03-28T20:16:00.000-07:002022-03-28T20:16:11.143-07:00Will Smith, Chris Rock, and "Violence Is Never The Answer"<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Not taking a position on last night’s Smith/Rock incident. But for anyone piously intoning some version of “Violence never solves anything, violence is never the answer, violence has no place in XYZ, etc,” have you considered what discourse would be like with zero possibility of offense to words leading to violence?</span></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Actually, you don’t have to consider it; just log on to Twitter, or spend some time on Facebook, or check out the comments section of any blog dealing with an even remotely controversial topic. This is how humans devolve into talking to each other when they know it’s impossible their words could entail physical consequences. Are you sure you want that kind of discourse in the real world, too?</span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Or ask any woman you know about being harassed while walking down the street or riding the subway, and again you’ll have some idea of what discourse is like when the people talking are certain there can be no physical ramifications for what they say.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Violence is a big topic. It involves more than just the physical—more even than the threat of the physical. It also involves the mere possibility of the physical. Violence and all its elements have been with humankind forever. Anyone calling for the banishment of violence should have a clear idea of what they want banished, and the roles (often hidden) violence or any other thing serves in the vast system they’re certain banishment would improve.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Cue the outrage claiming that I love violence, that I think Will Smith was justified or even that he didn’t go far enough, that I don’t think violence carries any negative consequences whether for the individuals involved or for society, that I’m saying violent offense to words is the same as self-defense to actual violence, etc. It’s social media, after all, and indulging spurious outrage is the quintessence of the medium.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But I’m really not saying any of those things. I’m just suggesting that bromides will probably deliver results less helpful than an open mind and careful thought.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Violence is a language. Before opining about how it’s good for nothing or exclusively counterproductive, it might be helpful to learn a few words.</span></div></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-67408393870692041302022-03-08T16:07:00.002-08:002022-03-08T16:07:43.528-08:00Where's the Outrage?<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> <span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;">Someone asked me in another thread why I’m not outraged about Ukraine.</span></span></p><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="7jaq7-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7jaq7-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="7jaq7-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="avthg-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="avthg-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="avthg-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course the question assumes that if a person isn’t obviously displaying an emotion, it follows that he isn’t experiencing it. But that’s trivia. What’s important is the underlying notion that outrage is desirable. My response:</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="92fen-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="92fen-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="92fen-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="8bu1q-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8bu1q-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="8bu1q-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I don’t parade my outrage and in fact distrust outrage because of its inherent pleasures. I wish more people would do the same—the Internet, at least, would be improved by it.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="6bt86-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6bt86-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6bt86-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="1v1pf-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1v1pf-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1v1pf-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Here, I’m trying to approach as rationally as I can the problem of “How can we avoid having Russia’s invasion of Ukraine become the destruction of all humanity?” There’s more than enough war fever all over the west right now. If we get through this crisis without blowing up the world, it’ll be despite outrage, not because of it. And that in a nutshell is why I work hard not to join the outrage party but instead try to stand outside it."</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="b856n-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b856n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="b856n-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="4icqg-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4icqg-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4icqg-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The person also said, "But just once, I’d like to see you say: 'Goddamnit, this must not stand.'”</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="39qv4-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="39qv4-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="39qv4-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="41p1t-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="41p1t-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="41p1t-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My response to that:</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="d0cgn-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d0cgn-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="d0cgn-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="abkea-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="abkea-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="abkea-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I’m going to have to disappoint you. I find talk like that suspiciously onanistic. Worse, if it gets loud and contagious enough, it becomes dangerous. And regardless, it does nothing to solve problems.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="5v6b0-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5v6b0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5v6b0-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="7s7t3-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7s7t3-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="7s7t3-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf" target="_blank">Numerous voices</a> in the west have been warning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine" target="_blank">for years if not decades</a> that NATO’s relentless expansion risked provoking a war with Russia. I’ll link to just one such article below; there are countless others, coming from left, right, former US ambassadors to the USSR and Russia and other Russia experts, even from Tom Friedman. My view is those voices have been proven right. Your view, I think, is that Russia was always going to invade Ukraine no matter what because Putin is at least as inherently evil as those countless Economist covers have depicted. For the moment, what matters more to me is getting through this without a nuclear war that would turn the entire planet into something that would make what’s happening in Ukraine seem like trivia. Again, if we get that lucky, the luck will have been influenced by reason, which is a struggle, not by outrage, which is a reflex.”</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="84gqh-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="84gqh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="84gqh-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="7lgqs-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7lgqs-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="7lgqs-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A few more thoughts:</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="4ggc9-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4ggc9-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4ggc9-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="3tgd8-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3tgd8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="3tgd8-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If you want to see what war fever outrage leads to, it’s interesting to consider that at the outbreak of WWI, <a href="https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2017/10/02/americas_complicated_relationship_with_the_hot_dog_dog.html" target="_blank">dachshunds were slaughtered in America</a> because of their association with the Kaiser. That was a bit before my time, but I remember so much outrage in America at France’s reluctance to become part of what turned out to be America’s disastrous second invasion of Iraq (100,000 innocent Iraqis killed; 4,000,000 refugees created) that calling French Fries Freedom Fries was all the rage (you can’t spell outrage without rage).</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="5vehp-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5vehp-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5vehp-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="8ej8l-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8ej8l-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="8ej8l-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">(I didn't have a blog at the time so I don't think there's a record of it, but I was part of that outrage. I'm not proud of it, but I have tried to learn from it.)</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="e7n2n-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e7n2n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="e7n2n-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="a00v0-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a00v0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="a00v0-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I think that as a species we have a better chance of survival if we keep this kind of mentality as far as possible from questions involving nuclear weapons.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="4bf2r-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4bf2r-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4bf2r-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="c2879-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="c2879-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="c2879-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">More recently, innocent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/nyregion/russian-ukraine-restaurants-new-york.html" target="_blank">Russians are being punished because…they’re Russian</a> (or at least might be).</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="60iu5-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="60iu5-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="60iu5-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="din2j-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="din2j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="din2j-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Reason takes work. Outrage is as easy as any other reflex, and feels good, too. Which is why reason is always scarce and outrage always abundant.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="b1127-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b1127-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="b1127-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="c7aek-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="c7aek-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="c7aek-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course, this time it's different. It always is.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2jm1h" data-offset-key="bcico-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-20037127700452990082022-03-05T11:10:00.001-08:002022-03-05T11:10:14.993-08:00What America Should do About Russia's Invasion of Ukraine<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">From a comment I left in a Facebook thread asking me what America should do about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:</span></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I try to look at all countries, including America, the way a Martian would. If a Martian were trying to identify the most peace-loving and the most war-loving countries on this planet, where would the Martian rank America?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course I could be wrong, but my guess is that the Martian—judging by military budgets, overseas military bases, and number of “military actions”—would find America to be off the charts. The Martian would probably be intrigued to note that it’s only Americans who can’t see this. I would try to address the Martian’s perplexity by explaining that human perception is massively distorted by something called the fundamental attribution error. Were the concept new to the Martian, I would advise the Martian to use the Internet to look up this extremely important key to human behavior.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Anyway. I think that unless Russia’s war in Ukraine blows up into something bigger, up to and including the end of human civilization, it will be resolved by guarantees of Ukraine neutrality, meaning no western forces in and no NATO for Ukraine (this would probably apply to Georgia, too). These have been Russia’s demands since 2008, when America first started urging NATO to admit Ukraine and Georgia as NATO’s 31st and 32nd member states, and when Russia began making clear that it would go to war rather than allow such a thing to happen.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s interesting to note that George Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State James Baker promised Gorbachev that in exchange for the Soviet Union acquiescing to a unified Germany becoming part of NATO (an extremely bitter pill for the USSR to swallow, given what Germany did to Russia in WWII), NATO would not expand “one inch” further east. After which, we flipped the entire Warsaw Pact into NATO and expanded the alliance all the way to Russia’s western border.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">All of this is of course memory-holed in America, where Putin simply wantonly invaded Ukraine for no reason other than Peter the Great/Hitlerian dreams of conquest.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To me it feels like 1979, when Iranian students took the US embassy in Tehran and the hostage crisis began. Most Americans believed the whole thing started that day, that Iranians were just evil and for no reason wanted to give America a black eye, etc. I was 15 at the time and that’s what I thought. 1954, Mosaddegh, the entire history of US meddling and the coup that installed the murderous Shah regime…all memory-holed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s always like this, but citizens seem not learn from the obvious patterns. Maybe it’s because the fight itself is so captivating; because the factors that led to the fight were hazy and not particularly cinematic and so went unnoticed by most people at the time; because once the fight is on, powerful, primitive emotions kick in and not just occlude the ability to reflect and to reason, but are so pleasurable that they cause people to *resist* reflection and reason, lest reason get in the way of the emotional high of The Good Fight.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s interesting to consider that the solution to conflicts is often obvious from the beginning, but ego prevents the actors from adopting the obvious solutions except at the brink. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is a perfect example. America had positioned Jupiter nuclear missiles in NATO member Turkey, on the USSR’s border. America launched the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961 (followed by the Operation Mongoose terror campaign). Cuba asked the USSR to position nuclear weapons in Cuba to forestall another US invasion and further US meddling. Khruschev agreed. America picked up the activity in satellite photos, blockaded Cuba, and threatened to sink any Soviet vessels that tried to breach the blockade.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Again, all the foregoing history is memory-holed in America. In the American popular imagination, without provocation Khrushchev aggressively and wantonly moved nuclear missiles into Cuba, after which brave John Kennedy cooly and intelligently faced Khruschev down. All that’s taught is the story of how America *resolved* the Cuban Missile Crisis. You have to go searching on your own if you want to understand what America did to *provoke* the Cuban Missile Crisis.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">None of this is about blaming America, hating America, or Whataboutism, or any other such bullshit that people commonly throw up to protect their emotional attachment to the feeling that their own country is Good and the adversary is Bad. Mostly it’s about understanding that other people don’t see us the way we see ourselves, and understanding that other people don’t see themselves the way we see them. This is as old as Sun Tzu, but it’s given not much more than lip service, again and again with disastrous results.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Anyway, eventually the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by the Soviets publicly agreeing to remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba; by America publicly promising not to invade Cuba anymore; and by America secretly promising to remove its Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey (secrecy required to save face for President Kennedy, even though “Please remove your nuclear missiles from just a few miles from our border, where they’re needlessly provocative” was exactly America’s complaint about what the Soviets were doing in Cuba).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The solution to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems equally obvious. Getting to it without blowing up the world is another matter.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s worth noting in this regard that we did almost blow up the world before resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. There’s much more on this, but just from Wikipedia:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">During the blockade, "the US Navy dropped a series of ‘signalling’ depth charges (practice depth charges the size of hand grenades) on a Soviet submarine (B-59) at the blockade line, unaware that it was armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo with orders that allowed it to be used if the submarine was damaged by depth charges or surface fire. As the submarine was too deep to monitor any radio traffic, the captain of the B-59, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, decided that a war might already have started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. The decision to launch these normally only required agreement from the two commanding officers on board, the Captain and the Political Officer. However, the commander of the submarine Flotilla, Vasily Arkhipov, was aboard B-59 and so he also had to agree. Arkhipov objected and so the nuclear launch was narrowly averted.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“On the same day a U-2 spy plane made an accidental, unauthorised ninety-minute overflight of the Soviet Union's far eastern coast. The Soviets responded by scrambling MiG fighters from Wrangel Island; in turn, the Americans launched F-102 fighters armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles over the Bering Sea.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That’s the kind of shit that happens during the Fog of War. We have been unbelievably lucky, more times than any species deserves to be lucky. If you doubt that, Google Nuclear Close Calls.<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I wish that instead of relying on luck, we would spend a little more time considering what could be done to avoid these wars and other crises. Because once they’ve begun, they seem not to get resolved except at the brink. One day, maybe this time, we’ll get to the brink and still won’t resolve it. We’ll go over. Over and out.</span></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-62058259731618019792021-12-28T12:38:00.002-08:002021-12-28T12:59:52.778-08:00RIP Andrew Vachss, A Warrior Protecting Children<p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This morning I received extremely sad news: <a href="http://www.vachss.com/index.php" target="_blank">Andrew Vachss</a>, a lawyer and novelist who dedicated his life to protecting children, is gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">About ten years ago, International Thriller Writers asked a collection of novelists to contribute to a forthcoming book:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thrillers-100-Must-Reads-David-Morrell/dp/160809040X" target="_blank">Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads</a></i>. <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/pdfs/Eisler.FLOOD.pdf" target="_blank">My entry</a> was about Vachss, who I didn’t know at the time other than by his reputation and through his novels, which I’d been devouring since first discovering them through the work of another writer, violence expert <a href="http://nnsd.com" target="_blank">Marc MacYoung</a>, in 1989. Sometime after<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Thrillers</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>was published, Vachss got in touch and we became friends. We never met, though we would talk on the phone every few months. Those conversations were long and involved, and my wife Laura could always tell when I was talking to Vachss—everything about my expression and posture revealed how closely I was listening.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Vachss had an unusual and insightful take on everything: politics, writing, publishing, and most of all, human nature. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of crime, and his website will remain an <a href="http://www.vachss.com/help_text/index.html" target="_blank">invaluable resource</a> for anyone wanting to learn more about human predators and how to combat them (as well as for thriller and mystery novelists who aspire to greater realism).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">You might think someone who had seen the things Vachss had seen would be consumed by pessimism about our species. But a pessimist wouldn’t fight as hard or as long as Vachss did. I once asked him how he managed not to despair. He said, “Barry, why do you think I always ask about Emma [my daughter]?” I understood then. His calling was a battle with poisonous evil. The antidote was hearing about love. I told Em as much about Andrew as I told Andrew about Em, and I know the hug I got when I shared with Em the news about Andrew’s death would have meant a lot to him.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Vachss had a way of <a href="http://www.vachss.com/graffiti_wall/graffiti_wall.html" target="_blank">summing up concepts</a> with deadly accuracy and memorable brevity.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Love is a behavior, not an emotion. Behavior is the truth. Blood makes you related—love makes you family.</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> He had no patience with platitudes like “to heal, you have to forgive.” He knew that forgiveness is a choice, not an obligation. As he put it,</span> justice was his vehicle, but hate was the fuel it ran on. I borrowed that concept for my character Livia Lone because it suited her so perfectly, and dedicated my book<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Killer Collective</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>to Andrew and his wife <a href="http://www.alicevachss.com/sex-crimes.html" target="_blank">Alice Vachss</a>, a former sex crimes prosecutor and herself a warrior against human predation. I don’t think any novelist has had as big an impact on my writing as Andrew, and without Alice’s book<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Crimes-Prosecuting-Confronting-Collaborators-ebook/dp/B01FTBDKJM/ref=sr_1_1" target="_blank">Sex Crimes: My Years on the Front Lines Prosecuting Rapists and Confronting Their Collaborators</a>,</i> Livia and her world would be far less real and compelling.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Andrew, who suffered from (though never complained about) various severe health problems, had no illusions about his own mortality. He often said that if he could go out carrying a bomb into a room filled with every child abuser on earth, he would do it gladly. Such a thing wasn’t possible, of course, at least not literally—but Andrew did give, he did dedicate, his life to the protection of children. If you want to honor his memory and his work, I’d suggest contributing to the <a href="https://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2018/11/if-you-buy-from-amazon-do-it-at.html" target="_blank">Legislative Drafting Institute for Child Protection</a>, an organization he founded and which even in his absence will continue to wage what Vachss called the only holy war worthy of the name.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If ever there was someone whose spirit will outlast him, it was Vachss. The world was made better by what he did with his time in it. And through all the children he saved, all the work he inspired, and all the battered souls he touched by speaking truth and abhorring bullshit, it will remain better even now that he’s gone.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuH97jxg3qLSJVole0ZWx2J662Ld1cShVtlZ-Ec_Ws-N1lNB7G_ITLn6XpMVW4CTtDGe-pRx-cU92xfgBPuAh3v1Cloi8FMyU3tSGJS6Lti7RSkPexoN2qq1XbsY3B7FHsQFnDLaXt4kKPXLIPqfNdRGHhBBAyHuj6x009jmr-axbpJ6xlH1k=s750" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="750" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuH97jxg3qLSJVole0ZWx2J662Ld1cShVtlZ-Ec_Ws-N1lNB7G_ITLn6XpMVW4CTtDGe-pRx-cU92xfgBPuAh3v1Cloi8FMyU3tSGJS6Lti7RSkPexoN2qq1XbsY3B7FHsQFnDLaXt4kKPXLIPqfNdRGHhBBAyHuj6x009jmr-axbpJ6xlH1k=w576-h203" width="576" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div>Update</b></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">One more thought, about something I should have included in that last paragraph. Andrew liked to point out that child protection is crime prevention. So among the ways he made the world more positive is in a sense via a negative—crimes that would have happened, trauma that would have been inflicted, but didn’t because of Andrew’s work. Any of us might owe to Andrew the absence of some horror, and though we can’t measure such a thing, all of us are in his debt for it.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-55203045236432320852021-11-28T14:34:00.000-08:002021-11-28T14:34:06.339-08:00Talking Violence in Fiction and Fact With Tim Larkin<p><span style="font-size: large;">Hugely enjoyed doing this three-part talk with violence expert Tim Larkin, one of the people with whom I've been privileged to train and whose influences appear in my books. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuhDOvOxjQg" target="_blank">Part 1</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bncYWBFBzBE" target="_blank">Part 2</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTBrGy3I4xg" target="_blank">Part 3</a>.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LuhDOvOxjQg" width="320" youtube-src-id="LuhDOvOxjQg"></iframe></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bncYWBFBzBE" width="320" youtube-src-id="bncYWBFBzBE"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cTBrGy3I4xg" width="320" youtube-src-id="cTBrGy3I4xg"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-88557808076342273882021-10-16T14:42:00.001-07:002021-10-16T16:58:31.382-07:00Flash-Forward Preambles: What, How, and When<div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>Updated Below</b></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">For various reasons, recently I got a little obsessed with flash-forward movie and television preambles. That is, presentations that begin with a scene from later in the story, and then spend some amount of screen time catching up to the “later” scene that came at the start. How much catch-up varies. Sometimes the catch-up happens only a few scenes later; sometimes the preamble was actually the end of the movie.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I started by casually going through a bunch of movies I’d already seen and thought I knew well, and was surprised to find many more examples of the technique than I had expected. The flash-forward preamble gets used in all kinds of stories: action, comedy, drama, horror. My guess is that opening with a flash-forward has become more common as it’s become easier for viewers to switch to something else. Once upon a time, a movie meant something of a commitment—a drive, parking, $20 for tickets…various opportunity and transaction costs. If something didn’t hook you right away, your alternative was to get up and leave, eat the $20 and the other costs, come up with a new plan and go someplace else. All of which meant you’d be incentivized to stay, which in turn meant movies could take their time warming up.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Today, going to a cinema has become an ever smaller part of how people consume movies, and hundreds, maybe even thousands of alternatives are always just a click away. Meaning filmmakers are motivated to find ways to hook an audience immediately, and keep them hooked. One popular method seems to be the flash-forward preamble. I’ve even seen the technique creep into previews, which are now often presented with a quick flash-forward from something later in the preview before the preview opens and plays sequentially.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s worth emphasizing that the fundamental objective of the preamble is to <b>hook the viewer</b>. How the preamble achieves this is important but ultimately secondary. If the viewer is hooked, the preamble was a success. If the viewer isn’t hooked, the preamble failed.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Now let’s talk a bit more about: (1) what the technique consists of; (2) how it works (that is, what makes it work); and finally (3) when you might want to use it (that is, what kinds of stories lend themselves to the technique). And then we’ll finish with a list of examples. Sound good? Okay, here we go...</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What It Consists Of</span></b></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As already noted, the flash-forward preamble consists of something that happens later in the story, presented upfront. But that’s merely necessary, not in itself sufficient, and in the best executions there were other commonalities, which we can distill out as principles (no spoilers in here because hey, these are all openings):</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>A presentation of something central to the story.</b> Examples:</span></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Breaking Bad</i>—the impossibility of simultaneously trying to be a meth criminal mastermind and inoffensive high school teacher family man (duty to others vs self actualization)</span></li><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>City of God</i>—how to escape the favela when trapped between its warring forces (physical survival vs following your dream)</span></li><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Goodfellas</i>—the cost of becoming a gangster, which “I always wanted to be”</span></li><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>The Hangover</i>—“Getting married in five hours,” “Not gonna happen, we lost the groom”</span></li><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Nobody</i>—“Who are you, really?” (which identify defines us and which should we be true to)</span></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>A complete presentation</b>—that is, no fragments, no shadows, no <i>direct</i> mystery about what you see in the preamble, only an <i>indirect</i> mystery about how what you see in the preamble relates to the larger story. You can see everything, you just don’t yet know (but you badly want to know) how we got here, which makes you want to watch the rest of the movie or show.</span></li></ul></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">How to Hook</span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The hook consists of two things:</span></div><div><ul><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>doling out certain critical information</b> on who, what, and where, to draw in the viewer and ground the viewer in the story; and</span></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>simultaneously causing intense curiosity</b> about each piece of doled-out information, and ultimately instilling an even greater global curiosity about how and why we got here—a global curiosity that can only be satisfied by watching the rest of the show.</span></li></ul></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sometimes preambles are expressed in terms of “teasing” the audience. I think this is a misnomer. Getting teased is easy to walk away from. Getting hooked, by definition, is not. So the goal isn’t to tease. The goal is to hook.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And because the goal is to hook—which requires both grounding and curiosity—it follows that <span><b>more information in a preamble is good.</b> But only as long as <b>the curiosity created is commensurate.</b> </span>Lots of grounding <i>plus</i> lots of curiosity—answering lots of questions while posing other and more compelling ones—makes for the most effective hook, and therefore the most effective preamble.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Think of how much information is conveyed in the four-minute <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m07slv7BP6o" target="_blank"><i>Breaking Bad</i> preamble</a>, or the one from <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t5awMTGqog">Goodfellas</a>.</i> These are complete story moments—linear, chronologically intact fractals. The one exception I found is <i>The Accountant,</i> where too little information was presented (you can</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">’</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">t even see who</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">’</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">s involved), and not coincidentally that preamble was a relatively weak hook.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To put it another way: the preamble must offer substantial nourishment—while simultaneously, insidiously, and paradoxically famishing the viewer for more. That is, when it comes to preambles, less is not necessarily more. More can be more (another reason I don</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">’</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">t like the </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">“</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">teaser</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">”</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> nomenclature).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">For more general thoughts on how a story engages an audience, I recommend this terrific TED talk by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, <i><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story" target="_blank">The Clues To A Great Story</a>.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s interesting to observe that among the examples below, almost every one involves a depiction of violence—either the violence itself, or the threat of violence, or its aftermath. This doesn’t mean that violence is <i>necessary</i> in a preamble; in fact, we know it’s not, because there are powerful instances of non-violent preambles <i>(The Hangover, True Romance).</i> But it certainly seems to be the case that violence can be <i>useful.</i></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And if most of this sounds relevant to story openings generally—it is! All openings should aim to hook, and all will do so with the paradoxical combination of nourishing and famishing discussed above. The flash-forward is just a particular way to do it.</span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>Okay, now you know what it is and how it works. How do you decide if your story would benefit from it? After all, there are innumerable movies and television shows that hook you immediately without a preamble (though I do sometimes wonder whether even a masterpiece like </span><span><i>Die Hard,</i></span><span> were it made today, would have some studio executive saying, “Opening on the airplane is too slow and low stakes…do a flash forward to the explosion on the Nakatomi Tower rooftop and Bruce Willis leaping off with the firehose, then show a title card saying </span><span><i>Six Hours Earlier</i></span><span> and cut to the plane...”).</span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When To Use It</span></b></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>I think the stories that benefit most from a preamble are ones that in the absence of a preamble would begin with something slow, low-stakes, or otherwise not immediately gripping. If Vince Gilligan had opened the </span><span><i>Breaking Bad</i></span><span> pilot with Walter White in bed, then exercising, then eating breakfast, then getting disrespected at school and at his second job at the car wash, viewers might have grown impatient. But begin with that crazy Winnebago preamble, and for the rest of the pilot, viewers will be wondering, “How the hell do we get from this boring life to whatever that Winnebago thing was all about?”</span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Likewise, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Brick</i></span><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is a noir mystery, but it’s set in a contemporary suburban high school. If Rian Johnson hadn’t opened with the dead girl in the culvert and Joseph Gordon-Levitt crying over her body, it would take much longer for viewers to understand that the stakes in this teenaged high-school world are actually life and death (and Johnson would have lost the opportunity to hook by making viewers </span>wonder<span style="font-family: inherit;"> how and why the girl died, and what Gordon-Levitt’s connection with her was).</span></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That said, while some stories might need a flash-forward preamble more than others, there are lots of reasons to use the technique beyond bare necessity, such as tone. But no matter what, the preamble should hook, or you risk losing your audience to one of the other thousand forms of entertainment always a click away.</span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Examples</span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I put together the following list from movies I know pretty well (and the television show </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Breaking Bad</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">). I’m sure there are many more examples I haven’t thought of or don’t know of. </span>Anyway, h<span style="font-family: inherit;">ere you go.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Breaking Bad</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Brick</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Casino</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Centurion</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">City of God</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Deadpool</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Deadpool 2</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Fallen</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Fight Club</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Goodfellas</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Hacksaw Ridge</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Hangover</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">John Wick</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Kiss Kiss Bang Bang</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Let Me In</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Limitless</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Nobody</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Once Upon A Time In America</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Out of Sight</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Pulp Fiction</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">True Romance</span></i></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Usual Suspects</span></i></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And some notables that start with a flashback preamble, but one that functions similarly to the flash-forward variety (interestingly, both are extremely violent):</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Bad Times At The El Royale</span></i></div></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Casino Royale</span></i></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Okay, those are my thoughts. Take it all with a grain of salt because though I’ve written a bunch of novels and short stories, I’ve never had a movie or television show made. So I could be off base about any of this, and even if I’m not, I still have a lot to learn. To that end, please don’t be shy about mentioning any additional flash-forward preamble examples in the comments section, along with any thoughts about how you think the technique works and when it’s best to use it. Thanks and I hope these thoughts have been useful.</span></span></div></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>Update:</b></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span data-outline-text="true">Should have thought to check Wikipedia earlier—lots of interesting thoughts and examples under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res" target="_blank">In Medias Res</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashforward" target="_blank">Flash-Forward</a>.</span><br /></span></span></div></div></div></div><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-72947384026665210862021-10-11T08:40:00.006-07:002021-10-13T09:08:35.101-07:00It's Not a "Bad Art Friend." It's a Bad Artist<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Recently the <i>New York Times</i> published an article by Robert Kolker called <i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html" target="_blank">Who Is the Bad Art Friend</a></i>, which purported to be about the incredibly silly question of what constitutes a “bad art friend,” even the diction of which is markedly childish (for a short, incisive rejoinder, see Elizabeth Bruenig’s <i><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/bad-art-friend-dorland-larson/620321/" target="_blank">The Harsh, Central Truth of the Viral “Bad Art Friend” Story</a></i> in the <i>Atlantic</i>).</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Perhaps because the <i>Times</i> article itself was so confused, it’s led to some confusion. This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, among them that the article indirectly raises, while managing never to squarely address, the far more consequential question of what constitutes a bad <i>artist</i>.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If you’ve already read the <i>Times</i> article, you know the outline of the story. If not, a quick summary:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In 2015, a person named Dawn Dorland donated a kidney to a stranger. In preparation for the procedure, Dorland started a private Facebook group where she discussed her decision to donate and invited various people to join, including writers Dorland knew from a Boston organization called Grub Street. Some of those people failed to react; among them was a Grub Street writer Dorland thought of as a friend, Sonya Larson (I slightly know Larson because she handled the logistics for a talk I gave at Grub Street, I think about ten years ago. We also have some friends in common. I don’t know Dorland, although it’s possible we met when I gave my talk at Grub Street). When Larson failed to react to Dorland’s posts about her donation, Dorland pinged Larson to ask why. Larson then replied with some polite praise.</span></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Later, Dorland learned that Larson had written <i>The Kindest,</i> a short story about someone who donates a kidney but with fundamentally narcissistic intentions. This upset Dorland, who signs off letters with “kindly.” Still later, Dorland learned that in Larson’s story, the narcissistic fictional character writes a letter to her kidney recipient, a letter that echoed a real letter Dorland had posted to her private Facebook group and incorporating something like 50 words from the real letter.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>When <i>The Kindest</i> started winning awards and garnering other acclaim, Dorland began contacting various parties to complain—an awards committee, a book festival, the Boston Globe, Grub Street, a writing conference where Larson had once had a scholarship, various friends of Larson’s. She also hired a lawyer and threatened litigation (strangely, Dorland claims “I'm not threatening,</span>” but her threat to sue the Boston Book Festival—which planned to distribute 30,000 copies of <i>The Kindest</i> in connection with its One City, One Story program—for $150,000 succeeded in getting the festival to cancel the program for that year out of fear of being embroiled in a lawsuit).</span></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Larson beat Dorland to the courthouse, alleging defamation and tortious interference; Dorland counterclaimed for copyright violation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, including alleging that Larson had caused Dorland to engage in self-slapping (apparently Dorland had previously sued a writing workshop Dorland was part of, also for causing emotional distress).</span><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Pursuant to the discovery Dorland demanded in her lawsuit, Larson provided Dorland’s lawyer copies of private texts between Larson and her friends in which they commiserated about Dorland, deriding her as annoying, self-important, unselfaware, and creepy.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The judge has thrown out Dorland’s emotional-distress claims; her copyright claims haven’t been ruled on. The <i>Times</i> article doesn’t mention the status of Larson’s tortious interference claims; presumably they haven’t yet been ruled on either.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">While the case was pending, Dorland contacted the <i>New York Times</i> and pitched them the story that became <i>Who Is the Bad Art Friend</i>—which is Dorland’s own framing, the prism through which she views the situation.</span></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">So much for the TL;DR version of what happened. On to the online confusion.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">1. <u>Plagiarism</u>. Some people seem to have bought into Dorland’s claim that Larson’s fictional use of about 50 words of Dorland’s Facebook letter is plagiarism. Which in some ways is understandable, because plagiarism is one of those words people are so eager to deploy as an accusation that they don’t want to let anything, let alone a definition, get in the way.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">First, note that Dorland began her campaign against Larson long before even knowing of Larson’s use of the letter. Dorland’s original complaint, posted on Facebook, was that “a writer friend has based a short story on something momentous I did in my own life, without telling me or ever intending to tell me.” Or, as she emailed friends of Larson, “Why didn’t either of you check in with me when you knew that Sonya’s kidney story was related to my life?”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But to whatever degree Larson’s story might have been inspired by or based on Dorland’s donation, no one—neither Dorland nor anyone else—has or should be granted the right to prevent artists from incorporating kidney donations into their art. The reasons for denying individuals this much control over other’s artistic freedom ought to be obvious: doing so would drastically reduce the scope of permissible art and the societal benefits of art (though in fairness, Dorland’s position would be a boon to trial lawyers, as indeed it has been).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We can probably come up with hypotheticals about acts or strings of acts so unusual that we might agree that underlying rights should remain with the actor—the kind of “<a href="https://www.romanolaw.com/2020/10/29/life-rights-agreements-need-know" target="_blank">life rights</a>” studios need to obtain before making a biopic, for example. But whatever else might be said about donating a kidney to a stranger, the act itself is not in this category. Donating a kidney to a stranger isn’t a life story; it isn’t even unique. In fact, Larissa MacFarquhar dedicated an entire chapter to the topic in her 2015 book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Drowning-Impossible-Idealism-Drastic-ebook/dp/B00SI02AWA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0" target="_blank">Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help</a></i>, an examination of the nuanced, complicated, and not always admirable motives of people driven to help others in extreme ways (the chapter in question is called “Kidneys”).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>So the origins of Dorland’s campaign against Larson had nothing to do with Dorland</span><span>’s</span><span> Facebook letter, but rather with the fact of the donation itself. Still, once Dorland realized Larson had used about 50 words of the letter in the story, she made claims of plagiarism central to her complaint. So whatever might actually be behind Dorland’s campaign, let’s talk about plagiarism.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Plagiarism is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/16/us/biden-is-facing-growing-debate-on-his-speeches.html" target="_blank">Joe Biden repeating portions of Bobby Kennedy’s or Neil Kinnock’s speeches</a> in his own speeches, or <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/19/politics/melania-trump-michelle-obama-speech/index.html" target="_blank">Melania Trump doing the same thing with Michelle Obama</a>. Or a comedian, presenting another comedian’s joke as her own. There’s no transformation there—someone else’s speech delivered as your speech; someone else’s joke delivered as your joke.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">So if Larson had taken Dorland's letter and presented it as her own letter, that would have been plagiarism. But instead, Larson repurposed about 50 words of the real letter as fiction, written by a fictional character in a larger story. All of this seems to me to be classic transformative use, part of the <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html" target="_blank">Section 107 fair use exception to copyright law</a>. And there’s good policy behind the fair use exception. As Cormac McCarthy says, “Books are made out of books,” and society benefits when artists have wide latitude to draw on everything around them in their art. We should want artists to be willing to take risks, question pieties, and attack shibboleths, and we should encourage them to sample widely in doing so. And we should be extremely cautious—as Section 107 is—about granting individuals so much control over their own deeds and their own words that the progress of art and the benefits art offers society are impeded in the process.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Some people have argued that Larson should have informed Dorland of what she was doing, or credited her as the writer behind a real letter Larson repurposed as fiction. But really, what was Larson supposed to do here? Inform Dorland, “Hi Dawn, not only am I aware of your donation, but it inspired me to write a short story about a profoundly unselfaware narcissistic white savior whose own donation is anything but heroic—oh and by the way, your Facebook letter was so perfect an exemplar that I used about 50 words of it in the story. Happy to give you explicit credit if you like; just let me know. Best, Sonya”?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Maybe in retrospect that would have been the better course. But doing so would have been an unusually blunt act, and Larson was clearly reluctant to share with Dorland her honest, negative opinion of her—a pretty common reluctance among humans who prefer not to hurt other people’s feelings, I would say, and certainly not an uncharitable one. And even if brutal honesty would in retrospect have been the better course, retroactively imposing such an expectation on someone dealing with a person she obviously found increasingly difficult seems a touch unrealistic. Certainly it’s not a standard many people would want to be held to themselves.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Personally, I would have advised Larson not to use the letter—not because using it was in any way immoral, illegal, or otherwise culpable, but because so many people have a knee-jerk reflex to plagiarism charges that the distraction from the more important question of artistic freedom might not have been worth it. That said, everyone, every artist, has to run these risk-reward calculations for herself. And while I doubt even Larson feels she handled this thing perfectly from the beginning, no one who survives a mugging ever handles it perfectly—much of the time, you don’t even realize it <i>is</i> a mugging until it’s well underway, and then you’re playing catch-up, just trying to figure out what’s happening and doing the best you can to get through it.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Again speaking personally, I’ll note that people have used my writing in various ways, and periodically I get mail informing me that so-and-so writer has ripped me off. I never bother even to look into the allegations. Life is short and I have more meaningful things to do than trying to lock up every handful of words I’ve ever strung together so I can stop other artists from using them. This suits my priorities and I think is good for society, too. Dorland obviously has a quite different value system.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The other misunderstanding I’ve encountered is that Larson and her friends were somehow being “mean” to Dorland because in private texts they made fun of what they perceived as Dorland’s annoying and even creepy tendencies and because they questioned the purity of the intentions behind Dorland’s donation decision (I hope it goes without saying that interrogating the purity of “altruistic” intentions shouldn’t be off-limits—nor is it, otherwise someone better get to work on suing Larissa MacFarquhar for writing <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Drowning-Impossible-Idealism-Drastic-ebook/dp/B00SI02AWA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0" target="_blank">a nonfiction book that does this very thing</a>).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What’s primarily weird about the “mean” criticisms is that <i>these were private conversations</i>. Dorland (and the world) learned of the conversations’ existence only because Dorland demanded such communications in the course of her lawsuit. No one was saying these allegedly “mean” things to Dorland or in public; in fact, given what the texts reveal about what Larson and her friends really thought of Dorland, it seems they were all going out of their way to treat Dorland respectfully, politely, and kindly in public (while at the same time hinting to her without apparent effect that they would prefer she leave them alone).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Note that every contact Dorland had with Larson over the course of this years-long saga was initiated by…Dorland, beginning with the email she sent Larson asking why Larson hadn’t reacted to any of Dorland’s Facebook posts about the donation. It must have been obvious to everyone but Dorland that the friendship Dorland told herself she had with Larson and others in Larson’s circle was distinctly one-way.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>What’s also weird about the “mean” criticisms is that commiserating about—or gossiping, laughing at, deriding, ridiculing, questioning, whatever—people you privately find irritating is a widespread, possibly even a universal human behavior. So to criticize Larson and her friends for engaging in it is almost certainly hypocrisy. As the Japanese expression goes, <i>Saru mo shiri warai</i>—The monkey laughs at the other monkey’s butt. Or, in this case, criticizes it. Humans rarely pass up sanctimony opportunities, and criticizing someone else for doing what we all sometimes do</span>—privately deriding an individual perceived to be annoying—is a classic case.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Some of the “mean!” accusations might be the result of the <i>Times</i> extremely credulous adoption of Dorland’s belief that Larson et al were her friends and thought only well of her. But everything becomes much more understandable when you realize that these people weren’t Dorland’s friends, but were instead trying to distance themselves because she made them uncomfortable, while still trying to spare her feelings. This is the opposite of “mean.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Among the various things I’ve learned about humans in my 57 years living among them is that “She’s just not that into you” is almost impossible for the “you” in that equation to accept, no matter how obvious it is to everyone else. People will cling to almost any belief about why someone is brushing them off rather than accept the simplest, most straightforward, most widespread and obvious explanation: <i>She’s just not that into you.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s frequently surprising, and never comfortable, to realize that others might not share your own high regard for yourself. And it’s hard to error-correct for the powerful bias nature has built into our psyches, where our egos distort our perceptions with effects such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority" target="_blank">Illusory Superiority</a> (which is why everyone thinks they’re above average) and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error" target="_blank">Fundamental Attribution Error</a> (where we judge ourselves and our in-group by motives and others and out-groups by behavior). Still, if only on an intellectual level, healthy people will admit at least the possibility that they might be grading themselves and their own motivations on a curve. But don’t take my word for it; listen to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zKIqEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=niebuhr+Moral+Man+and+Immoral+Society+tribute+hypocrisy&source=bl&ots=VeMdxXQvlD&sig=ACfU3U1vp9ailvfsd_96cdoEcW3xZx0KNg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjzhJ6Nz5XyAhUPJDQIHYYXBPoQ6AF6BAgQEAM#v=onepage&q=niebuhr%20Moral%20Man%20and%20Immoral%20Society%20tribute%20hypocrisy&f=false" target="_blank">Reinhold Niebuhr</a>:</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy. We have noted that self-deception and hypocrisy is an unvarying element in the moral life of all human beings. It is the tribute which morality pays to immorality, or rather the device by which the lesser self gains the consent of the larger self to indulge in impulses and ventures which the rational self can approve only when they are disguised. One can never be quite certain whether the disguise is meant only for the eye of the external observer or whether, as may be usually the case, it deceives the self. Naturally this defect in individuals becomes more apparent in the less moral life of nations. Yet it might be supposed that nations, of whom so much less is expected, would not be under the necessity of making moral pretensions for their actions. There was probably a time when they were under no such necessity. Their hypocrisy is both a tribute to the growing rationality of man and a proof of the ease with which rational demands may be circumvented.</span></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I don’t know Dorland, but I also don’t know how to account for someone launching a years-long campaign of third-party contacts, threats, a lawsuit, stalking, and now a pitch to the <i>New York Times</i> to write a story about “bad art friends,” over…what? Someone not adequately congratulating you for sharing a kidney? Someone not sharing your belief that your act was the result only of unimpeachable motives? Someone repurposing in a short story a few words you wrote in a Facebook post? Even if someone hurts your feelings, even if you feel someone has treated you dishonorably or otherwise badly, it’s up to you what to do about it. Dorland had many options, including just shrugging off the whole thing. She chose something else.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Speaking personally again for a moment, I tend to distrust people who seem too quick and too public to share their traumas and tribulations. I tend to suspect, at least until proven otherwise, that the behavior is a con. Dorland strikes me as one such, and while of course I could be wrong, I doubt my impression is unique or even particularly unusual. I would hope that Dorland could accept that not everyone will share her high opinion of herself, in the same way that writers can accept that not everyone will think their books are as wonderful as the writers themselves do.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I think Bruenig summed this up beautifully <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/bad-art-friend-dorland-larson/620321/" target="_blank">in the article I link to above</a>:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Especially now, especially working within the arts, especially in educated and liberal-leaning circles, there’s a certain cachet in having been wounded, wronged, injured in some way—not only a cachet, but a near-limitless license for aggression. What could never be justified as offense can easily be justified as self-defense, and so the key to channeling antisocial emotions into socially acceptable confrontations is to claim victimhood. Dorland, in particular, went looking for hers, soliciting Larson for a reason the latter hadn’t congratulated her for her latest good deed, suspecting—rightly—a chillier relationship than collegial email etiquette would suggest. She kept seeking little indignities to be wounded by—and she kept finding them. Her retaliations quickly outpaced Larson’s offenses, such as they were.</span></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To take Bruenig’s observation up one level of generality about human nature: anything that can be weaponized will be weaponized. Anything that can be turned into a con, will be. To deny this isn’t just foolish; it’s to make yourself complicit in the con, as the <i>New York Times</i> writer did.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It should go without saying, but it’s okay—it really is!—for not everyone to share your high opinion of yourself. Here’s a <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/well-now-i-dont-even-know-if-i-want-this-kidney-anymore" target="_blank">McSweeney’s article purporting to be the actual kidney recipient deriding Dorland</a>:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What an angel, right? A selfless act like that? Well, come to find out, she’s been yapping all over town about how she gave away one of her kidneys and isn’t she such a saint and whatnot. Okay, look. I’m grateful, I really am, but I didn’t sign up to be anybody’s big step on the stairway to heaven, you know what I’m saying?</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Why couldn’t I have gotten a kidney from some nice dead kid? A terrible boating accident, a traumatic head injury—something, as long as the kidney becomes available through an act of God that forces a bereaved and loving family to make a final gesture of kindness and generosity, not through some weirdo theatrical display of nephro-altruism that didn’t get enough likes on Facebook. I don’t know whether kidneys are imbued with the souls of their bodies of origin, but I’m starting to think I might just as well give it back…</span></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Hopefully the McSweeney’s writer, Emily Flake, won’t be accused of plagiarism for basing her article on an actual instance of kidney donation. Or of having done something irredeemably mean. Hopefully Dorland won’t sue her, or be taken seriously if she does.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What’s funny about all this—or sad, depending on how you look at it—is that not even Dorland believes individuals should be able to lock up real life and deny it to artists. Questioned by the <i>Times</i> writer about why Dorland had shown up at three different online events that featured Larson as a panelist (remember when I noted earlier that Dorland is the one consistently initiating contact?), Dorland offered this as an explanation: “I proceed in this experience as an artist and not an adversary, learning and absorbing everything, making use of it eventually.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Making use of everything as an artist? Dorland permits herself such license, but wants to deny it to others?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I don’t mean to be too hard on Dorland. Humans are wired for hypocrisy, and articulating an ideal (“Artists should be able to use everything in their art”) while simultaneously promulgating an exception for yourself (“And by ‘everything,’ I mean ‘everything except things I don’t like’”) is so commonplace there’s not much to say about it other than…it’s common.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But look, if you are “committed to free speech, but—” you’re not committed to free speech, only to speech you like. Similarly, if you’re “committed to artistic freedom, but not to freedom that hurts my feelings,” you’re not committed to artistic freedom, only to art you approve of.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As a novelist friend of mine likes to point out, behavior is the truth. And if you self identify as an artist but embark on a years-long campaign to prevent someone from using an event in your life or a short passage from a letter in the service of her fiction, you’ve made your priorities clear—and freedom, art, and being an artist are not among them.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Speaking just for myself: when weighing the balance between individual control over events, words, or other real-life events, on the one hand, and artistic freedom, on the other, I choose freedom (this is why even though as a writer I benefit from ever-expanding copyright terms, I believe those terms should be drastically curtailed for the sake of society—but that’s another story).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Dorland obviously has a quite different value system. She presents herself as a victim even as she victimizes Larson and artists generally; even as she tries to deny readers the opportunity to read an acclaimed, award-winning story they probably would enjoy and otherwise benefit from; even as she demands for herself the very rights she is attempting to deny Larson (and by extension other artists).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A person who signs her letters “kindly” and claims the mantle of altruism might be expected to behave differently. But when our egos are calling the shots, everything else becomes collateral damage.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />That Dorland might be damaged or difficult is of little interest to me. That she’s destructive is my concern. This isn’t about an artist trying to protect her own rights; it’s about a person attacking the artistic rights of others.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Or, to put it another way: Dorland’s campaign is an attack on artistic freedom. It should be understood as such, and treated accordingly.</span></div></div></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-75573675533609317722021-10-01T06:24:00.001-07:002021-10-01T06:24:31.721-07:00The Chaos Kind, Today!<p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">If you enjoyed the #1 bestselling <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/40b71ee99a" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><i>The Killer Collective</i></a>, you're going to love the follow-up, <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/f01410e10b" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><i>The Chaos Kind</i></a>. It's the whole gang plus <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/2b236cb51c/type=3" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Marvin Manus</a>, the Berserker-wielding assassin of <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/be8af2bc36" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><i>The God's Eye View</i></a>, along with a few new characters, too.</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/2392b0d229" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><i>Kirkus</i></a> calls it "Another high-fatality, high-spirited revenge fantasy." <br /><br /><a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/68c2016cde" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><i>Publishers Weekly</i></a> says, "Eisler juggles the complicated plot and large cast, imbuing his diverse characters with robust backstory and emotional motivation...Pure action seekers will gasp at the brutal violence and raw hand-to-hand combat."</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">I should add that it has its tender scenes, too... :)</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">I laughed and cried while writing it, and hope you will, too. Enjoy when you have a chance, and thanks for all your support over the years!</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Cheers,</span><br /><br /><b><i>Barry</i></b><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br /><br /><em>P.S.</em><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">I'll be doing a Zoom launch with Kepler's Books at 6:00 pm, October 5th. <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/d4d05597ad" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Signup is here</a>—and Kepler's is the place where you can order autographed paper copies.</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">I also want to mention the <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/3b7e0bc58d" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Legislative Drafting Institute for Child Protection</a>—an organization that does work Livia Lone would be proud of, and that deserves your support. A particularly easy and effective way to support the LDICP is through <a href="https://cts.vresp.com/c/?BarryEisler/8f856fd1ba/31f8129675/65143862f6" style="color: #b43e38; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">AmazonSmile</a>. It's simple to sign up and have Amazon donate 0.5 percent of your purchases to the LDICP (or other charity of your choice).</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7OybjrDFNkjDAbds8sUimn71O0ZK4RADyiKoaGxqMcrmm9OaHYbBC-4iIyTK_j_Jdivmw4VwacZEMHqn7mKU6mv5wu3oN06pQ2C4i4_OtXSImdOE_VA4yojWVU1A8yhsI0LLciw/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="1077" data-original-width="1616" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7OybjrDFNkjDAbds8sUimn71O0ZK4RADyiKoaGxqMcrmm9OaHYbBC-4iIyTK_j_Jdivmw4VwacZEMHqn7mKU6mv5wu3oN06pQ2C4i4_OtXSImdOE_VA4yojWVU1A8yhsI0LLciw/w640-h426/Photo+on+9-1-21+at+9.15+AM.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>The assassins of Barry Eisler's #1 bestseller <i>The Killer Collective</i> are back—and this time, it's chaos.</b></p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">Assistant US Attorney Alondra Diaz hates traffickers. And she's determined to put one of America's most powerful financiers, Andrew Schrader, in prison forever for his crimes against children.</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">But Schrader has videos implicating some of the most powerful members of the US national security state. To eliminate Diaz, the powers that be bring in a contractor: Marvin Manus, an implacable assassin whose skills have been forged in intelligence, the military, and the hardest prisons.</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">Enter former Marine sniper Dox and black-ops veteran Daniel Larison with an unusual assignment: not to kill Diaz, but to keep her alive.</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">A lot of players are determined to acquire the videos and the blackmail power they represent. But with Seattle sex-crimes detective Livia Lone, "natural causes" killer John Rain, and Mossad honey-trap specialist Delilah, the good guys might just have a chance.</p><p style="font-family: Georgia, Cambria, serif; font-size: 16px;">They're not going to play by anyone else's rules. They're not going to play by any rules at all. They want a different kind of fight. The chaos kind.</p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-1593655295612116212021-05-13T08:47:00.016-07:002021-05-13T08:52:04.812-07:00The Salton Sea<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I always try to visit the places I depict in my novels--realism matters to me personally, and has also become a key aspect of my brand as a novelist. This is why I have a <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/photos-places/">Photos and Places</a> page on my website, and more importantly a <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/mistakes/">Mistakes</a> page--people won't trust you to get it right if you don't own up to getting it wrong (media, take note).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But occasionally a place eludes me, forcing me to rely only on books, articles, and online images, maps, and videos. This was the case with the Salton Sea and <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/books/all-the-devils/"><i>All The Devils</i></a>. I came close several times, most notably on a monster 350-bookstore, cross-country-and-back 2006 book tour, but I never made it all the way there.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Happily, last week I finally managed the trip. It was surreal--both because of the place itself, and also because after all the research and writing, I felt like I'd already been there. Here are some photos. I think I got my depicitions right, but of course that's for readers to decide.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir9NlVKIj1TIRv8-QGXpTJNBxYZdPyU-cCI6KWQOgsB-aBCVnS1pytlfHgdj5eXUdCji_L-724jipKTS_Rb79QopQZAPWoiQ6obwrb_3-Ad5Bxp4W6C_lo5g3uNdYxvMaa1Qo9_g/s2048/IMG_3364.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir9NlVKIj1TIRv8-QGXpTJNBxYZdPyU-cCI6KWQOgsB-aBCVnS1pytlfHgdj5eXUdCji_L-724jipKTS_Rb79QopQZAPWoiQ6obwrb_3-Ad5Bxp4W6C_lo5g3uNdYxvMaa1Qo9_g/w640-h480/IMG_3364.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If you looked up “desolation” in the dictionary…<br /><br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ZoTT8yzKL3UtK8ARvc9x8SixnRg8Led5OrMbXna_TbgOliBaEMrAJ2wVmdqJgaetxK42jpgLhJ8qsuxPQIlmC2-j4-PCn6fqhE5UMtzO6weyv54swsMxN7pQpgDYApkp9v5nTg/s2048/IMG_3363.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ZoTT8yzKL3UtK8ARvc9x8SixnRg8Led5OrMbXna_TbgOliBaEMrAJ2wVmdqJgaetxK42jpgLhJ8qsuxPQIlmC2-j4-PCn6fqhE5UMtzO6weyv54swsMxN7pQpgDYApkp9v5nTg/w640-h480/IMG_3363.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“He opened the door and stepped out, his boots crunching on what sounded like gravel but what he knew instead were the pulverized bones of a million poisoned fish…”<br /><br /></span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK4I-Lw4939HihE8rzTlnC8rJqWS-O5SH6PnFI7g-OXUw5djeCY1ituq0oggsP2CypBsx-k02CEV8vuokVh7rAH6IlcoOLXwVh9rTyxX3JfC7kTRLuUbLt_AVMlmGZQTxwKyCGYw/s4032/IMG_3367.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK4I-Lw4939HihE8rzTlnC8rJqWS-O5SH6PnFI7g-OXUw5djeCY1ituq0oggsP2CypBsx-k02CEV8vuokVh7rAH6IlcoOLXwVh9rTyxX3JfC7kTRLuUbLt_AVMlmGZQTxwKyCGYw/w640-h480/IMG_3367.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The view of the town, Salton Sea Beach, with my back to the water<br /><br /></span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgENJfg86eswyuG7TQGqlkjM53ueXWDFmeRnUTGMxDQo5jxQjqvwRADlhRFj1dt6rhBoPVkNy_OjtFe5W1V-2OMyjILuJQtezwH9S1wFv4FnQqRhpcsx8KPupdVGH6E90obVdc69w/s2048/IMG_3369.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgENJfg86eswyuG7TQGqlkjM53ueXWDFmeRnUTGMxDQo5jxQjqvwRADlhRFj1dt6rhBoPVkNy_OjtFe5W1V-2OMyjILuJQtezwH9S1wFv4FnQqRhpcsx8KPupdVGH6E90obVdc69w/w640-h480/IMG_3369.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The path Livia and Little walked in on from Desert Shores<br /><br /></span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgll0bke8J0fAPPCfZjByex9ub3sOT1_dCyVv9pxz-TezChFc4q_7V8PwlvPkivNer4r948ODezdvhEjpUIuGUCjz-rsDbxLjsfQBHZPL4rybogTFLW7vKFBn9bkAOdxR-V94ks_w/s4032/IMG_3386.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgll0bke8J0fAPPCfZjByex9ub3sOT1_dCyVv9pxz-TezChFc4q_7V8PwlvPkivNer4r948ODezdvhEjpUIuGUCjz-rsDbxLjsfQBHZPL4rybogTFLW7vKFBn9bkAOdxR-V94ks_w/w640-h480/IMG_3386.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: start;">“</span><span style="text-align: start;">Around him stood a few derelict structures glowing faintly beneath a low crescent moon: A broken-down trailer. A windowless storefront. The skeletal frame of a roofless house…”</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ7oIsyLTvpZOe4qxayv0NjTTbTmEtP3HkAw0zPq7dew2XNhn36zqiw8tLuWmoGHWvdXyJu3HHNQuqsx1M3KiavOLgw-3hQH37uhja4YXNqLMkwVjo_KRCkzdDllg8eHYdw00lGA/s4032/IMG_3385.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ7oIsyLTvpZOe4qxayv0NjTTbTmEtP3HkAw0zPq7dew2XNhn36zqiw8tLuWmoGHWvdXyJu3HHNQuqsx1M3KiavOLgw-3hQH37uhja4YXNqLMkwVjo_KRCkzdDllg8eHYdw00lGA/w640-h480/IMG_3385.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“'I’ll tell you why they like this place,’ she said. ‘All the deserted structures. Garages, burned-out trailers, abandoned houses…They have their pick of places to take their victims, and then take their time. Rusted-out vehicles, decaying furniture…it’s like a postapocalyptic junkyard…”<br /><br /></span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRiWY-JD29JYe2k2JBMtssB363GUK7CJ-Nlz9Jd1DM1rFEVvAiXPy6F9idD68eS5dAKVOqHmD4QckjfRuFyp-Ol82SAg10o7uTkbOIyBtfduk9-oabSN_10mNthj6oyAXX06TgoQ/s2048/IMG_3366.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRiWY-JD29JYe2k2JBMtssB363GUK7CJ-Nlz9Jd1DM1rFEVvAiXPy6F9idD68eS5dAKVOqHmD4QckjfRuFyp-Ol82SAg10o7uTkbOIyBtfduk9-oabSN_10mNthj6oyAXX06TgoQ/w640-h480/IMG_3366.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Parts of the town are still inhabited</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzaXYaQauwu7QcTUbqYZxuBQXoEFGulcZTm06Xn-sMc6xrGaWtjqH75te-0vHlnWK7ymasIs_70KhT4HK02_zSUHtJukFHcDDoLpottcvYSBkhSTLykpHXmacNzLAbCGDps7Vbzg/s4032/IMG_3388.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzaXYaQauwu7QcTUbqYZxuBQXoEFGulcZTm06Xn-sMc6xrGaWtjqH75te-0vHlnWK7ymasIs_70KhT4HK02_zSUHtJukFHcDDoLpottcvYSBkhSTLykpHXmacNzLAbCGDps7Vbzg/w640-h480/IMG_3388.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p class="030BodyTextTopMargin" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Some additional resources (more in the notes of <a href="https://www.barryeisler.com/books/all-the-devils/"><i>All The Devils</i></a>)</span></p><p class="030BodyTextTopMargin" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A brief history of the Salton Sea:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="020BodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9bz5b7/i-went-to-californias-post-apocalyptic-beach-town-salton-sea" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9bz5b7/i-went-to-californias-post-apocalyptic-beach-town-salton-sea</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="030BodyTextTopMargin" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And some haunting photos, too. Careful of the Lost America site—it’ll suck you in.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="020BodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.katherinebelarmino.com/2016/07/photographing-salton-sea-ghost-towns.html" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.katherinebelarmino.com/2016/07/photographing-salton-sea-ghost-towns.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="020BodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://lostamerica.com/photo-items/the-salton-sea/" style="color: #954f72;">https://lostamerica.com/photo-items/the-salton-sea/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="020BodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jimriche.com/salton-sea/" style="color: #954f72;">http://www.jimriche.com/salton-sea/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="030BodyTextTopMargin" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Great six-minute documentary film about the Salton Sea:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="020BodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otIU6Py4K_A" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otIU6Py4K_A</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="030BodyTextTopMargin" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And the 2002 Tony Gayton noir film <span class="522Ital">The Salton Sea</span> is wonderful and surprisingly not well known.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="020BodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235737/" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235737/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><p><br /></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-27436855720087132842021-04-24T20:39:00.000-07:002021-04-24T20:39:04.860-07:00Putin Looms Perennially Large For The Economist<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sometimes I can almost hear The Economist whispering, "Vlad, I wish I could quit you..."</span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtOf8-cQ5eQrNY1XSONF8HHIvZb-3uqdUUPvkvQv662MoJiV_lQIksawSXxSCKBY5pwrAusrwOCquldd7gF79o9rYx9ZwTIPGuFKUa603_xHCy0nOtjs18Lnnmvw6RYHtM0jbFg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1315" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtOf8-cQ5eQrNY1XSONF8HHIvZb-3uqdUUPvkvQv662MoJiV_lQIksawSXxSCKBY5pwrAusrwOCquldd7gF79o9rYx9ZwTIPGuFKUa603_xHCy0nOtjs18Lnnmvw6RYHtM0jbFg/" width="183" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheUucW2hhPRc8ESpXsLlU0mAHO6uiTOLOIfSrvmWEtAFjxk1clVb-7YL_5FzxCPzk694VOkGnbqWkGZYt5ydVsn2LT8khJyEBhVrY4faPimaWtZPK6Xn_bD3N5zz7zLpkFMHmPvg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1315" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheUucW2hhPRc8ESpXsLlU0mAHO6uiTOLOIfSrvmWEtAFjxk1clVb-7YL_5FzxCPzk694VOkGnbqWkGZYt5ydVsn2LT8khJyEBhVrY4faPimaWtZPK6Xn_bD3N5zz7zLpkFMHmPvg/" width="183" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLWsxB8qsewIyI-i2_sbfNf1awMvHjcEw0UdAg_Eulhdj546_F3V3RuDs2V2fc4bIJTAFaKHx94BJI3hKCDPywdB7RT_01IBx9Cs8yFf2hx7fvJBTVl4pkK2i_bGDhXSk8eXhN3g/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="427" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLWsxB8qsewIyI-i2_sbfNf1awMvHjcEw0UdAg_Eulhdj546_F3V3RuDs2V2fc4bIJTAFaKHx94BJI3hKCDPywdB7RT_01IBx9Cs8yFf2hx7fvJBTVl4pkK2i_bGDhXSk8eXhN3g/" width="182" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Kp40RkvlYIsEU8XPATftLrkkaiB3QLMi4u40r-CZxuBCRvxy1OCy9AkbaouaZVBhe7by7nLYya3mdUf5-_7KB3W0vjW0hC9kCHkAHRHh4CP6-kWi_aOa1S2ZbzLKX8SAOk4Dnw/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1315" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Kp40RkvlYIsEU8XPATftLrkkaiB3QLMi4u40r-CZxuBCRvxy1OCy9AkbaouaZVBhe7by7nLYya3mdUf5-_7KB3W0vjW0hC9kCHkAHRHh4CP6-kWi_aOa1S2ZbzLKX8SAOk4Dnw/" width="183" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFGNmXP894UD41iYun64nO2jk_lDtfHPJy3q9u4tuorT__9WwF6L8WnYgnSvruTu2z_mYo4L3kTmSBSPY0erYn8RDprawKM8J4vQfdgq2mphwOhbs5Qf0zEyTBnF-2-vwNO5V3rw/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1315" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFGNmXP894UD41iYun64nO2jk_lDtfHPJy3q9u4tuorT__9WwF6L8WnYgnSvruTu2z_mYo4L3kTmSBSPY0erYn8RDprawKM8J4vQfdgq2mphwOhbs5Qf0zEyTBnF-2-vwNO5V3rw/" width="183" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdubvzjMQ1Ubls6ZFJnNJwvdvgU3-RHOMAFigmd4l5uLbe73awSBSP8QzjyZj1oZapXeDQ-5ILmFIoluSjsAONLTsaB4-csxltW3OLZ9nc0ng1305PuKxf9opfbRJ8f_LgS2iYIQ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdubvzjMQ1Ubls6ZFJnNJwvdvgU3-RHOMAFigmd4l5uLbe73awSBSP8QzjyZj1oZapXeDQ-5ILmFIoluSjsAONLTsaB4-csxltW3OLZ9nc0ng1305PuKxf9opfbRJ8f_LgS2iYIQ/" width="183" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB2zQhcoFoP_WJFP67WX1Ub-DO4oWnMIu2CDWLqMdNxtpx20U1wc1Ugd5voGanDJ8Kk_7Ux3U6gYBNukw84u2ZVBgUl1wUB_CAbcrNSzQxVQXBWA4KQNDvS3J7qHIzkzwfN5gQLw/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1684" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB2zQhcoFoP_WJFP67WX1Ub-DO4oWnMIu2CDWLqMdNxtpx20U1wc1Ugd5voGanDJ8Kk_7Ux3U6gYBNukw84u2ZVBgUl1wUB_CAbcrNSzQxVQXBWA4KQNDvS3J7qHIzkzwfN5gQLw/" width="182" /></a></div><br /> </span></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-14636874418337617932021-03-11T16:54:00.001-08:002021-03-12T07:53:06.237-08:00Walter LaFeber: A Great Light Has Gone Out<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Yesterday I learned that a great and good man I was fortunate to study under in college and later to have as a friend, <a href="https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/03/walter-lafeber-revered-history-professor-dies">Walter LaFeber</a>, <a href="https://www.ithaca.com/opinion/guest_opinions/a-tribute-to-cornell-professor-walter-lafeber/article_6c0c749c-81f3-11eb-a025-ab1e29107fa7.html">had died</a>. As I emerged from my initial shock and distress, I remembered a line from <i>Shakespeare in Love,</i> uttered when the stunned Admiral’s Men hear of the death of Kit Marlowe: “A great light has gone out.”</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That’s what happened yesterday.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I first got to know Walt in the fall of 1985, when I took both his legendary History 313 History of US Foreign Policy lecture (continued in the spring with History 314) and a small graduate-level seminar, also on the history of US foreign policy. I was 21 then, and it’s strange for me to consider now that Walt would have been 51—six years younger than I am today.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The reasons 313 and 314 were legendary, and the reason I was so fortunate to take them, were threefold: Walt’s command of the subject matter; his deep insights; and his masterful delivery, always involving a 50-minute talk—without ever resorting to notes—to a room of hundreds of spellbound people. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In one lecture, I noticed a student in the row in front of me doodling in the margin of his notes: <i>Walter es Dios.</i> I doubt anyone in the room would have argued, though Walt himself tended to shrug off the praise he regularly received, always quickly departing rather than reveling in the applause that inevitably erupted at the end of his lectures.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">History 313 and 314 met on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. The lecture hall was always filled. Saturday might have been even more crowded, because students liked to bring visitors to experience Walt in person.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">From the vantage point of 2021, it might not seem like much of an innovation, but Walt was ahead of his time in tape-recording all his lectures for any students unlucky enough to miss the live performance (by coincidence, yesterday <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/lou-ottens-inventor-of-the-cassette-tape-dies-aged-94">Lou Ottens</a>, the inventor of the audiotape cassette, also died). My brother and I used to bootleg the tapes at the library and mail copies to our dad, a voracious reader and amateur historian, who would avidly listen and then enthusiastically discuss the content with his sons. My dad died in 1997, and knowing how much he, too, learned from Walt and relished listening to him is bound up in my sadness today, although that connection also gives me a lot of happiness.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If you’d like some flavor of what it was like to listen to Walt, this was his <a href="https://www.cornell.edu/video/walter-lafeber-beacon-theatre-2006">retirement lecture</a>, <a href="https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/04/alumni-pack-beacon-theatre-say-farewell-walter-lafeber">attended by over 3000 people</a> in New York City in 2006. The whole talk is wonderful, but if all you want is the foreign policy discussion, it begins at about the 30-minute mark.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Another of Walt’s special qualities was his wry kindness. I could give many examples, but just one: when I turned in an essay for History 313 that included an elaborate explanation of why General Lafayette didn’t attack the Colonial forces, Walt wrote in the margin, “Another—and better—reason is that Lafayette fought with the Colonial forces, not against them.”</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite a few missteps like that one, Walt wrote me a recommendation that I’m sure was instrumental in gaining me admission to law school. I managed to acquire a copy afterward; in it, Walt said that had I been interested in history instead of law, he immediately </span><span style="font-size: large;">would</span><span style="font-size: large;"> have accepted me as a PhD candidate. I’ve wondered since whether I made the right choice.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Before studying with Walt, I was pretty insular in my outlook and while I read a lot, I wouldn’t say I was doing anything particularly useful with the information. But as the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and Walt’s insights into the nature of US foreign policy were hugely eye-opening and motivating, and provide an intellectual framework that has served me ever since. I don’t think his politics would be easy to classify, and in some ways I think he was amused by some of my more radical critiques of the status quo, which made discussions a pleasure even when we didn’t see eye to eye.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">After I graduated from undergrad, we started getting together for lunch periodically, usually at Rulloff’s in Collegetown. He told me I had to stop calling him Professor LaFeber and start calling him Walt. It was a strange transition, but eventually he did become Walt for me, though part of me will always think of him as Professor LaFeber, too. My mom, who died in 1987, once told me how delightful it was to have her children grow up and then, while remaining her children, also become her friends (I have since experienced this joy as a parent myself). Growing up and becoming friends with a former teacher is, I think, something similar.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Even after I graduated from law school, my wife Laura and I have had numerous opportunities to visit Ithaca, and on almost every one of those occasions we’ve gotten together with Walt and his delightful wife Sandy. The last time we saw them was in the fall of 2019. The last time we were in touch was by email, almost a year ago at the start of the pandemic. Of course I’m upset now that I wasn’t in touch more—having lost people before, I generally know better. But somehow this year slipped away, and now Walt has, as well. I’m comforted by knowing how rich a life he lived, and how many hearts he touched and minds he influenced in his 87 years. “No one here gets out alive,” my dad would sometimes say, but still there are a few immortals, and Walt LaFeber was one of them.</span></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-37912856053726372302020-11-09T13:10:00.000-08:002020-11-09T13:10:03.830-08:00Fundraiser for a Tragic Loss to Cancer<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="3bfm8" data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/Brooke-Needs-Her-Village">fundraiser</a> is for a friend of Laura's and mine who just lost her 35-year-old husband to cancer. They have small kids and anything anyone is inclined to do right now would be a big help.</span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1pbhl-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Thank you.</span></span></div></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-16802234956414901162020-10-12T11:47:00.002-07:002020-10-12T11:47:24.116-07:00How To Write A Killer Opening<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This past weekend I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the annual <a href="http://japanwritersconference.org" target="_blank">Japan Writers Conference</a>, which was of course held virtually because of Covid. If you want to learn more about how to write an effective story opening, here are my 50 minutes worth of thoughts. Enjoy!</span></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HxgUab3YS1g" width="320" youtube-src-id="HxgUab3YS1g"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><br /></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-90568885878919767322020-10-09T10:28:00.000-07:002020-10-09T10:28:15.758-07:00That Rarest Breed: Leftist Political Thrillers<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Recently I had a fun discussion with <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;">Praveen Tummalapalli about why there are so few leftist thrillers, and of course we talked about much more, too.</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2smJP9KVsAA" width="320" youtube-src-id="2smJP9KVsAA"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;">The discussion was for an article Praveen is writing for </span><a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">Current Affairs Magazine</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;">, but it wound up working well in its own right, so I'm posting it here. Had I known we were going to use the interview not just for background, I would have lit our Zoom call better and used an external mic, too. I might even have combed my hair! And apologies also because, having listened to some of the talk after the fact, I was horrified at how much I was saying "um." I work hard to avoid verbal tics, but that morning the Ums got the better of me.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;">I've addressed some of these issues before, particularly in the context of the tendency to denigrate as "political" only those storylines that don't jibe with one's own political views. As I sometimes like to ask when people criticize my novels as "too political," "<a href="https://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2013/03/that-power-of-accurate-observation-is.html" target="_blank">You do know they're political thrillers, right?</a>"</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway, regardless of any technical shortcomings, I hope you'll enjoy the discussion. When the article's out, I'll post that, too. And who knows? Maybe some of this will encourage other novelists to depict the thrills inherent in leftist politics.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-53465759487995775262020-10-08T12:03:00.000-07:002020-10-08T12:03:12.852-07:00Vincent Bevins's The Jakarta Method<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>Okay, time for another book I've listened to during the pandemic (and now the wildfires). Last up was </span><span>Barton Gellman's Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State; </span><span>this time it's</span><span> </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jakarta-Method-Washingtons-Anticommunist-Crusade-ebook/dp/B07XDMCSJM/ref=sr_1_1"><i>The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World</i></a><span>.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXC5dfY8h4OYcYjY00CvE9splMaqXEZlOJWAhzR7HOEuEJ1wlh2goZO0Bo2rihjpD1iiNtnncY8qe8_zVlU-N1jj4bJXBiMypJKkF0yX9Hd5IT0eMHqWxhlfhlX5Y36n_nZ6iyA/s488/GUEST_6e971dc6-bab9-4aa1-a2a1-e8ba99d74230.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="488" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXC5dfY8h4OYcYjY00CvE9splMaqXEZlOJWAhzR7HOEuEJ1wlh2goZO0Bo2rihjpD1iiNtnncY8qe8_zVlU-N1jj4bJXBiMypJKkF0yX9Hd5IT0eMHqWxhlfhlX5Y36n_nZ6iyA/s0/GUEST_6e971dc6-bab9-4aa1-a2a1-e8ba99d74230.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>The Jakarta Method</i> recounts the US-backed extermination campaign that murdered something like one million Indonesians. If you're unfamiliar with this history, it's partly because the program was a "success," and partly because the details are so disturbing--disturbing both for the horrors and human suffering the book recounts, and because the horror and suffering were both the effect and the intent of US policy.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>If you found yourself recoiling from that last clause, don't worry. The reaction is natural. It's hard to look in the mirror and see something terrible staring back. This is just an axiom of human nature. So w</span>hen faced with evidence of atrocities committed by one's own in-group, it's extremely psychologically tempting to deny them, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole" target="_blank">memory hole</a> them, or to marginalize them as aberrations or "a few bad apples" (see for example Nick Turse's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American-ebook/dp/B008FPSTOQ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=nick+turse&qid=1602179431&s=digital-text&sr=1-2"><i>Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam</i></a>, putting the Mai Lai massacre into its proper, larger context).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span>But if there's one thing I know about humans, it's our tendency to give ourselves and our in-groups the greatest possible benefit of the doubt (for more on this, I recommend looking into something called the <a href="https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/fundamental-attribution-error" target="_blank">Fundamental Attribution Error</a>). </span>From the earliest age, Americans are fed a steady diet of American Exceptionalism, American benevolence, the Indispensable Nation...the whole notion of a Light Unto Nations and the City Upon a Hill. You don't have to seek out American apologia and hagiography; they're impossible to avoid. Our national anthem is a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/08/28/colin-kaepernick-is-righter-than-you-know-the-national-anthem-is-a-celebration-of-slavery/" target="_blank">celebration of war and slavery</a>; <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/air-force-pay-more-stadium-flyovers-sports-fans-join-841170" target="_blank">stadium flyovers</a> are part of the cultural firmament; we carve likenesses of revered politicians into the face of mountains; as children, we're made to recite a Pledge of Allegiance proclaiming that we have achieved liberty and justice for all; politicians decree that America is <a href="https://www.brainyquote.com/lists/marco-rubio--history-quotes" target="_blank">the greatest nation in the history of mankind</a> and that <a href="http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2012/08/everyone-wants-to-be-me.html" target="_blank">there's not a country on Earth that wouldn't gladly trade places with us</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Imagine for a moment how the media would treat, and how we would perceive, these sorts of things if they were occurring in, say, China or Iran or Russia. Can you believe Iran puts "In Allah we trust" on their own currency, or that they have developed a weapon intended to burn people to death and that <a href="https://boingboing.net/2016/03/02/how-would-you-explain-the-diff.html" target="_blank">they celebrate such a horrific weapon in the weapon's very name</a>? That Russia believes in Russia's "<a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp" target="_blank">manifest destiny</a>" of dominion over an entire continent from sea to sea? That China has something called the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine" target="_blank">Xi Doctrine</a>" declaring separate eastern and western spheres of influence and making all of Asia a Chinese protectorate?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And of course you could write an entire book on how their wars are aggression and conquest while ours are merely interventions or police actions; how their nuclear weapons are destabilizing and provocative while ours are simply defensive; how they meddle in elections while we merely assist; how theirs is terrorism and ours is Shock and Awe (actually, I really do need to write a post just on the propaganda buried in our reflexive nomenclature. There's so much of it).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Part of the reason propaganda is so pervasive is because it's so pleasurable. We all want to feel good about ourselves and our in-groups, and propaganda helps achieve that. What's the expression? "Flattery is the art of telling people exactly what they want to believe about themselves." Coke and Pepsi don't dominate the world because they're good for human health; they dominate because sugar tastes good. What tastes good gets widely consumed, regardless of what it might do to your body (or your mind).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To put it another way: ego distorts accurate perception. Books like Bevins's are corrective lenses. For anyone interested in seeing more clearly, <i>The Jakarta Method</i> is a great place to start.</span></div>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22165230.post-29967833065145718342020-08-22T15:46:00.001-07:002020-08-22T15:46:47.018-07:00Barton Gellman's Dark Mirror<p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I'm still trying to catch up on reviewing some of the great books I've listened to during the pandemic (and now the wildfires).<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Last time was Maija Soderholm's <a href="http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2020/08/maija-soderholms-hustler-sword-play-and.html"><i>The Hustler</i></a>. This week is Barton Gellman's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Mirror-Snowden-American-Surveillance-ebook/dp/B017SCQKE2/ref=sr_1_1"><i>Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State</i></a>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh8mihBs6Sg9w1x_g72aYhbv3yTBxGTby9ZH4VdJB-sw7jp_-dYAyB0NJcGZ6y6XgRLaQOnZjeUaS8teBinETtjOmeNpn4nhvXIx3msIBM7-YKeGC5IcNXm8ZNZtvEdrQJOqHcMg/s0/9780451485359.jpeg" /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">I've followed the reporting based on whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations reasonably closely since June 2013, when I was working on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XT47SOK/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i15"><i>The God's Eye View</i></a> and was concerned that the secret bulk surveillance (sorry, "data collection") program I imagined for the novel was going to seem like too much. And then, as I dove into Gellman's and other reporting based on Snowden's revelations, I realized the program I had envisioned wasn't nearly enough, and that the reality of domestic spying had already far outpaced my imagination (more on how reality wound up informing <i>God's Eye</i> <a href="https://www.salon.com/test2/2016/01/30/holy_smokes_this_stuff_is_all_real_how_i_get_my_best_ideas_for_thrillers_from_the_good_ol_u_s_government/">here</a>).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Beyond the reporting itself, I read </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Hide-Snowden-Surveillance-ebook/dp/B00E0CZX0G/ref=sr_1_1" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State</i></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, by Glenn Greenwald, along with Gellman one of the reporters to whom Snowden entrusted his revelations (my thoughts on </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">No Place to Hide</i> <a href="https://freedom.press/news/journalist-argues-in-ny-times-that-publishing-decisions-should-ultimately-be-made-by-government/" style="font-family: inherit;">here</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and </span><a href="https://freedom.press/news/prioritizing-personalities-over-a-free-press/" style="font-family: inherit;">here</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">). I also watched </span><a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>CitizenFour</i></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, the Oscar-winning documentary by filmmaker Laura Poitras, another of Snowden's handpicked journalist contacts. And of course Oliver Stone's biopic </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774114/" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Snowden</i></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, in which Joseph Gordon Levitt, who physically bears little resemblance to the real Snowden, manages an uncanny imitation through body language and a remarkable imitation of Snowden's voice and vocal cadences. And I wrote <a href="https://time.com/4495221/pardon-edward-snowden/">an op-ed for Time Magazine</a> urging then-president Obama to pardon Snowden (spoiler alert, Obama didn't </span>listen).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Lastly, a few years ago <a href="https://boingboing.net/2016/03/01/on-whistleblowers-and-secrecy.html">I shared some thoughts on Snowden and whistleblowing alongside former director of the CIA and NSA Michael Hayden</a> in front of the San Francisco chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Hayden was promoting his memoir <i>Playing to the Edge</i> and I was promoting <i>The God’s Eye View</i>. I wouldn't say we all saw eye to eye, but it was a good discussion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">So that's the tale of how I've been following the Snowden story since 2013 (I'm chagrined to admit I haven't yet read Snowden's own memoir, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden-ebook/dp/B07STQPGH6/ref=sr_1_1"><i>Permanent Record</i></a>). But as familiar as I am with Snowden's revelations and the story of how they came to be, I was still knocked out by the amount of fresh material in Gellman's book. <i>Dark Mirror</i> has plenty about the programs Snowden revealed, yes, but what made the book particularly compelling for me were the personal aspects Gellman detailed: how Gellman built trust with the anonymous source who initially reached out to him; the bordering-on-paranoia steps he took to protect their communications; the decisions he had to make about what news organization to work with on the stories. There's a scene where Gellman is negotiating with the leadership of <i>The Washington Post</i>—on what he would require if he was going to agree to work with them—that actually made me tear up! Which doesn't often happen when I'm reading nonfiction (or at least I can't admit that it does, because that would be bad for my brand).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Part of what made the audiobook so affecting, I think, is that Gellman narrated it himself. Given the personal aspects of the story, and given that Gellman did such terrific job, I'd say the publisher made the right call.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">The dictum in detective fiction is that the best stories aren’t about how the detective works the case, but about how the case works the detective. And that’s part of what makes <i>Dark Mirror</i> so gripping—how a set of incredibly high-stakes circumstances affected Gellman, what decisions he had to make, what it put him through and how it shaped and forged him. Anyone interested in investigative journalism will find these sections of the book fascinating and even moving.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Not long ago, I came across <a href="http://www.pandemoniuminc.com/endings-video">a video by screenwriter Michael Arndt</a> on what makes a great story ending. Arndt makes a case for three sets of stakes: external; internal (emotional); and philosophical. I could go on and on about this, but for now I’ll just say that I think part of what makes <i>Dark Mirror</i> so unusual for nonfiction is that all three stakes are in play. External—the risks Gellman was running given the laws and resources the state could deploy against him (reputation, providing for his family, prison). Internal/emotional—how far beyond simply protecting a source can you go before you've drifted beyond journalism and into something else (journalism, advocacy, what is the proper role—can a journalist be “aiding and abetting” as <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130624/00183623589/david-gregory-suggests-glenn-greenwald-may-be-criminal-doing-journalism.shtml">David Gregory infamously suggested</a>)? Philosophical—when it comes to secrets, who ultimately gets to decide (hint: whoever it is, it's not the government)?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">And how do you grapple with these momentous questions when you can’t talk to anyone, not even the people you trust the most?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Anyone with an interest in how the government has created a giant one-way mirror through which the government knows more and more about the people and the people know less and less about the government; in why whistleblowing and investigative journalism are our last line of defense against this metastatic asymmetry; and in the mechanics of reporting on one of the most explosive set of national security revelations of all time, will get a lot out of this book. I know I did.</span></p>Barry Eislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17785333622697500192noreply@blogger.com0