James Campion: The Doors: Identity Crisis in the Land of $$$

There is being an idealist, and then there is John Densmore. There is defining integrity, and then there is John Densmore. There is putting money, reputation and professional legacy where the mouth and the heart reside, and then there is John Densmore.

The legendary drummer's new book, The Doors Unhinged -- Jim Morrison's Legacy Goes on Trial is a compelling look at defining the cost of art, integrity and legacy. Where is the line drawn between creativity and commerce? When does a band turn from a vehicle for artistic expression to a commodity, or is it always both? If so, which is more pertinent? And most importantly, what's in a name? Is it identity? Is it purity? Or does it have many definitions? And exactly who defines it?

The Doors Unhinged is a story about longtime friends, brothers-in-arms, fighting tooth-and-nail to define their creation; The Doors -- its image and rightful place as an American icon, as either a product to be re-packaged for profit or a collective with the living DNA of four unique members that ceased to be, in reality, after 1971.

Densmore's The Doors Unhinged is less about his struggles for personal principle as it is about definitions; not only definitions put on trial between long-time colleagues, but in a court of law, where the story transforms from a passion play among members of a powerful and lucrative creative entity to a battle for survival, both professional and personal.



For 45 years, The Doors have stood as an exemplar of the late-1960s pioneer rock era; breaking molds, bending styles, and staking claim to an exploding culture of youth, fashion and political and social dissent. During the band's heyday, Densmore was its quietest member. He chose, and quite enjoyed, staying in the background to drive the sound behind the flowing keyboards of Ray Manzarek and guitarist, Robby Krieger's accenting resonance. But it was putting an exclamation to the manic poetry of the enigmatic detonation that was the late Jim Morrison that really jazzed Densmore.

To Densmore, Morrison represented the ideals of rebellion. His search for escapism and pure freedom fueled songs that topped the charts; "Light My Fire", "Break On Through (To The Other Side)", "Hello, I Love You", "Touch Me", and others that darkened the edges of the counter-culture, "When The Music's Over", "People Are Strange", and "The End". Consequently, it was Morrison's wish that none of the fame and fortune would sever the bond of the four young men, as they explored new musical and lyrical territories without constraint. This wish was confirmed in the band's rare commitment, never considered before in the entertainment industry, that all four members would have an equal voice to defy the rest of the outfit, as Morrison put it back in 1967, 'if things got weird".

In 2003, things got weird.

Densmore, who never stopped believing Morrison's edict, was forced to stand for the principles of a man long dead and a band long gone when Manzarek and Krieger decided to promote and tour a 21st Century Doors. Despite assurances that the "tribute" would not be labeled as The Doors reunited, Densmore was forced into legal recourse to halt what he felt was misleading to the band's fan base and an insult to both he and Morrison's place in the original band. Desperate to keep the gravy train moving, Manzarek and Krieger counter-sued Densmore for $40 million, claiming his continued filibuster of advertising opportunities to use Doors songs to sell just about anything was ruining them financially and sequestering "the brand".

And so The Doors Unhinged, in essence, bears witness to the purported '60s philosophies and the lingering notion that they still exist or at least it wasn't all merely a fraudulent attempt to cash in.

The author, one of the most inventive percussionists of the rock era, took time out in early April to reflect on this painful and illuminating diary of the events that ensued.

You write so poignantly about this ugly battle between brothers-in-arms. I wonder if it was even more difficult to share your inner most fears and beliefs with the world.

It wasn't as difficult to write it down as going through it. (laughs)

The old phrase, time heals? Well, time does heal. Technically, it was hard, but I took years to do it. I worked real hard at trying to not to make it a legalese, blah-blah, boring, technical lawyer thing. So, I interspersed my emotions. I let the writing drift off when I was in the courtroom - I mean, I didn't do that when I was actually in the court room - but I wanted the reader to get inside my mind, so I could better tell the stories of sitting in with Carlos Santana or seeing Elvin Jones. I'm real pleased it's available for those that are interested.

It was pretty difficult as a fan of The Doors to read about how the lawyers for your friends and colleagues stooped to accusing you of being a communist or worse still, a terrorist. I've been covering politics for decades, and even I was appalled.

I know. It's funny, because in the beginning the fans, the really hardcore ones, thought I was destroying their favorite band. But now that they can finally read the whole journey, they will hopefully get the idea that I was trying to preserve the integrity of the original group. Now that this book is coming out a cloud is lifted from me. It's healing, even though it's a tough pill to swallow for Ray and Robbie. In the last chapter I say, "Hey, how can I not love you guys, we created this incredible thing together." Musically, they're my brothers forever. They just didn't see that The Doors got knocked off its hinges by their idea that they could play without Jim. And that's been proven wrong.

Your signature point in the book is Morrison's well-documented outburst against the selling-out of "Light My Fire" to Buick back in 1968. And an intriguing element of the unfolding story is in defining how a 27 year-old man, who stands for so much of the 60s' imagery, would come across today had he lived. Yet, Morrison's ideals are frozen in time. There was no maturing or being corrupted or compromising for Morrison. Yet, despite Krieger and Manzarek arguing in court that over time, as he aged, Jim would have evolved in his thinking about selling out The Doors' integrity for profit, you stood by the ghost of your friend, as if he were here today to speak for himself.

I'm very proud the first line of the book is "Fuck you!" Jim saying "Fuck you!" (laughs) If he were alive today would he okay using Doors songs to sell Cadillac?

I'm not unaware of the fact that times have changed and the music business, like all the creative businesses, is really difficult, and as I write in the book; if a new band wants to use their stuff to hawk some product to pay the rent, I get that. It's just that in our situation we've already done well and if a new band begins to do well maybe then they should revisit whether they should do commercials anymore, because, as Tom Waits wrote, "You've changed your lyrics to a jingle."

Two of my great heroes, lyrically and musically, Tom Waits and Pete Townshend are quoted in your book arguing both sides of the point. Waits is vehemently against having his music used purely for commerce while Townshend states emphatically that he can do what he wants with his songs and shouldn't feel guilty about it. And I can see both sides of it.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. Townshend's quote is funny; "I don't give a fuck if you fell in love with Shirley to my song, I'll do what I want with it." (laughs)

But Townshend gets to speak for himself, while Morrison could not. I liken it to arguing that if Martin Luther King had been alive today he might say, "I'd like to reconsider this whole civil rights thing." You have to go by what a person did and said during their time. That's all you've got.

That's it exactly, James. All you've got is what they did when they were alive. What else could you base your thoughts on?

You see, where Manzarek and Krieger lost me was when they, or their lawyers, used the 1969 Miami incident where Morrison was arrested for lewd behavior and public disturbance or whatever, to besmirch him. In all the books I've read on The Doors and interviews I'd heard or seen, all of you guys clearly denounced the charges against Morrison, especially for allegedly exposing himself on stage, which ostensibly finished The Doors as a touring act. Until this case, all the surviving Doors are on record as stating none of these things happened.

That's what's hysterical, really, because at the trial in Miami Robbie was asked, "Did Mr. Morrison simulate performing oral sex on you?" To which he said "No! Are you kidding? He gets down on his knees to look at my fingers! He's enamored with musicians since he can't play an instrument." So here are his lawyers implying that it was true, as if Ray and Robbie were never there!

This is where I was on board with your rather lofty goal of "honoring your ancestor". In essence, you stood by a lost member of the band, who could no longer defend his fourth voice in the collective, his equal vote to stop the band from selling out. It really is an honorable gesture to uphold the legacy and wishes of Morrison and saying, "Jim still gets a vote here." That is The Doors.

I agree. And since the trial, Jim's dad has passed, and his mom too, so now they're ancestors as well. We're standing on all their shoulders. It was so touching to me; you know, I had never met Jim's dad. I had met his mom, but I hadn't met his dad until this trial. And here I initiate this horrible struggle and this great gift of hanging with his dad comes along; how he turned the past around and supported his son's legacy even while we had written songs against the Viet Nam War as he was over there fighting it! So, what a great healing of the 60s' in a way.

What hit home for me as I was reading your account is vividly recalling when I was younger and wanting to be a writer and dabbling in poetry and all that stuff you do when you're trying to find your identity or your voice, how much An American Prayer was so influential and inspiring to me. I have many literary heroes and influences, and consider Jim Morrison as one. And I've had my arguments over the years with those who dismiss Morrison as a poser or a hack because of his affiliation as a pop star. There's a legitimacy factor that I've always embraced with Morrison and The Doors, so to read how you stood by that hit home for me. I found myself rooting you on as I read it.

Well, thanks. Yeah, we really enjoyed doing American Prayer. You know, Jim was really over the top in some of his lyrics and behavior, so people wrote him off.

Getting back to your trial and this battle to maintain the integrity of The Doors - now that this is all settled, and we'll let people decide by reading your book how it all comes out and what they believe was the right angle; what are your thoughts on the line drawn between art and commodity? Does it move from when you're struggling to put food on the plate to when you're a rock star? Is it tangible?

You know, I quote Lewis Hyde, who wrote a book called The Gift, which really nails it for me. He says there is a gift exchanged between the artist and the receiver and it doesn't matter if you're paying for an opera ticket or a concert ticket or whatever, it's still this gift. But if you change the work of art entirely into a commodity, you're going to lose the gift. I like that very much. It's kind of what I'm saying, whether it's a painting or music or whatever the hell it is, it's an expression of the artist in trying to share what it's like being human. There's a sacred something exchanged there. And, you know, if you make it be about a new deodorant I think you've lost the gift.

But I can also see the other point about creativity being your trade. I'm not sure how you feel about what Pink Floyd went through with Roger Waters or what KISS goes through when they tour with two new guys in the make-up of the original guys and selling it as KISS, and I've had Alice Cooper tell me in interviews that he created this character and if someone wanted to carry on as Alice Cooper after he was gone that would be all right with him. This is really about definitions; how The Doors are ultimately defined, and in this book you define it as a singular entity, almost sacred. There are some things that are not for sale.

Well, I'm so grateful for something Tom Waits said, and I put it on the back of the book; "John Densmore is not for sale and that's his gift to us." But, you know, Alice Cooper, that's his name, where this is The Doors, and that's not Jim's name. It reminds me of this moment when we were on stage and were introduced as "Jim Morrison and The Doors" and Jim dragged the promoter back out and made him re-introduce us as The Doors. So, behind closed doors - sorry about that - we were four equal parts. Even L.A. Woman was a good, strong album, and Jim was clearly an alcoholic by then. When we were alone, the four of us, the muse still blessed us. And so I feel okay. I feel the beginning of a healing with Ray and Robbie, because something bigger than us helped us make our music.

Ultimately, did you see those guys touring as the 21st Century Doors, and more or less promoting it as The Doors, as identity theft?

Yes. That's pretty good. I know I did say, "The Doors died in a bathtub in Paris in '71", but you know, Jim's such an icon that he lives on in everyone's mind. Of course, I was just trying to make it clear that The Doors were Jim, Ray, Robbie and John - John, Paul, George, Ringo - it's not Ray, Robbie, Ian (Astbury - The Cult, new singer), Stuart (Copeland - former Police drummer), Fred and Tom. The Stones without Mick? The Police without Sting? No, come on. The Doors were knocked off their hinges for a few years due to this idea, but they're back on their hinges now. Thank God.

I always say I'd trade all the shows I saw in my lifetime for one evening watching you guys ply your trade, because as I understand it, a Doors show was literally an organic experience, no matter how bad it got or how brilliant it got, no one could predict what the hell would happen. So, I ask you; someone who played that music and performed those shows; how did you feel when you came on stage with The Doors? As the lights went down and the crowd was cheering and you guys were about to crash into the first song; did you have that same feeling of, here we go, let's see what goes down now?

(laughs) It's funny. Unpredictability was a main ingredient. You know, Jim could be completely wild or quiet and it created a ritual or something like a séance. What's gonna happen tonight? It was sort of crazy, but also magical. A lot of the time it was magic, until his self destruction increased and then I was lobbying for us to stop playing live. And it took me a year to convince Ray and Robbie of this, because I missed the magic. It was so good in the beginning. It was, you know, goose bumps...pin-drop time. Usually we'd play "Light My Fire" and everybody would be on their feet dancing and then we'd play "The End" as an encore and people would file out...quietly. (chuckles) Like they were gonna take it home and chew on it.

Maybe my favorite piece of video of you guys, and it might have been in Europe, is The Doors playing live on a television show and doing "The End", which in and of itself is gutsy - here you are probably expected to do the hit, to play "Light My Fire" on a pop television show, and you're playing this eleven-minute opus with bizarre poetic references and Oedipal overtones and this is not a theater or a rock club. The studio lights are up and you can see the audience and these people are between awe and shock. That's pretty profound, man. And I think unique to The Doors.

(laughs) It reminds me of a gig in Mexico City. We were promised to play in the bull ring for the people who had just a few pesos in exchange for playing a ritzy supper club. And we went down there and there was some riot in the bull ring a few weeks before and they ended up cancelling us playing there. We were so depressed. So here we were playing for these people eating supper in a real ritzy club and we were playing "The End" and they were trying to cut their steaks... (laughs) ...with mouthfuls of food. (laughs)

That kind of story reminds me of how you really just loved the whole thing; not just being in The Doors, but, like I said before, the whole sacred thing about those four guys. In fact, you were the last person in the inner sanctum to speak with Morrison before he died. Could you take a minute and recount that conversation. Did you get an eerie feeling that maybe it might be the last time you spoke to Morrison?

Oh, boy. (sighs) Well, I could tell he was still drinking, so that was disturbing, but no...I didn't think it would be the last time I'd talk to him. But I appreciated his enthusiasm for hearing how well L.A. Woman was doing, because we produced it ourselves with Bruce Botnick, our longtime engineer in our rehearsal room, and we had more control. So, it was fun to do. And Jim said, "Oh, man, I'll come back. We'll make another one!"

Which is a cool story, because in most books I've read on The Doors or on Morrison, it always depicts him as wanting to shed The Doors and become a legitimate poet and leave all that rock god stuff behind. But when you tell it, it sounds like he still held his place in The Doors in high regard.

Yes.

Greil Marcus' new book, The Doors - Five Mean Years, argues for the relevance of The Doors today. I loved the story about when he was visiting his dad, who was in a hospital at the time a few years back, driving across the Bay Bridge from Oakland or Berkley to San Francisco and listening to several rock/pop radio stations for weeks on end - every day - and in that hour or so drive there and back almost inevitably with all the new stuff like Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake or whatever, there would be a Doors song and how more than any band from the past, The Doors still seemed to have a resonance among this generation, how the band transcended its time so well. It's not like you guys are stuck in that time. The Doors are still relevant. And this speaks to your battle to protect that, not just for nostalgic purposes, but for now, for today and for all time.

Well, I don't know why it's lasted so long. It must be the drumming. (laughs)

That segues into a final question I have for you: What do you hope people who didn't experience all this turmoil between you and Robbie and Ray and the court case and everything you describe take away from your book?

Well, at the risk of being on a soapbox and sounding like Mister PC, there's an underlying theme in this book...money. And as I quote Michael Mead, a mythologist friend of mine; "Currency comes from the word 'current', and it's supposed to flow like a river. So if the corporate leaders horde everything - the billionaires damn it all up - money becomes like fertilizer; when horded it stinks and when spread around things grow, I'm kind of arrogantly implying that my personal struggles with my band might be metaphoric for bigger issues. That make sense?

It does.

I guess I'm talking about integrity or whatever the hell.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

Lewis DeSimone: The Man in the Front Row

"Why did you feel compelled to write an AIDS death scene?" the man in the front row asked with a scowl, arms folded across his chest. "Nobody wants to read about that."

I had just finished a reading from my new novel, The Heart's History. This was supposed to be the fun part -- the Q&A, the writer's chance to see firsthand how his work affects readers. I had sailed through the easy questions, which inevitably come from the budding writers in the audience, hoping I'll share a secret that will foster their own success. Do you write every day? What time of day? Do you write in the nude? How did you manage to get published? Have you made enough millions to quit your day job? Trust me, I usually tell them: there are no secrets, nor are there any universal rules. Just that old saw about inspiration and perspiration: that always rings true. Oh, and as for the millions -- forget about it.

But this question was different. Instead of receiving the usual treatment -- the wide-eyed admiration so many people have for someone who's actually managed to complete a book -- I suddenly felt more like a guest in the hot seat on Jerry Springer. Not just because the man was deliberately provoking me, but because the question itself forced me to think beyond the sheltered world of literature. It shifted the conversation to the harder topic of what the novel was actually about, what it had to say about the real world.

The man was a few years older than I. He would have been in his prime when AIDS hit. He probably knew far more about it than I did -- I, who had seen fewer friends die but still knew enough pain to fill a book.

For the generation that lived through the darkest days of the epidemic, AIDS fatigue is understandably real -- and so, apparently, is AIDS novel fatigue. There's been a rash of them over the past couple of decades. For years, it seemed, no gay-themed novel appeared without at least touching on the subject, without forcing the reader once again to live through death.

Nobody wants to read about that.

Gay literature, like the world it depicts, has been breathing a sigh of relief for the past several years. As fewer people have died, so too have fewer fictional characters. We have more things on our minds these days, more issues for fiction -- and real life -- to explore.

That's as true of my work as anyone else's. AIDS exists on the margins of my other fiction, if it appears at all. Of the two HIV-positive characters in my first novel, Chemistry, one appears briefly in a single scene; the other is simply talked about, and just as briefly. My short stories are virtually devoid of any mention of AIDS. Only The Heart's History deals with it to any significant degree.

But silence on AIDS -- silence, which we once equated with death -- is precisely the theme of my book. This was not intended as an AIDS novel, but a novel about how our priorities as a community have shifted. In the 80s and most of the 90s, HIV was an immediate death sentence: it was our deepest fear, our greatest enemy. Now, if you believe the media and our political advocates, our greatest enemy is the National Organization for Marriage. I think we should count ourselves lucky.

So that's what I told him, the man in the front row with his arms defensively folded. "I felt it was important," I said, "to show that AIDS isn't over, that we still don't have a cure. I think that message has gotten lost recently, and it needs to be acknowledged."

He nodded, but his expression didn't change. He was unconvinced. Whatever noble aims I may have had were uninteresting to him. What he got from my book was a trip back in time, to experiences he had no interest in revisiting.

But his resistance was something I couldn't get out of my mind. For days afterward, I found myself thinking about him. Other readers had told me the novel had moved them, sometimes to tears. And they had meant it as a compliment.

No writer can please every reader, of course, but clearly I hadn't accounted for people like that man at the reading. And in the days that followed, I found myself rethinking who my audience really was. Perhaps, I thought, my novel is not for people with AIDS fatigue. Perhaps its ideal reader is from a slightly different demographic -- not people of my own generation or that of the testy man in the front row, but those a bit younger, those who haven't quite gotten the message because they haven't had to sit beside death beds or go into a what-if panic with every sore throat.

Like me, the central character of the book, Edward, came out in the 80s -- in the middle of the crisis. By contrast, his younger lover, Robert, came out several years later, when safer sex was firmly established and protease inhibitors were changing the face of the disease. In a key scene, Robert confronts a friend -- a man in his 20s, for whom AIDS is less a crisis than a fact of life. The friend evinces an indifference to HIV, a willingness to risk infection because of a misguided belief that AIDS is no longer fatal.

That's the person for whom I wrote this book.

The recent past has been remarkable for the gay community. We are serving openly in the military. We are legally marrying our true loves in nine states and more than a dozen countries. It's a great time to be gay, better than any previous time in history.

And we are still dying. And that story still needs to be told.

So does the story of the man in the front row. I imagine him standing on the front lines of the gay movement in the 70s, protesting for AIDS treatment in the 80s.

The irony is that among the many things about history that younger gays often don't understand is that the valiant efforts of people only a generation older are what paved the way for their own freedom, their own casual approach to their sexual orientation. Because others marched in the street, and because thousands died of a horrible disease that put our community in the spotlight, younger gays have the luxury to think that homosexuality is just another aspect of their lives rather than a defining characteristic. Because for the previous generation it was everything, they can now take it for granted.

So I'm grateful for the man in the front row, and for his brothers in arms. Strangely enough, he reminded me of Tom Brokaw's powerful book about the courage of the men and women who pulled this country through World War II. In the gay community, it is that man, and the ones who died and the ones who helped ease their pain -- including, quite pointedly, our lesbian sisters -- who may be our greatest generation.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

One Show Jon Stewart Won't Go On

Marc Maron has made no secret of his ongoing plea for Jon Stewart to come on his show, and on a recent appearance on HuffPost Live, the acclaimed "WTF" podcast host (and star of the upcoming "Maron" on IFC) confirmed that the "Daily Show" anchor has no plans to go on Maron's show anytime soon, due to their rocky history.

"There's some tension there that's decades old," Maron acknowledged to host Ricky Camilleri, referencing Maron and Stewart's past as rival up-and-coming comedians in New York City.

"I thought, 'I'm the guy who apologizes to people on my show,'" he continued. "Jon said, 'That's not going to happen. If you want to talk to me, maybe we can talk over coffee.'"

Maron, whose book "Attempting Normal" came out on Tuesday, also said Daniel Tosh and Albert Brooks are two potential guests who are not eager to appear on his podcast due to their desire for privacy.

Check out the clip above to see that segment of the interview on HuffPost Live, and click here to see the full 23-minute interview.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

Penny C. Sansevieri: Permission Based Publishing: The New York Publishing Model (and Why It Doesn't Work)

Some years back I knew this guy who used to work at Time Warner Publishing, back in the heyday of the publishing world when publishers were the center of the universe and everything else was, well, just everything else. He told me that there was this song called "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," which had a lot to do with how most people felt in publishing back then. They did, in fact, rule the world. Or at least the social and trends side of things. With books that shocked the country (remember the Madonna title?) and authors who would be with us for decades, they were trendsetters and did what they do very well. They did it with creativity, innovation and, most of all, control. Publishing has always been about the business of literature, not the business of controlling this literature. Though it has, simply because for the most part it was the only way you could gain access to literature. It was vetted and given the seal of approval by a publishing house. Then, and only then, did we call it a book. Now, however, things have changed drastically.

Times haven't just changed but the publishing world is virtually unrecognizable. Authors are finding success and building audiences without even having a book (think Wattpad). Self-publishing and eBooks have become a mainstay in the industry. The one thing that hasn't changed is a publisher's need to control. Even in an age where publishing is more about free expression and the freedom to express any thought you want using sites like Smashwords, Createspace, and others to develop content. Publishers are hanging onto the old guard way of doing this, now almost more than ever. The model they know: permission based publishing and that same way of thinking could be one of the biggest downfalls of the industry if someone doesn't shake up the model and offer them a new way of looking at an age-old market.

Bookish is a great example of this. Bookish took two years to launch and was started by Penguin Publishing as a portal to share books. The problem with this site is the restrictions. While it's a great idea in principle, the reason it will never hit the success of a Goodreads or a Library Thing is one element: control. Everything about Bookish is controlled by the publishing industry, there is limited freedom like you'd see on any other site that is reader-driven. When Amazon bought Goodreads and the collective question in the industry was, "Why didn't a publisher step in and do this?" the answer was simple: control. You can create guidelines and rules, but you can't control a site like Goodreads nor would you want to. Readers made this site what it is. They get to choose the books they want to add (gasp, even if they are self-published), while Bookish offers restrictive book listings that are subject to change/modification only by Penguin. Imagine if Goodreads had only been limited to focusing on traditionally published authors. I can hear the crickets now.

This is what I call Permission Based Publishing and it simply doesn't work anymore, yet publishers continue to hang onto it like the life-preserver it no longer is. Why do they do this? Do they want to fail? No, they don't. Like any industry they want to succeed, the problem is, it's all they know. Often we'll do eBook campaigns with authors and I find that when we do these, it's great to give away copies of the book for either one day or five days. When I push this idea to publishers you can't imagine how much they struggle with this idea. How can you control something if you give it away? Guess what? You can't and that's a good thing.

Here are some things, right off the bat that publishers need to work on:

DRM: Forget this. Seriously. The more you try and keep people from sharing the more they will share. I recall a quote from Michael Cader years ago when the music industry was waging the Napster battle and he said, "We should all hope to be Napstered." Amen to that.

Libraries: Please stop making it so hard for libraries to loan eBook content. Seriously. Keep in mind that if we continue to lose bookstores at the pace we are, libraries may be all you have left.

Free eBook promotion: There are enough studies out there that show the powerful effects of freebie eBook promotions and how they can help boost sales overall. Time and time again I find that publishers struggle with this. You don't want to use KDP? Fine. Find another way to do this, capture your own emails and send them the eBook, whatever you want to do.

What can publishers do to step away from this model and open the door to more talent? Why not let the market decide? In the end it's the reader who matters the most, right? Let readers decide what you should and shouldn't publish. I mean isn't that how some books have been discovered recently? I recall one author who just got picked up from Wattpad. Why aren't publishers doing this just generally? So, you have a book idea. Great! Now put it on Wattpad or any other similar site and let's see what resonates with the audience. "But what if someone steals my idea?" you might ask. Well, that's always possible though in my years of being in the publishing industry it's pretty rare.

Indie stores: this seems like a perfect partnership for publishers. What can publishing do with its massive resources to boost and help indie bookstores remain relevant and competitive? The question though is do they want to? I cited in another piece on bookstores (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/penny-c-sansevieri/bookstores_b_2975644.html) that publishers should help bookstores survive, perhaps a creative way to do that would be to dig into the resources these stores offer, like access to readers and new talent.

Develop new sales models: NYC publishing's meltdown over eBook pricing, insisting consumers should fork out more for digital versions than paperbacks in some cases -- was doomed to fail. This narrow focus also failed to recognize something bigger -- suddenly there was a new way to make money from books, by selling eBooks to a new audience of readers who use digital devices to read. For years, authors came to me with the argument that Amazon took too big of a cut from their book sales. They wanted to control the purchase and sell more books off of their own websites. Though the issue is different, the challenge is still the same: how do you control a purchase? How about offering something readers can't get anywhere else: A digital subscription service with an annual fee that gives you free access to content, sort of like the Amazon Prime model? Combine print and eBook sales -- perhaps a free eBook with a print purchase. Several studies have shown that digital readers still read and buy print books. There are so many ways to add value that in the end lead to more sales, more revenue. Or what about this idea: when I buy shows on Amazon I have the option of getting one episode or all of them. But if I get the season pass, I get all of the episodes at a discount. Publishers could offer something similar (I know many of them cringe at the idea of modeling Amazon but stay with me), what if they offered a "season pass" to their mystery collection, so any new mystery published would be delivered to your eReader at a discount and if they were really creative, they could sidestep the Amazon model altogether and pull readers to their site instead. Isn't this what publishers have wanted all along? To sidestep this mammoth e-Tailer and pull people into their site instead?

Look for your next bestseller: I was at a publishing event some years ago and I asked the head of a publishing house (which shall remain nameless) whether they monitored eBooks to find the gems. The response was "No, why would we?" This response was accompanied by a confused look of "this does not compute." While that model has changed, somewhat (yes, publishers are picking up self-publishing titles that are gaining momentum), there still isn't a solid plan in place to find these titles or rather, find the talent. Just like there are farm teams in sports, traditional publishing now has a big pool of talent to scout in the indie/self-publishing world. Go find the talent -- they're all over the web, using social media for promotion, posting content and books at sites like Wattpad and Smashwords. The deals we hear about have occurred long after an author's success self-publishing (which does give them leverage when negotiating a contract), but publishers could do a lot more to discover and develop new talent. This would mean that publishers would have to deign to look at sales figures from a variety of sources, including the oft-maligned Amazon.com.

Help midlist authors break out: Given how deep some publishers' lists are, what about helping midlist authors move up? Take your big name, bestselling authors and use them as the bait -- readers who buy those books -- digital or print versions -- you can offer a book for free (which I know send shivers through most of publishing) and bundle it with a bestseller. Offering a free or sale price book from another author in the same genre who is also published by the same company could really be a boost to exposure. Not only does this give a deserving author a chance, it's a plus for the publisher by exposing readers to more books they can buy and, back to the idea of publishers wanting to control the buy, this could be a great way to bring readers in.

For years publishers have insisted that what happened to the music industry won't happen to them. Yet when we see what's happening in publishing I fail to find an instance where publishers aren't subscribing to the same model music companies did. They want to hang onto the way things have always been done because there was a time when it worked very well for them. Perhaps many worry that if they give up their old model of permission based-everything, they won't have a place in the industry. This, in my opinion, is far from true. There is still (and I presume, always will be) a cache to being published by a Simon & Schuster and while their role in the future of publishing has changed, their value is still valid and important.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

Liz Neumark: Pollan-ated!

The man most responsible for causing us to examine what we put onto our plates and into our mouths with his blockbuster Omnivores Dilemma is at it again, this time with a book titled Cooked. My copy arrived last week. I love how he once again uncovers fundamental truths that have somehow gotten lost in our postmodern shuffle -- hidden-in-plain-sight, simple, logical truths. Just as he peeled back the layers on processed food and industrial farming, this time he engages in the ancient, timeless and indispensable ritual of cooking.

It is almost ironic that the most eloquent spokesman for the food policy movement was not as he might be imagined -- skilled in the kitchen, whipping up all sorts of healthful and delicious meals with confidence -- and more significantly -- with passion. Not the case, Pollan honestly states in the powerful opening to this new book: "the mildness of my interest in cooking surprises me, since my interest in every other link of the food chain had been so keen" (p. 2). Pollan discovers the magic of the cooking process on a personal level but clearly connects it to his search; "....for years I had been trying to determine... what is the most important thing an ordinary person can do to help reform the American food system, to make it healthier and more sustainable?" (p. 1). In this book, Pollan states that cooking is "one of the most interesting and worthwhile things we humans do," transforming our lives (p. 11). "I learned far more than I ever expected to about the nature of work, the meaning of health, about tradition and ritual self-reliance and community, the rhythms of everyday life, and the supreme satisfaction of producing something I previously could only have imagined consuming..." (p. 12).

In 2006 we established The Sylvia Center for the purpose of connecting a young and vulnerable population of children to a lifeline that could potentially help shape their lives for the better. We would teach them about cooking delicious, healthy food -- in season when possible -- in a fun and socially engaging environment. A brainstorming session early on created the mission tagline: "Inspiring children to eat well." Obesity and other diet-related diseases were on our mind, but we knew that to make change, we would have to involve our young students in a positive and socially engaging program.

We started at Katchkie Farm, where The Sylvia Center team carved out a one-acre children's garden in the heart of the farm. As children arrived at the farm, they would explore the wide, rainbow-shaped kid-friendly rows, nibbling greens, flowers, weeds and veggies they never imagined existed. They would plant and harvest before moving to the next activity -- chopping together and preparing a meal they would share as a community at the picnic tables adorned with field flowers.

Did we know for sure that if we connected these young eaters to food in a new and slightly radical way, that they might start to think differently about what they were eating? Yes and no -- but we believed that on that day, as they experienced a farm along with some vegetables for the first time, that we were "planting seeds."

And as the program expanded to NYC and we started working in various community centers within the New York City Housing Authority, the effect was equally powerful. There is unexpected joy in being able to transform a raw food product into something delicious. Cooking is a critical skill that grows with time and provides the ability to care for oneself or a family. It is independence from poor food choices and from the world of absolutely unhealthy processed food. It is a connection to great flavors and bridges the disconnect from remote celebrity chefs by making it real and attainable.

So, here we are, working for over seven years with the clear belief that our culinary-based program would positively influence food choices and health outcomes. As funders and potential donors looked at our work, their requests for metrics that connect the work to our stated outcome were amplified. Analysis is happening as we speak.

This is where Michael Pollan steps in. As Michelle Obama did with her White House Garden and Let's Move campaign, sometimes it takes someone of great stature to galvanize support for something that is in fact not complicated and even obvious. Plant a garden, engage in physical activity -- see how things can change. Cook a meal with children -- offer them wonderful fresh foods -- and see if they don't respond positively, refilling their plates.

Back to Michael Pollan -- "The shared meal is no small thing. It is a foundation of family life, the place where our children learn the art of conversation and acquire the habits of civilization" (p. 8 of Cooked). As a culture, we have lost our way to the kitchen, distracted by hard days at work and seduced by the myriad of options from fast food to alluring restaurants and easy frozen or prepared supermarket options. But when we find the joy, taste and beauty of cooking in the kitchen, something wonderful happens.

Thank you, Michael, for "Pollan-ating" our program. We take this as an affirmation that we are on the right path and are thrilled that we share the joy and benefits of cooking with you.

See you in the kitchen!

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

John Dear: Walter Sullivan, The Good Bishop

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that if our righteousness does not surpass that of the religious authorities, we will not enter the reign of God.

It's a shocking instruction. He seems to have learned early on that power corrupts, and not just politicians, but professional religious people, too. If professional religious authorities do not break out of the trappings of power, authority, money, and cultic privilege, if they do not embody the Beatitudes and struggle for justice and peace, they will not enter the reign of God. I think he means, not just in the next life, but here and now, in this life, where the reign of God is at hand.

We see this play out every where today, where our religious leaders go along with the culture of violence and war, and remain silent in the face of warmaking, nuclear weapons, poverty, and violence. They fear rocking the boat, so they do nothing, protect their money, stay close to their benefactors, accept whatever the military tells them, and reject the way of the cross. Or if they speak, they only denounce abortion, claiming to be pro-life, even though they actively support U.S. warmaking and nuclear weapons. In doing so, they come across to the faithful as radically pro-death. They remain clueless to the prophetic vocation which Jesus calls us all to live in the Sermon on the Mount.

The exceptions, of course, make the rule, and one great exception was my friend Walter Sullivan, bishop of Richmond, former president of Pax Christi USA, who died on December 11, 2012.

In recent years, he had been cooperating with writer Phyllis Theroux, and her wonderful new book, The Good Bishop: The Life of Walter F. Sullivan (Orbis Books, 262 pp, 2013), has just been published. The Good Bishop offers a rare portrait of an authentic religious leader, one who put the poor first, practiced the Sermon on the Mount, and tried to help us all follow the nonviolent Jesus. His story is inspiring in its humanity and a sign of hope for us to carry on our own Gospel journey.

For the many of us who were his friends, the title rings true. Walter Sullivan was a good man and a good bishop. Still, I find the title disturbing. One would presume that every bishop -- and every priest, minister, and cardinal -- were "good." Alas, that is not the case, certainly not the public perception of bishops these days. Most religious officials these days seem better suited to be corporate C.E.O.'s who spend their time with accountants, lawyers, and bankers. Most come across like executives for Goldman Sachs, or Enron, not as servants of the poor, or heralds of a world without war and nuclear weapons. The title says in effect -- Look! we found one "good" bishop! Of course, there are two or three others -- Hunthausen, Matthieson, and the great Tom Gumbleton. But these days, few people would call any bishop "good" and that is a tragedy. Nonetheless, it's inspiring to read the story of Walter Sullivan and learn all that he did.

As one friend remembers: Walter had no pretense. That's what made him so unusual: he was a bishop without any pretense.

I knew Walter Sullivan for decades, traveled extensively with him, and eventually moved to Richmond, Virginia in part to work with him. We served together on the Pax Christi National Council for years, and journeyed to El Salvador and Rome together. Everyone in the peace movement called him "Walter," which was a shock to the good people of Virginia.

In the mid-1990s, I served as executive director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for low income African American women and children, owned by the Diocese of Virginia. It was a great project, with 40 staff workers and a $2 million annual budget that we raised from scratch each year. Every Friday for two years, Walter took me out to lunch at the "Spaghetti Factory." We discussed the center, the diocese, the peace movement, the church and the world. He was a great mentor and friend.

But I learned so much more about him in Phyllis Theroux's new book. Unlike most C.E.O. bishops, Walter made a commitment right from the start to prisoners. He visited death row, said Mass regularly at jails, and corresponded with and befriended many prisoners over the decades. His action scandalized and inspired the public, but he didn't care. Walter had read the Gospel and decided to try and live Matthew 25. That's what made him a true servant-leader.

For twenty nine years, Walter served the diocese of Richmond very well. Throughout the years, he showed compassion for the poor and marginalized, embraced Protestant and Jewish believers, built housing for the elderly, and visited every parish. He took special care of the elderly, embraced gays, championed those sentenced to be killed by the state, journeyed to Haiti, Nicaragua and El Salvador on solidarity missions, and welcomed everyone in the diocese.

And he denounced war fiercely. At one event in New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral, he said simply, "One way to put the Gospel of Jesus today is to say, No Nukes. We are not allowed to have nuclear weapons." He received fierce opposition from the military in Virginia Beach and throughout his diocese, but he saw that as a chance to remind people that we're supposed to be followers of the nonviolent Jesus. He knew that the military and pro-war Catholics had never heard this Gospel message before, so he felt compassion for them.

Conservatives hated him and complained to Rome so much that eventually the Vatican investigated him and humiliated him. "I am a loyal son of the Church," Walter said. "It is my home. But I am not a company man."

I knew some of what he went through, but The Good Bishop presents the whole picture, and it's an inspiring story, a true Gospel story. He could only be misunderstood because Virginia never had a prophetic leader in its history. He was dismissed, hated, and denounced, but he kept going forward with his usual good cheer, befriending everyone he could, and trying to promote the Gospel as best he could.

"People cannot experience God as long as they condone violence, or tolerate injustices, or acquiesce when human dignity and human rights are denied, or put trust in military armaments, or remain unresponsive to the plight of the poor," Walter wrote. Notice his message: you will not experience God if you do these things. His focus was not on the pope, money, power, privilege, authority, or ownership; it was on God. That's the mark of one of those rare pastoral, post-Vatican II bishops, but more, the mark of any good shepherd. A good shepherd leads us to God.

Last month, I met a brand new bishop, ordained only a few months. "I have no idea what to do," he confided. "There is no instruction manual."

"No problem," I said, "Read The Good Bishop by Phyllis Theroux about Walter Sullivan. Try to be like him and you, too, will be a good bishop."

But I recommend the book not just for bishops and priests, but for all of us because in the end, Walter Sullivan shows us how to be good Christians in a bad time. He shows us how to live the Sermon on the Mount, points us back to God, and gives us hope for what we could be. What a beautiful gift. Thank you, Walter!

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

Self-Published Ebooks Dominate Bestseller List

Every week, Digital Book World compiles an ebooks bestseller list (here's their methodology). Starting today, we're featuring each week's top ten paid bestsellers. As the website points out, five of the books are self published.

The top ten for the week ending 4/28/13:



1 The Hit David Baldacci Hachette $9.19

2 Damaged H.M. Ward Self-published $0.99

3 The Bet Rachel Van Dyken Self-published $0.99

4 Whiskey Beach Nora Roberts Penguin $12.99

5 Twisted Perfection Abbi Glines Self-published $3.99

6 Real Katy Evans Self-published $3.99

7 The Great Gatsby F.Scott Fitzgerald Simon & Schuster $7.99

8 Alex Cross, Run James Patterson Hachette $7.49

9 Six Years Harlan Coben Penguin $12.99

10 Don't Say a Word Barbara Freethy Self-published $0.99

Read more at Digital Book World.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

David Galenson: Do Poets Peak Young? Don't Believe It

When in their careers are artists most creative? Since the publication of Harvey Lehman's Age and Achievement in 1953, psychologists have contended that the answer depends on the artist's domain, or genre. So for example Lehman concluded that "the golden decade for the writing of secular poetry occurs not later than the twenties." In 1993, Howard Gardner wrote that "lyric poetry is a domain where talent is discovered early, burns brightly, and then peters out at an early age. There are few exceptions to this meteoric pattern." In 1996, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi agreed: "The most creative lyric verse is believed to be that written by the young." In 2004, James Kaufman declared, "Poets peak young."

William Butler Yeats (1933). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The psychologists' analysis rests on the assumption that the creative life cycles of practitioners of a given discipline are homogeneous. Keith Sawyer stated this belief in 2006: "Every creative domain has its own inverted-U shape that tends to apply to all individuals working in that domain. Each domain has a typical peak age of productivity, the age at which the most significant innovation of a career is typically generated."

Elizabeth Bishop. Image courtesy of the Vassar College Archives, Poughkeepsie.

Do poets peak early? Apparent evidence that they do is provided by the striking list of poets who made major contributions in spite of dying young: Robert Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Rimbaud, Leopardi, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Hart Crane, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath. Nor does this exhaust the roll of poetic prodigies. T.S. Eliot published "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" at 23, and The Waste Land at 34. Ezra Pound published his most frequently anthologized poem at 30, and Richard Wilbur his at 34.

The writers named above are all among poetry's young geniuses. They were all conceptual innovators, whose poetry tended to be abstract, introspective, formal, based on imagination. But they are only part of the discipline. For poetry also has its old masters. These are experimental innovators, whose art tends to emphasize observation, the specific, and the concrete, expressing the writer's perception of reality using vernacular language.

Philip Larkin (1974). Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Experimental poets are typically late bloomers. Robert Frost published "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," his most anthologized poem, at the age of 48. William Carlos Williams published his two most anthologized poems at 40 and 59; Wallace Stevens his at 42 and 55; Robert Lowell his at 41 and 42. Elizabeth Bishop published the villanelle "One Art," her second most anthologized poem, at 65. Nor are these rare exceptions. Other modern experimental poets who were excellent late in their careers include Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, Marianne Moore, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Penn Warren, W.H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Joseph Brodsky. These are not a few exceptional cases: they are in fact a substantial proportion of the major figures in modern poetry.

Seamus Heaney (1996). Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The difference in the life cycles of conceptual and experimental poets is no mere numbers game, but stems from basic differences in the nature of their art. Conceptual poets are brash, iconoclastic, and often transgressive, and are generally at their best before they become constrained by established habits of thought. In contrast, the greatest achievements of experimental poets depend on deep knowledge of their subjects and subtle mastery of language and style. Robert Frost believed that a poem "begins in delight and ends in wisdom." He contended that poets need a kind of knowledge that cannot be gained solely in libraries, or acquired deliberately, but comprises "what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields." Randall Jarrell explained that Frost's greatest poems "come out of a knowledge of people that few poets have had, and they are written in a verse that was, sometimes with absolute mastery, the rhythms of actual speech." Frost wrote in his notebook, "I had rather be wise than artistic."

Marianne Moore (1948). Image courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Conceptual innovations are often formulated and introduced suddenly and completely, and consequently are often recognized immediately as novel and revolutionary. Thus William Carlos Williams reflected that T.S. Eliot's Waste Land "wiped out our world as if an atomic bomb had been dropped on it," and the critic A. Alvarez recalled that when Sylvia Plath first read "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" to him, he was shocked: "at first hearing, the things seemed to be not so much poetry as assault and battery." In contrast, experimental innovations generally lack drama, and appear quietly and gradually. As a result, experimentalists are often appreciated only by experts. Thus the poet James Merrill praised Elizabeth Bishop's understatement and unpretentiousness: "her whole oeuvre is on the scale of a human life; there is no oracular amplification."

Robert Lowell. Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC.

Experimental art is less likely that its conceptual counterpart to depend on sudden inspiration, and more likely to depend on extended reflection and revision. William Butler Yeats toiled for decades "to make my work convincing with a speech so natural and dramatic that the hearer would feel the presence of a man thinking and feeling." Seamus Heaney elaborated on the lessons of Yeats' extended experimental evolution: "What Yeats offers the practicing writer is an example of labor, perseverance. He is, indeed, the ideal example for a poet approaching middle age. He reminds you that revision and slogwork are what you have to undergo if you seek the satisfactions of finish...He proves that deliberation can be so intensified that it becomes synonymous with inspiration."

Stanley Kunitz. Image courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Wise, mature, and diffident old masters do not trumpet their own brilliance with the bravado of brash young geniuses, and the subtlety of their innovations often makes them less conspicuous than the bombshells of their conceptual peers. So perhaps it is not surprising that, as the poet Josephine Jacobsen observed, "in our general conception, old age is a period alien, if not fatal, to poetry." The simplicity of the idea is appealing. But scholars should be willing to sacrifice simplicity for accuracy. The truth is that all poets are not alike: the life cycle of creativity depends not on the domain, but on the approach of the individual. Jacobsen herself recognized that the poetry of Frost and Williams "reached its highest level when the men who produced it were able to speak from great reserves of experience." It is simply not true that the twenties is the golden decade of writing poetry, nor is it true that poets peak young. In fact, poetry has two very different life cycles of creativity: conceptual poets peak early, but experimental poets peak late. Understanding poetry - and creativity in general - depends on being able to comprehend this diversity among poets, as among practitioners of virtually every other intellectual activity.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

Kelly Kleiman: Rachel Shteir vs. Chicago: Performance vs. Reality

I was in Russia when a tourist from New York turned to me and said, "Whatever happened to Chicago?" To this mysterious question he added, "I kept thinking it was going to break through, but it never did." Nonplussed, I tried to think of a Chicago breakthrough. Eventually I must have sputtered something about Nobel laureates because he interrupted me dismissively. "Eds and meds," he said. "Every second-tier city has those." That concluded conversation between us -- for the rest of the trip.

And that's the problem with Rachel Shteir's article on the front page of last week's New York Times Book Review. Conversation ended the minute she turned a review of books about Chicago into a pan of the city itself. Oh, there were responses aplenty, but most were reflexively protective, the kind you'd expect from a mother charged with having an ugly baby. So we've had a week of "So's your old man" and "I'm rubber, you're glue" without anybody's communicating much of anything worthwhile.

Which is a shame, because Shteir's review was a gigantic missed opportunity to investigate the fact that "Chicago" is a performance. Chicagoans perform the city's epic nature, its street smarts, its unshockability. Most of all we perform its blue-collar roots even -- especially -- when we have none of our own. How could a professor of theater miss the fact that she's in the midst of a production as deft and complicated and self-referential as Brecht?

For underneath the swagger and braggadocio Shteir finds so grating is a grand group game of Not Too Big For Our Britches. Why does the highly-educated Barack Obama drop his g's when he's campaigning? Why do books about the city flaunt bad grammar (Don't Make No Waves, Don't Back No Losers)? Why do white-shoe lawyers order a pair of Italian beef sandwiches by asking for "two beeves"? Because they're trying to fit into a town that prides itself on distrusting the wealthy and the well-spoken. They know that around here there's a choice: deprecate yourself or risk having someone else do it for you.

Thus Chicagoans are constantly and consciously "representing," in the street sense of the term: flashing local knowledge, enacting local stereotypes, even annoying outsiders by insisting on the importance of locality as background. It may be a background fictional and poetic, but that doesn't make it any less real.

Many of these feats of performance are improvisational, as one would expect in The Second City. But we've also had our lines written for us by the likes of James T. Farrell, who in his Studs Lonigan trilogy created the literary trope of the hapless Chicago roughneck. Farrell's Studs plans to be a big deal and pretends to be a big deal, and manages to continue thinking he's a big deal as long as he's within four blocks of his parents' house. Too ambitious for his narrow world, Studs finds himself too small to manage the wider city when he encounters it.

That notion -- that the city will cut you down to size -- is the theme of Chicago literature, recurring in Sandberg, in Dreiser, in Algren, in Bellow, in Mamet-and in Sara Paretsky, to name just one of the women whose literary presence Shteir overlooks. If the professor fails to grasp the difference between portraying parochialism and embodying it, of course she'd find Chicago a text too difficult to read.

It's not a text requiring uncritical adoration; quite the contrary. Who could criticize anything more pointedly and savagely than Algren in Chicago: City on the Make? Or portray it as cruder than Bellow's Augie March?

I am an American, Chicago born -- Chicago, that somber city -- and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.

No one claims Chicago is flawless; no one has to. The point is that Chicago is flawed out loud, and we have the literature to prove it. The sound of that literature is so distinctive that when Norman Mailer reproduced it as an aria in the opening paragraphs of his Siege of Chicago he could be confident everyone would get the allusion. Perhaps supertitles would help Shteir grasp the opera taking place right in front of her.

Again, how could a scholar of drama fail to recognize that reporters writing about Chicago are most likely performing their own private versions of The Front Page? I haven't read the books by Neil Steinberg or Jeff Coen and John Chase, but the quotes Shteir offers show the authors' debt to Hecht and MacArthur, whose bitter-comic portrayal of corruption and racism congratulated uneducated newspapermen on seeing through the pretensions of the powerful and well-to-do. If contemporary journalists exhibit a desire to follow in the footsteps of those valorized bums, who can blame them?

As for provincialism, no city is free of it. (Where, after all, was the subject of Steinberg's famous cartoon?) But I do understand Shteir's unhappiness at encountering the Chicago version thereof.

I lived in Boston for a year after college, during which time I was so homesick for Chicago that nothing I experienced was even tolerable, much less enjoyable. The more people tried to sell me on the place, the more I hated it. Boston has great colleges? The U of C is better. Boston has great subways? Except for the pickpockets. Boston has great ice cream? Ice cream? I left behind me in Chicago everything I love and you're talking to me about ice cream?

So I understand what it feels like to be in exile. And all I can say is: Poor Rachel.

via Books on HuffingtonPost.com

PHOTOS: How To Make Mother's Day Extremely Awkward

Bob Sullivan: What is the Plateau Effect?

After the Great Recession, there is the Great Stuckness.

Sure, the unemployment rate seems under control, it's been a while since a major bank or brokerage went belly up, the Dow is soaring, and even the housing market is showing signs of life. But you probably don't feel like things are getting better.

Why? Maybe you're a young couple with a small child living in a one-bedroom apartment in New York City, or San Francisco. Where is your next move? Good luck affording a house in the city. Maybe you have a job with a passable salary, but you know you will never get a promotion because the boss is never leaving -- who leaves a paying job these days? That probably makes you one of the 55 percent of Americans who are unsatisfied at work. Or maybe you have a job offer in another city, but you simply can't take it because you are one of the 10 million American homeowners with a mortgage that's under water, and you could never sell your home.

In other words, you are stuck. Treading water, perhaps, but not going anywhere. Working harder and harder and getting less for the effort.

That's okay, it's only natural, we argue in our new book, The Plateau Effect . In fact, getting stuck is a force of nature as real as gravity. And the good news is that you can overcome these plateaus.

When we set out to write about The Plateau Effect several years ago, The Great Recession was the farthest thing from our mind. Though our book is full or tips and tricks that help people break out of bad financial habits, thanks to Bob's role as consumer advocate for NBC News, The Plateau Effect is much bigger than money, or economics.

Plateaus occur naturally, when we learn to play piano, when we try to lose weight or gain muscle, when we fall in love, heck, even when we fall to the ground (physicists call that 'terminal velocity'). In everything we do, there is success followed by stuckness. Beginners luck, followed by sophomore slump.

Why is this? There are scores of reasons, but here's one: Our bodies are biologically wired to become numb to things. The overwhelming smell of garlic, or of a boy's locker room, disappears with magical quickness if stand still for a few moments thanks to a process called acclimation. As both predators and preys, it's best that our noses notice changes in the environment, so we are wired to quickly ignore that which is constant. And so, like our sense of smell, we grow numb to everything around us -- our spouse, our customers, our Spanish teacher.

All these responses trace the shape of the front half of a bell-curve, a shape we saw hundreds of times in high school math. When you feel most stuck in life, you should take comfort in this graph, because it tells you that you aren't doing anything wrong.

The advice you usually receive at this crucial moment is: "Just try harder. Just Do More." But those who understand The Plateau Effect know this is often the worst advice you can give or take. In fact, to twist a popular phrase, often the best advice simply, "Just DON'T Do it."

In The Plateau Effect, we feature eight varieties of mistakes people make when they feel stuck, and the antidote for each. For example: there are great efforts under way around the planet to master the element of time, to discover the precise minute when it is best for you to exercise, or to eat dinner, or to memorize those next 10 Arabic phrases. This Quantified Self movement teaches precisely that you can achieve far greater results with far less effort if you simply master your sense of timing.

Likewise, one antidote to numbness is attention, perhaps the most scarce element in the world, and growing more scarce all the time. Another is what we call a "splash of diversity." Professional sniffers use coffee beans to shock their olfactory nerves out of their plateau-induced daze. What can be your shock at work, with your husband or wife, with your music lessons?

The law of The Plateau Effect works like this: In every success, the seeds of failure are sown. Everything works, until it doesn't work. Every training method, even political idea, every passion eventually runs its course. We are terrible at changing course, however. How many times have you heard a flailing colleague insist, "But this worked before!"

Being stuck is a dreadful feeling, as is being part of something else that is stuck: a company that is neither growing, nor shrinking, but instead slowly dying; our political system, with its violent lurches back and forth that collectively produce nothing but sound and fury; our country, no longer the world's great power -- just look at our subway systems or bridges -- but not ready to give up the title, either.

Mastering The Plateau Effect will bring you hope in all these realms. You don't have to be stuck by your entrenched boss, or in a loveless marriage, or 10 pounds heavier than you want to be. You simply have to learn the secrets The Plateau Effect has waiting for you.

Bob Sullivan and Herbert Thompson are the authors of The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success. With more than 40 years of experience between them researching, writing, and analyzing systems and human nature, their new book helps you bust through the plateaus in your own life.

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Janet Tavakoli: Should God Be Indicted?

My recently published thriller, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits , is a tale of intrigue about Jesuits who blackmail the pope with secret documents, and force him to cede power to them to clean up financial and sexual corruption in the Catholic Church.

A couple of readers expressed outrage over questions raised by Helena, a married Italian mother. In a conversation with a Jesuit priest, she questioned the story of the Immaculate Conception, specifically the choice of an underage inexperienced girl. This was only a few paragraphs in my novel, but apparently it shook them up.

Early Myths

The story of a deity impregnating women and producing special offspring isn't a new one. The Greeks had myriad myths in which Zeus mated with mortal women who produced immortal children. In those myths, the women were usually married--but blameless of adultery through some twist in the story.

One of the most famous myths is of Queen Alcmene. Zeus disguises himself as her absent husband, and the product of their union is Hercules, a demigod with superhuman strength. Upon Alcmene's death, Hermes, a god with a winged helmet and winged sandals, carries her body up to a special resting place for heroes, the Elysian Fields.



Impregnating an Underage Girl

In the story of the Immaculate Conception, Mary is around thirteen or fourteen years old. At least that is how it was taught to me in the Catholic schools I attended before I attended university. A winged angel announces Mary's pregnancy to her, and says she will bear a son called Jesus. Joseph marries Mary, and accepts that she is blameless of adultery. At the end of Mary's life, she is assumed (brought up) into heaven.

In the United States, girls of that age cannot legally marry. If a girl that age became pregnant, there would be an investigation into the circumstances. Even if the girl remained a virgin and the insemination were artificial, there would still be an investigation.

An all-seeing and all-knowing God might have done some advance planning for the day when humans would realize that the impregnation of an immature body and a not-fully-developed mind is not a wise idea. Mary could either have been born earlier or impregnated later.

We don't live in the Middle East where marriage of 13 year olds is legal. (In Iran it was legal at the age of nine for a while). Even if it were customary two thousand years ago, even if it is customary in some countries today, it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it a good idea.

Laws in the United States are designed to protect young girls. When these laws are broken, we try to hold someone accountable. If God were hauled into a police station, there'd be some explaining to do.

The Old Man and the Virgin

Catholics usually refer to God the Father, and depict him as an older white-haired man. The church hierarchy from the pope, cardinals, bishops, archbishops, monsignors, and priests are all men. They generally controlled the purse strings that paid male artists to create images of God.

But who says God is male or that God has a gender at all? Is it any wonder that some Catholic women sport T-shirts that say: "When God created man, she was only joking?"



More Questions

One can deflect questions about Mary's story by claiming it is one of the "mysteries" of faith. But my fictional character Helena isn't alone among Catholic women who say that it's no mystery is that women don't have a greater role in the administration Catholic Church. Many still ask why that cannot change in future.

See also: "Pope Francis I: Well-Timed Sex and Mafia Scandals," Huffington Post, March 19, 2013 and additional commentary related to this post at my author's website: "God and Mary: Illegal in the USA."

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Cuomo Fuels 2016 Speculation With Book Deal

NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo, the popular governor and a possible presidential contender in 2016, has a book deal.

HarperCollins told The Associated Press on Monday that Cuomo will write "a full and frank account" about his private life and the "profound moments" of his first term in office, including signing gay-marriage legislation. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Cuomo, a Democrat who hasn't declared his plans for 2016, was represented by a man with much experience in handling presidents and presidential contenders, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, whose clients include President Barack Obama and another possible 2016 candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Cuomo book is scheduled for next year, when Clinton also has a book expected.

Earlier Monday, Cuomo dismissed reports that he would not seek the presidency should Clinton run, saying that he was focused on being governor.

Cuomo, 55, was secretary of Housing and Urban Development during President Bill Clinton's administration and served four years as New York's attorney general before being elected governor in 2010. He has signed legislation allowing gay couples to marry in the state, helped secure financial aid for victims of Superstorm Sandy and signed tough gun control legislation into law after the deadly Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting.

In the book, Cuomo will write about being the father to three girls, his role in establishing housing for the homeless and the legacy of his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo.

Monday's announcement did not mention Cuomo's marriage to Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and their bitter divorce in 2005. The publisher declined to comment on whether Cuomo would write about Kennedy, the mother of his children.

Cuomo now lives with Food Network star Sandra Lee.

___

AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

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John-Paul Flintoff: How To Change The World

If you had the chance, would you change the world? Of course you would! I didn't say "save" it, I said change it. And we all want to do that - either by ending something that distresses us, or by realizing our dreams of something better.

And the great news is that we are changing things already. Because, at any given moment, you are doing this, instead of that. You are voting in the perpetual, rolling election of The Way Things Should Be.

Don't believe me? Well, imagine a powerful king. What makes him powerful? It's not the big crown, or the golden throne. It's the people around him, flat on their faces. If they got up and turned their backs to do something different, the same king, without doing anything different, would no longer be powerful. In other words, power is given by the people over whom it's exercised. That king is a great metaphor for the status quo. If we don't like the way things are, we can get up of our faces and change them.

But how?

Researching my book How To Change The World , I was thrilled to discover the work of the Boston-based political scientist Gene Sharp. He's spent decades studying the amazing effectiveness of non-violent political action, throughout history and around the world, and drawn up a list of precisely 198 ways to make change.

Sharp is one of America's great unsung heroes: his writings underpinned the revolutions in Eastern Europe, and the Arab Spring, and they have relevance to any situation where people want change.

Broadly speaking, Sharp's 198 actions divide into three types: drawing attention to an issue, refusing to have anything to do with the thing you object to, and creating a better alternative.

Each type can be easy or difficult, depending on circumstances. To take the first category: you could easily draw attention to an issue by "liking" something on Facebook. Or you could risk your life, as the White Rose Group did in Nazi Germany, by printing and circulating papers calling for resistance.

In the second category: you could spark a bus boycott that will lead to desegregation, as Rosa Parks did, or you could just stop using sarcasm at work, thereby helping others to stop too. (Styles of interaction are contagious.)

As for creating a better alternative - well that can be big or small too. But I'm not going to say what you could do, because deep down, I suspect that you know already what needs your attention.

Changing the world doesn't have to mean changing the whole world. Just change your world. That's what all the great change makers did, to begin with. If others like what you're doing, you can be sure they will start to follow.

John-Paul Flintoff is the author of (most recently) How To Change The World. (His TED talk on the subject can be seen here)

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Tom Engelhardt: Storyteller for the Planet: Playing 'the Beautiful Game' on the Page

[A bow to Eduardo Galeano on the publication of his new book Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. Excerpts from the book can be read by clicking here.]

As a teenager, you dreamed of being a writer and I imagine you dream of it still. When young, you were a cartoonist and, ever since, you've noted the exaggeration in our world. You were the editor-in-chief of a newspaper and, with the skills you honed, you've never stopped editing our history -- from our first myths to late last night. You were imprisoned and it left you with an understanding of how we've imprisoned this planet and its inhabitants. You went into exile and so grasp the way many in this uprooted world of ours never feel, or are allowed to feel, at home.

You've traveled this planet so widely that, as a friend of yours once told you, "If it's true what they say about the road being made by walking, you must be the commissioner of public works." And on those travels, you've discovered that boundaries between states (and states of mind) are not to be trusted, so as a writer you've never felt cowed by categories or hesitated to merge journalism, history, scholarship, and the thrilling feel of fiction, of recreating other worlds so intensely that we seem to inhabit them ourselves.

And none of this would have happened if your youthful dream -- to be a soccer player -- had come true. Instead, you've played "the beautiful game" on the page. You've even explained our unjust, unequal world by noting the only place where North and South meet on "an equal footing" -- a soccer field at the mouth of the Amazon River that the Equator cuts right through, "so each team plays one half in the South and the other half in the North."

You're so well known in Latin America that, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met President Barack Obama, the only gift he chose to give him was a copy your early book Open Veins of Latin America, whose subtitle explains why it remains so relevant 42 years after its publication: "five centuries of the pillage of a continent."

Your work has been translated into 28 languages, which is undoubtedly part of the reason you mourn the loss of words on this planet. You have a way of finding people. Your first English translator, Cedric Belfrage, was a former British journalist who covered the silent movies in Hollywood for the Beaverbrook press, helped found the left-wing National Guardian in the U.S., was deported in the McCarthy period, and ended up in Mexico. You seem to have known everyone who was anyone, for better and sometimes worse, over the last several thousand years, and many who could have been someone if their circumstances and the powers-that-be hadn't made that impossible. You've taken us with you to visit Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as she first enters a convent in "New Spain," studies "the things God created" that were forbidden to women, is set upon by the Inquisition, forced to renounce literature, and "chooses silence, or accepts it, and so America loses its best poet."

You've been with Ben Franklin as he sends up a kite and discovers "that heavenly fires and thunders express not the wrath of God but electricity in the atmosphere," while his sister Jane "resembling him in talent and strength of will," has a child every two years and toils raising those that live, forgotten by history, but not by you. You've been with Joseph Stalin's son Yakov, after his suicide attempt, when his father standing at his hospital bedside tells him, "You can't even get that right."

You somehow take our embattled world and tell its many stories in ways no one else can. And perhaps because people sense the storyteller in you, they regularly -- I've seen this myself -- come up to you and spill their guts. So one more volume from you, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History , a daily prayer book for our moment, is cause for elation. We should celebrate you for stealing the fire of the gods, like the Cakchiquels, descended from the Mayas, who reputedly hid it "in their mountain caves," or in your case, in your books which, from Open Veins to Children of the Days, burn ever bright.

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Greg Mitchell: Hollywood Bomb: The Unmaking of 'The Most Important Movie Ever Made'

One of the great tales of Hollywood "censorship" remains little known today, more than 67 years after it transpired. And who was right at the center of it? None other than President Harry S. Truman. He even got rid of the actor playing him in the MGM movie. For good measure, protests by Eleanor Roosevelt led to the firing of the famed actor -- Lionel Barrymore -- portraying her late husband.

The 1947 MGM film The Beginning or the End deserves special review, however, as the film emerged, after many revisions, as a Hollywood version of America's official nuclear narrative: The bomb was absolutely necessary to end the war and save American lives, and we needed to build new and bigger weapons to protect us from the Soviets. And so the nuclear arms race began.

My fascination with the making and unmaking of the MGM film took me to the Truman Library, where I was the first to consult key documents. The story of the derailing of the movie, Truman and why it was important is told in my new book, just out this week, Hollywood Bomb: Harry S. Truman and the Unmaking of 'The Most Important Movie' Ever Made.

Several weeks after the Hiroshima attack, Sam Marx, a producer at MGM, received a call from agent Tony Owen, who said his wife, actress Donna Reed, had received some fascinating letters from her high school chemistry teacher, Dr. Edward Tomkins -- who was now at the Oak Ridge nuclear site. Tomkins expressed surprise that Hollywood did not already have an atomic bomb feature in the works, and wondered if the film industry wanted to warn the people of the world about the coming dangers of a nuclear arms race.

Soon, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer gave the film a go, calling it "the most important story" he would ever film. President Truman provided the title himself. Marx and others from MGM met with the atomic scientists at Oak Ridge and elsewhere.

Early scripts, I discovered, raised doubts about the Hiroshima decision and portrayed the effects of the atomic bombing in a way that would have shocked many viewers, with Hiroshima pictured as ghostlike ruins and a baby with a burned face. The overall political message was alarmist and aligned with pro-disarmament scientists: It would have been better to lose half a million American lives "than release atomic energy in the world."

Then something happened, and the sensibility of The Beginning or the End shifted radically. The decision to use the bomb, in revised scripts, was viewed as justifiable, even admirable. Now, after the bombings, no victims appeared, just a burning landscape observed from the air. Amazingly, General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, had secured the right of script approval -- along with a hefty $10,000 fee -- and played a vital part in reshaping the film. (See the trailer here.)

MGM hired Norman Taurog to direct the film and Hume Cronyn to star as Robert Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand worked on another script for a rival studio.

Nearly all of the scientists impersonated in the film signed releases, even Albert Einstein, but unlike Groves and President Truman, were not given script approval. Oppenheimer visited the set after being assured that his character, the film's narrator, would display "humility" and "a love of mankind." The Hollywoodization of the bomb had begun.

Even in minor details, the revised script now justified the bombing. General Groves made light of nuclear fallout. The B-29s flying over Hiroshima were pelted with heavy flak, a fabrication that makes the attack more courageous.. One scene depicted fictional German scientists visiting a (fabricated) Japanese nuclear facility in -- Hiroshima!

Yet it was in the script's central melodrama that the true message of the film was conveyed. Matt Cochran, a young scientist arming the bomb, prevents a chain reaction from blowing up 40,000 people on a Pacific island -- and thereby exposes himself to a fatal dose of radiation. But just before he dies, Matt concludes that "God has not shown us a new way to destroy ourselves. Atomic energy is the hand he has extended to lift us from the ruins of war and lighten the burdens of peace."

When former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt learned that filming had begun, and conservative Lionel Barrymore -- who had campaigned against her husband in 1944 -- was playing FDR she protested loudly, and Barrymore got the boot.

After screening the finished, watered-down, film, famed columnist Walter Lippmann said he still found one scene "shocking." President Truman felt uncomfortable with it as well. It pictured Truman making the decision to use the bomb, and the president and his aides objected to his deciding, after only a brief reflection, that the United States would use the weapon against Japan because "I think more of o

Following protests from the White House, the MGM screenwriter James K. McGuinness deleted the offending scene and wrote a new one. In the revised scene, Truman revealed that the United States would drop leaflets warning the populace of "what is coming" as a means to "save lives." (this did not happen). He said there was a "consensus" that dropping the bomb would shorten the war by a approximately a year (there was no such thing) and he predicted that a "year less of war will mean life for...from 300,000 to half a million of America's finest youth" (a highly inflated figure).

And he advised that the targets had been picked for their prime military value, rather than telling the truth: they were selected because they had not been bombed previously and so would demonstrate the pure power of this new weapon. In any case, the aiming points for release of the bombs would be the center of the cities, not over any military bases. The new scene had Truman claiming he had spent "sleepless nights" making the decision. But in real life he proudly insisted he had never lost any sleep over it.

Still, the Truman White House demanded further changes. Among them, deleting a reference to morally concerned scientists who favored demonstrating the bomb for Japanese leaders in a remote area before dropping it on a city. Also, the claim of shortening the war by "approximately" a year must be changed to "at least" a year. At the same time, the United States was suppressing film footage of the shocking results of the bombing (see some of the footage here).

Truman even wrote a letter to the actor who had portrayed him in the original scene, complaining that he made it seem like the president had made a "snap judgment" in deciding to use the bomb. The offending scene was rewritten -- and the actor, Roman Bohnen would write a sarcastic letter to Truman, informing him that people would be debating the decision to drop the bomb for 100 years "and posterity is quite apt to be a little rough." He suggested that Truman should play himself in the movie. Truman, who normally ignored critical letters, took the trouble to reply and defend the atomic bomb decision, revealing, "I have no qualms about it whatever." Soon Bohnen was replaced by another actor -- on orders from the White House?

The Beginning or the End, which billed itself as "basically a true story," opened across the country in March 1947 to mixed reviews (that's a publicity still, above left). Time laughed at the film's "cheery imbecility," but Variety praised its "aura of authenticity and special historical significance." Bosley Crowther, the New York Times critic, also backed the film, calling it a "creditable" re-enactment. He even hailed how it handled the moral issues in portraying the "necessary evil" of the atomic attacks. Harrison Brown, who had worked on the bomb, exposed some of the film's factual errors in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He called the showering of warning leaflets over Hiroshima the "most horrible falsification of history."

The MGM movie was seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans. Because of its quasi-documentary form, its depiction of history was probably accepted by most viewers. But famed physicist Leo Szilard, after attending a screening, summed it up this way: "If our sin as scientists was to make and use the bomb, then our punishment was to watch The Beginning or the End."



Greg Mitchell's Hollywood Bomb was just published this week as an e-book. His previous books include Atomic Cover-up and, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America.

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