For the first time, Thursday's debate revealed the extent of Bush's weakness. (This shouldn't be surprising; it's easy to forget in the wake of 9/11, but the man wasn't popular enough to win straight up in 2000.) Since the towers fell, pumping up Bush has been considered a handy substitute for authentic patriotism. But he's never been assured of winning reelection, because he's simply not that good at convincing people who don't already agree with him that he's right. His only defense has been "don't change horses in midstream"; last night, it was clear that this horse is drowning!
In the words of that great political thinker Michael Douglas, "The Presidency is the greatest home-field advantage in the world." That didn't help Bush Thursday. Incumbency didn't help him; being a wartime President didn't help him; having a taller podium didn't help him; talking about foreign policy didn't help him. With all these advantages, a reasonable candidate would've steamrolled John Kerry. Not only did Bush not win, he actually LOST. This is the biggest debate debacle since Reagan took Carter out behind the woodshed in 1980. Anybody who tells you different is sweating and spinning.
Don't get distracted by the horserace that the media will use to keep selling ads and making money. President Bush's performance Thursday showed more than ever why he needs to go. This is not a partisan issue, or even a question of style--the debate demonstrated that Mr. Kerry is simply more qualified for the job, and more worthy of our trust.
This morning, The New York Times says that Bush is attacking John Kerry on Iraq; he can attack all his likes, but the truth is, there's only one person responsible for the continuing bloodshed over there, and it isn't John Kerry. Could Kerry still lose? Sure--but only if we let him, by not showing up to vote.
Barry Trotter (Book 1)
The Hogwash School for Wizards was the most famous school in the wizarding world, and Barry Trotter was its most famous student. His mere presence made sure that every year twenty candidates applied for every open spot, no matter how rapacious Hogwash's tuition became. As a result, Barry and the school had come to an unspoken agreement: regardless of his grades, Barry could remain at Hogwash for as long as he wished. He had just begun his eleventh year...Freshman
Sleepy with boredom and gassy from lunch, Hart Fox sat in the hard plastic chair outside his dean's office. A kid walked in the door, pink detention slip in hand, bobbing his head a little so that the purple spikes of his mohawk didn't get bent on the transom. He slumped down next to Hart. Hart nodded--he remembered tis joker from sophomore American History, constantly arguing in favor of anarcho-syndicalism. Was his name Henry?...Sophomore
Arcing lazily through the air, the Frisbee smacked against the window. “Ooo-oo!” a chiseled and shirtless boy teased as it wobbleplummeted to the ground. “Sarah's in troub-le!”The beauty-boy was righter than he knew: Of all the windows on campus to hit, this one was the worst. It belonged to Stutts’ Professor of Clandestine Affairs, Glenbard North, who had destroyed more students than there were blades of grass on the freshly resodded Old Quad below...Coming Soon!
All you really gotta know is, I'm writing new things constantly and the more I write, the better my books get. So if you've read my earlier work--and millions of you have--we should keep in touch. This fall, at least one and maybe two new books will be available: a Dickens parody AND a comic mystery loosely based on The Beatles. Drop me an email at mikesnewbooks[at]gmail[dot]com, and I'll be sure to let you know release dates, special deals, etc.Friday, October 1, 2004
Something funny
Spider-Man reviews crayons. I quit halfway through, but funny for a while. Whaddaya expect from the internet--and it's free, too.
Me on editing and humor, in case you care
This, from an email to a friend of mine in the publishing business:
"Here's my general feeling on editing and humorous prose: when in doubt, don't. Robert Gottlieb, the editor of Catch-22, rejected A Confederacy of Dunces; many times since, even after Dunces had won the Pulitzer Prize, Gottlieb has reiterated that he'd reject it again. That's insane--and that's Robert Gottlieb, probably the greatest editor of his generation, with the kind of credentials editing humorous novels that no other editor can match. Experience has taught me that the best way to learn how to edit humor is to write an incredible mass of it yourself. That's the only way to develop enough sensitivity to the proper things. Thurber's fights with Gus Lobrano were legendary. Perelman fought, too. Benchley's stuff was, I suspect, uneditable--it's too light. Editors are constantly trying to give humor more weight--turn it into a form of journalism or essay or in general make it like some other type of writing that they can understand better, but this is a real mistake, because the first thing to die is the writer's voice, which is the single biggest factor in whether a piece is funny or not. I'm an obsessive about this, and I couldn't tell a Henry Alford piece from a Bruce McCall piece from a Hart Seeley piece, just by reading it. This isn't their fault--their pieces have to go through the editorial sausage grinder--but it has, and probably will, keep them from ever being considered great humorists. Out of the people working now, I'd trust Dan Menaker at Random the most, because he spent so many years editing casuals at The New Yorker, but I'd also be wary of him with something like the college book, precisely because it's as different in audience and intent from a NYer casual as chocolate cake is from cherry pie.
When it comes to humor, most editors must be viewed as simply particularly close readers--a humorist can't let the editor get too empowered with a funny manuscript, as much as that editor is used to being empowered, because humor is in some sense the imprint of the writer's ego hidden by craft. The better hidden it is, the funnier the book is, but the better hidden it is, the greater the chances that an editor--regardless of background or skill--won't really understand how it works or doesn't work. Often times, the humorist doesn't really understand him/herself. Humor is some weird mix of the personality of the writer, and a painfully learned ability to predict the psychology of an absolute stranger--the reader. It's a bizarre and difficult transaction.
If a pre-publication reader sees a structural or logical flaw, I want to know. If there's confusion, I want to hear about it. Heck, I even want to hear which jokes they liked--all feedback is useful when's in the proper context. But (the inevitable but), one of the hardest things about doing what I do is that nobody else I know of is really trying it--there are loads of fundamentally serious novels with flashes of comedy, but very few fundamentally comic novels with flashes of seriousness. I suspect that's because if you have the chops to be funny, why not make a boatload of money writing things that are a lot less time-consuming and financially risky than a novel? I'd write sitcoms too, if I could--but I can't, so I write prose instead. That's apparently pretty unique, and while it does give me a lot of room to manuever, it also makes it less likely I'll find editors who can really help. Any novel that's the least bit pointed or ironic is christened "a satirical romp" or "a comic tour-de-force," but when you put them up against The Daily Show, which makes you laugh more? And that's the test of a humorous piece of writing--does it make you laugh?
I've had decades of practice reading, writing and editing humor, and know exactly what I'm trying to do (whether it's possible to do, or whether I am talented enough to pull it off, are separate questions). No editor has put in that time; you can't become a snake-charmer by working as a lion-tamer. Overinvolved editors do as much damage to a humorous project as help it. The Barry books have gotten better as books as I've written more of them (whether they've gotten funnier is up to each individual reader), but that's been me practicing structure and learning how to balance plot, character, and jokes. My editor suggests, but mostly he tells me where he laughed, where he was confused, where the story dragged--he lets me drive, and that's worked well.
Everybody's got a sense of humor, so everybody has an opinion on a funny piece of writing. With humor, there are no preexisting boundaries to the editorial process, and that's a real danger--not for the editor, but for me. If I was writing books about the care and feeding of butterflies, there would be a point at which both the author and the editor could agree, "Well, x is simple scientific fact, so that's staying in." There is no fact in humor, so I have to be very protective of my material, no matter how much goodwill is behind an editorial suggestion.
If you have critique, finish the book first, and send it to me. I'd love to see it and will be grateful for any improvements that I can make as a result. But don't be surprised if there's much more going on with any one decision (or even joke!) than you suspect--the whole trick with humor is to make every decision feel effortless, but it's not, and once you dig down into the mechanism, you always find that it's like the back of a watch. With something as fundamentally ineffable as humor, one tinkers at one's own risk--and I include myself in that."
"Here's my general feeling on editing and humorous prose: when in doubt, don't. Robert Gottlieb, the editor of Catch-22, rejected A Confederacy of Dunces; many times since, even after Dunces had won the Pulitzer Prize, Gottlieb has reiterated that he'd reject it again. That's insane--and that's Robert Gottlieb, probably the greatest editor of his generation, with the kind of credentials editing humorous novels that no other editor can match. Experience has taught me that the best way to learn how to edit humor is to write an incredible mass of it yourself. That's the only way to develop enough sensitivity to the proper things. Thurber's fights with Gus Lobrano were legendary. Perelman fought, too. Benchley's stuff was, I suspect, uneditable--it's too light. Editors are constantly trying to give humor more weight--turn it into a form of journalism or essay or in general make it like some other type of writing that they can understand better, but this is a real mistake, because the first thing to die is the writer's voice, which is the single biggest factor in whether a piece is funny or not. I'm an obsessive about this, and I couldn't tell a Henry Alford piece from a Bruce McCall piece from a Hart Seeley piece, just by reading it. This isn't their fault--their pieces have to go through the editorial sausage grinder--but it has, and probably will, keep them from ever being considered great humorists. Out of the people working now, I'd trust Dan Menaker at Random the most, because he spent so many years editing casuals at The New Yorker, but I'd also be wary of him with something like the college book, precisely because it's as different in audience and intent from a NYer casual as chocolate cake is from cherry pie.
When it comes to humor, most editors must be viewed as simply particularly close readers--a humorist can't let the editor get too empowered with a funny manuscript, as much as that editor is used to being empowered, because humor is in some sense the imprint of the writer's ego hidden by craft. The better hidden it is, the funnier the book is, but the better hidden it is, the greater the chances that an editor--regardless of background or skill--won't really understand how it works or doesn't work. Often times, the humorist doesn't really understand him/herself. Humor is some weird mix of the personality of the writer, and a painfully learned ability to predict the psychology of an absolute stranger--the reader. It's a bizarre and difficult transaction.
If a pre-publication reader sees a structural or logical flaw, I want to know. If there's confusion, I want to hear about it. Heck, I even want to hear which jokes they liked--all feedback is useful when's in the proper context. But (the inevitable but), one of the hardest things about doing what I do is that nobody else I know of is really trying it--there are loads of fundamentally serious novels with flashes of comedy, but very few fundamentally comic novels with flashes of seriousness. I suspect that's because if you have the chops to be funny, why not make a boatload of money writing things that are a lot less time-consuming and financially risky than a novel? I'd write sitcoms too, if I could--but I can't, so I write prose instead. That's apparently pretty unique, and while it does give me a lot of room to manuever, it also makes it less likely I'll find editors who can really help. Any novel that's the least bit pointed or ironic is christened "a satirical romp" or "a comic tour-de-force," but when you put them up against The Daily Show, which makes you laugh more? And that's the test of a humorous piece of writing--does it make you laugh?
I've had decades of practice reading, writing and editing humor, and know exactly what I'm trying to do (whether it's possible to do, or whether I am talented enough to pull it off, are separate questions). No editor has put in that time; you can't become a snake-charmer by working as a lion-tamer. Overinvolved editors do as much damage to a humorous project as help it. The Barry books have gotten better as books as I've written more of them (whether they've gotten funnier is up to each individual reader), but that's been me practicing structure and learning how to balance plot, character, and jokes. My editor suggests, but mostly he tells me where he laughed, where he was confused, where the story dragged--he lets me drive, and that's worked well.
Everybody's got a sense of humor, so everybody has an opinion on a funny piece of writing. With humor, there are no preexisting boundaries to the editorial process, and that's a real danger--not for the editor, but for me. If I was writing books about the care and feeding of butterflies, there would be a point at which both the author and the editor could agree, "Well, x is simple scientific fact, so that's staying in." There is no fact in humor, so I have to be very protective of my material, no matter how much goodwill is behind an editorial suggestion.
If you have critique, finish the book first, and send it to me. I'd love to see it and will be grateful for any improvements that I can make as a result. But don't be surprised if there's much more going on with any one decision (or even joke!) than you suspect--the whole trick with humor is to make every decision feel effortless, but it's not, and once you dig down into the mechanism, you always find that it's like the back of a watch. With something as fundamentally ineffable as humor, one tinkers at one's own risk--and I include myself in that."
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