Today, I am joining my efforts with those of ten European writers and intellectuals who are more or less directly related to my review, La Regle du Jeu. Together, we sound a cry of alarm concerning the fate of one of Europe's great intellectuals who is presently threatened with imprisonment in his own country, Croatia, for an offense of opinion. Can this be Europe? Has European genius fallen so low that we can simply accept this imminent outrage, without any reaction whatsoever?

Predrag Matvejevitch Must Not Go to Prison!

On July 28th, at the age of 78, the Croatian writer Predrag Matvejevitch will perhaps spend his first night in prison, a singular destiny for a university professor who once taught at the Sorbonne, whose only crime is to have openly expressed clear-cut opinions.

October 3rd, 2005, marked the inauguration of negotiations for Croatia's admission to the European Union. By a coincidence of dates — but was it really that? — scarcely a month later, on November 2nd, Predrag Matvejevitch, one of Croatia's finest intellectuals, was condemned by the municipal court of Zagreb, the country's capital, to two years in prison, five months of that term without remission, for defamation. There was an aspect of bitter irony about this, for the same Predrag Matvejevitch once held the European chair at the Collège de France, in Paris, in 1997.

The international press, in particular French, English and Italian, then took up the cause of this professor, specialist of comparative literature and a man of courageous political convictions: the son of a Croatian Catholic mother and a Russian Jewish father, in 1991 he sided with predominantly Muslim Bosnia against the Serbian and Croatian nationalists who dreamed of carving up the country.

His position was by no means easy to assume at the time. He was subjected to insults and defamation of all kinds; shots were fired into his pigeonhole at the University of Zagreb, where he was director of studies of French literature. It was the beginning of an exile that led him to Paris, Rome, and then Trieste.

During all the wars that have bathed ex-Yugoslavia in blood and since then, he has unfailingly fought against nationalism, against extremism, against the hard-liners on all sides and of all origins, expressing his love for a fraternal and pacific Mediterranean in his works, the most famous of which is his Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape (Fayard, 1992), translated into more than twenty languages and, already, a classic.

In keeping with his combat for another vision of ex-Yugoslavia, for the work of memory, and against the harm that has resulted from ethnic purification, in 2001, at the invitation of the Centre français André-Malraux, he went to Sarajevo with staff and crews of Arte television channel. His stay there inspired him to write a text which appeared in the Croatian daily Jutarnji List, entitled “Our Talibans”.

This text belongs to the literary tradition of travel narratives, but with the melancholy of one who finds himself in the setting of a tragedy he tried, with the means at his disposal, to prevent. Along the thread of his thoughts are a few lines pointing out a certain number of Croatian ultranationalist writers Predrag Matvejevitch deems responsible in part for the disasters of ex-Yugoslavia.

One of them, a poet by profession, considered the term “Christian talibans” (the title of the article as it appeared in Italy) calumnious and filed suit against the author before the municipal tribunal of Zagreb. As libel remains a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment without a suspended sentence in Croatia today, the Croatian intellectual was condemned to serve time.
Judging the sentence iniquitous and unworthy of a State of law, pleading for freedom of opinion and speech, rebelling, in a word, against what he terms an “offense of metaphor”, Matvejevitch has refused to lodge an appeal. The Croatian Prime Minister himself, observing the rising tide of international disapproval, has declared that he is personally opposed to the execution of the sentence. The Court of Appeal took the case before the Supreme Court of Croatia and the latter rendered its verdict scarcely a month ago, confirming the sentence of the magistrate's court: on July 28th, at the age of 78, Predrag Matvejevitch will sleep in prison.
What a strange destiny for this encyclopedic, polyglot mind! What a scandal for this Croatian George Steiner (for that is the reputation he immediately earned when he came to France)! What a singular fate for this impressive European intellectual whose first published works would inspire Sartre and so many others! His combat, in the dark History of the end of the 20th century, was always that of a free and politically committed spirit, in the very same tradition as Sartre — whom, as a matter of fact, he knew well. His courage honors a European mind which is, at this very moment, so methodically dishonored. And nevertheless, on July 28th, at the age of 78, he will sleep in prison.

“One does not imprison Voltaire,” General de Gaulle said, once again in reference to Jean-Paul Sartre. Of course. But can one, in all conscience, allow Predrag Matvejevitch, a man inspired by the heritage of Voltaire and of Sartre, to be imprisoned? Is Croatian law and the manner in which it is applied compatible with the demands of contemporary law and freedom of expression that are the distinctive features of democracies?

Is it acceptable that, in a country so close to adhering to the European Union, a person guilty of the simple offense of having taken a stand publicly against a poet of civil society (whose ultranationalist positions are known to all) can be treated as a delinquent? And this Croatian left-over of Yugoslavia's authoritarian past, can it be soluble in Europe?

In the meantime, as we search for an answer to these questions, on July 28th, at the age of 78, Predrag Matvejevitch will sleep in prison.

~
Umberto Eco, writer, philosopher, professor emeritus at the University of Bologna
Michaël Foessel, philosopher, editorial consultant at «Esprit»
Donatien Grau, critic
Nedim Gürsel, writer, research director at the CNRS ;
Gilles Hertzog, writer, publication director of “La Règle du jeu”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, writer, philosopher, director of “La Règle du jeu”
Claudio Magris, writer, professor emeritus at the University of Trieste and member of the editorial committee of «La Règle du jeu»
Olivier Py, writer, director, director of the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe
Salman Rushdie, writer and member of the editorial committee of «La Règle du jeu»
Peter Sloterdijk, philosopher, rector of the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung de Karlsruh, professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
Pierre Zaoui, philosopher, lecturer at the Université de Paris-Diderot, programme director at the Collège international de philosophie

Well, I haven't seen him mentioned in the comments yet, so I'll put in a plug for Joe Haldeman. He was a student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, then also taught at U of I for a while. Currently he teaches at MIT.

If you're not into science fiction, you probably wouldn't recognize the name. But he's highly respected in the field, having won several Hugo and Nebula awards.

–jrd

We’ve been following MP3Tunes, an online music locker, since it launched in late 2005. It’s come a long way since then. Today the service has 500,000 users, and has released a variety of new products to help those users get access to their music from almost any Internet connected device.

The core of the service is a music locker. It finds music on your hard drive and then backs it up online over a period of days. You can then log in and stream that music from a browser.

But the service is a lot more interesting than that. It will also sync your music across devices, making sure, for example, that iTunes has the same song library on each of your computers. It will also grab those iTunes playlists and make them available elsewhere as well.

They’ve recently inked a deal with Roku and are in beta. MP3Tunes users can stream music that they previously only had on their hard drive through their television on the Roku device. Logitech has also built MP3Tunes into a variety of devices, including this Wifi Internet radio. More devices are coming shortly, says MP3Tunes.

But the best part of MP3Tunes are the mobile apps. The Android application in particular is extremely useful. If you buy a song on the Android via the built in Amazon store, for example, you can easily upload that song quickly to MP3Tunes, and then have it available on, say your iPhone or iPod touch (as well as your desktop and everywhere else). MP3Tunes is calling the syncing behavior behind these application “Buy Anywhere, Listen Everywhere” – see the video below:

A number of other third parties have built MP3Tunes into their software and devices as well via a robust open API. I’m a big fan of music services on my mobile devices since getting actual song files onto the device is usually cumbersome and requires at least a purchase or a tethering. I use MOG on my android device and am quite happy with it.

But I also like the idea of just having access to my entire music collection – all 60 GB of it – on any device at any time. I’m a long time user of MP3Tunes, and I’ve recently upgraded from the free version to the 100 GB of storage.

Soon we’ll all have a variety of music streaming services to choose from – from Apple and Google’s upcoming products to the MOGs and Spotifys of the world. But all will likely have a hefty monthly subscription fee of $10/month or so for any kind of mobile access. I already have my core music collection on my hard drive, bought and paid for (for the most part). I really don’t see a need to pay $120/year to keep paying for that music. MP3Tunes gives me a viable reason to keep just buying music outright and downloading it.

All this assume, of course, that MP3Tunes wins the longstanding EMI Group lawsuit against them. In the meantime, though, I like the service.

MP3Tunes is free for 2 GB of storage. They are moving to 10 GB free in the near term, and 50 GB is $40/year. 25% of active users upgrade to a paid version, says the company.

Welcome to the new music week. This one is full of '70s flashbacks. Sheryl Crow tries to convince us that she's a '70s Southern soul singer, Marc Cohn channels his inner Cat Stevens, Big Head Todd & the Monsters make us believe we're still living out of a 1970s VW van, and rapper Rick Ross lays down some tracks that feel like the great '70s soul sides… until you hear the lyrics. Ouch. I don't remember the '70s like that.

SKIP: Sheryl Crow, “100 Miles From Memphis”

Sheryl Crow wants you to know she digs soul music. She's all about peace and love and keeping it groovy in a '70s, “Superfly” kinda way. She's recruited Southern soul musicians and producers Doyle Bramhall II and Justin Stanley to convince you. She's written new songs with funky '70s horn lines to convince you. She covers Terrence Trent D'Arby's supremely soulful (if not '70s) song “Sign Your Name” with Justin Timberlake to convince you. She covers the Jackson 5's “I Want You Back” to close the deal. Listen to the tracks, and you'll swear you've grown a 'fro and are waiting for your bell-bottoms to come back from the cleaners. Put Crow's voice into the middle, and something goes wrong. Sheryl Crow is a great singer; she's just not a soul singer. And this album needs a soul singer. It pains me to say it, because I wanted to play this all summer.

WATCH the music video for Sheryl Crow's single “Summer Day.”

SKIP: March Cohn, “Listening Booth: 1970″

Forever caught in the shadow of his 1991 hit “Walking in Memphis,” Marc Cohn's new album (only his fifth in a 20-plus-year career) goes for covers instead of originals. As Cohn explains it, he spent his misspent '70s youth in a local record store, previewing new albums in a listening booth. Now the husky-voiced singer and his producer, John Leventhal, have deconstructed the songbooks of Paul Simon, John Lennon, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, and eight other coffee-house classics. The problem? It's kind of a bore. Tempos slow to a crawl, and the volume rarely goes above a whisper. It's all very tasteful, but I wish they'd spent the time writing some new songs. Pick up some old vinyl if you want to recapture 1970.

WATCH Marc Cohn and John Leventhal discuss making “Listening Booth: 1970.”

PLAY: The Books, “The Way Out”

The New York duo return with their first full-length album since 2005's “Lost and Safe.” Vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong don't record songs as much as they throw sounds against the wall. “The Way Out” plays more like an audio sequel to “Blue Velvet” than it does a collection of tunes. Every track is a twisted tour through another private room where you're eavesdropping on someone's sordid secrets. The album is not easily ignored nor understood, and you may indeed be looking for the way out before it's over. Still, it's compelling as all hell and will give me something to tell my shrink at my next session.

WATCH the music video for the Books' song “A Cold Freezin' Night” .

PLAY: Big Head Todd & the Monsters, “Rocksteady”

Twenty-four years on, Big Head Todd & the Monsters are still super-jammy. While such contemporaries as Dave Matthews Band have shot into the mainstream stratosphere, BHTM play to a smaller but loyal legion of followers who dig their reliable, mid-tempo, laid-back grooves. “Rocksteady” doesn't mess with the formula, save for an appropriately dirty cover of Howlin' Wolf's “Smokestack Lightnin'.” Otherwise, it's sweet hippie bliss. Play it if you're a believer or if you have some patchouli and tie-dye you need to wear.

WATCH Big Head Todd & the Monsters perform the single “Beautiful.”

PLAY: Rick Ross, “Teflon Don”

The formula is simple: Rick Ross recruits Jay Z, Kanye West, Raphael Saadiq, Erykah Badu, Ne Yo, John Legend, and nearly every other hip-hip/neo-soul superstar to bring forth the rhythm and the rhyme. The rhythm is undeniably booty-quaking. You will move despite yourself. The rhyme, on the hand, is a baser affair: the usual two-dimensional playbook about n***as, b****hes, and the joys of telling people to f-off. What's a guy to do when his body wants to groove, but his mind wants to move beyond tired misogynistic hip-hop grandstanding? I guess that's why God invented the Roots. Play the music. Skip the rhymes.

WATCH the music video for Rick Ross' single “Super High.”

Prepare to get an “insider” look at Pat O'Brien.

The former anchor of The Insider is putting his dirty mind to use by penning an upcoming tell-all memoir with Andrew Morton. Among the topics to be covered will be his struggle with alcoholism, his divorce and of course, his “unfortunate scandal.”

You remember – He harrassed his co-workers with dirty talk and threats of threesomes!

Sure should be a page turner!

We imagine after this he'll plead for a spot on either Celebrity Apprentice or Rehab, whichever will take him.

That's where all dried up former celebrities go to graze after all!

[Image via WENN.]

Tags: memoir, pat obrien, the insider

Hello Dr. Tipler:

Don’t worry. You said their magical mantra word: “believe”. I got my degree in Physics in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. The defense positions all dried up as these were no longer needed now that the Soviet Union was trumped during Gulf Storm. I went back to school after reading about the “Greenhouse Effect” and furthering myself with James Hanson. Well, to put it short, I found out that this “science” really was more politics and public advocacy about alternative energy. And I was taking Atmospheric Science and Chemistry courses! AT GRADUATE LEVEL!

A solar physicist, Dr. Charles Sonnet, changed me in one sentance: The sun puts out more incident energy onto the surface of the earth than all of mankind creates in a year, in about 5 minutes. That is to say, that if the sun flickered a bit, so does this planet. It is just that simple.

I went into the semiconductor world in 1994 and never looked back. But I have been watching, researching, challenging, and pressing all the fools and advocates who merely blurt eco talking points of their new found religion: AGW. It is always satisfying to trade barbs and blind foolery with logic and fact when I have debates at cocktail parties and family events. One thing I have noticed: of all the people supporting this nonsense, they truly “believe” in AGW. Science is not about beliefs. Science is about facts, data, theories. It is about right and wrong. There is no truth that an electron fills certain states around a nucleus. Drude Theory was thought right in explaining electron gas in metals. It was shown to be wrong. Nothing wrong with that, we from the world of physics understand failure and move forward.

That is the core of the problem. People want to believe in something, so they believe in this AGW nonsense. They cannot believe in a God, or at least a Christian god, so they follow this golden cow. Now that the flimsy flimflam is falling apart, they do not want to be seen as a failure. Most of these have never really experienced it, so to find out that all the mercury filled light bulbs that cost more to manufacture than incandescents CFLs are nothing more than a crock of stinky, they risk implosion.

I am not a man of religion, but have noticed that we are really seing a distorted version of Galileo’s trial. Here we open-minded individuals who question man-made computer programs lacking to incorporate all the laws of physics, let alone models of cloud cover, generated by those who spout fear and the end of the world due to a 1/10,000th change in a molecule consumed by organic life forms, are now in Galileo’s seat. We are being charged with the fact that we believe the sun is the central force in our universe of atmospheric control and not Man. They, the believers of their new Gaian religion, AGW, are trying us of EcoHeresy. Man is central. Well, Western man. Everyone else gets a reprieve for now.

They are going to lead us all to the new land of prosperity and harmony after they blacklist and rid all those who dare question their models and programs. Just do not lift up the curtain and look for where in the models the Second Law of Thermodynamics is used. It is not.

They are selling a perpetual motion machine. Everyone wants to fall for it because it is the free forever approach.

The Wall Street Journal reported some new details about the long-rumored Google music service, this time with a tasty Android twist.

Google’sGoogle plan, it seems, is to launch a download service first — one that is tied to the company’s search engine — and then to progress to an online subscription service by 2011. The ultimate goal is to have a cloud-based subscription service that could stream directly to AndroidAndroid-based devices.

While rumors and reports about Google formally entering the music sales or subscriptions space have been ongoing for years, this time the talk might be for real. In October, Google launched its music discovery search features. At the time, we discussed its implications on the music business as a whole.

Additionally, VEVO (a partnership service between YouTubeYouTube and Universal Records) has at least theoretically created better relationships between the major labels and the search giant. However, when trying to assess Google’s overall music strategy, Android appears poised to be the biggest catalyst.

At Google I/O, Google showed off technology that would allow Android users to stream music off of their desktop computers right on to their phones. That’s very cool and offers a glimpse of what a cloud-based subscription service may offer. While Android can support direct over-the-air purchasing from the Amazon MP3 store, the overall music player and music experience still doesn’t quite have the finesse of iTunes and its integrated multi-device solution.

While The Wall Street Journal article mentions Android in relation to phone handsets and a streaming subscription, I actually think the implications for such a service are even greater on other Android devices.

Think about it: If your Android-based Google TV can also stream any music you want to your home stereo, that becomes an Apple TV without limiting users to their own libraries. And what about automobiles with Android-embedded systems? Those products aren’t on the market but manufacturers are interested. Having the ability to access that streaming subscription from your car, your home and your phone could make a Google-branded music subscription service succeed where so many others have failed.

What do you think about the potential for an Android-enhanced Google music service?

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In this release of Bing one of the biggest investments we are making is in the area of entertainment. As the content on the web has exploded, it has become difficult to navigate and find what you are looking for. In the field of entertainment, 76 percent of people use search to help find and navigate their entertainment options online, but only 10 percent say they have a trusted place to go.

So we see a great opportunity to help customers make important entertainment decisions — from deciding what movie to buy or see, which TV shows to watch online or on your TV, what music to listen to, how to find and safely play your favorite casual games – Bing is making a first step today to help make entertainment on the web easy and fun, so you spend less time searching for entertainment and more time doing the stuff you love.

Working with key groups inside Microsoft that have deep entertainment heritage, we've made significant investments in four key areas: Music, Gaming, Movies and TV. Our focus was on making it easy – if you can type in a search box, you can have a great entertainment experience on Bing. Or, if you prefer a browsing, discovery oriented experience, also make that easy to, just visit http://www.bing.com/entertainment.

Here's a look at what's launching today.

Music: Answers, Lyrics, 5 million free plays.

People love music. In particular, folks want more than just a song or artist, they want a fuller experience around the music they love. Over 70 percent of people look for lyrics online. Whether you want to get ready to kill it in karaoke or just rock it in the shower, it's now easy to safely find lyrics to all in one place.

We didn't stop at lyrics. In addition to the full Bing answers experience where you can get photos, videos, and even tour dates for your favorite acts, we partnered with our friends at Zune, and are now able to offer full-length streaming for more than 5 million songs. You get a single play of every song in this 5 million song catalog, and after that 30 second previews. So you can really get into the music you love. When it's time to buy, we'll offer you the ability to purchase and download songs from Zune, iTunes and Amazon.com MP3.

Gaming: Search, Click, Play.

In the gaming realm, people go to the web for a few key tasks. They want to choose which games to buy, become a better gamer by finding cheats and walkthroughs, and find and play casual games online in a safe and easy manner. Working with some of the best data sources out there, we now provide detailed information on over 35,000 games, including in depth reviews, cheats and walkthroughs for all your favorite games.

Working with the Microsoft Games team we offer nearly 100 of the most popular casual games online safely from right within Bing. Just Search, Click. Play . So you can now search for your favorite casual game, and with one click, be playing the game. This is cool for a couple of reasons. First, it's easy. Second, hosting the games inline means you can be sure they are actually games and not malware. Finally, the Microsoft Games team included some fun social features that allow you to actually invite friends from your social network to play with you right from the game.

TV: The Shows You Love, A Click Away

Like most people, we love TV. We know from research that people spend 60 hours watching TV online video every single month. What's more amazing is that more than 30% of people watch all of their TV episodes online, and over 60% of people have used a search engine to look for full-length TV shows online.

With Bing, we've brought together a very comprehensive collection of full length TV episodes and visually organized them so it's easy to find what you are looking for and start watching. With thousands of episodes from over 1500 shows including lots of HD content, watching your favorite shows online is easier than ever before. And if you are one of those people who watch TV on an actual TV, we're pulling in guide information to help you easily find what's on in your area from your service provider, so you can make sure you are on the couch or setting your DVR to catch your favorite shows.

Movies: Plan the perfect night out.

Going to see a movie turns out to be a bit more complex than you might imagine. That's why 90% of people turn to search to help them find movies information. What time is the movie playing? Which theater? Where does one park? What's traffic like right now? Is the movie any good – what do reviewers say? What do my friends say about it? What does the Twitterverse say?

Bing brings together all of the information and tools you need to get to the movie stress free and have a great night out. Reviews from the pros, real time Twitter and Facebook sentiment, real time traffic information and directions, nearby restaurants and even parking information from Bing Maps make it simple to spend less time searching and more time doing.

All of this cool stuff is going live right now, with the exception of the TV listings, which will be along in a couple of weeks, and the music playback will ramp up over the next few days. Try it out, tell us what you think. We know there's more we can do, and we are hard at work on new ideas that can continue to make Bing the best place to go on the web for all your favorite entertainment content and decisions.

At a time when Oxford University would surely like to move beyond the unpleasant memories of last year’s disputed election for its professor of poetry position, a new controversy has opened up around that chair.

Paula Claire, the only woman in the running for the position withdrew from consideration, The Guardian reported, saying the election process was “seriously flawed” and favored another contender, Geoffrey Hill.

Last year the Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott withdrew from the election after Oxford academics were sent anonymous packages containing pages from a book describing a decades-old act of sexual harassment that he was accused of having committed. Ruth Padel, who became the first woman in more than 300 years to win the seat, resigned after it was learned she sent e-mail messages alerting reporters to that book.

Ms. Claire, an Oxford-based poet, told The Guardian she was frustrated that the university’s official announcement of candidates for the 2010 election described her as a “performer and artist” but not as a poet, and that a flier in Oxford’s Gazette, the official journal of the university, said Mr. Hill was “quite simply a giant” and “the finest living poet in English today.”

“That is grossly over the top,” Ms. Claire said. “They shouldn’t allow it ahead of the election – an election is supposed to be a fair system and until the voters come in everybody’s equal.”

She added: “I haven’t withdrawn in a pique – I’ve withdrawn for women. The post was founded in 1708. They haven’t had a woman since then and I think they’re still determined to put a man in.”

A spokesperson for Oxford told The Guardian, “No special arrangements have been made for this election that are inconsistent with normal university operations in this respect.”

The Guardian:

Promises to use poetry as a “weapon, bloodsoaked and glinting” and plans for a poetry slam contest suggest the competition for the role of Oxford poetry professor is heating up. The 11 candidates have each laid out their reasons for standing — one of them entirely in verse.

Read the whole story: The Guardian

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You
Won – Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political
management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from
both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public
policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country,
including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco
Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science
Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

PRAISE FOR POLITICAL WIRE

“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand
politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”

– Chuck Todd, NBC News political director

“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”

– Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report

“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every
day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news
and developments.”

– Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report

“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”

– Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia

“If I were on the proverbial
desert island and had only one web site to access, Political Wire would
be it.”

– Dotty Lynch, CBS News political consultant

“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too
often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the
latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes
his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don't want to kick.”

– Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post

“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”

– Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit

“I love Political Wire. It is a one stop shopping site for all the political information I need. It makes me sound brilliant so naturally I like it!”

– Dick Morris, political consultant

“I rely on Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It's an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”

– Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

No, I am not talking about the James Frey who wrote A Million Little Pieces, the controversial piece of creative “nonfiction” that initially made a splash with Oprah but then fell into ignominy. The man I want to praise today is James N. Frey, probably the best writing teacher on the face of the earth.

As far as I know, Jim is still leading writing workshops all over the place, giving of himself, helping others improve their craft. According to his website, “Many participants of his workshops have gone on to publish with major New York houses and receive solid advances (as high as $2 million) and much critical acclaim.” I don't for even a second doubt the veracity of that assertion.

I first met Jim in the spring of 1984, the year he published his first thriller, The Last Patriot. I had seen an ad in a Berkeley, California, newspaper for something called “The Story Laboratory,” a writers' workshop that met every Monday evening in the basement of the Finnish Brotherhood Hall near the corner of University Avenue and Chestnut Street in what we called the flats. We working stiffs lived there, not with the rich and famous up in the Berkeley hills. It didn't take me more than five seconds to decide to check out the Story Lab because I lived just a half block away on Berkeley Way. Somebody was trying to tell me something. I seemed destined to become a member of this little group of struggling scribblers.

When I walked into that basement, Jim was sitting at one of those long, institutional folding tables that reminded me of the ones at the Berkeley Chess Club, where I had spent a humiliating few weeks the year before. Jim was about forty, and my first impression was that he was a red-nosed Irishman who liked his whiskey just a wee bit too much. But that perception evaporated as soon as the rest of the crew showed up and he began to talk shop. Jim spoke more lucidly than any college professor about language, plot, characterization, setting, and something else of vital importance that I will get to in due time.

The way the Story Lab worked was that someone would read a short story or a chapter of a novel, and then the rest — especially Jim — would most likely tear it to shreds with scathing comments. Jim would invariably start out with, “The problem with this story is … ” And he'd always be right. The first work of fiction that I read at the workshop was of the type known derogatorily as a “slice of life” piece. Its title was “The Loft,” and it was about my experiences with a punk rock band in New York City during the late 1970s. It was full to bursting with funky description and quirky characters. I thought it was just great, of course, but no one else around the table in that cellar seemed to agree. They all had something a bit nasty to say, but only Jim was able to articulate what the problem really was.

“This bit of writing could get you into the Creative Writing Masters program at San Francisco State,” Jim told me, “but it isn't any good.”

The first part of that seemed rather encouraging, I thought, but the rest sounded crazy to me, as it appeared to contradict what came before. Jim went on to explain, “You use words very well, and the images are fine, but the story lacks conflict.”

I was flabbergasted. He was right! Why hadn't I seen that myself? I felt like a fool, and I told him so. Jim responded, “Don't feel bad. Everybody starts out as you did. But writing is like everything else. Somebody has to show you how to do it.” After that, I must have heard him say at least a hundred times to other writers around that table, “Your story needs three things: conflict, conflict, and conflict.” He liked to illustrate this point by showing how Charles Dickens had used conflict to the utmost effect in A Christmas Carol. Jim made that story come alive in so many ways that I realized I had taken Scrooge for granted all my life.

That was just the first of many invaluable lessons from the master, and it led to the writing of one of my best short stories, “Decibels.” Thanks, Jim, for helping with the manuscript.

I'll never forget the time I read another short story, “The Little Room.” Right after I finished the last sentence, Jim called for a break and took me by the arm and said, “Let's go over to Taco Bell and get a cup of coffee.” The fast-food restaurant was just across the street.

I thought for sure that I was walking my last mile as a writer, that Jim was going to tell me something like, “I didn't want to say this in front of everyone else, but I was wrong about you, kid. Give it up. You've got no talent.” But no. He said that my story was terrific and that I had found my voice as a writer. Actually, that's what I think he said. I was so blown away by his praise that I really don't remember his exact words, but he thought the story was good, and that's all that mattered. I think I was actually in shock as we walked back to the Story Lab.

When we sat back down inside the Finnish Hall, other members of our group had some comments critical of “The Little Room,” but Jim wouldn't let any of them stand. He said the story was a piece of literary fiction of the highest quality. Perhaps it really is as good as Jim thought it was, but perhaps it isn't. The point is that I wouldn't have been able to write it at all had it not been for Jim's tireless encouragement and excellent advice.

Sadly, I haven't spoken with him in years. I know I disappointed him by not living up to the potential he saw in me. After all, I don't have even a single novel under my belt, just a modest collection of self-published short fiction. But whatever writing skill I do have I owe to Jim. I hope he is doing well.

Jim has written nine novels, among them The Long Way to Die, an Edgar Award Nominee, and Winter of the Wolves, a Literary Guild Selection. Yes, I've read them all, and I've enjoyed every one. Jim is also the author of the How to Write a Damn Good Novel series of instructional books for fledgling writers.

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt /
K

Book Reviews |
June 4, 2010 | Comments (13)

There’s something fascinating as well as unsettling about Britain in Edwardian times. It was a short era of radical change in almost every aspect of life, culminating in the unimagined and unimaginable trauma of the First World War. It seems to provide endless possibilities for writers, and Byatt’s latest work tries — and manages — to explore most of them.

Taking as a narrative frame the intertwined lives of four families in Southern England, Byatt lets her protagonists follow different paths, all grounded in the problems and interests of the time. The seven children of the Wellwoods, a free-thinking Fabian couple, are all heavily influenced by their well-know children’s writer mother and her stories. The children’s fairytale childhood and their reactions to it, their different characters as well as their life choices are described in detail, with the help of narrative comments about the diverse cultural and social setting. In addition to the Wellwoods, Byatt also introduces working-class characters, pottery artists and military men, bankers and German puppeteers. The scope of her work is amazing, and with the exception of the younger children, no character feels underdeveloped or one-dimensional. This leads to a sometimes patchy narrative and a wealth of information supplied in just a short paragraph. It took me a while to get into the story, precisely for this reason, but the writing is superb, and the world Byatt is piecing together is irresistible in its diversity.

While the boys and young men struggle with their parents’ carreer choices for them, with ambition and passion, it’s really a story about girls’ and women’s lives around 1900, without moving into a feminist literature corner. Faced with traditional values as well as exciting new developments they are exposed to through their liberal parents’ circles, the Wellwood girls and their friends experience turbulent times. One of them faces years of hard work and the prospect of a lonely private life by choosing to become a doctor, while another one almost loses all hope of a dignified life by falling pregnant after giving in to a writer advocating free love. They all experience the tensions between the social classes, one as an anarchist, another one as an ambitious but poor working-class girl without much choice about her future.

It’s also a novel about the arts. The Edwardian’s near-obsession with childhood and a golden past is reflected in Olive Wellwood’s success as a children’s writer, in the stories she writes for her children, the puppeteer’s success in Germany and Britain alike, and the academic interest shown in folktales at the time. Art is at the heart of the power struggles in the new V&A museum in London, and art fills every minute of the two potter’s lives. Finally and poignantly, art — poetry — is the only way the war is shown to be dealt with by the surviving soldiers.

The book ends in the fragmented way life after 1918 must have felt for everyone. It’s depressing how you always know before opening a book about the time that most characters will have died by the end. The Children’s Book is no exception. The fact that so much story, so many words, were spent on the childhood of the men who are to die, somehow makes it an even sadder, and more real, experience. It’s a novel about the magic of childhood and the agonies of growing up; about betrayal of parents and betrayal by parents; about a time that promised a new beginning and ended with a lost generation. It’s brilliantly written, and it makes a lasting impression. And if you still don’t get my drift: GO READ IT NOW!

This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. For more of K’s reviews, check out … and then I read some more.