Notebook - April 25, 2002

The hell with Robert Parker.

No, not the wine guy, the author of the "Spenser" books. Robert Urich passes away, and the quote he musters is this:

"This is a shock. It's too soon, and he was too young...He wasn't the perfect Spenser...Bob was not a great actor, but he was big and physical, and he looked good and he showed up to the set knowing his lines. A lot of people liked him in the role, but I can't even say in honor of his memory that he was quite right for the role. But then, who is?"

This is offensive on so many levels. It starts out well, but then turns into some mish-mash of misguided integrity ("hey, I gotta call em like I sees them!") and a backhanded compliment (or not).

"He wasn't the perfect Spenser..."

He wasn't? Sorry, whenever I read the Spenser novels (that's read as in rhyming with "red," past tense), all I could picture is Urich as the character. He was perfect. A perfect TV star in the perfect TV role (as was Avery Brook's portrayal of Hawk). That show lasted three seasons because of Urich. I remember hearing something about how Parker didn't want the the TV series to use first-person voiceovers. Funny, those voiceovers were some of the best things about the show. They gave it an elegance and mood that most shows, especially detective series, never capture. Books and TV shows are very different things. You shouldn't worry about how the book is being portrayed; the books live on. But Parker never seems to be happy with how his creation is dealt with. Except now, of course. He has Joe Matagna in those second-rate A and E Spenser flicks that think Toronto passes for Boston. I hope he's happy with them.

"Bob was not a great actor..."

Let's kick the man when he's down (way down). Actually, I say that Urich was a fine actor. He probably would never have gone onto win an Academy Award, but so what? This guy starred in 15 TV series as a leading man, and a few as an ensemble player, over a 30 year career, so producers and casting agents and TV fans certainly found something that they liked about him, again and again and again, even if some of those shows didn't last long. You don't have to remember that Emeril was his last TV show. That show was horrible because of the writing and the concept, not Urich. Remember Spenser and Lonesome Dove and the cheesy but fun Vegas and his flair for comedy and how he worked hard and was a good guy.

"...and he looked good and he showed up to the set knowing his lines."

Ahem.

"A lot of people liked him in the role, but I can't even say in honor of his memory that he was quite right for the role. But then, who is?"

Maybe this guy shouldn't do interviews. A beloved human being is dead too young, and he thinks that NOW is the time for literary and acting opinions? Notice also that he gets in a little plug for his books. "The character of Spenser, as I have written it, is my too complex to be portrayed by a mere TV actor," he seems to be saying. Egads.

Perhaps this is how we'll remember Parker:

"He wasn't the perfect author...he wasn't a great writer, but he had fingers and owned a typewriter and he knew how to type. A lot of people liked his books, but I can't even say in honor of his memory that he was quite up to writing the "Spenser" books. But then, who is?"

New additions to the site: my Pop Culture Guy column will be updated every two weeks. And, yes, that IS a PayPal Tip jar! I wasn't going to do it, but then I thought, why not? You can help pay for this little endeavor, if you like what you see, by donating a buck or three. Besides, it keeps me off the streets, where I would be going up to strangers and saying, "hey, wanna hear my rant against Robert Parker?"

It also serves another purpose: I'll be selling a lot of items in the future, and this gives you an easy way to pay. You can, of course, start with the book! Pre-order now and I'll send you a free gift in June. Seriously. Just my way of showing a little thanks for you reading this stuff.

More to come: the launch of a new mag, links, etc. See you next week.

On behalf of all humor writers, I'd like to thank L.A. Times columnist Norah Vincent. She's quickly becoming to other columnists what Dan Quayle, Gary Condit, and Pam Anderson's breasts are to late night talk show hosts. Here Vincent chimes in on the news about Oprah ending her book club. Some choice excerpts:

"Good riddance to Oprah's Book Club, and her literary amateurism."

Yeah, let's leave all this literature stuff to the professionals. Someone could lose an eye or something. And this is the title of her piece. Come on, don't beat around the bush, tell us what you really mean.

"Winfrey presumed where she should not have, and while her presumption may have led millions who might not otherwise have done so to read some good books, one can understand why someone like Franzen would disdain her haphazard tap on the head."

'Someone like Franzen.' Read: One who writes SERIOUS LITERATURE. (I'm surprised Winfrey even picked Franzen, since The Corrections doesn't really fit into her usual woman surviving after rough upbringing/finding love after heartbreak/self-help, self-discovery picks, and I admit liking her just a bit more when she said fine, the hell with you, I take back my invite to the show). And getting people to read is a bad thing? Oprah's Book Club wasn't meant to be the be all and end all of the publishing industry, where she picked the BEST books of all those currently at the bookstore. She wasn't the head of Publisher's Weekly or The New York Times Book Review section. She had an afternoon talk show, geared towards women and self-help issues. Her picks reflected that. Franzen is a good writer, and he had his reasons for not being particularly grateful for being picked, but this whole "disdain her haphazard tap on the head" is unfair to Oprah AND Franzen.

"I wouldn't want her sticker on my book either"

No, of course not. Why would an author want to sell millions of copies, make her publisher happy, and have millions reading her book? Something tells me that even if Oprah didn't end her book club, that sticker is something Vincent would never have to worry about.

"In our fast-food nation, we tend to think that the intellectual life, like everything else, can be had pre-chewed and in bulk just for the asking."

If something is intellectual, or if something is smart or clever or poignant or truthful or profound, those things don't become lessened just because more people are reading your book. She seems to want Franzen (and I'm sure we know what other authors she's talking about) to remain small and quirky and only read by those who are "intelligent" and "in the know."

"Winfrey and B&N represent the same pernicious homogenization of American life that makes existential despair all but unavoidable."

Did she just say what I think she said? Existential despair?

"They are the generic market force that always pushes the charming, singular neighborhood bookstore cafe out of business or the quirky black comic novel into the remainder bin; the bland cultural juggernaut that makes every corner of America look the same and, more frightening, think the same."

Put a Borders Books and Music next to a charming, singular neighborhood bookstore cafe, and let loose two of Vincent's intellectual, independent, voracious readers. Which do you think they will go to first? Which do you think will have the book they are looking for? Which is going to be open at 9:30PM on a Friday night?

"Books are not commodities, but the gilded age of treadmill publishing--to which Winfrey has contributed her demeaning sensibility--has made them so, thereby spawning harried plagiarists such as Stephen Ambrose and yellow journalists like David Brock."

Not sure what she means here. Don't know if books are commodities or not, but they are products (shocking!). Full disclosure: while I don't agree with Franzen's dis* of Oprah (or Vincent's thumbs up about it), I also don't mourn the loss of the book club (nor the end of her show in a few years - all this self-help stuff is dangerous, and Dr. Phil is scary). Sure, it got a little tiring to hear that she picked yet ANOTHER story of a woman overcoming the odds and getting her life back together, or a woman finding love after heartbreak, or a story of some sort of abuse. I would have loved to have been sitting on my couch, surfing around the channels, past Rosie and my local news and reruns of Matlock, and seeing Oprah tout the latest Donald Westlake crime novel, or the newest by Elmore Leonard . Or maybe the newest collection by Martin Amis or Stephen King , or maybe push some classics like O'Hara or Asimov or Fitzgerald or Bradbury. But ranting about the books Oprah picked is like saying to the local mystery book club, "how come all you folks do here is read mysteries?"

"Finally, there's the question of quality. People who dislike Oprah's Book Club dislike it for the same reason that they dislike Barnes and Noble. The fact that the two do a brisk business isn't accidental."

Right. And people who hate Barnes and Noble bookstores are the type of people who want to shop in independent stores because it's more "real." It's less "corporate." The smaller stores have more "personalized service." (Let's read between the lines: she's saying if you shop at Barnes and Noble, you're stupid. If you frequent that cute little bookstore on the corner, the one with the bell at the top of the door as you come in, the one with the cramped space, the one that never has anything you're looking for, you're smart and independent.) This is the usual knee jerk reaction to chain bookstores. There's just one thing wrong with this: it's garbage. Chain bookstores are better than small independent bookstores anyday. And who, exactly, are theses people who dislike Barnes and Noble? The chain, like Borders, does "brisk business" because they offer what customers/readers need: massive selection, computers to look up book info, clean floors, nice chairs, great selection of beverages, and a large, friendly staff. Period. (Lileks has commented on this, and The Atlantic had a great piece last year which pretty much said the same things that I'm saying - you can check their archives). I practically live at Borders, and shop at B&N often. But I'll always shop at Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston for their fantastic used mystery/sci-fi section upstairs, and the old magazines and collectible books downstairs. A great place.

A few changes coming to the site. My "Pop Culture Guy" comes over from where it used to be, and gets its own section. Professor Barnhardt's Journal undergoes a transformation in May. The book will be out in June, and I'm currently setting up the book tour (heh heh...you'll see why I'm laughing soon enough). More details to come. See ya next week.

*Did I use this right? And is this how you spell it? I'm so unhip.

Blogs. Blogs. Blogs. Blawgs. Blawwwwgs. One of those words that after a while doesn't seem like a word at all. I'm sure you've read about this whole blogging controversy, started by Eric Alterman, stirred by Alex Beam, and continued by Norah Vincent. (Go read those columns first, if you haven't already, then come back and read below - if this interests you at all, which it might not - I understand).

Here's the full text of the letter I wrote to Romenesko. It was edited on that site for space:

Gee, maybe we should all aspire to be as like Alex Beam, working for a newspaper that "people actually read," and then we can also write a column that is factually wrong (James Lileks doesn't even keep a blog), cliched ("ouch!" and "double-ouch!"), naive (the Staerk April Fool's Day site), and so misguided and silly that he doesn't even know how out of touch it is. Why does Beam have this bizarre combination of disdain and FEAR about blogs? Not only is the column dripping with condescension (he tries to use John Ellis' own words about how many people are into his golf info against him, and says that some writers are "too smart to write every day!"), you really get the feeling that his disdain goes beyond blogs and encompasses the web in general.

Lileks has already given perfect responses, here and here, so I won't repeat his points. But it's obvious that Beam just doesn't get it. He sits there at his computer, trying to find an "angle" for his attack on blogs and web writers in general, not even realizing that his entire piece is painfully needless, embarrassing, and contradictory (I love how he talks about how bloggers practically give handjobs to each other by posting links to each other, not understanding that not only is there nothing wrong with it - newspapers don't have their version of this? - it's the web technology that allows for it). He misunderstands what blogs are about, and then takes this lack of knowledge and tries to build an entire piece around it, using examples that (amusingly) point out how wrong he is. Amazing.

In the end, it seems what Beam is against, really, is words. Daily writing is hard? These bloggers have nothing to say? What is he talking about? Most bloggers don't even "aspire" (ugh) to journalism, they just write. Besides, unlike Beam, I think most of us can enjoy the books of George Higgins, the New York Times, AND our bookmarked blogs about pop culture, the war, or a leaky fridge. There are good writers and bad writers, regardless of what they are talking about, how many days a week they do it, how much (if anything) they are paid, and what the medium is. I think if Beam had a blog, he wouldn't know what to say, unlike the many fine web writers. But then again, Beam does it a few times a week, in a newspaper "that people actually read," and he doesn't have anything interesting to say there either.

A few more points:

1. Most blogs don't "tilt" to the right. We could all sit here and name a thousand blogs that are liberal or don't even mention their politics. Most blogs are about the personal life of the author, or about pop culture, or are a mish-mash of commentary, observations, and links to sites that interest that blogger. They're personal. Vincent's column is even more cringe-inducing than Beam's. He's just clueless and anvil-headed; Vincent has an agenda. Read her and you'd think that the "important" (?) blogs are war blogs, when, in reality, they account for a very small % (and she can't just say "there are, of course, blogs of all persuasions on the Net." That's just a columnist trick to quickly mention - and dismiss - the alternative. To seem like you're mentioning all the facts and still getting the column within the word count the editor wants.)

2. Blogs are not journalism, and shouldn't be compared to journalism in areas of readership, circulation, subject matter, or the quality of the writing. I mean, they certainly can be journalism (what is "journalism" anyway?), and many of the best blogs are kept by those who are writers, but that's an individual thing. Blogs are for anyone. (By the way, most journalists simply aren't good writers). It's really hard to figure out what Beam was trying to get at with his nose-in-the-air comments. And here's a tip: when trying to get a writer's reaction to a piece you're writing, don't insult him.

3. It would be nice to say that Alterman is more on the mark, because his column seems to at least have more meat than the other two columns have, but you read it, scratch your head, and wonder, why is he using The Nation to attack the professionalism and importance of what a well-known, full-time writer (Andrew Sullivan) is writing, but using Sullivan's BLOG, of all things, for the attack? Eric, you might not like the guy's politics or his lifestyle or how he feels about the war, but to have for your base of argument the fact that he writes about personal stuff like an upset stomach or the toilet overflowing or seeing Tina Brown in a lobby...well, that's bizarre. Would you be talking about this personal stuff be acceptable if Sullivan was just some complete unknown that happened to have fun keeping a blog?

4...eh, that's enough. Go read the Lileks links above and Scalzi. (And buy their books). They covered all this really well. (And contrary to what I said in the letter, I'm sure I've repeated some of their points here).

I'm trying my damndest to update this Notebook every Monday. I really am. Isn't working out though. With the last edit on the book (out in June), setting up the book tour, looking for another paying writing gig (that's a subtle hint, editors), and hovering between feeling really groovy (man) and coughing my ass off, it just hasn't been happening. I'll make the same pledge I always make: the Notebook will be updated every Monday. Don't be surprised if it doesn't happen. What's that saying? "Those who believe in miracles are never surprised when they occur."

Many readers have sent e-mails asking me a.) why don't you have a "links" page, and b.) what sites do you visit? The former is harder to answer. I had a links page way back when, circa 1998 or so, but I found it hard to maintain. It's the nature of this beast called the Web that you find more and more great sites that warrant a link, or you make friends with fellow site-keepers, and they link you and you feel obligated to link back. It gets to be too much after a while (one of the reasons I don't blog). If I see a particular site or article that I like or I think might interest you, and pertains to whatever Notebook topic I'm writing about, I might put a link. But as for a separate page for links, I don't see that in the future. Never say never though, as Connery found out.

As for the sites I frequent, that's a little easier to answer (though I'm not sure why so many people are interested, since it doesn't necessarily mean you'll like these sites as well): You can't go wrong with Romenesko's sites (Obscure Store and his Media News site), Slate, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Red Meat, This Modern World, Cook's Illustrated, Food Network, Scalzi, Fark, Metafilter, Bonnie Burton, Pop Culture Junk Mail, Scrubbles.net, Joe Bob Briggs, TV Barn, Stuckeyville, Amazon, ebay, Bruce Campbell, Lileks, The NY Times, As The Apple Turns, The Atlantic.com, too many blogs to mention ...um, in other words, I spend way too much time surfing when I should be writing.

Damn. Maybe a links page isn't such a bad idea after all. See you Monday. (Heh)