All The Presidents Men

Is Snowden a patriot or a traitor? Was FDR Hitlerian in putting the Japanese in concentration camps or was he a Commander in Chief in War doing what he had to do to keep the country safe. Is the Patriot Act an intrusion on our liberty or is it necessary in the post 9/11 age. Historically our freedoms have always contracted in times of crisis. During WWII there were all sorts of freedoms redacted the most brazen was clearly Roosevelt's shipping the Japanese to the desert. But in WWI there was the same treatment of German Americans with deportations and surveillance against German Americans with the most famous hangover being the Lindbergh case where Bruno Hauptmann was put do death with questions that persist to this day.

But now we have mass surveillance on a scale we cannot fathom. Really it depends on how powerful Prism is.  The computer running though our phone records is looking for triggers and hopefully we are not in the sweep. But we might be and that would bring up the question is the leaker a man of conscience doing what is best for the country or a leaker who has done irreparable damage. Democracy hangs in the balance as we debate the modern state under constant suspicion.

In All The Presidents Men Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post tells Woodward and Bernstein in the final scene that they need to get back to work because the future of the country hangs in the balance. Nixon resigned later that year and of course the rest is history. Are we not at a crossroads that will determine if a Big Brother state is the SOP or if we have somehow veered very close to the type of Police State monitoring one would only find in the old Soviet Union.

And we are in the shadows. Interestingly enough the world was calling for Woodward and Bernstein's head right before they realized they were right and Nixon had obstructed justice and had been running covert ops from the White House against political enemies. Where is Ben Bradley when you need him?

Rocket Man...the Upside Down American Dream

Why Gatsby Will Always Elude Film

We all saw Coppola's effort to capture The Great Gatsby with Redford and Mia Farrow mooning after each other in seventies grandeur. Great clothing. Great cars. Great music. Terrible movie. And yet here was Fitzgerald's masterpiece, but of course Coppola's problem was he was too in love with the novel. He tried to interject Fitzgerald's prose wherever he could and it was like laying silk on charcoal. "Cant repeat the past, of course you can old sport!' Redford choked on that one.

And if the characters didn't choke on the prose then the narrator did. "I have been turning over some advice my father gave me once...." The stertorous Nick Caraway years before he was a TD Waterhouse mouthpiece just couldn't handle those lines without dropping them like lead into the Long Island Sound. And why shouldn't he? Voice overs are tricky anyway and literary voice overs feel like syrup dribbled all over perfectly good scenes. Scream when the metaphors become too much.

But metaphor was Fitzgerald's gift and that elegiac elegant prose does not translate to the eye or the ear. It was meant to be read. Sadly for DiCaprio and everyone else involved in the new attempt to bring Gatsby to the twenty first century they will only succeed in sending people to find the book. And even if they update the story will not translate. The intelligence of Fitzgerald and any first rate novelist is they understand the keening of a read line of prose and its impress on human consciousness. No amount of CG will ever bail out a visual medium in this area.

And so we will be left with the plot without the fine linen. And so, we will beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaseless to the novel. And not the film.

Rocket Man...The American dream turned upside down
 

Autism makes jump from dads to granddads

One in eight. That is the statistic now for kids. One in eight has autism. Crazy. They tied it to the father. Old sperm. Seems the DNA mutates in older dads. Mom is off the hook. But dad who decided to sow his wild oats and then have a family is dealing with a stacked deck. The autism odds shoot way up. And now they have a co conspirator. Granddads.

Seems autism jumps a generation. And it's the granddads fault for holding out and having kids later. And it shows up in the next crop of kids. So that would explain why little Johnnie has autism when dad was twenty three. Granddad went off to the war and started a business and then had a kid. And his grandson has the affliction. Biology is brutal in this way. We really were designed to replicate and do it early.

As if older dads and granddads didn't have enough on their plate. They are huffing and puffing and trying to be that young cool dad but those years have a funny way of calling their marker. And like most old parents the bet is you can have it all. And then you realize you cant. Women get menopause and the men throw out damaged sperm.

And the kids get in a one in eight chance.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

What American Vacation?

Americans do not take vacations anymore. Not really. Paid vacation days are down from even 2011. Fourteen days was the average then and now we are down to twelve days. But here is the kicker. Most Americans didn't even take them all. Ten days. That's the average. The Europeans bust out at twenty five days of vacation and take every one of them. It gets worse. If we do take them we don't even go away for a week. Three days. We take a whopping three days then it's back to work. So I go back to my original question...what American vacation?

It used to be our right. We deserved a vacation for busting our collective hump all year. And that vacation was a glorious two weeks or more. But somewhere that all was lost and vacations became something to be looked down upon. I know a man who ends up with two weeks at the end of each year of vacation days and then he stays home because he has to take them or lose them. What does he do with his two glorious weeks? He said he does projects around the house. Fuuuuun!

When I was growing up we always went to beach for at least two weeks and usually three. My dad worked for a corporation and was a manager and so he had good perks. We would go to North Carolina and hang out in a cottage for our two, then three, then (are you ready for it) five weeks of vacation. And this wasn't odd. Everyone went on at least two week vacations. Many on three weeks. And here is the kicker. My dad would drive down to some salty weather beaten store after the first week and half and use the phone.  He was on the phone for about ten minutes and then that was it. That was staying connected!

Now we can't be disconnected for a day. That's really what killed the American vacation. Us. Sure the companies are stingy but we bought into that we have to stay connected or the world will fall in. The sad thing is those family vacations are what I remember most about my childhood. Everyone was relaxed and while I was bored (what kid isn't) I still loved being at the beach and reading and going out to dinner and just being with the family. Who wouldn't right?

Compare that to my vacation in the North Woods where I tramped through the woods in the middle of the night to get a Wifi signal for my Iphone. Pathetic. But I have bought in too and while we used to always go on a two week vacation now if we can squeeze in a week then it is a victory. Such is the state of the American Dream.

Or at least the American Vacation.

Rocket Man...the American dream turned upside down
 

That Raunchy Male Lit

Reading Chad Kultgen's The Average American Marriage. And it is pretty raunchy in a guy way. Not saying it' s not true but male lit has fallen to it's natural low point. Lets face it men have pretty much abandoned the field to women in the area of fiction. Sixty percent of all fiction is bought by women. So you had better have some cross gender appeal or go whole hog for the American males who really want the down and dirty and who will read anything with gratuitous sex. Bring on Chad.

Men generally don't write these type of protagonists. Hollywood messed around with it in the opposite with the Mel Gibson vehicle of what women really think about. How about Erica Jongs Fear of Flying. Women really do want to have sex. Well of course men want to have sex all the time anywhere anyplace. Ho Hum. No mileage there. What is left is the inside of the male mind. The down and dirty and I mean dirty of men.

And a lot of it is pretty over the top. I mean I had to stop eating my salad twice in several of Chads scenes. I mean I am very much a guy and they grossed me out. Even men want some pink glasses when it comes to sex. But Hultgens guy is all about sex all the time and that is pretty dead on for ninety nine percent of men. Having written a male based character in Rocket Man I have read my share of male lit. David Liss calls a lot of this fiction white mans angst fiction. And he is probably right.

Even Chads guy for all his balls out I want it all the time and will do anything any position with anyone devolves into white man angst's. This is the purview of college educated white males who found out Roxy Music and The Cure were subcultures not a way of life. And they are pissed all the good times ended and their wives became fat after having children. The problem with this basic approach is it doesn't really answer anything.

If you give us the down and dirty all the time...then what is left? More down and more dirtier I suppose. No real answers there.

Rocket Man...the novel of suburban hell

Journey of the Self Published Novel

When I started out writing I started with a  very small press. So small in fact it came down to one man who had never published a book but wanted to try. He brought out my first novel on a big Six Color Heidelberg Press on the South Side of Chicago. I remember watching the first sheets of the novel, Ripples, come off the press. It was exciting. He had no idea what he was doing and neither did I. He had offered to publish the book after his wife read it. The book was well reviewed and that was it.

Come to my second novel, Tobacco Sticks. Again the man with the press and again the good reviews and then, then...the world changed. The big publishers came knocking and an auction was held for the paperback rights. Bantam bid the highest and I ended up with a two book deal. Along comes by next novel, Mica Highways with all the trimmings. There are movie rights and foreign rights and Book of the Month Club rights. They even bought Ripples my first book. Make that a three book deal. And then things quieted down.

And I could not get another book published. Call it the changing times. Call it the plight of the midlist author. But I wrote Rocket Man and ended up self publishing the book. Again the reviewers came calling. Another publisher bought the rights. But he never brought the book out. The book languished. It would seem the rocket never would fire under Rocket Man again. And yet the book would not be quiet. I wrote another novel, The Pitcher.

And this time the book sold quickly. Due out next fall, but there was Rocket Man. The publisher asked me about this book. They read it. And then a two book deal with Koehler Books took shape. Rocket Man and then the Pitcher. Rocket Man is now due out May 1. So what is the lesson here? Publishing is crazy. Yes. You can never tell how a book will end up. Yes. You have to believe in your book. Yes. You have to take a chance when no one else will. Yes.

And finally. Never ever give up. Never. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the story of the upside down generation