|
"MURDER
at the Busted Bird Cafe"
by Claude Hall
Chapter 11
I rolled out of my sleeping bag in the dark
hours of
the morning, stopped at a 7-11 and bought a container
of coffee, and sped down the road toward Los Angeles,
sipping at the coffee as I drove.
Highway 101 becomes the Ventura Freeway once you get
over the mountains southeasterly of the Oxnard/Ventura
area and ease down into the San Fernando Valley. It
was still the hard dark before dawn as I stopped by my
apartment and, although there were a few anxious
moments as I opened the door, I didn't get blown up.
Four minutes later, I had all of my clothes, my Johnny
Cash and Hank Williams Sr. cassettes, and my
collection of Cosmopolitan magazines cleared out. I
carried everything, including my cassette deck, and
put them in the camper.
As an after thought, I went back and got the two
Elephants out of the refrigerator.
Funny, I'd thought there were three.
As I closed the refrigerator door, I heard something
that sounded an awful lot like a clock. An
old-fashioned alarm clock.
I ran out the door and down the steps and was by the
swimming pool before I realized that it had been a
clock. An old clock that resembled a cathedral radio
my sister had given me several years ago.
I went back and got it. That cleaned out the
apartment. Disc jockeys, as a rule, travel fairly
light. You never know how long you're going to be in
any given market. A month? A year? Dale
Andrews,
who by then was living a fairly permanent existence in
Baltimore, once remarked in Billboard magazine that
he'd worked at something like 23 radio stations in
three years at one point in his career.
A while later, I was parked on a side street about a
block from K-Oldies. After the sun came up, I locked
the pickup and walked the long way around the block to
the radio station. If they--whoever "they"
were--wanted to blow up this pickup, they have to hunt
for it.
Tuesday is a busy day at most contemporary radio
stations in America. Those that are live, anyway.
Many radio stations today are automated; more than
15%. And even some of the "live" stations are
not
live; the disc jockies tape their shows each day.
Takes about 45 minutes to tape a three-hour show.
This, however, is traditionally the day most music
directors of radio stations do their research on
record sales and prepare the music list that will be
broadcast by the radio station during the following
week.
On this particular oldies-format radio station, it
doesn't work quite that way. I do a constant stream
of research daily. Most of the research is via mailed
questionnaires. I feed this information into a
computer. Occasionally, I do callout research by
phone to a random list of phone numbers; mostly I just
ask them if they'd be kind enough to listen to the
"hook" of a record on the phone and tell me how much
they like it on a Likert scale. I feed this
information into a computer. Now and then, I invite
some people--a focus group--into a conference room
here at the radio station and play various records for
them to see what they like, paying close attention to
their body language. I also feed this information
into the computer.
Once a week, I pull a list of records out of the
computer and take it into Dude and we discuss the
records for up to an hour. The list has a readout of
the various people who like the record by age and sex,
as well as other information I've accumulated over the
years, i.e., how high the record went on the various
trade magazine record charts, when, weeks on the
charts, etc. In some cases, I've acquired sales
figures on the records. This is not easy to do. Many
record companies exaggerate sales on the record's way
up the charts and then lie like hell when it comes
time to pay royalties to the artist and producer and
the song publishing company. BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC
collect royalties on airplay of records. The Fox
Office collects on mechanicals--the rights involved
with actual sales of the records.
I've never been able to steal, sneak, beg, or borrow
information out of the Fox Office. Digging up sales
information from the record labels is actually almost
as difficult. To some extent, it's simply because
they don't know.
Jesus Sawyer was waiting for me. His car was in the
parking lot near a dark, oily smear. The oily smear
was all that remained of my old pickup.
A van from one of the TV stations was parked in front
of K-Oldies. For once, I was reasonably happy that I
wasn't one of your basically famous radio
personalities. No one recognized me as I walked over
to Sawyer's car and tapped on his window.
"Let's grab some coffee in the station," I said when
he rolled the window down.
He followed me inside K-Oldies through a side door and
into the so-called disc jockey lounge, which was just
a bare room with a soda machine, counter, and a coffee
pot. The morning team usually reaches the radio
station about 4:30 a.m. Before they go on the air at
5 a.m., one of them makes coffee. It is usually quite
strong.
My office is actually just a desk with a computer in
the music library of the station. No window. Just
shelves upon shelves of CDs and albums.
One of the disc jockeys stuck his head in the door.
"The Los Angeles Times is trying to reach you. So's a
couple of TV stations."
"Thanks," I told him.
Turned out that Hey You liked strong coffee. He was
interested in my computer setup and the fact that I
had a modem.
I told him about the new pickup and camper. "It has
all of the comforts of home--stove, icebox, bathroom.
Have you caught the person who blew up my old pickup?"
"Don't be silly," he said. "And it turns
out that I
may have been a little premature on ruling out the
Mafia."
"You really know how to cheer a guy up."
"How'd you get into this business?" he asked.
"Like many disc jockeys in the business today, I hung
around the local radio station, sorting records, going
for coffee. I was your typical radio gofer."
I showed him around the radio station. It was still a
little early. Dude Daniels usually doesn't get into
the station until almost 10 a.m.; however, he often
works until 10 p.m.
The general manager wasn't in either. He'd probably
headed for the golf course before coming into the
station. To his credit, he had probably taken a couple
of ad agency people with him.
"It's strange," said Hey You, "but there's really
not
much to a radio station."
"You trying to hurt my feelings?"
"I mean, it doesn't seem to take many people to keep
this thing ticking."
"After the past few days, I wish you wouldn't use a
word like ticking," I said, "but you're right. A
good
radio station can be a gold mine. When John Kluge
owned Metromedia, there was a radio station here in
town, KMET, that made several million dollars profit a
year. Sixty-seven cents out of every dollar fell to
the bottom line, according to a friend of mine named
David Moorhead who was general manager at the time.
At its peak, there were only 29 people working at the
station."
I left word with the secretary that I had an errand to
run.
"What's a station like this worth on the market?"
Sawyer asked as we left the station.
"Depends. Maybe $40 or $50 million. Maybe
more."
"Jesus!"
"Yeah."
He'd caught it, too, whatever it was.
We drove over to Sunset. Sawyer wanted to visit a
music magazine. I figured that Horace Vosberg, editor
of Disc Times, might let him see what a music trade
magazine was like. I explained that magazines like
Rolling Stone, Creem, Metalshop, and the others were
for the public. Magazines like Disc Times and R&R and
Billboard were for the people in the business. "Disc
Times is a weekly. It's distributed throughout the
United States and several other countries," I said.
Vosberg was busy, which was okay with me. He's a
rather fat piece of what was left over of an old
Russian and wears a hangdog mustache and smokes a pipe
as if it was a psychological tool. He usually hides
behind the pipe when he's trying to think of something
to say or when he has nothing to say, but doesn't want
anyone to know.
We waited in the lobby for perhaps 15 minutes,
however, before his secretary even had the courtesy to
tell us he was busy.
I asked the receptionist/telephone operator if "Mr.
Dexter has a few minutes for the Mexia flash."
We'd become acquainted a few years ago when Buzz
Dexter had drifted through deep Texas to listen to
some of the regional artists. He was always
interested in new music and reportedly had something
vaguely to do with the Beatles.
Dexter, one of the world's nicest human beings, not
only had free time, but showed us around. Dexter had
worked on Downbeat magazine for years, then produced
records for one of the major record companies. After
retirement, he joined Disc Times to do copyediting
just to keep his hands in the industry.
Dexter had known them all--Peggy Lee, Stan Kenton,
Frank Sinatra. He thought Lee was a great person;
Sinatra, he always considered to be a punk.
In one room with a large window that was the entire
wall, several people were on the phone; others fed
information into a computer.
"This is where the Big Ones are tabulated," Dexter
explained to Sawyer. "The Big Ones is a list every
week of the major records in the United States, based
upon both airplay, that is, play on radio, and record
sales."
"Does everyone in radio follow the list?"
"A huge number. If the record is listed with a
bullet, meaning increasing airplay and sales, there
would be a tendency for more radio stations to add the
record."
"Including your radio station?" Sawyer asked me.
"No. We play oldies...records that were hits at some
point in the past. Not all of the records that have
been hits. Just those we think will appeal to our
target audience. We try to determine specifically
which records will do that through research."
"Your job?"
"Yes."
I explained that "Kentucky windage" was used in the
final tabulation; it was known throughout the
industry. Human decision. "Because sales
fluctuate a
lot, as does airplay, and thus the motion of a record
up and down the chart would be jerky. That would
confuse the hell out of everyone, so a decision is
made each week to see that the record moves smoothly
up and down the list."
"Could we visit a record company?"
"You trying to learn the record business?"
"I have a vague feeling that it might take a couple of
days," said Sawyer with a laugh.
"Unfortunately, there aren't many people around these
days who really know the business," I said. "Joe
Smith has retired. So has Mo Ostin. Joe Galante at
RCA Records maybe. Here in town, though, I guess it
would be Russ Ross. He's one of the few real record
men left."
"Can we see him?"
"I don't know," I confessed. "I'm not only
a bit new
in town, but K-Oldies isn't the kind of station that
record companies care much about."
Dexter said to mention his name when we called Ross.
We used the phone in his office. Ross was in. There
had been little worry about being able to see him.
We said good-bye and drove east on Sunset Strip until
we reached the freeway. This being a work day, smog
had fallen over downtown Los Angeles on further east
like a huge brown bowl. I had never been in that part
of the city. No reason to go. We took the freeway
over to Burbank.
"I find it difficult to believe that anyone would want
to kill you, Buddy."
"Me, too," I said.
"Have you done something in your past that I should
know about?"
"I once worked briefly at a radio station in Brady,
Texas," I said. "The station was sort of a crime
at
the time."
We drove past Columbia Pictures studio in Burbank and
I gave him instructions on how to get to Olive.
Ross' office wasn't difficult to find.
He welcomed us and shook hands with me as if I was an
old friend. We didn't have to wait in any lobby and
only had to stand by half a minute as Ross finished up
a conversation with one of his staff.
"Good radio station," Ross said.
"Come now. You haven't really listened to
K-Oldies."
"Not true. I check out every radio station on a
fairly regular basis. When I have time. We have some
great radio in this market. Now and then, I get
hooked on K-Oldies and forget to turn the dial.
That's how good the station sounds."
"Thank you," I said.
"My only complaint is that I don't hear enough of my
own records. Maybe because one never produces as many
really good records as they think. Hits are one
thing, good records another."
He also treated Sawyer like a good friend, laughed at
him, shook his hand.
"I've got this parking ticket...."
"I'll pay yours if you'll pay mine," said Sawyer.
"No way," said Ross. "Mine's only $10.
You look like
the kind of guy that would get caught speeding."
"Double parking," said Sawyer. "Some blue
didn't
notice the sticker on the window. I'm hoping that I
can wiggle out of it."
Ross was known as a hard-working record man. He'd
worked his way up out of promotion for a local record
distributor to handle a small label for MCA Records,
then known mostly as U.S. Decca. After a couple of
hits, he'd eventually become president of a record
label owned by a movie firm. While he was there, the
company had a phenomenal box office hit movie and Ross
had capitalized on that with a best-selling soundtrack
album. He'd also had some hits with other artists
His office was large and comfortable. A couple of
huge leather-covered chairs and a leather-covered
couch framed a glass-top coffee table in one corner
for informal sessions. The two chairs across from his
desk were stiff-backed hand-carved wooden monsters;
you sat there, it was to be a quick, no-nonsense
meeting.
His own chair was a padded command post. You could
tell that he spent hours far past the usual day here
in these spacious quarters. They were to impress, but
they were also working quarters.
We sat on a comfortable couch in the corner of his
office that was reserved for casual meetings. A
secretary, alias Girl Friday/Girl Friendly, brought us
coffee and chocolate chip cookies.
"My major weakness," I said, taking a cookie.
"Otherwise, I'm nearly perfect."
I explained to Ross that Sawyer was investigating the
Busted Bird murders and was trying to get a quick
picture of the record business.
"That's like trying to shoot a picture of a
hummingbird," said Ross. "Can't be done with a
Brownie."
"I'm beginning to understand that," said Sawyer.
"I've just had the charts explained to me. Seems like
a lot of possibilities there for payola."
"Investigations happen now and then," said Ross.
"Nothing has ever been proved."
"An investigation of the Big Ones chart at Disc
Times?"
"Just rumors. That's all," said Ross.
"But this is a
rumor business. We even spread rumors ourselves--it's
sometimes called hyping--just to get some excitement
going on a record or an artist. We live on
excitement. Excitement about an artist can mean the
difference between selling a hundred thousand copies
of a CD and selling a million."
Sawyer gave a low whistle.
"That could represent a lot of money," said Sawyer.
"Millions," agreed Ross. "And, even more
important,
those millions could lead to more millions. Can you
imagine an artist like Elton John being so hot it took
an entire accounting firm just to handle his business?
The record sales, the concerts, songwriting, the song
publishing. That was virtually true during my days at
MCA Records."
"If Elton John made that much money, the record
company probably also did well."
"Record companies rake in their share," said Ross.
"Some record labels do better than the movie companies
back in their heyday. David Geffen, the former head
of Elektra Records, is certainly up in the same
financial bracket, if not higher, than Steven
Spielberg. You know what I mean?"
"I've been wondering, Mr. Ross...would you sign an
artist like Sherbert to your label?"
"Hard to say. Depends on what kind of marketing plan
my staff or his manager could come up with and whether
I could be convinced his records would make money for
the company," said Ross. "Some record men might
take
a chance on a given act for one reason or another. I
think I would have banked on Frank Zappa just for the
hell of it if the right opportunity had come my way,
whether he sold enough records to pay for the
pressings or not. Some acts, I probably wouldn't sign
even if they sold like the devil. I just don't dig
that kind of music."
Sawyer looked at me. "Kentucky windage?"
"About the same thing," I said. "Even a
damned good
record man can't always predict a hit. One label
invested half a million trying to promote an act
called Jason Zorn. I don't think Zorn sold enough
records to pay half of that back. On the other hand,
there are a lot of stories in the industry about hits
that came out of the woodwork...that is, they were
unplanned. 'Sunny' by Bobby Hebb was on the B side of
the record."
"B side?"
"The other side was the song that the record company
was working. Same thing happened with the Statler
Brothers. 'Flowers on the Wall' was the B side of the
single that Columbia Records was pushing."
"This business sounds crazy!" said Sawyer.
"Wait until you learn more about it before you make a
decision like that," cautioned Ross with a wry smile.
"There may be more method to the madness than shows on
the surface."
"Neil Bogart once researched five singles," I said.
"The researcher told him that two of the records would
be hits. And they were. But Bogart never used
research again; he didn't want to know something like
that because he was afraid he wouldn't work all five
of the records on an equal basis."
"Could I talk to this Bogart?"
"Gone," I said. "Very flashy, fairly
successful
record man. Founded a label called Buddah Records,
but he probably became a victim of his own lifestyle."
We talked for perhaps an hour. Ross was very cordial
and very frank. He told Sawyer quite clearly that he
wouldn't say anything bad about anyone specifically
and he would not put down the business.
"I love the record industry," he told Sawyer as we
were leaving. "It's a great business and we produce
an enormous amount of high quality entertainment for
the world. True, we have a few creeps that sometimes
screw things up. You can find similar creeps in any
business. Probably there are less such creeps in the
music and radio industries than in other businesses.
But you're right about one thing, Sawyer, this is a
crazy business. Maybe that's why I love it."
"A whole morning shot," I said as Sawyer and I got
back in his car.
"Not so. I think I picked up at least a glimpse of
what the business is like. May help somewhere down
the line."
"Bad choice of words," I said. "I didn't
mean the
morning was wasted, but it's damned well gone."
A few minutes later, he dropped me off in front of
K-Oldies.
"What if I need to reach you?" he asked.
"Can't. Except here at the station. I'm not
going to
go buy a cellular. I hate the phone anyway."
"Buddy, I think I should tell you: Something is fishy
about that Society for Critical Studies."
"I'd already figured that out," I said. "On
the other
hand, this Tricia Rizzo who heads it up is one very
pretty lady."
"Thought you were giving up women forever and running
away to Alabama."
"That was yesterday," I said.
"You've got my number if you need me," he said.
(To be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
|
Commentary
by
Claude Hall
July
21, 2003
How to Write an Article
by
Claude Hall
A lot of people think they're writers-and some are. Many more
think they can write-and some can. But while mere writing
may come easy, good writing is actually hard work and probably
deserves considerable attention.
Ironically, writing is fun! First, there is an euphoric feeling
after you've finished a piece of writing. This feeling is
deceptive; seldom is the item that you've just written as good
as you believe it is. But the moment you lay the ballpoint
pen down or peck "- 30 -" on your computer or
typewriter, you sometimes feel as if you've just written
America's most phenomenal work of art. I don't know why
this is so, but the feeling is great and its lasts a while and
most of the time you get it. Rarely is the feeling not
there and many real writers would write for no other purpose.
Second, there is always the expectation that you're going to
make money out of the article or short story, play, TV script,
book, or whatever it is that you have written. The first
time you sell a short story or article is equivalent to the
thrill Lindbergh must have experienced when he finally made it
across the
Atlantic Ocean solo in The Spirit of St. Louis or when Kathy
Sullivan became the first woman ever to walk in space.
Third, you've accomplished something definitive. You may
have not carved a statue of the goddess Diana, but what you've
written has substance and may lead to lasting fame. Few
currently know who chiseled that statue and one day few will
remember Paul Simon or
Bruce Springsteen, while millions upon millions today and will
even tomorrow know who wrote "The Raven" or "Tom
Sawyer."
The opportunity of becoming immortal through writing is there
with every article, story, poem, or book you write.
The other day, "Tea House of the August Moon" was
shown once again on television. "Tea House of the
August Moon" was first a novel, then a Broadway play, then
a movie starring Marlon Brando and Glen Ford. Vern Snider never
had to write another word; he was rich and famous.
Everyone has heard of Hemingway, so famous that-like Elvis or
Sinatra-all you have to say is Hemingway. But singers known by a
single name are rare compared to writers such as Steinbeck,
Twain, Kafka, Michener, Kipling, Wolfe, Chekov, Flaubert,
Faulkner, Wallace, Dostoevski, Durrell, Dickens, Poe, Hammett,
Spillane, O'Henry, Thurber, Brackett, and on and on. And
even Elvis and Sinatra may one day fade away while Mark Twain,
Edgar Allen Poe and Fyodor Dostoevski probably not.
Of course, even moderate success at writing takes a certain
level of work, commitment, and skill.
Can you write? Of course you can! You've been
writing letters for years. A diary, perhaps. Reports,
memos, notes. All of these have been good practice.
Can you write well? Maybe not at this particular moment,
but probably as good usually as anyone else. Without question,
you can write almost as well as anyone if you're willing to
learn a few "tricks of the trade," so to speak.
Certainly, you can write as well as Irving Wallace and Mickey
Spillane, although, true, you may never become a Hemingway or
Durrell.
But even Hemingway mistakenly deluded himself, now and then,
into believing he was better than he really was. He first
thought "Across the Rivers and Into the Trees" had
bested Dostoevski (it hadn't). In his more rational
moments, he was like those of us who
constantly strive to write better than we do.
Here is one of the best-written paragraphs in modern literature.
It is the lead to "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest
Hemingway.
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village
that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and
blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down
the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the
trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the
leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along
the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze,
falling and the soldiers marching and afterwards the road bare
and white except for the leaves.
This particular paragraph has it all. It is virtually a
textbook on how to write well. I study this one paragraph
often and intensely. To this day.
But this you can be sure: All of us have to keep trying to
improve our writing; the goals in writing are just as elusive to
you and me as they were to Hemingway, Melville, Dostoevski, or
Raymond Chandler. Or Leigh Brackett.
These, of course, were among the greatest writers of writing.
You've probably never heard of Leigh Brackett, who insisted
until she died that there was life on Mars. I'm probably
one of the few people around who believes she was a great
writer, though all of the things she wrote were certainly not
great. This is true as well, incidentally, of many writers,
including Hemingway and Durrell. Many of Hemingway's
stories and novels simply do not stand up; not today; not then.
And Lawrence Durrell actually has only the quartet as proof
without question of his greatness; the other things he wrote
were not that good. James Clavell did a magnificent job
with "Sho-Gun." His other books contributed to
the loss of some trees for paper pulp that would have better
been left standing.
When I taught a course called "Magazine Writing" at
the State University of New York at Brockport, I quoted part of
a pulp short novel written by Leigh Brackett as an example of
great prose imagery. A purest might have frowned: Reading
fantasy fiction in a basically non-fiction magazine writing
class?
I believe that all writing has many similarities. One of
the great hacks, and I use that term fondly because he was a
very fine professional writer-Neils Mortensen-claimed that he
wrote fiction like fact and fact like fiction. I taught
writing, period! Good writing. And any literary snob
who thinks all of the material printed originally in pulp
magazines was poor should have his or her L.C. Smith taken away
from them.
Some excellent writers, of course, never reach any great fame.
The late Leigh Brackett has a couple of John Wayne
films-"Rio Bravo" and "Eldorado"- to her
credit, she worked on the script of "The Big Sleep"
with William Faulkner, she was involved with the second
"Stars Wars" movie--"The Empre Strikes
Back"--and some increasingly obscure pocketbooks of
previous novels printed in the old Planet Stories pulp magazine.
But few would know her name today outside of hard-core science
fiction fans and fewer still the name of her husband Edmond
Hamilton, also a writer who was virtually a cult figure at one
point, but ended his career writing stories for Superman and
Batman comics. However, read the opening of "The Last
Days of Shandakor" in the collection "The Best of
Leigh Brackett" published by Ballantine, 1977, and you'll
see what I mean. She wrote beautiful prose.
He came alone into the wineshop, wrapped in a dark red cloak,
with the cowl drawn over his head. He stood for a moment
by the doorway and one of the slim dark predatory women who live
in those places went to him, with a silvery chiming from the
little bells that were almost all she wore.
I saw her smile up at him. And then, suddenly, the smile
became fixed and something happened to her eyes. She was
no longer looking at the cloaked man but through him. In
the oddest fashion-it was as though he had become invisible.
She went by him. Whether she passed some word along or not
I couldn't tell but an empty space widened around the stranger.
And no one looked at him. They did not avoid looking at
him. They simply refused to see him. He began to walk
slowly across the crowded room. He was very tall and he
moved with a fluid, powerful grace that was beautiful to watch.
People drifted out of his way, not seeming to, but doing it.
The air was thick with nameless smells, shrill with the laughter
of women.
Two tall barbarians, far gone in wine, were carrying on some
intertribal feud and the yelling crowd had made room for them to
fight. There was a silver pipe and a drum and a
double-banked harp making old wild music. Lithe brown
bodies leaped and whirled through the laughter and the shouting
and the smoke.
The stranger walked through all this, alone, untouched, unseen.
He passed close to where I sat. Perhaps because I, of all the
people in that place, not only saw him but stared at him, he
gave me a glance of black eyes from under the shadow of his
cowl-eyes like brown coals, bright with suffering and rage.
I caught only a glimpse of his muffled face. The merest
glimpse-but that was enough. \Why did he have to show his face
to me in that windshop in Barrkesh?
He passed on. There was no space in the shadowy corner
where he went but space was made, a circle ofit, a moat between
the stranger and the crowd. He saw down. I saw him
lay a coin on the outer edge of the table. Presently a
serving wench came up, picked up the coin and set down a cup of
wine. But it was as if she waited on an empty table.
I turned to Kardak, my head drover, a Shunni with massive
shoulders and uncut hair braided in an intricate tribal know.
"What's all that about?" I asked.
Kardak shrugged. "Who knows?" He started
to rise. "Come, JonRoss, it is time we got back to the
serai."
"We're not leaving for hours yet. And don't lie to
me, I've been on Mars a long time. What is that man? Where
does he come from?"
Barrakesh is the gateway between north and south. Long ago, when
there were oceans in equatorial and southern Mars, when Valkis
and Jekkara were proud seats of empire and not thieves' dens,
here on the edge of the northern Drylands the great caravans had
come and gone to Barrakesh for a thousand thousand years.
It is a place of strangers.
In the time-eaten streets of rock you see tall Keshi hillmen,
nomads from the high plains of Upper Shun, lean dark men from
the south who barter away the loot of forgotten tombs and
temples, cosmopolitan sophisticates up from Kahora and the trade
cities, where there are spaceports and all the appurtenances of
modern civilization.
The red-cloaked stranger was none of these.
A glimpse of a face-I am a planetary anthropologist I was
supposed to be charting Martian ethnology and I was doing it on
a fellowship grant I had wangled from a Terran university too
ignorant to know that the vastness of Martian history makes such
a project hopeless.
I was in Barrakesh, gathering an outfit preparatory to a year's
study of the tribes of Upper Shun. And suddenly there had
passed close by me a man with golden skin and un-Martian black
eyes and a facial structure that belonged to no race I knew.
I have seen the carven faces of fauns that were a little like
it.
Kardak said again, "It is time to go, JonRoss!"
I looked at the stranger, drinking his wine in
silence and alone. "Very well, I'll ask him."
Kardak sighed. "Earthmen," he said, "are
not given much to wisdom." He turned and left me.
(266-68)
You've more than likely also never heard of Erich Maria Remarque,
another one of my favorite writers. And, if I mention Frederick
Faust to some writers, I usually get that definitive tilt of the
head and dull sheen of the eyes.
Remarque is best known for "All Quiet on the Western
Front" originally published in 1928, probably the first
major novel to exploit the concept that war is hell. It
sold millions of copies around the world. This is from a version
published by Crest Books, 1961.
We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers
run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their
splintered stumps into the next shell-hole; a lance-corporal
crawls a mile and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee
after him; another goes to the dressing station and over his
clasped hands bulge his intestines; we see men without mouths,
without jaws, without faces; we find one man who has held the
artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to
bleed to death. The sun goes down, night comes, the shells
whine, life is at an end. (84)
My personal favorite book of his is "Three Comrades."
But if you're a glutton for the macabre, try "Spark of
Life," undoubtedly one of the greatest books of horror ever
written. This book makes Braum Stoker's
"Dracula" read like a children's tale.
Through "All Quiet on the Western Front,"
"Flotsam," "Arch of Triumph," "Three
Comrades," and "The Black Obelisk," you can
follow the history of Germany from World War I through World War
II. But Remarque offers much more than history; he presents a
vast tableau of humanity under siege by gross villainy. He
ended up extremely wealthy and at his death was married to
Paulette Goddard, the movie star, although without question the
girl of his earlier books was probably Marlene Dietrich who was
also a girlfriend of Hemingway at one point and is mentioned in
"Islands in the Stream."
Faust? The world knew him mostly as Max Brand. Those
that knew any name of his at all (he used more than two dozen
pen names). To experience his work, watch "Destry."
You can see the film with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich or
Audie Murphy, or Andy Griffith (who also performed in a musical
version on Broadway). These were three of the most popular
versions; there were three or four other films produced based on
this one book-Brand's "Destry Rides Again," which was
actually the sequel to his book "Destry."
Brand wrote more than 4,000 words a day most of his productive
life. In my personal collection are more than 160 of his
western novels. But he also wrote the Dr. Kildare series
(which were made into a series of movies as well as a television
series), spy novels, detective novels, romances, even one
science fiction novel.
The reason I mention Brand, Brackett, Remarque, and others is
simply to illustrate that no one article can teach you all there
is to learn about writing. And merely studying the works
of Flaubert and Hemingway is not enough (if you study Dashiell
Hammett, you may discover the original source of some of the
skills of Hemingway; but, of course, you would also have to
study Gertrude Stein, a very difficult writer, and maybe even
Dostoevski). Writing, in general, would-and does at many
universities-require more than one complete course. For
the same reason, there is probably no one particular book alone
on writing that can help you. While many books are
available on writing, some are confusing and others were written
probably by people who were not really successful writers or
thought they were more successful than they were. Or
thought they had some great secret about writing other than
constant, demanding study and hard work.
We're going to briefly discuss here only the various aspects of
skills necessary to write a decent article. Enough to get
you started. It would be difficult to cover in detail such
things as leads, structure, style, quality, and revising; those
aspects would require subsequent articles. And/or
books.
Although the focus of this article is about writing articles, it
could apply to almost any kind of writing. Many of the
aspects of writing apply, naturally, to just about any form of
writing, whether a short story, play, or poem. The form
may differ, the aspects differ only slightly.
Structure:
All writing should have form. A car is built on a
chassis. A house has not only a foundation, but a frame as
a rule. The human body has a skeleton.
The form or skeleton (outline, if you will) of
an
article can range from simple to complex. The longer the
article, the more academic in nature, the stronger the
possibility that the form is progressively complex.
But, essentially, the form is simple. and it can be the same as
that of a public speech. This is
basically the form of a public speech: Tell them what you're
going to tell them. Tell them.
Tell them what you told them.
When I'm writing an article, I'll sometimes write out this
formula as my starting point:
I. Introduction
II. Body
A. Point one
B. Point two
C. Point three
III. Conclusion
I couldn't even begin to estimate how much money I've made
writing and selling articles and the vast majority followed this
simple formula whether the articles were humorous or serious in
nature, whether they were intended for a trade magazine or a
consumer publication. Even serious academic articles which
also, of course, require verification as well as the capability
of being replicated...that is every fact or statement must be
attributed and the source listed at the end in a bibliography.
Sometimes, there will be two parts to the introduction and
sometimes I'll make four points in the body of the article.
Usually, the conclusion will be fairly short. I'll give
you some possibilities of various endings later. But,
usually, the conclusion is fairly brief-tell them what you've
told them.
There are, of course, other structures. Sometimes, you
might wish to just tell something like it happen, i.e.,
chronologically. Other times, you might want to put things
together that fit together; for example, if I were writing about
kinds of computers, I might wish to discuss all of the monitors,
then all of the keyboards, then all of the CPUs.
(Next week, topics that interest people and writing leads.
Coming soon: Remembering old man McLendon.)
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
|
