Deni Dietz

QUIBBLES & BITS

I have a blue tee-shirt…well, it’s more like off-blue…maybe light teal or dark turquoise…that says: I READ BANNED BOOKS

When I wear it I get strange looks, but – so far – no one has asked me what it means. I suppose it’s self-explanatory 🙂

Or maybe people are afraid to hear my answer since they already consider me…eccentric. And passionate about social and political issues.

Last week, when publication was abruptly halted on OJ Simpson’s (cough) hypothetical If I Did It, my first reaction was joy. The public spoke up and was heard. Then the following thoughts occurred:

Did OJ get his full advance? Or, like many of us, did he get half on signing (the contract) and the other half on publication?

That’s an "I’m merely curious" question. It really doesn’t matter. It’s like wondering if Tom Hanks got his usual 6 (or is it 8) million for Da Vinci Code. Or did he take "points"? And who cares? Except maybe Hanks, if he chose points 🙂

So, can OJ now sell his hypothetical (cough) book to another publisher? Or can he self-publish with, oh say iUniverse? Or maybe he can Xerox the pages from his galleys and create a new press — Orenthal Press has a nice ring to it.

Assuming he self-publishes, will Amazon carry his book? Before the book was pulled, Barnes & Noble said they’d certainly carry it ("like any other book"). So, will B&N carry a self-published version? Will Borders still donate any profits to charity?

I don’t know the answers.

But I have mixed feelings about the book’s cancellation. My husband Gordon says it’s a grey area since OJ wasn’t convicted of murder but was found guilty in the civil suit, and no one can write/sell his/her tell-all book and make a profit off a crime he/she committed. Still, legalities aside, my mixed feelings have more to do with…well, I can’t say banning the book since, technically, the book never came out. I have mixed feelings about public outrage "winning the day," I guess.

Is that a good thing?

Again, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, unless of course it goes too far. Suppose the voices screaming that the Harry Potter books should be banned had been louder, more strident, more threatening? Suppose someone, or a lot of someones, thought a Paul Guyot script should be banned because it was too violent or an Alex Sokoloff novel taken off the shelves because it was too horrific?

About a year ago I had a heated discussion with a friend who insisted that children shouldn’t be given access to "everything out there" without adult supervision. She was defending a banned-books list. I agreed that adult supervision was important. I disagreed with the banning of books. What gives anyone — or a committee of anyones — the right to determine which books are detrimental to one’s health? And morals?

Furthermore, I told her, it’s been proven over and over again that books sell even more copies when they’re banned.

"They wouldn’t sell more copies if they were unavailable," she snapped, and that was the end of our discussion.

Here are the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2001

*Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
*Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
*I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
*The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
*The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
*Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
*Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
*Forever by Judy Blume
*Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
*Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
*Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
*My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
*The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
*The Giver by Lois Lowry
*It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
*Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
*A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
*The Color Purple by Alice Walker
*Sex by Madonna
*Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
*The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
*A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
*Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
*Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
*In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
*The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
*The Witches by Roald Dahl
*The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
*Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
*The Goats by Brock Cole
*Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
*Blubber by Judy Blume
*Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
*Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
*We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
*Final Exit by Derek Humphry
*The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood *Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
*The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
*What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents
& Daughters by Lynda Madaras
*To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
*Beloved by Toni Morrison
*The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
*The Pigman by Paul Zindel
*Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
*Deenie by Judy Blume
*Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
*Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
*The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
*Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
*A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
*Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
*Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
*Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
*Cujo by Stephen King
*James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl *The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
*Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
*Ordinary People by Judith Guest
*American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
*What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
*Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
*Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
*Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
*Fade by Robert Cormier
*Guess What? by Mem Fox
*The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
*The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
*Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
*Lord of the Flies by William Golding
*Native Son by Richard Wright
*Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
*Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
*Jack by A.M. Homes
*Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
*Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
*Carrie by Stephen King
*Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
*On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
*Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
*Family Secrets by Norma Klein
*Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
*The Dead Zone by Stephen King
*The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
*Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
*Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
*Private Parts by Howard Stern
*Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
*Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
*Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
*Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
*Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
*Sex Education
by Jenny Davis
*The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
*Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
*How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
*View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
*The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
*The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
*Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

I’m fairly certain the list has grown. Makes you think, eh?

I’ve read (and loved) 23 of the above, assuming the Harry Potter series counts as one book. The Color Purple and To Kill a Mockingbird are on my list of all-time favorites.

And I’m still trying to figure out why they’d "challenge" Ordinary People. Anyone know?

                                           AND NOW…A CHANGE OF ADDRESS

This is my last Murderati blog. It’s been fun but I’m moving "across town" to a new blog. With a very exciting concept.

HEY, THERE’S A DEAD GUY IN THE LIVING ROOM will include a publisher, a couple of editors, a publicist, a reviewer, a bookstore owner, and my bud Jeff Cohen, who makes me laugh even when I don’t feel like laughing. We’ll all be talking/writing about the publishing business from our own (unique) perspectives.

And if, occasionally, one of us strays into more controversial terrain…well, that’s one person’s opinion, not the entire blog’s. But I think readers are smart enough to know the difference.

I’ll still be doing my QUIBBLES & BITS every Tuesday, hopefully more bits than quibbles, only I’ll post it at the new site.

If HEY, THERE’S A DEAD GUY IN THE LIVING ROOM is extraordinarily successful, we might have a line of Dead Guy toys and games, stuffed animals (Dead Guy has a cat?), an animated TV series…

So keep your ears — and eyes — open for the launch date this January. And please email me at deni@denisedietz.com if you’d like a personal notification.

Happy holidays, my friends, and goodbye for now. As those 7 little dwarfs (man, my spell-checker is going bonkers over "dwarfs") would say, it’s off to work I go. In between rehearsals for Oliver, I plan to finish writing my fourth Ellie/Peter mystery: EVERYBODY DIDN’T LIKE SARA LEE, and my Ingrid/Hitchcock sequel: THE LOLLIPOP GUILD.

Over and Out,
Deni

by Pari Noskin Taichert

Oh, I’m going to get in trouble for this . . .

For years, I’ve promoted independent bookstores far more than their shiny, muscle-bound counterparts. When I used to write a literary column for the Albuquerque Tribune, I extolled the virtues of these small businesses; they were the fortresses of free thought, the defenders of the little guy, the natural habitat for a flourishing small press.

Shopping at mom & pop stores was simply — and always — the right thing to do. I was a card-carrying member of the Small-Is-Beautiful philosophy.

That card remains in my wallet.

I believe that independent mystery bookstores (and other genre-specific stores) fulfill the mission described above. The Mystery Bookstore in L.A., Murder by the Book in Houston, The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, The Mystery Company in Carmel, IN — along with other members of the IMBA — are a big reason I’ve been able to build my career.

But . . .

I’ve been rethinking my knee-jerk defense of general indies and my haughty attitude toward the chain stores.

You see, I’m in business. Few businesses survive on mere ideology; they need results.

I’ve been working at this job a long time (far more than the mere three years since publication) and am finally cresting a new wave. From this vantage point, I’ve got to say it seems to me that many indies can’t be bothered with the little gal anymore — especially if she writes genre or commercial fiction.

There are, of course, notable exceptions — Vroman’s in Pasadena, The Well Red Coyote in Sedona, the Treasure House in Albuquerque’s Old Town . . .

However, authors from small presses — even ones with sterling reputations and good sales — have told me they now feel like supplicants who must bear gifts in order to gain attention from general indies. Coop money, extensive mailing lists, free copies — all of these are becoming de rigeur.

Indeed, the booking coordinator at the University of New Mexico Press told me about an indy in Boulder that asked her to ask an author directly for $200 to fund a book signing.

What the hell?
(Don’t get me started on how much these signings really cost. I know from my years of work in PR that most general indies spend little, if any, money at all on them.)

I wouldn’t have thought much about any of this except that recently I’ve had stellar experiences in chain stores. Managers and employees uniformly have been thrilled to meet me. They’ve ordered a large amount of stock, asked me to sign my books AND slapped stickers on the covers with the assurance of people who are going to sell the heck out of them.

So, why continue to sing the praises of general indies when they often treat me — us — as peons?

I believe commercial fiction from small presses increasingly is losing its natural home in these boutique stores. Once known for staff retention, customer loyalty (because of staff retention), hand-selling and unique inventory, indies are beginning to look much more like their big-guy competition.

And, guess what? I’ve witnessed the same kind of old-school hand-selling at the chain stores that many authors (and customers) so snottily slam.

It’s true.

The reality of this shift is affecting my own tactics and marketing strategies. Still, I can’t help myself. I seek out and am delighted when I encounter an enthusiastic general independent bookstore.

They’re out there.

They’re the ones that understand that genre fiction is commercial. Commercial fiction is just that — commercial.

It sells.

And, after years of singing the same song, I’m beginning to belt out a new tune.

A NOTE:
During the next month or so, you’ll notice changes here at Murderati. Jeff bid us goodbye yesterday. Deni will do so tomorrow. Naomi plans to guest blog but will not be a regular after this Wednesday.

Watch us beginning December 3 for the new writers who’ll grace our group. I’ll announce the full schedule on Dec. 4.

For now, please join us in wishing Jeff, Deni and Naomi tremendous success in all of their endeavors.

Okay, so Thanksgiving was three days ago. Does that mean we should no longer be paying attention to those things for which we are thankful? I think not.

I don’t believe in appreciating our luck only one day a year. I don’t believe in being romantic only on February 14. Do we only honor veterans on November 11? Think Abe Lincoln was a good president only on the third Monday in February? Get drunk and throw up only on December 31?

Of course not.

So, please indulge me as I catalog those things (at least, some of them) for which I am especially thankful at this stage in my life:

* I’m thankful for a new publisher. Not that I’m not grateful to the old one, but it’s nice that now, I’ve been working with the lovely people at Berkley Prime Crime for a series that starts next year.

* I’m thankful that I’ve finally come up with a title for the second (!) book in the new series. As of today, it’s called IT HAPPENED ONE KNIFE. Unless that changes.

* I’m glad that pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training in only 11 weeks. It’s not much, but we baseball fans have to hang onto something.

* I’m thankful that there is Amazon.com, since I have managed to do almost all my holiday shopping without having to go to–horrors!–a mall. (Remember, before you get annoyed, that we Semitic types have 10 days fewer before we have to bestow gifts upon everyone we’ve ever met.)

* I’m thankful to the Edy’s company, for making slow-churned light ice cream that tastes as good as the original kind. Who knew it was the speed of the churn that made the difference?

* Not to repeat myself, but I’m thankful for all the kind people who have blurbed my previous books, the people who reviewed them, the people who recommended them to friends. I hope to be even more thankful next year at this time.

* I’m thankful to everyone who has taken time to contact me about the books and say nice things. The few who said not-so-nice things? Maybe not as thankful, but I’m glad you read them, anyway.

* I’m thankful I got to see parts of Italy this year. Next year: well, we can afford Hoboken, at this point.

* Thanks to all mystery fans, all people who like to read, to librarians, booksellers, reviewers, fans (especially fans!), convention attendees, signing attendees and people who email.

* If you meet enough mystery authors, you get to be thankful for the friends you make along the way, and I am. I’d mention names, but then I’d inadvertently leave someone out, and feel terrible. So assume you know who you are. Thanks. Many of you have shown me the ropes (although what ropes can do to help a novelist is beyond me), others have commiserated when there was something to commiserate, and still others have bought drinks at conventions. None of these things is small, by any measure.

* I’d mention my wife and family, but then I’d lose my reputation as a curmudgeon, and I’ve worked so hard on it.

* I’m thankful that I finally finished listening to the audiobook of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. I mean, 21 DISCS??? The guy was dead for a disc and a half!

* I’m thankful there are (in life or in legacy): James Taylor, Susan Werner, the Beatles (gotta hear that new mish-mash of their songs!), the Marx Brothers, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, grilled cheese sandwiches (although I could have lived without the cholesterol), Mel Brooks, Jim Croce, Irwin Shaw, William Goldman, Larry Gelbart, Linda Ellerbee, french fries (see comment re: cholesterol), Preston Sturges, S.J. Perelman, Joe Adamson, Indiana Jones, Abraham Lincoln, Jon Stewart, Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Madeline Kahn, Gilda Radner, A.J. Croce, Jean Shepherd, and the New York Yankees.

I believe other people are thankful for other things:

For example, I think Mel Gibson is thankful for Michael Richards . Finally, someone’s taken the heat off.

I think Britney Spears is thankful for her pre-nup. Yeah, I really think Britney is thankful for that pre-nup. After all, she’s 25 years old, and been married, what, three times?

I think Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are thankful for the decorum and discretion of the press who followed them to Rome for their wedding. I think the press is thankful that Tom gets married every few years, so they can have a reason to go to Rome. You can’t get fresh gnocchi like that anywhere else.

I believe Justin Morneau is thankful that people outside the New York metropolitan area hate Derek Jeter so much. Only baseball fans are going to get that one.

It’s my belief that NBC is thankful it took a shot on a TV show about people who get superpowers just out of nowhere, and that Aaron Sorkin is pleased that it would be a huge embarrassment to cancel a really interesting show just because it’s hard to sum up in half a sentence.

I’m guessing Janet Evanovich is grateful that numbers are infinite. She can keep going forever.

Sue Grafton, on the other hand, is probably thankful there are only 26 letters in the alphabet.

Just as a note: This is my last post on Murderati. But I will be posting on a new blog, called Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room (no, really), very early next year, and I hope my former blogmates here will be so kind as to provide a link when the Dead Guy is up and running. I’ve had a great time here, am thankful (you should pardon the expression) for the opportunity, and for all the people who have commented and mentioned the blog to me. Thanks for taking time out of your Sunday to take a look. Hope we meet up again very, very soon.

Deni Dietz

QUIBBLES & BITS

As I was watching Canada’s Grey Cup Sunday (my team, the B.C. Lions, won and one of my favorite singers, Nelly Furtado, performed during the halftime show), the following thoughts occurred:

It seems to me that no author sits alone in an office anymore, with only a muse for company. To be perfectly honest, the publication game is about moving your book. Because, to be in the "A League" of this sport, it takes not only talent but team work: coaches (agents), team owner (publisher) and a fan base ("Go, Deni!")

Fans are crucial and, nowadays, they need to see writers perform.

Aye, there’s the rubber chicken! Fans, it seems, are no longer content to just read a good book. They want to see the author reading it aloud, signing copies, thanking the editor.

Recently a group of British novelists complained that publishers increasingly favor the manuscripts of young, sexy writers. It’s no longer enought to write well, they said; to win at the writing game today, one has to look good on podiums or on camera.

Is that true?

To continue the sports analogy … one way a (non-young, non-sexy) career-athlete writer can make his/her way to the top is up the prize ladder, from Giller to Governor General’s to Arthur Ellis to Edgar to Nobel (dream big, Deni!)

On Awards night everyone thrills to the glitz and glamour and the hyperbole of reviewers, right? Of course, right (as Tevye would say).

But … the growing scale and competitiveness of prize events is not only about pandering to a celebrity-obsessed public. Prizes direct people’s attention to titles, and especially novels, says Azar Nafisi, whose memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran describes what reading and writing was like in her native Iran, where individual idiologies aren’t welcome. Novels, she says, are the literature of empathy, individuality and ambiguity (I love that and have printed it out to hang above my computer), as opposed to fundamentalist certainty.

In truth, prizes can do more than suggest what to read; they can keep authors out of jail! This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, author of Snow. Pamuk was charged by the Turkish government for writing an article about Kurds and Armenians killed in Turkey that conflicted with the official, historical version. Eventually the charges against Pamuk were dropped, due to his international reputation and the protest of the world literary community.

So, to answer my own question, major book awards ARE about more than dressing up. And sometimes they even generate a paycheck:

City of Victoria Butler Book Prize: $5,000
The Giller Prize for Fiction: $40,000
Nobel Prize for Literature: $1.2 million

Holy cow! $1.2 million? Dream big, Deni!

Happy [American] Thanksgiving, everybody. On Thursday I will hoist a glass of root beer and recite my annual blessing:

    May the light always find you on a dreary day.
    When you need to be home, may you find your way.
    May you always have courage to take a chance
    And never find frogs in your underpants.

by Pari Noskin Taichert

I keep hearing about the sad state of reading in this country. Publishers bemoan a shrinking audience. Writers tremble at the stats. An NEA report from 2004 paints a bleak picture.

Yet, publishers continue to produce more and more books. Whole stadiums of people call themselves writers now and assume they’ll have readers someday. The NEA report was printed rather than simplified into an animated cartoon form.

All this wailing and knuckle-gnashing is getting tiresome. In my small corner of experience, the facts don’t mesh with the groans.

During the last month, I’ve had more than 13 public events. These booksignings, public presentations, conventions and bookclubs have brought me into stores, airports, private homes, restaurants and hotels. You know what? People are, indeed, reading for pleasure. They’re doing it a lot. Even in little ol’ New Mexico, which often stands with its face turned to the corner when it comes to illiteracy, people read.

Lest you think it’s only old farts who are whipping out books, let me reassure you that I’ve talked fiction with twenty-somethings and high school students. At the Tony Hillerman Writers’ Conference a few weeks ago, a young woman walked up to me with an Ipod in her hand.

I asked what she was listening to.

"I download books from the internet. Why would I bother with music when there’s so much good literature out there?" she said.

I thought I was hallucinating.

Is everyone else in the literary world encountering a far different subset of our culture? Why all the rending of clothes? The bloomers in a dither? The Cassandra predictions about the end of the written word?

Sure, my empirical samples may be small, but it’s not like I go out looking for them. I just notice a helluvalot of people reading books and magazines.

To be fair, I do believe there are factors that threaten reading as we know it. In my kids’ classes, teachers use videos and movies far more than they did when I was a girl. The allure of television and computer games at home has increased. Indeed, in our family, we limit our kids’ TV and computer playtime tremendously. They have no choice but to read.

Teenagers are busier and more scheduled than they used to be, too. They’ve also got a far broader range of communication choices than even a generation ago. Sure, they read books for school, but many have lives so full that it’s difficult to slow down enough to read anything longer than a cereal box.

Still, I’m not sure that this means these kids won’t turn into readers.

A little known fact: I hated reading until I was sixteen and desperate for English while living in France. It was there that I finally learned that books could be pleasures rather than obligations. Who knows? If I hadn’t been hungry for my native language then, would I be a reader today?

Last Friday, I went to our public library and spoke with one of my favorite people there. Gail Miller is a librarian and wife of John J. Miller. She’s also a YA reader for a NY publisher. I asked her if she thought people are reading less nowadays.

"Not substantially," she said, leading me to a book she adored and wanted me to check out. "And, people who read are actually reading more."

She should know.

Me?

I think it may be true that reading runs the risk of obsolescence someday. . .  though I don’t see much evidence of it myself. As a culture, we may need to figure out ways to ensure that children and teens have the time, quiet and space to foster good reading habits.

However . . . rather than add that worry to my already full mind and heart, I’ll get back to writing for the readers who do read. I expect their numbers to be strong for a long, long time.

Jeffrey Cohen

Tomorrow (that is, yesterday, seeing as how I’m writing this on Friday to post on Sunday–all clear?) I will take (or have taken, and that’s the last time I’ll mention it) my son on what is called an “admissions tour” of Rutgers University, my alma mater. My son, a high school junior, is just entering that period where one starts to consider colleges. This will be our first such tour. No doubt, there will be more.

Rutgers, which has gotten some national attention lately for having a successful football team (apparently, until last night), is where I learned how to write. And that didn’t take place in the classroom, by any stretch of the imagination.

For the better part of four years, I was a reporter and editor for the Rutgers Daily Targum, a five-times-a-week publication that covered the university and its populace–there were, and are, 50,000 people, students and staff, on campus at any given moment–as well or better than any “professional” newspaper could. It was run entirely by students, all volunteers, and I easily spent more time in the Targum (it’s a Hebrew word that means “interpreter”) office than I did in class, or at my dormitory, or for that matter, anywhere else.

I have never, in the 27 years since graduation, had a better time doing work. It hasn’t even been close.

When I arrived at the office the first time, a timid freshman who had been editor-in-chief of his high school paper (I later found out that everybody at Targum had been editor-in-chief of their high school paper), I was immediately put to work editing Associated Press copy from an honest-to-goodness wire ticker that made a LOT OF NOISE in one corner of the newsroom. When I asked the editor who assigned me that task for some guidance on how it was done, she said, “we have to fill up two columns on the side of the second page; figure out what goes there and write some headlines.” We’re throwing you in the pool, kid. Hope you know how to swim.

Walking in that door, on the fourth floor of the Student Center, I was an 18-year-old who had never actually composed on a typewriter in my life (this was the stone age, when computers were something called “Univac,” which took up whole rooms and spit out strange punch cards that nobody on the planet understood, but some pretended they did). My high school newspaper published once every blue moon, ready or not, and I’d always had plenty of time to write out any of my articles longhand on loose leaf paper, and type them out (using an ancient potion called “Wite Out” to cover mistakes) later.

There was no such time on a daily newspaper. Once I became a “regular” on the Targum–work was unpaid, and completely voluntary, so only the seriously dedicated maniacs showed up every day–I had to learn how to sit behind a keyboard and translate the information I wanted to convey into something that was at least ostensibly understandable, and if there was extra time, interesting.

I wrote about student housing problems–the place was overcrowded in those days, and having grown up in New Jersey, I understood overcrowding–, crime stories, movie and music reviews, administrative shake-ups. I interviewed the governor of New Jersey as he rushed down the stairs from an interview at the college radio station to a waiting car, and all I remember about it is that Brendan Byrne sounded a lot like Groucho Marx. Eventually, I was elected–we elected our editorial board every year in a ritual called “Caucus” that everyone relished and dreaded–one of three News Editors, and the year later, Arts Editor.

That gave me the opportunity to learn layout and assign articles and reviews. I edited copy. I learned how to say things more concisely–not that you’d know it by how I write now–and how to be clear. What worked and what didn’t. Doing that every day school was in session for four years increased my ability and my speed. I got better, faster. Eventually, that experience led to a summer internship at a professional daily paper, and a year later, to my first job writing for the Passaic Herald-News.

The last thing I wrote at college was a short introduction for one of the speakers at my class’ graduation ceremony. I introduced the invited speaker, John Kenneth Galbraith. He was 13 feet tall and looked like the United Nations Building. I was 5’5″ on my best day, and when he reached out to shake my hand, his grip encompassed my entire arm. I think he shook all of me, like in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

I wrote the speech on one of the Targum manual typewriters, on yellow copy paper. I wrote it two hours before graduation, because I had found that I work best under deadline pressure (and because I was too busy having a good time during Senior Week to think about it until then). It had been a long, but immensely satisfying, journey.

I hope that wherever my son ends up studying, he finds something he’ll love half as much. He’ll take his first steps in that direction tomorrow. Or yesterday.