7 classic books you need to read in 2017

Winter is finally on its way out, and it's time to start thinking about spring vacations — and the books to read while traveling to the nearest body of water that isn't frozen over.

The phrase "beach read" might evoke images of Harlequin romances or frothy chick-lit paperbacks rather than the Great American Novel, but it's time to rethink what's on your reading list. Some of literature's greatest stories are entertaining and can be read outside of a classroom.

1984

Sales of George Orwell's book, published in 1949, have risen dramatically since Donald Trump's election, with the book hitting the top of the Amazon best-seller list and a theater adaptation slated to open on Broadway in June. Clearly the dystopian novel about Big Brother and the Thought Police is resonating strongly with the American public.


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The first book in Douglas Adams' comedy science-fiction series follows Arthur Dent, the last surviving man on Earth after the planet is demolished, to make a hyperspace bypass. He embarks on a series of adventures and misadventures with a crew of hilarious sidekicks, including the depressed robot Marvin the Paranoid Android.


The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's story of the adventurous orphan first published in 1884 offers a scathing satire on societal standards, especially racism. The book has long been the subject of discussion and debate about the language and racial slurs that fill the pages as it narrates the story of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, who travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.


The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The 1961 story of "The Teacher Who Changed My Life" may seem tired to some, but Miss Jean Brodie, an educator who declares herself to be "in her prime," definitely changes the lives of a few of her students — although not in the ways one might expect. The "Brodie set" receive a real-life education about love, sex and politics.


The House of Mirth

Few books expose the hypocrisy and social pressures that women had to endure throughout history more movingly than Edith Wharton's 1905 story of Lily Bart. Lily is a well-born but poor woman who struggles to move up New York's social ladder, racing against time as she approaches the apparently unmarriageable age of 30. Her heartbreakingly tragic conclusion causes this book to be a guaranteed tear-jerker.


Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel was censored and scandalous when it was first published, due in part to its sexual content. The story of a young woman whose life is shaped by how men treat her, Tess includes addresses rape, religion and the danger of keeping secrets because of societal shame.


Little Women

For those in the mood for something a bit lighter, Louisa May Alcott's story of four sisters growing up during the Civil War is a heartwarming story of family and friendship with a powerful thread of feminism and emphasis on independence published in 1868.

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Pitch A Producer With Ken Atchity At The Dublin Writers' Conference June 23 - 25, 2017

Los Angeles based movie producer with 30 major movie and TV productions created, member of the Academy of Motion Pictures (the Oscars), author of Sell Your Story to Hollywood, The Writers Pocket Guide to The Business of Show Business, and Writing Treatments that Sell, book publisher, previously professor of comparative literature, vice President of PEN, LA Times book reviewer.

Ken will listen and critique a 1 to 2 minute public verbal pitch by you about any story, for print, TV, film. His feedback could change your life. Only ten places are available. Apply early – email: admin@booksgosocial.com after booking your conference place.

SIGN UP NOW – EARLY BIRD PRICING AVAILABLE

 

 

Guest Post: Writers, weird writers and nudity by Jerry Amernic

Writers are a weird group, each one with his or her own particular quirks. Make no mistake, writing is torture, especially fiction, but it’s pleasant torture in which you proceed bit by bit to the end even if the process takes years. Michelangelo was asked how he, at the tender of 24, was able to carve his masterpiece The David. He said it was simple. All he did was take this big slab of limestone and remove everything that wasn’t David.

Easy for him to say, but we can apply that principle to a novel. It’s about the ability to focus. A literary agent once told me the key is to write in ten words or less what your novel is about, and then put those words over your keyboard so every page, every paragraph and every sentence you write is about that.

If it isn’t, cut it.

The manuscript for my first novel Gift of the Bambino was 454 pages when an editor got hold of it. He taught me about “excisions” and with his help we whittled it down to 227 pages. Exactly half! Then it was published.

A lot of this has to do with the writer’s ego. You have to get rid of that when you write, and write for the reader. But every writer is different.

I have to write in silence – for fiction, non-fiction, or assignments from clients. No TV, radio or headset. It’s the same when running; many joggers are plugged into earphones but not me. I like to hear my breathing, the birds, the wind, and if I’m running by the lake the water crashing against the shore.

But writers also have to evolve and that includes technology. I remember making the transition from an IBM Selectric typewriter, which was big in its day, to a word processor and then a computer. Indeed, learning to write on a screen, as opposed to a page, didn’t happen overnight but when it was mastered the writing improved.

On the other hand, I once met Nelson De Mille at a writers’ conference and he told me he writes all his manuscripts on paper in longhand! He doesn’t use a computer. But even in the days before computers writers had quirks.

John Steinbeck did his drafts in pencil and kept a dozen sharp pencils on his desk. His editing was so intense that he always had callouses on his hands.

Truman Capote was superstitious. He never began or ended anything on a Friday, he would change his hotel room if the phone number had ‘13’ in it, and he never left more than three cigarette butts in his ashtray.

Some writers like to write in bed and they include Mark Twain, George Orwell, Woody Allen and Marcel Proust. Ernest Hemingway wrote on his typewriter standing up while Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame resorts to inversion therapy in order to relax before he starts writing.

But Victor Hugo was the weirdest of all. He liked to write in the nude! When he was facing his publisher’s looming deadline for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he had his valet take all his clothes so he couldn’t leave the house.

This is a different type of discipline which I might consider doing myself. But I live in Canada. And it’s winter.



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EQUALITY. NOW MORE THAN EVER! Writers Essays

In the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King's Stride Toward Freedom and Malala Yousafzai's, I Am Malala, Equality: What Do You Think About When You Think of Equality? presents thought-provoking and compelling personal essays that probe a concept professed to be the very foundation of our democracy--a concept that may even be more vital today than in the past.

From international bestselling author, Anne Perry who asserts we must look within ourselves to our emotions, experiences, and beliefs before we attempt an honest and truthful answer, to Dennis Palumbo, psychotherapist and author, who claims diagnostic labels used in treating mental illness often stigmatize and dehumanize the patient causing clinicians to view their patients in terms of their diagnosis rather than people, and Barbara Abercrombie, writer and distinguished university professor, who explores ageism as yet another form of stereotyping and discrimination in the language we use to describe older adults.

These award-winning and best-selling writers, and twenty-two more, tackle equality across multiple spectrums--racial, social, political, religious, marital, gender--and run with it in surprising directions.

Kia Kiso on "I am honored to have been asked to write about my mentorship experience with Kenneth Atchity for the The Producers Guild of America’s publication." ~ Kia Kiso, Zaza Productions

Oscars: Hollywood Therapist, Dennis Palumbo, on How to Relieve Anxiety Over Losing, Guilt Over Winning

As nominees hit their Hail-Mary cleanses and agents lay the groundwork for post-Oscar quote hikes, the town's army of shrinks is soothing the roiling emotions that lie beneath the just-glad-to-be-nominated miens of Oscar hopefuls. Dennis Palumbo, a Sherman Oaks-based licensed psychotherapist who specializes in treating Hollywood creatives, recalls one memorable Oscar session: "I had one patient, a big-name director nominated for an Oscar, whose psychic predicted he'd win. The day before the show, he told me that another nominated director — a friend of his — was told by his psychic that he'd win. Turned out to be the same psychic. And neither man won. My patient's response? 'Now I don't know who to trust.' " He continues: "We all know that thing where you see the five nominees and then watch the frozen plastic smiles on the faces of the losers," says a sympathetic Palumbo. "I've had patients with that frozen smile and thought, 'It's going to be about six weeks here in the office with this guy.' "

Working in Hollywood is stressful, but when Oscar season rolls around, a heightened wave of anxiety sets in for even the most seasoned veterans. "I have been to a lot of these ceremonies, and each time it feels like I had never done it before. The flashes seem brighter, the carpet seems crazier," says best supporting actor nominee Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water), who took home the Oscar for best actor for 2010's Crazy Heart. "I still get stressed out at the idea of saying something. My mind overloads."

Bridges is not alone. Whether you're an actor or an agent, the Oscars can bring on a set of anxiety-ridden behaviors, starting with nomination announcements and continuing through campaigning, awards shows and the aftermath. "I have tremendous compassion for people both nominated and not nominated, because it's like getting a report card when you're a kid," says Palumbo. "Some people find that [the Oscars] is the arbiter of how they can feel about themselves."

HOW OSCARS STRESS MANIFESTS IN HOLLYWOOD

'The most common form of anxiety across the board at this time of year is insomnia, says Philip Pierce, a clinical psychologist with Oscar winners among his patients who sees them "waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep over the uncertainty and the stakes." Other symptoms include substance abuse, low-grade depression, disturbed appetite and spending sprees — which can simulate a low-grade version of the adrenaline rush that comes with winning an award. "There's this thing where they just zone out, and it's all across the board — it could be producers, actors, directors — they sit there in front of their computer and just go shopping," says psychotherapist Larry Shaw, who treats patients across the industry spectrum. "[It gives them] control. Whether it's on eBay or Amazon, you stick it in the cart and you've 'won.' "

Illustration by Luci Gutierrez

THE BIG PSYCHE DIVIDE: ACTORS, AGENTS AND EVERYBODY ELSE

Nominees who don't spend time in front of cameras, including writers and producers, are typically the most anxious about awards season, according to Pierce. "They're very much worried about the public aspects, talking to people they don't know and being in a strange situation," he says. "My directors, on the other hand, just assume they're going to win."

Actors generally are less stressed about campaigning, though there is the sheer physical exhaustion involved with engaging in endless red carpets, awards shows, junkets and photo shoots. "It seems like there is a lot more campaigning these days," says Bridges. "There ought to be a special award for the best campaigner." But high visibility also puts talent at a greater risk for emotional distress, according to David Levy, a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. "When you're the actor, you are the product. If you've written a screenplay, you're attached to your baby. If you've directed a film, it's your product. But when you're a performer, you are the commodity. So when you get rejected, it's you." For some talent, "ironically, they have conflicting feelings about being in the spotlight," adds Mari Murao, a Beverly Hills psychotherapist with nominated patients. "A part of them seeks it out, and often nothing terrifies them more."

Even agents and managers have their issues. "It would surprise my creative patients to know how much fear reps have, fear that their client is going to leave them if they become successful," says Palumbo. "Creative types never see their reps as fear-driven. They transfer parental feelings on to them. I can't tell you how many times I've had to say to a patient, 'She's your agent, not your mother.' "
Levy also sees some reps taking their clients' nominations personally. "Part of it is financial. If they're an agent or a manager and their client wins an award, it means more work and a higher asking price, and they're going to make more percentage on the next job." But it's ego-driven, too: "They feel personally let down if things don't work out the way they want them to."

THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

When it comes to Oscar night, Palumbo says some patients ask their families not to watch the broadcast because they can't bear to have them see their reaction if they lose. One A-list patient, nominated for best supporting actress, asked him to "let us use our session to practice her 'good loser' face in case the camera was on her when one of the other actresses won," says Palumbo. (A new low-downtime surgery is also an option; see page 102.) "I suggested we concentrate on her self-esteem issues instead."

Losing sets off feelings of failure and lack of self-worth — "a lot of negative self-talk," says Shaw. But "most of this stuff is beyond your control," cautions Levy. "A lot of this is luck, happenstance. And some of it is politics." Levy encourages his losing clients to talk about feelings, "but certainly not in the public arena." It's an ego issue, he says, "and that's what I try to help them reduce," using therapy to get his patients to not take things personally. "They're too attached to the winning and losing."

THE ANXIETY — AND GUILT — OF VICTORY

Winning a coveted statuette comes with its own unique stresses. The acceptance speech is the star of many a session on the couch. Even confident directors ask, "What if I win and I've got to go up?" says Jeffrey Blume, a licensed psychologist in Beverly Hills who has worked with creative talent for 25 years, adding that he deploys hypnotherapy or deep relaxation to "try to help them imagine going up onstage and practicing while they're relaxed. So when they actually get up there, they can be relaxed."

Some people feel survivor's guilt, that they won and deserving others didn't. "It's hard sometimes for people to take in success and they feel guilty. Their friend or colleague didn't win," says Blume. Adds Pierce, "Many very successful people in the business have the deep-seated fear that they're a fraud," he says, adding that these patients often see their anxiety increasing after an Oscar triumph, "as they believe now they will surely be exposed."

After all the excitement and celebration, post-Oscar blues can be common, followed by stress over ever measuring up again. "I had a writer come in a year ago with their award," says Blume. "He had the anxiety of, 'Now I'm supposed to write another masterpiece and I don't have any ideas.' " Directors might apply extra pressure to themselves "because of the auteur theory — if you are nominated or win an Oscar for best director, you're in the company of Billy Wilder, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, the real heavyweight pantheon," says Palumbo. The sentiment that you're only as good as your last Oscar, says Levy, and the expectations can be tremendous: "How do you top that? For most people, you can't." Levy suggests clients look to past winners and losers to see how they conducted themselves. "This is uncharted territory for most people, but if you look at who has been in that situation, they all have similar struggles, so the commonality in that is helpful." In fact, says Palumbo: "I think it's better to be nominated than to win. When you force the town to up your fee because you've won an Oscar, the expectation is, the next project better be great, or we're being taken advantage of. You're setting yourself up for failure."

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A must read and practical road map of a shifting and exciting business!

5 More Black Authors Everyone Should Read

They are poets, playwrights, novelists and scholars, and together they helped capture the voice of a nation. They have fearlessly explored racism, abuse and violence as well as love, beauty and music. While their names and styles have changed over the years, they have been the voices of their generations and helped inspire the generations that followed them. What follows is a list of prominent Black authors who have left a mark on the literary world forever.


Alex Haley
Alex Haley’s writing on the struggle of African Americans inspired nationwide interest in genealogy and popularized Black history. Best known for The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the novel Roots, Haley began his writing career freelancing and struggled to make ends meet. Eating canned sardines for weeks at a time, his big break came when Playboy magazine assigned him to interview Miles Davis. Proving to be such a success, the magazine contracted Haley to do a series of interviews with prominent African Americans. Known as “The Playboy Interviews,” Haley would eventually meet Malcolm X and ask permission to write his biography. The Autobiography of Malcolm X would soon become an international bestseller and Haley became a literary success.

Embarking on a new ambitious project, Haley was determined to trace his ancestor’s journey from Africa to America as slaves, and tell the story of their rise to freedom. After a decade of research and travel to West Africa, the epic novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family was published in 1976. The book was a national sensation and won the Pulitzer Prize, eventually becoming a television miniseries that would shatter television viewing records when 130 million viewers tuned in. If you enjoy reading Alex Haley, consider reading Jesmyn Ward and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Image: Mickey Adair/Getty Images

Langston Hughes
A primary contributor of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes was one of the first to use jazz rhythms in his works, becoming an early innovator of the literary art form jazz poetry. While many American poets during the 1920s were writing esoteric poetry to a dwindling audience, Hughes addressed people using language, themes, attitudes and ideas that they could relate to.

Influenced by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, his poetry caught the attention of novelist, critic and prolific photographer Carl Van Vechten. With Van Vechten’s help, his first collection of poetry was published in 1926. Establishing Hughes’s poetic style and commitment to Black themes and heritage, The Weary Blues had popular appeal. When his first novel Not Without Laughter was published in 1930, it won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

A prolific writer known for his colorful portrayals of Black life from the 1920s-1960s, Hughes wrote plays, short stories, poetry, several books, and contributed the lyrics to a Broadway musical. In addition to his extensive body of work, he inspired other artists and highlighted the power of art as a catalyst for change. Seen as a voice for their own experience, writers during the Harlem Renaissance often dedicated their work to Hughes. The play A Raisin in the Sun by playwright Lorraine Hansberry was named for a line from a Langston Hughes poem.
Image: Langston Hughes, 1936 Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress 

Zora Neale Hurston
In 1925 as the Harlem Renaissance gained momentum, Zora Neale Hurston headed to New York City. By the time of its height in the 1930s, Hurston was a preeminent Black female writer in the United States. It’s said that her apartment was a popular spot for social gatherings with the well-known artists of the time like Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.
Of Hurston’s more than 50 published novels, short stories, plays and essays, she  wrote her most famous work Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937. Unlike the style of contemporaries Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston did not write explicitly about Black people in the context of white America. She focused on the culture and traditions of African Americans through the poetry of their speech.

Despite her earlier literary success, Hurston would suffer later in her career. Having difficulty getting published, she died poor and alone. Years later, Alice Walker would help revive interest in Hurston’s work with her essay, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," published in Ms. magazine in 1975. This essay, alongside her edits of notable works like “I Love Myself When I am Laughing and Then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive,” brought Hurston to the attention of a new generation of readers.  
Image: Zora Neale Hurston, Photo by Carl Van Vechten (1938) Library of Congress 

Richard Wright
Born in Mississippi in 1908, Richard Wright is best known for his novels Native Son and Black Boy, that mirrored his own struggle with poverty and coming of age journey.  A staunch critic of his literary contemporary Zora Neale Hurston, Wright’s work was overtly political, focusing on the struggle of Blacks in America for equality and economic advancement.

Wright’s dreams of becoming a writer took off when he gained employment through the Federal Writers Project and received critical attention for a collection of short stories called Uncle Tom’s Children. The fame that came with the 1940 publication of Native Son (not to be confused with James Baldwin’s titular essay: “Notes of a Native Son,” which criticized Wright’s work) made him a household name. It became the first book by an African American writer to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

His novel Black Boy was a personal account of growing up in the South and eventual move to Chicago where he became a writer and joined the Communist Party. While the book was a great success, Wright had become disillusioned with white America and the Communist Party, and moved to Paris. He spent the rest of his life living as an expatriate and he continued to write novels.
Image: Carl Van Vechten Collection, Library of Congress

BONUS | Toni Morrison
Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison is considered the voice of African American women. Growing up in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison was not fully aware of racial divisions until her teenage years.
Dedicated to her studies, she went on to earn her master’s degree before moving to Howard University to teach. It was in the 1960s when Morrison became an editor at Random House that she began to write.

While she had published The Bluest Eye in 1970 and Sula in 1973, The Song of Solomon was the book that set her on the course of literary success. It became the first work by an African American author since Native Son by Richard Wright to be a featured selection in the Book-of-the-Month Club. The publication of Beloved in 1987 is considered to be her greatest masterpiece and won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Young authors Danielle Evans and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins cite Toni Morrison as one of their influences.
Image: Toni Morrison, 1986, MDCarchives

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The Dawn of the Post-truth Age by Nathan Stone, S.J.

Richard III was the last monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty. His death in 1485 marked the end of Medieval England. His body had been lost for centuries, but it was discovered in the backlot of a churchyard, authenticated with DNA testing and subsequently reburied at Leicester Cathedral in 2015 with royal pomp and dignity. Members of the American press corps asked British subjects who attended the interment why they paid homage to a monster with a hunchback, a withered arm and a perversely twisted character, who usurped the throne and murdered his young nephews in the Tower of London so that there would never be any pretender with the slightest claim to legitimacy. The mourners, though five centuries late with their tears, responded, Because he was our king. And we left it at that. Brits are die-hard monarchists and democratic Americans will never understand that.

 England's King Richard III. Was he or wasn't he?

The problem is that Richard was not a hunchback. He didn’t have a withered arm. There always was a portrait, but now we have a body. I believe he was a good family man and a courageous soldier who gave his life in battle. He might have been ambitious, but despite the claims of most modern sources there is no evidence that he usurped the throne, as Harvard University Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber has pointed out. Instead the throne was offered to him after his dead brother’s marriage was annulled. Edward IV had married his widowed sister-in-law, so there was an issue of canonical consanguinity. That made the boys illegitimate. There is no evidence that Richard murdered them. They disappeared after Richard’s defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field. It’s worth noting that the new king, Henry VII, first of the Tudors, stood to benefit the most from there not being any little Plantagenets lurking in the wings.

The Tudors created the myth of Evil Richard III. The victors write the history. Call it patriotism, or call it loyalty, but even St. Thomas More was called upon to write a tract demonizing Richard. Thomas never knew Richard. He was only 7 when Richard died. He skillfully reiterated the politically expedient lies of his day, what we now call spin. It was necessary in order to legitimize the Tudors, his patrons. These days, we would call it national security: Henry VIII could only lead England against the threat from Spain and France if, and only if, his somewhat dubious claim to the throne could be made to seem authentic.

The image of twisted Richard and his vile deeds is not going away any time soon. Most of us have only heard of Richard III because of Shakespeare’s play about him. Shakespeare is, after all, the Bard. The poet wrote his play more than 100 years after Richard’s death based on the accepted narrative of his time. How could he do otherwise? He was no less dependent on Tudor goodwill than Thomas More had been. Staging the party line kept the money flowing and the playwright’s head attached to his shoulders. All the world is a stage, my friend, and we are the players. More often than not, like it or not, we are often being played.

Spin is not new. Machiavelli shocked people in his day by being forthright and explicit about how things got done in the courtly centers of power. The Renaissance was, among other things, a rebirth of certain ancient traditions of treachery and deceit.

Karl Rove is regarded as the modern master. Like Bill Gates, President George W. Bush’s longtime senior policy advisor never finished a college degree, but he had a knack for how to get the story out there until it sounded true, even if it wasn’t. Inheritance tax for the wealthy went away when it occurred to him to popularize the conception of it as a death tax. Saddam Hussein became responsible for the 911 attacks because the right people said it loudly and often. So, there was a war. Rove was a genius at making the worse argument seem the better. That made him an invaluable right hand man for the commander in chief.

Until quite recently, however, there was such a thing as a counterargument. Facts, those illusive points of undeniable information on which interpretations and judgments should be based, could be invoked and agreed upon by men and women, black and white, left and right.

Facts did not depend on party lines. Matters of fact were not open to discussion. Matters of opinion were. Facts could overcome unfounded discourse, given time and space. The Red Scare of the 1950s was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s paranoid conviction that there was a communist under every bush, out to destroy life as we know it. His persecution of those he considered suspicious was very popular. It took time, but the Red Scare was argued into a corner for lack of evidence. It just wasn’t true. We have journalist Edward R. Murrow to thank for that.

My perception is that, today, some sort of critical mass has been surpassed. We have somehow tipped the scales in favor of fiction. We have chosen deception over perception. We have set myth on the all-powerful throne where truth once sat. Prejudice and irrational acrimony seem to have displaced the careful and objective regard for clear thinking and solid judgment.

That’s bad. Perhaps this is due to radicalized individualism. We live in what seems to be one great big politically correct kindergarten where every child has the inalienable right to choose what he wishes to consider true, even if there are no facts to support it, and many to contradict. We wouldn’t want to hurt little Johnny’s feelings, or stifle his creativity, now, would we?

The Oxford English Dictionary made an outrageous choice for its 2016 Word of the Year: “post-truth.” A play on “post-modern,” it would seem to indicate an age in which truth is nothing more than an eccentric personal obsession, a dated fashion from long ago. The venerable OEDdefines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The editors have observed a 2,000 percent increase in the use of the term, and they attribute that to the Brexit vote, over there, and to the most divisive political campaign in history, over here.

The Washington Post reports, half in jest I hope: “It’s official. Truth is dead. Facts are passé.” Politicians have always lied, perhaps, but now it’s mainstream. David Frum of The Atlantic described the dishonesty of the president elect as “qualitatively different than anything before seen from a major-party nominee.” None of that, Post reporter Amy Wang commented, mattered to his supporters.

Ten years ago, comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” — which is not to be confused with “post-truth,” according to Stephen. He defined it as the phenomenon of believing something that feels true, even if it isn’t supported by fact. He was poking fun at right-wing pundits. But now, truthiness is not a joke anymore. Now that unreasonable feelings of racism, sexism and nationalist xenophobia appear to possess the keys to the kingdom, we will be ruled not by truth, dialogue and dignity, but by fear, scapegoating and finger-pointing. The powerful now have the authority to act on whatever feels true to them. No point in checking your facts. You can just make them up. If you are rich and famous, you will get away with it. If it fits your agenda, who cares?

The real problem with the post-truth era is not what happens in the White House, Trump Tower or Windsor Castle. The real problem is that the way in which power is exercised at the golden pinnacles of glory tends to replicate itself all the way down the food chain. In the workplace, at school, even in our families and among friends, what feels true will win out over what can be supported by fact. Machiavelli and Karl Rove are the new prophets. Hail, all hail.

After his dismissal as director of the CIA in 2005, Porter Goss was invited to deliver the commencement address at Tiffin University, near Cleveland. He told the graduates, “If this were a graduating class of CIA case officers, my advice would be short and to the point. Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter accusations.”

I guess that was meant to be funny. It’s not, at least, not anymore. I once heard a Boy Scout leader say almost exactly the same thing. It wasn’t funny then, either. It’s not the scouting tradition: scouts promise to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. This renegade was saying, Learn the arts of treachery and spin, my boy. Become a player or you will be played. I could never teach my children that. But I guess I am getting old. My world is probably gone for good.

Pessimism is not good, but realism is. Perhaps the truth will survive in the catacombs of society. (I hope there is room for me down there.) If it does, perhaps there will be a rebirth, and perhaps we will have learned a valuable lesson. It might take a while (I might not live to see the day) but anything worthwhile usually does.




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________________________________________
Nathan Stone, a member of the Chilean province of the Society of Jesus, is on sabbatical from his work in the Amazon region of Brazil while he cares for an ailing relative. His essay, “The Boys of Brazil” will appear in our Winter 2016-17 issue, in which other essays explore themes of credibility, truth and civil discourse.

A Screenwriter's Life in the Waiting Room by Kenneth Atchity Featured article on InkTip

How long can I wait?

Screenwriters ask me that all the time, becoming impatient and anxious that their script is taking so long to make it to the screen.

My answer surprises them:

Don’t wait at all.

Waiting is a massive waste of time and can lead to depression and/or existential despair, and who knows what else. Write something while you wait. Plant another seed, cultivate it, and train it to grow straight. And while it’s taking its sweet time to bud and then bloom, do something else. Start a new spec script!

Back in my own “waiting room” in the sixties, I reviewed a great book by Barry Stevens: Don’t Push the River, It Flows by Itself. I translated Stevens’ Zen advice to Hollywood where every project has its own clock and will happen when and only when that clock reaches the appointed hour. Other than keeping that project on track the best you can by responding when asked to or when appropriate, there’s nothing much you can do—other than financing it yourself (a serious option, by the way) to speed up that project’s clock. By the nature of things, the project clock is invisible, which means extra frustration for the creator—unless you refuse to wait.

Recently, I, and my dear producing partner Norman Stephens, produced a sweet little Christmas movie called Angels in the Snow. I had only been trying to get that movie produced for twenty years! I sold it to TNN once and came close to a deal at Hallmark another time. My client Steve Alten’s Meg is currently, after twenty-one years, shooting in New Zealand. What was I doing for the last twenty years? Writing twelve scripts and producing other films for television and cinema, managing hundreds of books, writing and publishing ten of my own, playing tennis, traveling, having a wonderful life. Not waiting.

Waiting makes writers neurotic. If I allowed myself to express my neurosis, as many writers have not yet learned not to do, I would drive those involved in making my or my clients’ stories into films crazy—and risk losing their support or return calls. The question I personally hate hearing the most, “What’s going on?” is one I have to force myself to refrain from asking. Your job, when it’s your turn to move your story forward, is to “get the ball out of your court” as efficiently, as well, and as soon as possible. Then, on that particular project, you have to wait for it to be returned to your court. Very few actual events requiring your help occur along the way, leaving a huge gap of dead time in between them, like super novae separated by vast time years of space. But it’s not dead time if you use it for something else creative.

If the glacial pace of the Hollywood creative business fills you with dread, you’re in the wrong business or you’re dealing with it the wrong way. Don’t wait. Do. As the great photographer Ansel Adams put it: “Start doing more. It’ll get rid of all those moods you’re having.”

Writer/producer/literary manager and former professor Ken Atchity’s most recent book for writers is Sell Your Story to Hollywood: Writer’s Pocket Guide to the Business of Show Business (to accompany his online course realfasthollywooddeal.com. This article is adapted from that book.

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