I don't think I will ever be invited to be the President of the Mark Gilleo fan club.
"Sweat" is the second book by Gilleo I've read ("Love Thy Neighbor") and my reaction is consistent. Gilleo is an adequate story teller and an inadequate writer. He creates interesting characters and story lines then offers a reasonable array of plot twists to keep the story interesting. Unfortunately Gilleo's short comings as a writer then surface. He fails to give his characters any real depth which keeps you from caring too much about them and too often relies on flimsy rationale for how they navigate the plot turns.
The novel is the story of Jake Patrick a college aged young man who has just buried his mother after a prolonged battle with cancer. His father, founder of a hugely successful international trade business, has never been a part of his life. Jake ends up taking a summer job with his father's company that will draw him into a game of business intrigue and murder. His path out of danger will take him to the other side of globe and the other side of life in Washington D.C. Along the way he will meet a down and out former C.I.A. agent with State Department connections, a beautiful medical student and a young Chinese woman working in near slave conditions making clothing in Saipan. Between the three of them they will face great challenges, potential death and the power of a sitting U.S. Senator.
The consistent annoyance is Gilleo's adding long-ish bits of writing that do nothing to advance the story. Near the beginning of the novel there is what the author describes as a "human interest story" from a newspaper. Other than being a gimmick for adding details that will not be featured in the rest of the action it's quite possibly the worst example of supposed feature writing I've come across in a while. No paper of any repute would have allowed it to hit the page. It's neither journalistic nor feature writing. And it serves no story telling purpose. The few pieces of background information provided could have done much economically and logically through the police characters investigating the incident. Later in the action he includes the entirety of the the prayer/poem "Desiderata". It has no lasting impact on the character reading it and no influence on the story at all. So why burn over 300 words on including it? That's a question I can't answer. The author tries to juggle 5 or 6 story lines which gives the book a lurching quality to its story telling. Trying to tell the story from too many points of view makes it hard to read. Add in Gilleo's often awkward images and metaphors and you end up with a good story that never gets to realize its potential. Finally he chooses to end the novel with a fair number of story lines completely unresolved. Which meant that my final experience of the book was one of disappointment. In the review of the earlier book I compared his writing to that of a modestly talented undergraduate student. This is consistent with that assessment.
Gilleo's story telling is probably enough to carry you through a quiet weekend with no other options. His writing isn't good enough to make it worth seeking out if you have other options.
"Sweat" by Mark Gilleo will be available August 28, 2012.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
RIP Richard Zanuck, Wearing Technology and Learning the Ropes
Program scripts from week of July 16, 2012
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Learning the Ropes
Once upon a time in the news biz you started at the bottom. If you were new kid, the junior most member you got the police blotter calls. Calling every police department in every dinky little burg in your paper’s coverage area and seeing who got arrested for what. It’s boring, it’s tedious and you never get your name on the story. That was always the holy grail of a reporter - the byline.
In this new age of news gathering the reporting staff is getting smaller and smaller. Which means that there are fewer “cub reporters” to do the dirty work. Newspapers are trying to find the best way to cut expenses without cutting too many corners. And it doesn’t always work.
Recently there has been a bit of a hoo haw over the work of a company called Journatic. The furor is over the fact that the company outsources some of their reporting (meaning that an employee in the Far East may be gathering information about Jamestown NY) and then providing the stories with fake bylines to make it look more local.
Now newspapers have always relied on outside news reporting services like The Associated Press, United Press International or Reuters. But these were all for news OUTSIDE the local area. The hometown paper was supposed to be the expert on its community, the definitive voice of information. Journatic was originally intended to help small papers stay competitive. The dismay has grown when it became obvious that major papers in cities like Houston, Chicago and San Francisco are using the service.
So what’s the real problem here? There are ethical questions to be answered about using fake bylines. At the bottom line there is nothing more important to a news outlet than it reputation. Especially at a time when there is more and more stress on the industry it must do everything it can to maintain its credibility. There is an importance to having reporters who part of the community they cover. If only because if they get it wrong they will hear about at the corner bar or over lunch out and about.
I understand the need to keep costs down. I also know that there was a benefit to making all those tedious calls in the old days. You got to know the community you were reporting on.
Wearing Technology
A couple times every year it seems like I come across an idea that just boggles my mind. We’re talking shaking your head in disbelief kind of amazement. Some times it’s a bad idea, sometimes its bad production and sometimes it’s just bad.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been walking in public, could be at the mall, or on the sidewalk, and had someone bump into your or nearly bump into you because they were so absorbed in their smartphone? Seems like it’s happening to me with increasing regularity. People are so wrapped up in their own stuff that they just kind of lose track of the rest of us. The world kind of fades away for them and suddenly they walk right into you.
Well I’m certain that the folks behind this next great idea will claim that they will help eliminate that problem. I’m afraid they’re wrong. The new idea that has me scratching my head is called “wearable technology”. We’re not talking Walkmen or iPods here. One of the first examples will be eyeglasses that will be able to project the World Wide Web onto the lens before your eyes. If the possibility of even more distracted driving and walking doesn’t worry you then think about how much more data could be collected about where you go and what you do. Integrated GPS is one of the items considered essential in most of these early designs. Never being able to escape advertisers or the all seeing eye of data collection strikes me as several steps too far along the technology highway.
But that’s not the only idea headed our way in the form of wearable technology. There are already patents secured on technology for clothing displays as well. In other words whatever qualifies as obnoxious t-shirt art in your book would now have the ability to link to the web, update and maybe even offer sound to go with the video. Imagine corporate logos that don’t just sit there but try to interact with consumers (otherwise known as your friends, family and co-workers) all from the comfort of your clothing. That same technology is being looked at to be used on walls of buildings and carpets. In such a world there would be no where to get away. Look up, look down, look at each other.
If you remember the hyper advertising model of the movie Blade Runner you begin to get the idea. And it’s an idea that I can live without.
R.I.P. Richard Zanuck
I figure that there are three kinds of movie folk - people who watch movies, then movie fans and finally movie geeks. I fall somewhere between those second and third groups. You probably need to have at least one foot in the movie geek world to register the death last week of Richard Zanuck.
Zanuck grew in Hollywood. Like grew up on the back lots at 20th Century Fox. His father was the last of the great movie moguls, Daryl Zanuck. Zanuck the elder was the classic stereotype of the studio boss. He was short, smoked cigars, chased after starlets and ran his studio as his personal kingdom. Along the way he made some pretty great movies. He also made some enemies. For a while his son was one of them.
Richard Zanuck was everything his father wasn’t. Quiet, intellectual and someone who respected the actors, directors and writers with whom he worked. When his father returned to 20th Century Fox in 1962 after several years in Paris as an independent producer Richard was made the head of Production at the studio. He was 28 years old. He would rise to head the studio just a few years later but they were hard times for 20th Century Fox. Hits like “Hello Dolly”, “M*A*S*H” and “Patton” were offset by too many flops. In an internal power struggle Daryl Zanuck sacrificed his son in a failed attempt to maintain control.
In the end that may have been the best thing for the younger Zanuck. With his friend David Brown they formed their own production company. They took a chance on a little known director named Spielberg and a story about a big shark. “Jaws” earned the duo their first Oscar nomination. They would also earn one for 1982’s “The Verdict” and finally win for 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy”. Zanuck would be connected to other hit films including “Cocoon” plus a very successful partnership with Tim Burton that included “Big Fish”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Dark Shadows”.
In the end Richard Zanuck is one of the last of Hollywood heyday generation. He was born into the movies (his mother Virginia Zanuck was an actress who worked with Buster Keaton), he was raised around the movies and the movies were his entire life. You may not have known his name but you certainly knew his work. And that would probably have been enough for him.
Richard D. Zanuck was 77 years. The exact same age as his father when he died.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Book Review - Twelve Months
The book isn't without it's short comings. Manchester fills far too many pages using out takes from newspaper stories and tourist brochures to move the story forward rather than sticking with his strength - the bond between his characters. The worst moments in the book are when DiMarco lives out a life long goal of doing stand up comedy. In all of his other "bucket list" events he does it once and moves on. DiMarco not only gets up on stage THREE times, he is awful all three times and Manchester makes us live through all three of them. It's painful reading, more painful than any of the emotional content elsewhere. To be honest I'm not sure that it really adds to the story.
In the end Manchester weaves together a story well worth reading. It's touching and emotional and was very hard for me to read at times. I read the book during breaks at a convention and several times had people inquire if I was all right. The story came too close to my own in several places. The book won't be for everybody but for some it could easily be their favorite book of the year.
Twelve Months is set to hit book shelves August 14.
Rating - *** Good Read.
Friday, July 6, 2012
50 Shades, Best or Worst, Olympic Failure
Program scripts from week of July 2, 2012
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
50 Shades
Well I suppose we should address the issue of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s all fairly silly and oh so American that we’re as wrought up about the books as we are. And it’s all because of the “S” word. No, not snow.
In case you have somehow managed to avoid any knowledge of the great furor in the publishing world let me bring you up to date. Fifty Shades of Grey is the first novel of a trilogy about a young American college student and her slightly older lover. The books were originally fan fiction written about the characters in Stephanie Meyers’ beloved/despised Twilight series. The rather adult nature of these stories caused the author to pull them from the fan fiction site and completely re-write them. That followed with some digital age self publishing as an e-book and on demand print which eventually led to an actual publishing deal. Right now the original novel, its two follow ups and the boxed set of them all occupy the top four slots in USA Today’s Best-Selling Books list. . It’s also resulted in people saying silly things like “Guess this proves that sex sells”
Um, duh?
The source material for this best selling series isn’t considered great literature and these books have gotten very much the same reaction. The stories are just well written enough to keep people turning the pages. At the same time people note that the English author has no idea how Americans actually talk and her prose is awkward and cliche ridden. So what’s the big deal?
Well of course that would be the “S word” again. S-E-X. Americans are obsessed by it but stoutly maintain that we’re not. It’s not like this is the first best seller that dealt with it. In 1928 we had D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover which set the world on fire by talking about sex. 40 years later it was Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It’s been just over another 40 years and it’s another book about sex again. I think we’ll survive this one as well.
We’d probably be much better off being outraged about the diminishing quality of the writing rather than the topic.
Best or Worst
The recent big story out of Rochester about the school bus monitor who was abused by four students and had that abuse posted on the internet has me a little perplexed. Not over the action of the students in question. I work with young people just that age and can tell you that I didn’t find the behavior particularly surprising. I’m not saying I approve of it or that I think there is any mitigating factor. The reality is that this kind of pack mentality is not unusual and it can build on itself. Two of the boys involved have apologized and even acknowledged that they don’t know what go into them. I do. It’s not pretty and nothing to encourage but it happens more often than we like to think about. Usually it happens among the youth themselves rather than going after an adult.
What puzzles me in all of this is the question - Is this the Internet at its best or at its worst? The young man who recorded the bullying incident has been upfront that his intent was to submit the video to a Comedy Central show that features viewer created content. Because he has seen many other videos featuring bullying on YouTube the young man didn’t think it would be a big deal.
And that’s really, really sad all by itself.
But it gets worse. The boys are now getting buried in all kinds of abusive, even threatening, e-mails and texts from around the world. The knee jerk reaction for some will be “Good, they deserve it”. Seriously? Our idea of a proper reaction to young people being stupid is to be the exact same kind of stupid to them? The solution to bullying is bullying? Sorry you can let me out here.
On the upside folks have started an online fundraising effort for the 60 something bus monitor that has blown up. The original goal was to raise five thousand dollars to give her a little vacation. At last count, with some 25+ days still to go the total was already at 600 thousand dollars. That’s a wonderful generous out pouring of support from all over the globe which is cool. It’s a little over the top maybe but it’s still a pretty cool thing to happen.
So I’ll leave you to figure this question out yourself. Was the bus bullying story the Internet at its best or worst? Or is it like most things in life, a little of both?
Olympic Failure
Once upon a time I would have been on pins and needles at this point in the summer. Not just because school was out and summer vacation was here but because this would be an Olympic summer. The Olympics were this great festival of sports and sportsmanship. And not just the usual stuff like baseball and football (in fact neither of those two were even included in the Olympics back in the day!) but all sorts of cool stuff that you just never got to see much of normally. I would root for the USA against those terrible eastern bloc nations especially the USSR. It was an event and it put me in front of the TV for many more hours than normal during the summer.
This summer I may not watch a single minute of the Olympics.
If you’re a regular listener to this show you won’t be surprised to hear that I miss those old school days. Days when it was about the best amateur athletes in the world competing for their nation. Unlike today when it’s professional athletes in all the big time events and mostly pros everywhere else. Every athlete has a sponsor who is paying their way. In fact sponsors are really what the modern Olympics are all about. This would explain the 35 day, 1 kilometer wide “Brand Exclusion Zone” surrounding all Olympic venues in London this summer. Basically if you’re not an official Olympics sponsor you can’t hang your advertising signs there. The U.K. also pass a law saying only the Olympics folks can use the words "games," "2012," "twentytwelve" or "two thousand and twelve." No I’m not kidding.
As if to prove just how little joy is left in the Olympic movement the U.S. Olympic committee recently sent a cease and desist order to the online knitting group Ravelry. They were planning on having an “Ravelympics” where they would have a lot of fun knitting activities with an Olympics theme. The Olympic Committee told them that it lessened the dignity of the games and the athletes. Since that time someone has slapped them upside the head and they have sent a rather insincere sounding apology to the knitting community.
Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost the heart of the Olympics. And that’s taken the heart out of me as an Olympic viewer. Maybe it’s time for me to just go outside and play.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)