Hal O'Brien

“It’s discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty, and how few by deceit.”

Noël Coward
Blithe Spirit

First, let's check in with Joel Spolsky from 10 years ago:

"Speaking of Verizon (formed by the merger of BellAtlantic and GTE): whenever a company changes its name, the only thing that it logically means is that they concluded that their old brand name was a liability, not an asset. BellAtlantic and GTE have spent so long pissing off so many people with such bad customer service that their names had negative brand equity." {emphasis in original}

For those who don't know, BP insists they're just "BP" these days, and not "British Petroleum," because they went through renaming the company after a merger with Amoco in the late 1990s. First it was "BP Amoco," and then it was solely "BP." So what does BP stand for, if it doesn't mean "British Petroleum"? Nothing. Or, one can think of it like a Sesame Street sketch: "This company is brought to you by the letter B and the letter P."

As Mr. Spolsky points out, this is probably because someone sold management on the idea that all three of the constituent names -- "British," "Petroleum," and "Amoco" -- had negative brand equity.

The other self-referential-to-the-point-of-autism rebranding that took place at a similar time was BAE Systems. BAe once stood for "British Aerospace." Now, the all-caps BAE stands for, you guessed it, the letter B, the letter A, and the letter E. (And I forget who wrote about that clusterfuck fannishly, but I remember reading about it at the time in some fanzine from the UK written by an employee.)

My point, though, is that these are among the most incompetent rebrandings of all time. Because letters are not names. Letters, when used in a proper noun, represent something. And it's not like this doesn't have a known solution -- as Exxon, Verizon, Altria, and many others demonstrate.

So, Dear BP: Too damned bad. It's British Petroleum until you can be bothered to get the job done, and actually come up with something else.

Penn & Teller have an interview in the Telegraph, where Penn quotes Jerry Seinfeld this way:

"(Penn) couldn’t care less what (magicians) think. “I have always hated magic,” he says. “I have always hated the basic undercurrent of magic which Jerry Seinfeld put best when he said: 'All magic is “Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over”.’ I never wanted to grow up to be a magician. It was never my goal.”"

The lesson from this, fannishly, is that obviously Seinfeld knows D. West.

Seriously. That quote sums up D's career comprehensively. It's why I regard D so boring as to be a, "He puts whole nations to sleep," kind of writer (originally Harlan talking about Wagner) -- because you always know what the punchline is going to be.

“Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over.”

Yup. Seinfeld has saved all of fandom from ever having to read a D. West cartoon or article ever again. It'll only be repetition from here on out.

I said something similar to Victor Gonzalez at this past Potlatch. Victor took great umbrage -- mostly, I suspect, because he read D at an impressionable time, before he knew better. Heck, I was there when Victor met D, during a jaunt to outer Yorkshire especially for the purpose right after the Leeds Corflu.

At Potlatch, though, Victor stiffened and said, "He's a better writer than you!"

Which has no bearing whatsoever on D's merits, but as I told Victor at the time, "Victor, everyone in this room is a better writer than I am. If that's your standard, it's very low."

Just because I was reminded of it.

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From a review of D.G.E. Hall's A History of South East Asia (1965) -- "(T)he volatility of the area outstrips even Hall's dexterous pen. For the first 10,000 years, however, a prescriptive read."

Wikipedia has a policy: No original research. The upshot of that policy is:

This means that all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed. The sourcing policy, Verifiability, says a source must be provided for all quotations, and for anything challenged or likely to be challenged—but a source must exist even for material that is never challenged.

What's wrong with this policy? Well... Let's say there's a story about a person, how they were involved in a covert op in the late 1960's. According to this story, the person was waiting in Country A, planning a coup in Country B, expecting help in the form of air support from Country C. One way to check that story would be to call the person's publicly known employer from the time, and ask if the person took a leave of absence during the relevant timeframe. While I could make such a call, I couldn't put the results into a Wikipedia article -- because it would be "original research." (I might yet do it, though, for my own curiosity.)

Running this through the rock tumbler of my mind, it all reminds me of some passages from Foundation by Isaac Asimov, 1951:

"(W)hy rely on him (for an archeological question)? Why not go to Arcturus and study the remains for yourself?"

Lord Dorwin raised his eyebrows and took a pinch of snuff hurriedly. "Why, whatever for, my dear fellow?"

"To get the information firsthand, of course."

"But where's the necessity? It seems an uncommonly roundabout and hopelessly rigamarolish method of getting anywhere. Look here, now, I've got the works of all the old masters -- the great archeologists of the past. I weigh them against each other -- balance the disagreements -- analyze the conflicting statements -- decide which is probably correct -- and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least" -- patronizingly -- "as I see it. How insufferably crude it would be to go to Arcturus, or to Sol, for instance, and blunder about, when the old masters have covered the ground so much more effectually than we could possibly hope to do." (pg. 65)

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"It isn't just you. It's the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin's idea of scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archeologist was to read all the books on the subject -- written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to solve archeological puzzles was to weigh the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and made no objections. Don't you see there's something wrong with that?"

Again the note of near pleading in his voice.

Again no answer. He went on: "And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad. We sit here, considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're receding and forgetting, don't you see?" (pg. 74)

I admire Wikipedia. I contribute to it, and will continue to do so.

The culture of it is still remarkably blockheaded sometimes.

From Siva Vaidhyanathan:

"Oh, the TYRANNY of 431 duly elected representatives seeking a majority vote for fully debated public policy!"

Random Harvest is a fun little film, which we saw partly because of Terry Carr's Fandom Harvest, and partly because we'd been watching an episode of As Time Goes By and they made a reference to it.

Some quotes:

"Miss Hanson."
"Yes, Mr. Rainier."
"Owing to lamentable weakness of character I'm having lunch at the Savoy -- with your approval, I understand."
"I thoroughly approve."

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The character Smithy, speaking to a Registry clerk about his newborn son:

"You can form only a very inadequate picture of him from what I've given you."
"I'll have to struggle along."

Errol Morris has a great piece in the New York Times today on lying. Or a taxonomy of lying, if you will.

The real find is when he talks about that well-known cut-up Arthur Schopenhauer and his work “The Art of Controversy” ["Die Kunst, Recht zu Behalten"], also translated as “The Art of Being Right” (available online here):

Schopenhauer’s premise was a simple one. There are two ways to win an argument. There is logic and there is dialectic. Since no one ever wins an argument with logic, he moves on quickly to dialectic — to 38 nasty ways to win an argument any way you can. Most (if not all of them) involve tergiversation, deception, chicanery, manipulation, insincerity, hyperbole, out-right lying and probably a number of other similarly descriptive concepts that I can’t think of offhand. {emphasis added}

Cue LOLCAT: IM DOIN IT WRONG

My second favorite disclaimer in a book, from Jay Dunitz' collection of photographs Pacific Light:

"DISCLAIMER and WARNING:

The process utilized by the Artist in the creation of the Pacific Light series is extremely dangerous, and may be injurious or lethal to person and hazardous to property. Neither the Artist nor anyone associated with the publication and distribution of PACIFIC LIGHT shall be responsible or liable in any way for any injury, death, or other damage arising from the reader's or public's application of the described process and its related materials."

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Take that!, Anarchist Cookbook.

You are writing a character who happens to be yourself. The only thing the reader can possibly know is what you tell them.

I've been meaning to write this piece (or something on its theme) for a while now. Perhaps it's just observational cluelessness on my part, but while it seems obvious to me, hardly anyone writes as if they've thought it through, to my eye.

I was reminded by reading the following recently in Joseph Epstein's essay, "Quotatious":

"Although there is very little of Geoffrey Madan in Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks, which is chiefly composed of things he had read or heard other people say, when you have read through this slender volume you feel rather as if you have come to know Madan -- and in a way that you may not feel you know the author of a book twice the length, every word of which was written by the author. Merely by knowing what he finds amusing, and what profound, one feels one comes to know the man himself. W.H. Auden, who was nervous about being the subject of a biography, felt that he had tipped his mitt quite as much as he cared to when he published A Certain World, his commonplace book, a compilation that he called "a sort of autobiography." In a brief foreword to the volume, he noted: "Here, then, is a map of my planet." I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said that "you are what you eat," but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote."

I agree with Epstein completely. In fact, I'd extend the idea: The internet, as a medium, is good for only two things -- reading text, and writing text. When you write text in the format some call a blog (and others a journal or diary), you are writing a narrative. You are inviting others to know what you find amusing, and what profound. You are selecting some actions of your life to highlight, while discarding others.

In short, you are writing a character.

Whether that character accurately reflects you, or is wholly fictional; an idealized version of yourself, or even a deliberately villainous portrait... That is up to you as a writer.

Make no mistake, though. Your readers will find you sympathetic or antagonistic wholly on the basis of what you choose to tell them, and how. Just like a character in a work of fiction.

I know a blogger who has a large reputation. Part of that reputation is how they get into scuffles with their readers or with other big name bloggers every now and then. What's interesting, in this context, is how they'll then write, "This blog is not the totality of who I am. You may think you know me, but you don't. I have other qualities, both good and bad, that you know nothing about, and to judge me solely on what you see here is to work on very limited information."

I've told them an early version of this piece. "If so, whose fault is that? Who chose to omit those qualities from what the world sees? Do you think your readers are somehow clairvoyant, or telepathic, and can see something you've never told them in the first place?"

Ezra Pound once said, "The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention." While that can be used to justify writing a sequence of "A... C" and having faith the smarter reader will infer the elided B (or even, if one is lucky, "A... D"), it does not justify "L... U".

So, some modest pieces of advice:

* When writing a blog post, consider how you would react if you read it as a character's statement in a novel. Is it interesting? Is it consistent with what has come before? If it isn't consistent, does it illuminate the character in useful ways?

* Does the post show you in the light you want to be seen? If you're showing a part of yourself you don't like, can you withstand the criticism that may come, or, even better, will you be willing to use the criticism to become more like who you'd really like to be?

My hope is this thought can be useful to fiction writers as well:

* If I were to read this narrative from my character in a blog, what would I think of them? Would I find them interesting enough to read the next day?

UPDATED TO ADD: I was talking this over with akirlu over dinner, and she replied with Mamet's Question: "What's my action?"

For those who don't know, there's a book called, A Practical Handbook for the Actor, based on workshops the authors attended with David Mamet. "What's my action?" is Mamet's analogue to the Method Question, "What's my motivation?" Mamet's point is that motivation doesn't matter if the audience cannot see an action you, as an actor, are showing them. All the internal despair in the world means nothing if the audience can't see it through your actions.

Same thing here. Without the action of communicating to the reader through writing it down on the screen, you don't get your character across -- no matter how well you might know the character, because they're "you."