Current Affairs

Ed Gorman is talking today on his blog about Harry Whittington, one of my favorite writers. He wonders why the work suddenly dried up for this prolific and successful writer.

Harry was a pro’s pro. He did it all. I can understand how he stopped hitting
the top markets in the mid-60s. The market was changing, his kind of lean, mean
sex-and-murder book was no longer in fashion. But Harry could write anything.
And all his agent could get was flat-fee work for hire? Harry Whittington?

Here are some of the reactions in the blogosphere to Dean Koontz’s "Mr. Teriyaki" speech.

From It’s Matt’s World:

It should be kept in mind that Koontz isn’t some anonymous man wearing
a white sheet over his head. He is a mainstream American author, whose
books have sold in the (probable) millions…
Koontz didn’t utter the words "chink" or "jap." Yet can it be disputed
that his speech was racist? It’s important to realize and understand
this, and not shy away from labeling it what it is. This is the only
way we can move forward and progress as a society.

There are
those who would argue that racism exists today only in the form of the
occasional march of men in white sheets, or whenever the "n" word is
uttered, or some member of a minority is dragged from the back of a
moving vehicle. But all that does is insulate us from the reality that
still exists. Racism is not dead, it is simply more insidious than it
used to be. It comes in the form of kids beating up on other kids
because "the Asians are smarter." It comes in the form of a popular
novelist stirring the pot of racial tensions and the bitter past. It
comes from comedians making jokes based upon racial stereoypes and bad
impressions of various ethnic accents. To ignore all of this and not
call it what it is, is to be complicit in the racism of the 21st
century. Surely, we can do better?

From Amy Ridenour:

Get a clue!  Black people were victims of slavery.  Jews were victims of the Holocaust.  Japan conducted the Bataan Death March.  Personally,
I’m not one for Bataan Death March humor. Doesn’t strike me as funny,
but not because I would fear offending the perpetrators, but because I
would not wish to make light of the horrors experienced by the victims.  The
difference between a victim and a perpetrator is a very clear one. It’s
odd, and rather worrisome, that some people don’t seem to see it.

From LAist:

Koontz doesn’t see anything wrong with his personal story of writing to
a Japanese movie executive and addressing him as Mr. Teriyaki while also
referencing low points in Japanese history to try to get his point across. He calls it George Carlin-esque. The difference may be though that a comedian
is just making jokes while, if Koontz’s anecdote is to be taken at face value,
Koontz really engaged in this behavior.

From Galleycat:

Steven Barrie-Anthony reports that "Koontz blames the brouhaha on
‘some sort of an agenda,’" and dutifully records the author’s
explanantion that he can’t be a racist because "I was a poor kid with a
Jewish grandmother and a great-grandmother who was black, [and] I grew
up in a dirt-poor family." Koontz also describes the letters that
prompted the controversy: "There’s some political incorrectness in it,
but nothing mean." 

Right. "We could have a few sake and reminisce about the Bataan
Death March" is absolutely not a mean thing to say to a Japanese
executive, just good-humored political incorrectness.

The first part of an interview my brother Tod and I conducted with each other has been posted on Beatrice.com, a popular lit-blog.  It’s a (mostly) serious discussion about breaking-in, the craft of writing, our work habits,  and sustaining a career as a novelist and/or screenwriter. Here’s an excerpt from one of my replies to one of Tod’s probing questions:

"For the last twenty
years (My God, am I actually old enough to start a sentence with
that?), I have made my living as a TV writer/producer. I spent most of
that time…okay, all of it…working on shows that other people created.
That’s true of most TV writers. You are hired, for the most part, for
your ability to articulate someone else’s vision and, at the same time,
bring your own unique voice to the writing. So I am quite comfortable
writing about characters and worlds created by others. I look at my
tie-in novels as the publishing equivalent of working on an episodic
television series."

UPDATE 11-18-05:  Part Two of the interview is now up. Here’s an excerpt:

"Given a choice between
reading a literary novel or a thriller, I’ll choose the thriller most
of the time. You’ll choose the literary fiction. That’s not to say I
don’t read non-crime/non-genre novels…I do. We share some of the same
favorite authors. But I love thrillers, mysteries, and
westerns—basically, escapist fiction—with a passion that you clearly do
not.

Maybe it has to do with TV. I was a voracious reader as a kid, but I
also grew up watching a lot more TV than you did and developing a true
love of the four-act structure. Maybe watching all that TV shaped what
I expect from a story…a kind of narrative engine, conflict, and
personal stakes that aren’t always found in literary fiction. Or I’m
just superficial."

Steve Lewis over at Mystery*File has resurrected a couple of interviews I did twenty-some years ago with Gregory McDonald, the author of the FLETCH novels, and with the movie-makers who tried to adapt his books to the screen. 

…Author Gregg Hurwitz has posted an entry on his blog.