Readers and Writers vs. Editors and Publishers (Day 89)

The book I alluded to this week that got me editing my to-be-read list and contemplating how well I can predict my future desires based on my current ones also got me thinking about publishing in general. I'm an indie so I'm biased, but I think we're increasingly underserved.

I won't name the book, but as much as I didn't like it and dropped it before I had finished the second chapter, it was evident that the author was skilled. The forced exposition was done well, and the obvious-to-me set up for the inevitable revelation was subtle enough that you'd have to be reading in the genre for a long time to recognize it from far away. The characters were exactly the characters you'd expect in the predictable set up--it was clear from jump who was who, and I wasn't going to worry about mistaking one for another. And the setting was well-thought out, even if I'd read variants on it already.

I am not, I promise, trying to damn this unnamed writer with faint praise. I mean it--she can write. Which it why it struck me as very, very odd that she was writing this particular book. It felt similar to a talented young actor or actress being stuck in a film that was clearly beneath them, but that's just what you have to do when you first get started.

And that only makes me more sure that a lot of debut authors aren't picking their own stories. I can't prove anything at this point, but it seems obvious to me that debut authors are being told, after a fashion, what to write, and how to write it.

Tochi Onyebuchi was the first author who made me think this might be the case. Beasts Made of Night and its sequel Crown of Thunder had a disturbing premise and intriguing characters. And much of the writing was good, but the story was uneven. It's something that people who haven't written and gotten comments might not have picked up on, but it seemed obvious to me that Onyebuchi was told to cut certain things for length, and to compress both back story and some action to... make a page count (I blanch just writing that). It made for some awkwardness, and the conclusion didn't feel as satisfying as I suspect it would have if we had had the chance to read the whole thing.

I couldn't prove that it was the editor and not the writer--not until I read Onyebuchi's Riot Baby and Goliath. Oh, hello. Those books are incredible, and haunting without any of the romance usually attached to the word. Onyebuchi is a masterful writer, and I have no doubt that the book he meant to write with his earlier series was changed by other people.

It's bad editing to force those kinds of cuts and revisions, but it's bad *publishing* to force writers to churn out the same stories that have been written before--and I mean in the last year, not the last decade. Publishing suffers so, so clearly from the same problem that has plagued the rest of mass media. Forget the internet filter bubble/echo chamber; the business advice to "give the people what they want" is just as sure to freeze a culture into a set of customs (with apologies to Frantz Fanon). 

I hope the young writer writes more; I'll be happy to take a look at her newer titles. Here's hoping she's able to write something original; you know, the stuff she'd actually like to write, and the stuff we would actually like to read.

Deb in the City

The Secret of Time Management

I won't keep you in suspense: it's saying No. Working smarter not harder is going to get you only so far, and if we're honest, a lot of smart working is saying no to certain things anyway. 

But how does one say No?

The curse of the era we live in is that we believe there is so much that we should say Yes to. The promise of the World Wide Web is just that: an interconnected world. But the world we are given easy access to is just so much garbage most of the time. It's a slightly more heightened version of the one available on television, which is itself a dumbed down version of the one available in books. A richer world is out there, but it's hidden in plain sight beneath the shiny glow of the baubles displayed by the internet.

I bring this up because, for the umpteenth time, I've listened in on a conversation in which people are concerned with Time Management (as well as the latest in gaming and television), and the intensity of these conversations might convince someone that distraction -- or Attention Deficit Disorder -- had been invented in the last two decades. But that is not true. What might be true is that the level of distraction has ratcheted up past what anyone could imagine.

Or couldn't they? Actually, haven't people been warning us about what mass media could do for decades? Neil Postman warned us in Amusing Ourselves to Death that Orwell's nightmare of Big Brother was irrelevant in a civilization that had chosen to make a god out of Entertainment; Carl Sagan saw that as our technology became more complex, many of us would backslide into superstition and revel in our ignorance; and Kurt Vonnegut described a society that was going to disguise the fact that it wasn't allowed to talk about substance by screaming about whatever was still left to us.

As far-seeing -- let's even call them visionary -- as these authors were, I don't think even they saw the sleight of hand that was going to be pulled on us in the twenty-first century. The usage of our modern technology -- small enough to fit into your pocket, more powerful than the Manhattan Project scientists could dream of -- gives us the illusion that we are participating in this movement called Technological Progress while we are, in fact, being commodified. We think we are using our technology to be more connected, but really we are connecting ourselves to a marketplace that listens into what we are already interested in and, like the best marketers in retail and politics, uses that information to convince us to buy what's already out there. We think we are choosing to watch and play the most cutting edge entertainment offered by Hollywood and Silicon Valley, but really many of us can't say no because we are addicted to the prospect of being entertained. 

Raj Patel, who has written more recently, had the great insight that the opposite of choice isn't coercion but instinct: if we have been participating in a marketplace from before the time we could consent -- before we were even born, in many instances -- our very "gut feelings" have been shaped to accommodate market values. Every other kind of value -- moral, political, intellectual -- will be indulged only to the point where it doesn't inconvenience said market. 

If you don't feel in control of your time -- and the life that it is filled with -- congratulations for realizing something that many are not yet able to see. You are not in control of your time because you are not in control of your attention. You cannot say No when you hear a demand, not a question.

This is a question

When you are being given thirty-nine different versions of chips in the snack aisle, you don't have thirty-nine options, but two: buy the chips, or walk away. (If one option has thirty-nine different varieties and the other has only one, what is the math weighted toward once you're in that aisle?) When you have available over fifty services for streaming in the United States, again, you really have two options: watch a program on one of the services, or walk away. (When each option has hundreds of programs per service, and there isn't a lot of drama inherent in walking away, what is the math weighted toward once you open up your device?)

Even those of us in a Community Supported Agriculture program will have to walk into a supermarket at some point, and once there it's difficult to avoid the snack aisle. By the same token, even those of us who are committed to spending as little time as possible on screens have to open them at some points, and once there it's difficult to avoid being plagued by ads and other "reminders" pointing you to entertainment. What is the solution? I don't know. But what I do know is that the more we remind ourselves that we are being asked, not told, we can start to say No more frequently.

Deb in the City

A meditation on South Korean entertainment

I used to joke that I didn't watch any entertainment that wasn't in Korean, only it's so frequently true that it's not really a joke anymore. Not that I'd be inclined to feel guilty about this for any reason, but even people who are shouldn't. It's too easy to snark about how unoriginal Hollywood productions are these days, and I find myself watching something made in South Korea and think, "why can't Hollywood do a story like this?"

I recently finished Delayed Justice. Two unrelated Parks -- an attorney who only went to high school, and a reporter from the wrong side of the tracks who recently lost his good-paying job -- team up to get justice for one downtrodden group of defendants after another, all connected to a corrupt judge, an uncouth businessman turned mayor of Seoul, and a kingmaker who used to be a prosecutor during the last military dictatorship. It was a fun little show, and I'd be lying if I said that some of the backstage drama -- one of the original actors got picked up for drunk driving and needed to be replaced -- didn't add to some of the appeal.

I also recently enjoyed Lucky Romance, but that was primarily because the leads (Ryu Joon Yeol and Hwang Jung Eum) are so charming and talented they could move me while reading the phone book. And A Korean Odyssey was one of the best ensemble comedies I've seen in a long time. And while sometimes I tire of derring-do in Korean action, Vagabond was AWESOME. Now if only they come back for a second season to close the loop...

K-dramas are fun, but in general they're just not as satisfying as the movies. (I don't think this is specific to Korean entertainment.) Not all movies are perfect -- I can think of more than a few that have fallen flat -- but when they're good you feel like you've spent two hours (or more) wisely. Best movie I've seen in several months is Beasts Clawing at Straws. By the title, you can guess that it's about the poor and/or desperate of South Korea trying to pull themselves up with one fever-pitched, make or break attempt, and you'd be right. The stories are intertwined, and even when you think you can see where it's going you'll still feel hit by a curve ball at least once. Can't say it had a happy ending, but most people will be satisfied by it.  

Beasts Clawing At Straws...everyone is as well-adjusted as you think they are.

I'm probably like a lot of movie viewers in that I'm prone to following good actors. Ryu Joon Yeol, mentioned above, is REALLY good. The first movie I saw him in was Believer, and he played the kind of character that made me want to hide under my covers while I hyperventilated. Then I saw him play completely different roles in Little Forest, The King, and Hit-and-Run Squad that made me feel, well, a little less panicky. He's an actor I really hope we see more from soon. 

Gang Dong Won is another compelling actor. I knew this from some of his recent films, but I was surprised at how adept he was over a decade ago in The Temptation of Wolves (look, I'm not the one who makes up these titles, okay?) and Haunters. He, like Ryu Joon Yeol, is a good actor for a director to enlist when they need someone to sell something absolutely crazy and make you believe it. 

Ryu Joon Yeol: trust me, this guy can play scary as easily as he can play charming.

 

No discussion of Korean cinema is complete without Song Kang Ho (you can think of him as the Parasite guy). With the glaring, horrible exception of Drug King (just...why?), he's been universally fantastic. The oldest movie I've seen him in is a ridiculous little film called Foul King, but he managed to be really touching and made the best of the material. After that, he really took off, starting with Joint Security Area and then Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. (People have probably seen him in Snowpiercer and The Host, but those just aren't my cups of my tea.) He was excellent in both The Attorney and A Taxi Driver, but my favorite of all of his roles is Age of Shadows. Basically, if you see Kang featured as an actor, it's an almost sure thing the production will be good.

Wait, aren't there Korean actresses? Um, yes, but I'm sorry to say that with few exceptions, women have better roles on television than in the big screen. Many of the movies fail the first two questions of the Bechdel test, and I've seen very few that pass the fourth question. Actresses who consistently work in movies include Kim Hye Soo, Jun Ji Hyun, Kim Tae Ri, and Kim Go Eun, but even those actresses arguably had roles with more depth on television than in film. In that regard, it's more than a little depressing that South Korea has the same problems that Hollywood does. 

Kim Hye Soo: A talented actress who should keep playing leading roles.

Deb in the City

PS Just about all of these movies are available on Netflix or Viki. Also, I am not getting any consideration from AsianWiki.com, their information is just more consistent than Wikipedia's.