Lynn L. Clark's Blog: Writing in Retirement

What Makes a Bestseller?

What makes a book a bestseller is unfathomable to me at times. Since the novel Gone Girl appeared, it seems to be a guarantee of success to put "girl," "woman," "wife," or "widow" in the title. Also, it helps to have an unreliable narrator who is either a sociopath or is brain-addled by alcohol and/or drugs. Plot twists seem to work well too. And having an "in" at a publishing company sure doesn't hurt either.

Whatever happened to intellectual honesty in writing? Is it no longer possible to write a novel that sells, but which is also capable of both holding a reader's interest and not insulting his/her intelligence?

This brings us to A.J. Finn's The Woman in the Window which prompted a bidding war among publishers. If you're intending to read this book, you might like to peruse the one-star reviews of it on Goodreads first. Or better still, re-watch Rear Window and Copycat. These movies, along with the novel The Girl on the Train, seem to provide the basis for the plot/characterization in the book.

A.J. Finn is the pseudonym for Daniel Mallory, an insider in the publishing business. Given his lies and constant deceit, it's really not surprising that he wrote under a pseudonym. (In fact, the publisher Little, Brown, in whose office Mallory once worked, withdrew from the bidding as soon as the real identity of the author was revealed.)

Mallory has amassed $3 million in total from his book deal (another novel is to follow in 2020) and the sale of the movie rights to The Woman in the Window. So he's probably laughing all the way to the bank about his success in parlaying bad writing--heavily reliant on other writers' material--into $$$.

If you'd like to read the true story behind this author, I'd recommend an article by Ian Parker in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20....

It speaks for itself.

Edging toward a Lesser Democracy

I've just finished reading Madeleine Albright's Fascism: A Warning, as well as David Frum's Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. Both are well-written and thought-provoking. Their authors represent opposite ends of the political spectrum: the former is a Democrat who served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton and knows firsthand the effects of tyranny, having fled her native Czechoslovakia twice when the Nazis and later the Soviets invaded it, The latter is a conservative thinker who served as George W. Bush's speechwriter. (Remember the phrase "axis of evil"? That was coined by Frum.)

Both Albright and Frum catalogue how the institutions of democracy--Congress, the judicial system, the rule of law, and freedom of the press--have gradually been undermined without a massive outcry against the current president from either his adopted party or his supporters. They also point to disquieting surveys showing that 20 to 30 per cent of wealthy Americans and millennials do not rate the ideals of democracy as important.

Albright provides us with a history of fascism from Mussolini and Hitler and notes disconcerting similarities in the Philippines, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and other countries that are displaying signs of the same despotism. The marks of authoritarianism are telling: an emerging leader who perceives wrongdoing--real or imagined--to himself; a public that is equally aggrieved and identifies with the leader, who creates scapegoats to further raise his supporters' ire; a public willing to put a "strong man" in charge and support him at all costs despite the gradual erosion of freedoms; and a leader that vilifes his opposition (and often imprisons its members), who regards media coverage unfavourable to him as "fake" news and uses his own form of propaganda to present an alternate reality of his leadership to his supporters.

They both note that Trump is not an anomaly in respect of current movements to the far right, but as Albright points out, there is a real danger of transporting these ideas abroad to threaten other democracies. Hitler modelled himself on Mussolini; the leader of the Czech Republic is known as "the Czech Trump" and the recently elected far-right leader of Brazil is known as the "Brazilian Trump". The term "fake news" is now standard in repressive countries such as the Philippines where reporters are routinely jailed. Meanwhile Trump praises the repressive leaders of Russia, China, Egypt, Turkey, Poland, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, taking the word of Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Prince Mohammad bin Salman over his own intelligence agencies and heartily congratulating the leaders of Turkey, Russia and China for manipulatively extending their terms in office. He has also applauded Duterte for his approach to handling drug offenders in his country (he murders them extra-judicially).

Despite the differences in ideology, both Albright and Frum express deep concern for the inability of current American politicians to listen to the other side. Nor are those on the far right the only ones to blame The far left, they both point out, can be as equally tyrannical in their approach. as the far right, As Frum states in his book:

People who have never suffered the tyranny and terror of utopian politics may hearken to radical and revolutionary slogans.

What is needed now, both authors assert, is an end to blind and unthinking loyalty to a cause and the ability to find common ground.

It's a lesson well worth learning.

Reading Habits of the American Public

Hello and welcome back after a long, hard winter that has yet to run its course.

I was interested in learning about audiobooks because occasionally at sales events I get asked what I think of them. I don't have any of my own books in audible format primarily because of the costs of converting them, but I'm still interested in the subject.

My research unearthed a Pew Research Center study that shows a rise from 14 per cent to 18 per cent of the American population who listen to audiobooks. This means that roughly one in five Americans use this format to read books.

There are also interesting statistics in the study concerning print and digital books. (For the purposes of the study, digital books include e-books and audiobooks.) Although you might think print books are less in demand, that's not the case: 39 per cent of Americans read only print books while 29 per cent read a combination of digital and print books.

For the full text of the article outlining the study results, please see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/....

Everyone's a Critic

One-star reviews of the classics have been the subject of many blog posts, and one example you might want to look at, if you 'd like to share a laugh, is a column in Lit Reactor at http://litreactor.com/columns/the-top....

Of course, the classics such as The Great Gatsby and Ulysses are still very much assured of their good standing in spite of these one-star reviews and rant-like comments. But it's certainly difficult for emerging writers to swallow some of the low ratings and vituperative review comments directed at their works. (I recently came across an example where a reader had assigned a one-star rating to a book with no explanation. It was a newly-released book so this was the only rating it had received. What was so wrong with the book, I wondered, that it deserved such a fate? Hopefully, someone with a little more foresight has since written a helpful review of the book.)

There's a lot at stake when someone puts his or her work out there in an act of blind faith, hoping to connect with readers. (After all, few contemporary authors--unless they're delusional-- actually expect to get rich by writing.) And placing the onus on authors to grow a thicker skin doesn't really address the issue of the lack of accountability when every reader is a potential critic.

A couple of years ago, I came across the following guideline from an avid reviewer (http://booksandpals.blogspot.ca/p/gui...) that I think is very perceptive:

...A good review will give a reader an idea of whether they’ll like a book or not. How well the reviewer liked the book is secondary. Many 1-star reviews describe a book that sounds perfect to someone else.


What a positive and refreshing approach!

(Reprinted from a 2015 post.)

2018 CNN Heroes

Each year, CNN showcases and supports the work of ordinary men and women making a difference in everyday lives. The Top 10 CNN heroes for 2018 are:


Abisoye Ajayi-Akinfolarin (Lagos, Nigeria): Ajayi- Akinfolarin’s organization, Pearls Africa Foundation, helps disadvantaged girls in Nigeria gain the tech skills and confidence to transform their lives.

Maria Rose Belding (Washington, DC): Belding’s nonprofit, MEANS, uses an innovative online platform to tackle food waste and hunger simultaneously, connecting businesses that have extra food to charities that feed the hungry.

Amanda Boxtel (Basalt, CO): Bridging Bionics, Boxtel’s non-profit, helps people with mobility impairments walk again by providing access to cutting-edge technology like exoskeleton suits.

Rob Gore (Brooklyn, NY ): Dr. Gore’s organization, Kings Against Violence Initiative, is working to end violence by offering youth-focused interventions that
are school, community, and hospital-based.

Luke Mickelson (Twin Falls, ID): Mickelson’s non-profit, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, builds, assembles, and delivers free beds to children and families in need.

Susan Munsey (San Diego, CA): Munsey is a sex-trafficking survivor whose non-profit, Generate Hope, provides a safe space for fellow survivors to heal and build new lives.

Florence Phillips (Carson City, NV): The daughter of immigrants, Phillips and her organization, ESL In-Home Program of Northern Nevada, provide free English and citizenship classes to immigrants in Nevada.

Ricardo Pun-Chong (Lima, Peru): Inspira, Dr. Pun-Chong’s non-profit, offers families from remote villages free housing, meals, and comprehensive support while their children undergo medical treatment.

Ellen Stackable (Tulsa, OK): Poetic Justice, Stackable’s non-profit, helps incarcerated women in Oklahoma heal from trauma by helping them find their voice through writing.

Chris Stout (Kansas City, MO): Stout’s non-profit, Veterans Community Project, provides tiny houses and comprehensive support services to any veteran.

Each Top 10 CNN Hero will be awarded $10,000 and the CNN Hero of the Year will receive an additional $100,000.

For information on how to vote for the CNN Hero of the Year, please see https://www.cnn.com/specials/cnn-heroes.

The Sinking of The Titanic

This is the last of my re-posts of all things scary in the lead-up to Halloween:

Among the finds at a book sale last fall, my husband discovered a 1955 paperback on the sinking of the RMS Titanic by Walter Lord entitled A Night to Remember. It remains one of the most authoritative accounts of the tragedy and inspired a movie in 1958 by the same name, which you can view online. It's worth the watch.

.... If you've never read Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain," you might want to check it out. The poem's imagery of the iceberg forming in the ocean while shipbuilders are constructing what they believe to be an unsinkable ship is striking. The sinking of the Titanic was the perfect subject for the fatalistic Hardy.

What struck me the most about Walter Lord's account of the sinking is how the ship was a perfect microcosm of the class system that existed at that time. More than 1500 passengers died while there were only 710 survivors. The class of the passenger in fact determined their survival: the death rate of steerage passengers was much higher than those in first class quarters. It was women and children first in the lifeboats, but many of those in third class--locked below in the ship--never had the option of boarding one. Seventeen per cent of first class children were lost as opposed to 66 per cent of third class children. Three per cent of first class passenger women were lost as opposed to 54 per cent in third class quarters. Many of the lifeboats departed the vessel only half full.

The class distinction persisted even in death. When Canadian rescue ships started on their mission to recover bodies, they discovered they didn't have sufficient embalming supplies. (Under regulation, bodies were required to be embalmed before being returned to port.) They preserved the bodies of the obviously well-to-do passengers for burial in Halifax, while abandoning the others to their watery grave.

The scope of the tragedy was compounded by many factors: there were not enough lifeboats for the passengers onboard; the myth of the unsinkability of the ship led many to believe that they were in no real danger; numerous ice warnings were not given enough credence by the radio operator, who was busy sending out messages from the millionaires aboard to families and friends, crowing about their presence on the Titanic's maiden voyage; and the practice of the time to have radio operators available only on a part-time basis meant that the SS Californian, only a few miles away, did not receive the Titanic's distress messages. (The ship's crew also watched, but ignored rockets from the Titanic because they weren't the usual colour of flares denoting distress.)

In retrospect, there seemed to be an inevitability about the ship's tragic end. In fact, there was a novella published by Morgan Robertson in 1898 in which many of the details of the later sinking of the Titanic were foreshadowed.

Is there truly such a thing as fate?

The Stanley Hotel: Is It Really Haunted?

This is the third of my reprints of favourite posts on scary stuff.

Fans of Stephen King's The Shining will probably know the story behind the Stanley Hotel, which is said to have been the inspiration for the novel. (In the novel, the hotel was known as The Overlook.)

Located in Estes Park, Colorado, the Stanley Hotel has a history of being haunted. Recently a guest staying there claims to have photographed a ghost on its grand stairway.

You can check out his photograph to see if you agree with him: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/s....

To visit the website of the Stanley Hotel, please see https://www.stanleyhotel.com/.

It's accepting reservations and you can even order your own REDRUM coffee mug...

The Enfield Poltergeist

As promised, I'm sharing some of my previous posts on all things scary in the lead-up to Halloween. Here's another one:

I watched The Conjuring 2 on DVD recently and really enjoyed it. I hadn't heard of the case investigated in the movie, but was intrigued by it and decided to do some research to share with you.

This is the story behind the case:

In August 1977, Peggy Hodgson called police to her council home in Enfield, England, after two of her four children claimed that furniture was moving, and knocking sounds were heard on walls. A police constable said that she saw a chair slide on the floor and "was convinced that nobody there had touched it." Later claims included allegedly demonic voices, loud noises, thrown rocks and toys, overturned chairs, and children levitating. These claims attracted considerable press attention, and the story was covered in British newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, until reports of these incidents came to an end in 1979. (Source: Wikipedia)

The case has been widely discredited as a hoax--similar to the Amityville horror alluded to in the beginning of the film. The main reason for this is that Janet Hodgson admitted to and was caught on tape fabricating some of the events. However, she claims to have invented only 2 per cent of them because she was afraid that investigators would not believe her. She maintains to this day that the majority of the supernatural events did happen. To read a 2017 interview with her, please see https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/201....

The psychic investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, convincingly played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, have also been dismissed as benign, but delusional in their search for ghosts and demons. But others such as Maurice Grosse of the British Society for Psychical Research steadfastly maintained the authenticity of the events. (Grosse, a character in The Conjuring 2, died in 2006.)

You be the judge after listening to the actual voice recordings at the time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OWgI...

Send in the Clowns

Now that Halloween is on the horizon, I've decided to reprint some of my favourite posts on what's truly scary. I'll start with the clown figure:

To me, the clown has always been an ambivalent figure, more tragic than comic but not usually downright scary.

Anyone who has ever read or seen horror depictions of clowns, however, can testify to the power of the clown as a figure of malevolence. So I was interested to read an article on the history of the clown figure entitled "The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary".

The article traces the history of clowns from pagan times to the present day, noting that the early clown was primarily a buffoon or mischievous imp.

The image of the "tragic" clown is associated with Joseph Grimaldi in England, who was famous as a comic pantomime player on the London stage, known not only for his painted face but also his extreme physical comedy. Sadly, he had a tragic personal life and was always in excruciating pain from his performances. His memoirs were edited by Charles Dickens, who did much to reinforce the tragedy behind the clown's mask and the image of an individual who would literally destroy himself to get a laugh.

A "sinister" figure behind the clown's face was Jean-Gaspard Debarau, known as Pierrot and famous for his pantomime and his clown's white face with red lips and black eyebrows. In real life, he killed a boy who ridiculed him, but was acquitted of his murder.

Later, in America, there were "hobo" clowns such as Emmett Kelly, who used slapstick humor for comedy but also expressed the underlying tragedy of the Great Depression for the common man (as did Charlie Chaplin, who isn't mentioned specifically in the article).

The article also references the deranged clown doll in Poltergeist (lampooned in The Simpsons' Halloween special); Stephen King's Pennywise in It; and Heath Ledger's depiction of the Joker, as well as various other permutations of the malevolent clown.

And--all clowning aside--these negative images of clowns have obviously been detrimental to the profession because "in the mid-2000s, articles began popping up in newspapers across the country lamenting the decline of attendees at clown conventions or at clowning workshop courses."

Of course, along the way there were some good clowns: think Bozo the Clown, for example. No, this isn't just a name you call someone who cuts you off in traffic: there actually was a beloved Bozo with his own television show, which most of us who grew up in the 60s watched faithfully.

And, as the Ringley Brothers' talent spotter (and former clown) indicates, "good clowns are always in shortage, and it’s good clowns who keep the art alive".

[Reprinted from a 2015 Goodreads post.]

Global Public Square

If you haven't had the opportunity to check out Fareed Zakaria's Global Public Square you might want to do so. It airs Sundays at 10 am and again at 1 pm. An excellent analyst of world events in his own right, Fareed also discusses events with foreign affairs experts and authors.

If you missed today's show, Fareed interviewed Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire, philanthropist, and former mayor of New York City with topics ranging from US trade policies to the scientific evidence that supports how global warming is precipitating current extreme weather events.

Fareed also discusses Bono's take on the growth of populism, and interviews an activist for women's rights in Saudi Arabia to get her take on whether there has been true progress in this regard.

You can also subscribe to a daily newsletter from the GPS team by visiting the CNN website or take a weekly quiz at cnn.com/fareedquiz.