Warren Adler's Blog, page 55

Chick Lit is Dead, Lover Lit is In

The current memoir by a middle-aged woman named Mimi Alford about her affair with President John F. Kennedy when she was a 19-year-old White House intern heralds a new genre in the book business, Lover Lit.

Mrs. Alford's "coming out" reveals her 18-month sexual escapade with President Kennedy who, she alleges, took her virginity in the First Lady's bedroom. Contrived to be self-effacing, the book and its author have received kind reviews and interviews, like the one recently in The New York Times that reveals a gushing bouquet of envy by a writer who appears to fondly wish she, too, had parked her shoes at the foot of Kennedy's bed, any bed.

Considering that John Kennedy was by all accounts a serial adulterer, one can expect a vast series of books to be inflicted on an eagerly awaiting public under the new genre with one overriding theme: "As a young nubile, naïve woman, I was the mistress of a powerful (and very well known) man."

There is, of course, precedent for such a category, such as the Monica Lewinsky memoir and certainly numerous others, but the Alford memoir seems to offer a unifying content label that can encompass a vast output of sexual "tell-alls" about affairs with horny, dead men of historical importance. Just think of the lineup at Agents' and Publishers' offices with outlines of juicy details about bedding down with famous dead men.

Heck, a clever woman or man with a galloping imagination and a zest for research can make a case for herself or himself that might pass as fact.

In the matter of John Kennedy, there are numerous well-known anecdotes about his many seductions using the White House swimming pool as a perfect luring environment. Intimate Kennedy staffers have often told the story of the two girls in the typing pool, dubbed "Tweedledum" and "Tweedledee" who were called upon frequently to utilize their servicing skills for the president's needs.

Then there is the oft-touted story of his liaison with Judith Campbell Exner, the girlfriend of mob boss Sam Giancana, now deceased, and the one about Ellen Rometsch, the alleged East German spy. Both can be easily packaged in book form.

Dollars to doughnuts, the ladies of his many affairs held dear those eventful trysts and one would think they or their progeny or their best friends would be first on line to peddle an account of their real or faux memories of those halcyon days. As this genre progresses, expect even more intimate details of sexual techniques and preferences to spice up the accounts.

Ahead, too, with women beginning to surge in the political arena, one cannot discount the possibility of lovers surfacing with their own accounts of secret sexual affairs. An entire industry may be aborning.

Having lived in Washington many years and known some of the inside players of the Kennedy era and before and beyond, there are enough stories both hidden and in circulation that would constitute a vast library for this genre. While the Kennedy's — Dad, John, Teddy and Bobby — may seem like exemplars of the sex gambols, there were others, many, many others, equally blatant, but much more discreet, who used their powerful positions to exercise the venery.

We might even cite historical precedent. Hamilton, Jefferson and Franklin come to mind, but they are merely the tip of the iceberg. Research on this subject would require two lifetimes to pursue.

Aside from politics, insiders in the nation's capital always knew that sex, in all its manifestations, straight, gay or whatever as currently cataloged in the millions of porno websites on the net, was the coin also of the federal realm.

As a novelist/observer of the many foibles, sexual and otherwise, of our Washington elite, I have recycled my behind-the-scenes knowledge into many of my Washington novels and my Fiona FitzGerald mystery series which deals with the real skinny of life in the political fast lane where the aphrodisiac of power provides a drug of choice to enhance the libido of both genders.

For years, such libidinous acts were off limits for media sleuths and publicity seeking participants wanting their fifteen minutes of fame, but now that the cover has been removed from the once inviolate pressure cooker, the tasty secret brew has exploded into the soup of commercial packaging and nothing will ever be expunged again.

Either Washington has caught up with the times or the times have caught up with Washington. There is no shame in sexual peccadilloes anymore, providing the participants are of legal age. Indeed, perhaps a subgenre is in the spawning stage when the victims of pedophilia, incest and other aberrations open up their own vast library of secrets to the book trade.

Yes, Washington is all screwed up. But then it always has been.

On Rejection and Renewal: A Note to Aspiring Novelists

You've spent months, perhaps years, composing your novel. You've read and reread it hundreds of times. You've rethought it, rewritten it, and revised it, changed characters, dialogue, and plot lines. Writing it is the most important thing in your life. The writing of your novel has absorbed your attention, almost exclusively. Both your conscious and your subconscious mind have been obsessed with it. You have read parts of it to your friends, family, former teachers. Most think it's wonderful.

You have finally considered it finished. Armed with optimism and self-confidence, you obtain a list of agents on the Internet and begin to canvas agents. You agonize over whether to send your precious manuscript to one agent at a time or to a number of agents. You choose the first option.

Just in case, you send it electronically, unsure of whether or not this is now standard practice. You have high hopes. You are aware of the massive changes in the publishing business, but have chosen to take the traditional path as your first option.

Weeks go by, then months. The agents are, you believe, reading it in the office, passing it around, deciding to take it on. You live on such hopes. Finally you call the agent's office. They haven't a clue as to who you are. Somehow, they are reminded and search through the piles of manuscripts in their office, find yours and send you back a form letter, perhaps made to look like an original out of politeness.

Well then, you tell yourself, it is only one agent's opinion. You send it off to another agent. A letter comes back swiftly, similarly worded. You get bolder, send your manuscript to two agents at a time, then three, then every agent you can find. Nothing happens. "Good luck on getting published," they tell you. "Not for us." Sometimes there is a personal, scribbled note that says something nice and you live in its glow for days.

Years go by. You start another novel, but you are less optimistic now, less confident, and unsure. You tell yourself you have not paid enough attention to the marketplace. You begin to analyze what is selling, what is not selling, what is being published. You read books on the bestseller lists and are certain you can do a lot better. You try to use these books as a guide to what is selling and you write accordingly. Nothing helps. You are continuously rejected.

You begin to read various pitches on the Internet about how you can publish your own books and get them marketed on electronic venues. Some sites promise that they can get your book in front of movie producers for a price. Some say they have the magic to make you a successful career novelist for a price, of course. For more of a price, you will be told how best to market your book. You debate the idea and as your pile of rejection letters mount, you give it a try.

You spend money. A book is produced in print on demand format and an e-book is created and placed on every electronic sales venue on the net. Your family buys copies and sends them to friends. It is even reviewed in publications that review self-published books for a price. There is a word or two of praise in the review and you send it around to the media and everybody you know. Unfortunately, there is little or no sales, no afterlife.

Despite your confidence in your ability, despite the fact that you truly believe your novel is certainly worthy of publication, you feel the full impact of rejection and failure. Still, you cannot shake the certainty or your talent. You write another novel. Perhaps a third. Perhaps more. You go through the same process. Again and again you are rejected. You begin to question your ability, your ideas, and your talent. Is it a fantasy, an exercise in unrealistic aspirations? You are becoming embittered. Your dream is crashing.

If you are fortunate, your wife, husband, partner, and family stick by you, continue to encourage your dream, help you keep it alive. Other realities begin to chip away at the dream. You have financial obligations. Your kids are growing up. You are losing out in the job market. Others are moving up in their jobs, while you are falling behind.

You feel lost, adrift. Rejection after rejection has beaten you down. You see this as the end of your world, the end of your hopes and dreams. Your high hopes and self-confidence in your own talent is petering away.

What now?

If you've read this far without your stomach congealing, I suppose you are awaiting some prescription offering a magic coping pill. Sorry, there isn't any available your corner drug store. And you won't find it here. Luck — that strange, illusive, heaven sent, burst of good fortune-has not fired a missile in your direction.

Not yet.

You have three choices. The first is personal surrender. You've been on a fool's errand following an adolescent dream. Time to throw in the towel and concentrate on your day job. At least you tried. The second choice is postponement. You weren't ready. You needed more experience of life. But you continue to believe it will come. Some talented people are late bloomers. Give the dream a rest. Wishing won't make it so. There are enough popular clichés to give you courage.

Now, for your third choice, the clincher. It is not recommended for the faint of heart. Never give up. Never, never, never. It may be impractical, unwise, foolish, pure madness, but if you truly believe in yourself, your talent, your ideas, your calling, your personal mission, why not, as Lewis Carroll wrote, "go on until the end, and then stop."

To do this requires a monumental ego, total self-confidence in your talent, and an unshakeable belief that you have been anointed with the right stuff. You will require obsessive focus, singleness of purpose, a draconian ruthlessness and total devotion to a belief in your artistic ability. Fancy words, I know, but with the absence of luck, you will need these attributes to sustain you through the process.

What this means for the true novelist is that he or she must continue to soldier on, keep writing, keep trying, taking the increasingly painful hits of rejection after rejection until … well, until someone out there catches on … or doesn't.

We are all waiting for Godot. Sometimes he comes.

The Movies: A Fading Flame

At the outset, let me state unequivocally that I have had a lifetime love affair with the movies. The affair spans the golden age of Hollywood films and as evidence of this heartfelt attachment, I can name most of the actors in black and white films, B movies included.

I inherited this addiction from my mother who would take me with her whenever the movies changed their bill, even in the middle of the week when I should have been doing my homework. Her lure was not only the movie itself but the collection of dishes the theaters would give away free to corral their patrons during the dark days of the depression.

The movie bill in those days consisted of a double feature, news of the day, a cartoon or two, and a minute or two of coming attractions — meaning the pictures that were on deck to be seen in the next few days. There was no popcorn, only a vending machine that would dispense packaged candies for a nickel (about six choices).

Those old birds from the studios who lured you into the movie theaters were the most brashly creative propagandists and advertising geniuses of their day. They built a star system that made gods and goddesses of their actors, slapping their images all over the place, on billboards, fan magazines and gossip columns, and used the mass media with unprecedented skill, verve, and chutzpah.

Indeed, they made you believe that those actors whose love affairs and 'derring-do' actually happened to them in real life and seduced you to glimpse into their lurid personal lives, stunted perhaps by the fact that these actors, mostly uneducated and insecure, began to believe that they were the characters put up on that 35-foot screen. Indeed, those movie promoters invented the modern celebrity machine.

They gave away dishes and other items that lured you into the theaters in the middle of the week. They sponsored contests for kids. They coupled the movies with live entertainment like Sinatra, Milton Berle, Martin and Lewis, and many others.

They built faux palaces that made you feel you deserved the importance of entering a baroque castle with lots of gold paint and chandeliers. Remnants remain, of which Radio City Music Hall was the epitome of the era, a relic that has retained its luster but no longer shows movies.

Their advertising in the newspapers was over the top with exaggeration and drum beating bull which to this day continues its legacy of faux praise, much of it bought and paid for.

The language of the lure is still over the top only more so. Ever really read a movie blurb? They are hilarious, extracted from reviews by anyone with a computer and an opinion, but who looks at the source? Some are from the top tier of reviewers from the New York Times and other big city newspapers; others are from magazines, entertainment trade papers, television "critics", assorted bloggers and movie critic sites where self-proclaimed "reviewers" abound, all with one thing in common: "opinions" hungry to see their critiques quoted and hopeful that their sites attract advertisers.

Here are some samples extracted from newspapers flacking new offerings, which will remain anonymous. I'll dispense with "Best Picture", "Best Actor" — which are ubiquitous and the absurdist exaggerations — like the overused "Brilliant", "Ravishing", "Remarkable", "Breathless", "Imaginative" and the all-purpose "Most" to underline the point.

Then there is the blockbuster word "Masterpiece" and, of course "Winner", of the various festivals and resumes of directors for past films all embellished with an avalanche of praise words lifted from Mr. Roget's handy thesaurus. Sometimes the flack writer will get really creative and spew "We're Too Busy Laughing" or "The Level of Craft is Something to Behold" or "An Erotic Mindbender" or "Thrillingly Hypnotic", or "Give Us More Like This One", heaven forbid, and the all-purpose "You Won't Believe Your Eyes" or "So Good You Will Have to See it Twice."

For the "save the world" filmmakers, who offer what they believe is life-changing movies, you will find specific hype headlines like "Uncompromising", "Brave", "Courageous", "Fearless", "Daring", and that all-purpose word of the righteous activist, "expose."

Then there are the groups who treat film as a cultural icon and a matter of scholarly inquiry with another cluster of hype words like "classic", "enduring" and "vintage."

Of course in today's world the lure goes beyond mere words. You have to endure a tsunami of advertising if you enter a movie theater on its advertised time entrapped and forced to endure 15 minutes or more of earsplitting commercials, many designed to get you to buy the obesity-encouraging, overpriced menu of life menacing goodies, served in the lobby concessions.

As if this was not enough brainwashing, you still have to endure endless coming attractions, usually eardrum endangering snippets from the latest movie spinoffs of computer games targeting the pre- and early teen set. By the time one gets around to the start of the movie, a half hour or more beyond the published feature time, you are exhausted by the assault and your potential film enjoyment meter has been compromised.

In the golden age of the black and whites, the coming attractions were five minutes long and your concentration on the story being presented on the screen was still fresh and expectant.

There is a sense, even as I write this rant, that the movie auditorium, meaning where groups sitting together in the dark, munching on unhealthy foods while being attacked with endless hype are the last gasp of a desperate industry running out of ideas as they enter an uncertain future.

As I said at the onset, I loved the movies, even the very few being offered today for those of even average intelligence, but I fear a total disenchantment is on its way, unless the moguls come up with a more engaging product for people of all ages and stop trying to overstuff us with all the hype and brainless baloney.

Author, Author

For centuries, the author of a book has been a revered figure, a symbol of intellectual achievement, wisdom and wit, brilliance and, above all, prestige. Indeed, the book, whatever its contents, has been an item of iconic significance.

It is no wonder that a large percentage of people want to write a book. Some have motives that their composition in the covers of a book, however defined as a physical entity or a cyber product, will make them rich and famous; some see such an achievement as an expression of their persona, their point of view, their record of a life lived, a work of the imagination and the fulfillment of a secret wish for immortality.

Some harbor hopes that they can establish careers as full-time writers in genre fiction, or self-help, or advice to improve the lives of others or on subjects that display their knowledge of cooking, history, politics, religion or whatever has absorbed their interest.

Whatever their motives, their ambition is an obsession and they are willing to take the time and muster the discipline to pursue their dreams of authordom, hoping that the words they compose will be read, contemplated and engaged with by others. It is, indeed, a noble aspiration.

Before the advent of the Internet and the e-book reader, publishing was dominated by a hierarchy of professionals who bought, judged, edited and distributed books through a process of middle men and a chain of brick-and-mortar outlets to sell their book offerings for a profit. For those who, for whatever reasons, were rejected by these professionals, there was always what has been called "vanity publishing," whereby the author pays for the production of his or her book that rarely, if ever, found its way into the distribution channel.

The divide between the professional publisher and the vanity author on the Internet has disappeared. The two are now on equal footing in the Internet distribution chain, which is surging and will eventually dominate the book business. Now, any author who writes whatever book he or she chooses is on equal distribution footing with the professional publisher on the Net.

The result, which I view as an unintended consequence, is that the floodgates have opened for the wannabe writer of book content and all those who hungered to write a book and see it distributed to a point where the self-published book will undoubtedly outpace the traditional book publishing industry by huge numbers, perhaps by millions.

Consider, too, the vast number of out of print books and the back list books of published authors that will be reincarnated on the net. Ten million available books on the net is not an unreasonable possibility.

It has spawned a huge new industry that covers every area of the book production and marketing chain. There are hundreds of outlets that can convert a manuscript into formats that will fit any platform. Apparently, any book content properly formatted is acceptable to the main e-book and POD retailers. Write a book and it can enter the system in days and theoretically compete with every other book in the marketplace.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of book bloggers have emerged offering reviews, some paid for, presenting themselves as advertising mediums. Once respected and allegedly neutral industry review publications like Kirkus will review any book for a price that will undoubtedly offer some favorable quotes for marketing. Other such sites have sprung up as well.

Promoters of every ilk have emerged with the promise of getting one's book publicized and getting the author on TV and radio outlets. Social networking "experts" abound, promising to create author awareness on Facebook, Twitter and other open venues on the Net. Every form of promotion will have its "stores" on the net, many providing videos, apps, enhancements, and whatever else can be devised for a price. Determined authors with ample funds will be happy to part with their money in their attempt to realize their hopes and dreams.

Many sites offer free conversions and a distribution deal that takes a piece of sales revenue provided the author pursues his own individual marketing program, many of which are offered on the Net for a price.

Because of the vast volume of self-published authors who have been rejected by traditional publishers, it has become a numbers game, where the outlet who designs the content for sale in the online marketing chain takes a percentage of any sales generated by the author. The truth is that the vast majority of self-published authors will barely sell more than fifty to one hundred books, after his chain of friends and relatives have been exhausted. Thus, the company that produces the formats for distribution has found a way for the individual author to be a freelance sales agent for the company who has put the book into the marketing chain.

The company with the most books under contract can make a fairly hefty living with its battalions of authors out there beating the drum for their book sales. Small sales numbers for each self-published book adds up.

As for the quality of the book offering which, in any event, is subjective, the honest filters of the past will be rare. Anyone can be a self-proclaimed literary critic. Perhaps they will attract clusters of fans but there will be so many of them it will be difficult for a layman reader to make a choice.

The fact is that there is little chance for a self-published author to expect to earn enough to do such work full-time, unless he keeps his day job, has a pension, or is independently self-sufficient. Some might do it. Good for them.

I do not wish to cast any aspersions on the business practice of those who have discovered the benefits of catering to the self-published. It is legitimate and in many ways satisfies the hopes and dreams of the author who can now say he is a published author with his book in a respectable catalogue featuring books by other authors. A novelist can be in an online bookstore with the likes of Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. A mystery writer can be in an online bookstore with P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. And so it goes for writers on any subject or genre.

This is not to say that there won't be breakout commercial books for self-published writers. The media will cover them, although some might be contrived or suspect. But even if legitimate, they will be few and far between.

I must confess that although I have been a pioneer in promoting the concept of e-books, I have been stunned by the vast explosion of self-published books. Perhaps this essay has stressed what some might consider the downside of the process.

Actually, the upside is far more gratifying. Writers whose voices had been silenced by the old system now have a chance to present their creative talents to a vast audience despite the difficulties of gaining traction in readership.

They can legitimately call themselves authors and be recognized as such, a satisfaction of great personal import. A press of a button will acknowledge that their work is out there for now and perhaps for all time for their descendents to acknowledge with pride. In some ways, they might consider themselves to have achieved some tiny piece of immortality.

Note I offer no judgments on the quality these ventures only on the virtue of intent and accomplishment. To separate the wheat from the chaff will pose a monumental problem for readers and many talented writers might disappear in the vastness. Who knows how this will play out over time.

Nevertheless, I take my hat off to anyone who can sustain the creative process and find the discipline to write a long form work of the imagination, or can stick with the enormous mental effort to write a book on any subject. In the end, after all the dreams of fame and fortune fade with time, it is the work itself that really counted.

The Iron Lady

The Iron Lady is an interesting example of the limits of movie biography and the manner in which contemporary political and social trends leak into motion picture storytelling.

Starring the incomparable Meryl Streep, whose unique talent allows her to create and mimic the persona of the most challenging of female characters plucked from real life or fiction, The Iron Lady purports to tell the intimate story of Margaret Thatcher, one of the most powerful British prime ministers of recent vintage.

The movie, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is a valiant attempt to go beyond the mask of Mrs. Thatcher's public image and portray the real person that lurks inside what we cynics often refer to as the human contrivance. Mrs. Thatcher, as we know from recent history, was a strong, articulate and stubborn woman who climbed the fortress of the male dominated British political system and become one of the most powerful Tory Prime Ministers in recent history.

The problem confronted by the filmmakers was how to portray a woman whose singleness of purpose and political obsessions were at war with her domestic instincts as wife and mother, the ultimate dilemma faced by the modern woman competing on what was once the entrenched turf of men.

With a female director, a female screenwriter and a strong-minded female actress, the movie they have fashioned opens on a note of steep decline with Mrs. Thatcher. She is revealed as a frail figure, afflicted with senility purchasing a grocery item illustrating her still determined domestic side. We next see her in her retirement digs with her husband, played by the wonderful Jim Broadbent. We are not certain if the husband is actually alive or existing only in the memory of Mrs. Thatcher.

I have a sense that the filmmakers, in many story conferences, determined that the best way to show Mrs. Thatcher's domestic side was to begin her story at the end of her career when she was bereft, mentally feeble and powerless, forced to endure the domesticity of home and hearth and the companionship of her husband and adult daughter as her only lifetime option.

Sprinkled throughout, the contrived flashbacks show us a woman who has put her career above the loving care of her children and the considerations of her supportive husband, but who seems to dwell on the memories of family life with far more emotion than she regards her career highlights. Oddly, there is less of the latter in the movie, which might have resulted in widening its popularity.

The filmmakers strive to show the force of her ambition competing with the obvious needs of her children and her husband. We see her driving away from her home to attend her first parliamentary session while her children chase after the car. It is a subtle illustration of separation without hysterics, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out how conflicted the movie makers were in creating that scene.

Her career as a politician is portrayed in the usual clichéd pattern of a woman against the odds, put down by her male colleagues, storming the ramparts of male domination with a stiff upper lip, and once on top of the heap showing more gumption and toughness than her male colleagues, who are portrayed as less forthright and determined to uphold the honor of what remains of the once all-powerful British empire.

There are the usual female independence manifestos necessary for this period piece. The young Margaret is depicted professing her love for her intended husband, but setting up the rules for their future. No domesticity for her, leaving her free to pursue a life of public service, to which the intended husband agrees.

Then there are scenes of domestic bliss at the beach when Margaret replays old movies of the early life when her two children were small, mugging in front of the camera to show camaraderie and her "real" feelings of motherhood, which soon must yield to political ambition.

Obviously, we are manipulated to root for her as she climbs the ladder to prime minister while the filmmakers do their best to illustrate the roles she must sacrifice as mother and wife, and as she ages and retires complete with broad hints of personal remorse.

There are lots of flashbacks and returns to the plight of her mental decline, the gaps in memory, the confusion in her mind about her husband's death, the passing mention that her son has gone off to South Africa to be followed, apparently temporarily, by her husband. Frankly, it is hard to nail down the facts of her life and her rise to political power from this movie, which clearly concentrates on the emotional aspect of Thatcher's life and less on the details of her career.

Bear in mind that I am over-analyzing this movie, having lived through her time in the political limelight. There is no question that Mrs. Thatcher was a dominant and colorful figure in her prime, and there are many who can cite her accomplishments and demerits. She was clearly single-minded, often ruthless, unforgiving and determined, traits that are illustrated in the movie like boxes to be checked.

While the movie has, to my mind, numerous flaws as a film biography of a powerful political figure, I would recommend it as an interesting and sincere attempt to portray the emotional life of a legendary female politician, and an opportunity to observe an actress of extraordinary talent who makes you believe that she is the actual, real-life embodiment of the woman she has chosen to impersonate.

Indeed, the career of this former female prime minister can count as a great step forward for the gender, although it was not the first time the Brits were subject to female rule. Remember Elizabeth the First, the equally strong willed sovereign queen who cemented her dictatorial rule by executing her cousin once removed, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had also claimed the throne.

And then there is Angela Merkel, the most powerful politician in Europe today. Nevertheless, politics and gender aside, I believe there is an intelligence at work in the creation of this film that makes its viewing a worthwhile experience despite its flawed presentation.

Will the Tablet Kill the Novel?

The electronic punditry, with their technological, elitist mindset, is now making noises that the single-use e-readers like Kindle, Nook and the SONY Reader are merely stopgap devices that will one day merge into the tablet, offering immersion reading, like the novel requires, as merely one of a million other ways to gain "information" and fill leisure time.

They argue that a single-use device is inherently obsolete in the face of the multitasking onslaught of the tablet, which packages in one carry-around-gadget everything one needs for the fulfillment of most communication activities from video to gaming to record keeping, scheduling, shopping and most other entertainment and information requirements.

Indeed, it is a powerful argument and is, from a business perspective, profoundly compelling. The convenience and choices the tablet technology offers have infinite possibilities.

Faced with such a smorgasbord of uses, what is to become of what I define as the serious novel? My concern is for the fate of the mainstream novels that offer stories of enduring interest, such as those created by Dickens, Trollope, Balzac, Tolstoy and, the more contemporary, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Roth, et al., to mention just a few of my favorites.

To engage with such novels requires time, effort, concentration, and an openness to reading these stories not only for pleasure but to enhance one's understanding of the human condition. It would be a pity if other distractions crowded out the pleasures of immersion literature, but the temptation to do so can be tantalizingly seductive, especially to young people who have not been grounded in the enhancements and benefits of reading great books.

Nevertheless, the technology addiction cannot be ignored as a competitor to reading. Indeed, some prognosticators may be right in citing the eventual rise of the tablet as a device of choice for everything under the techie sun, including reading. Perhaps I am being overly protective of the single-use reading device because of my career as an author and my lifetime love of the serious novel, but I cannot deny the threat to reading long-form stories that the tablet presents by its sheer multiplicity of competing distractions.

One may argue, as well, that the printed book, although in a steep decline, still dominates book sales. It could make a resurgence if the tablet begins to intrude on the exclusive e-reader market. I'm not sure that argument is winnable but who knows how the storefront book business might counteract its predicted demise?

There is another threat to the novel that could be even more destructive, and that is the devaluation of reading in general by technology addicts who believe sincerely in the primary importance of greater and greater reliance on electronic devices to navigate through life. I keep wondering how far up the technological benefit scale we can go before we hit a counterproductive wall.

This is in no way meant to denigrate those aspects of the electronic world that have acted as handmaidens to bettering the human condition, expanding our communication universe, organizing our time and finances, speeding up information exchanges, and widening our choice of movies.

Technological advances have enhanced our ability to create a moving record of our lives through video and still photography, helped us connect to people, locally, nationally and internationally, and have improved our research skills and medical diagnosis abilities. It has enhanced our ability to react to events, bring people swiftly together to enlist their cooperation in various causes, air our grievances, and accomplish a thousand other tasks that might have taken past generations days, weeks or months longer to realize.

Such alleged progress cannot be ignored, but neither can the concept of deep, personal reflection, thoughtful concentration, philosophical cogitation, creative imagination and aspects of insight that one can glean from literature which can only be conveyed through the privacy of immersion into a parallel world best dramatized in the imagination through storytelling.

It may seem odd that here I am questioning the survival of the novel in the face of a vast tsunami of novel writers who have taken advantage of technology to post their self-published works on the various online venues. There are millions of them out there pounding away on keyboards, creating their long-form stories, and hopefully making them available to potential readers through the welcoming ease of the Internet.

Whether or not this vast inventory of novels will enhance or multiply readership is an open question since it faces the same competition from the tablet.

Perhaps my speculations cite dangers that are not there. A part of me believes that the novel is an essential tool of human insight and knowledge and will never go away under any circumstances. But there is a part that worries that the relentless march of technology has a negative side that has not yet revealed its true destructive nature.

Doing Carnage to Carnage

Some, but not all live theatrical productions transfer well into movies. The movie Carnage is one of those most unfortunate cases. When I saw the award winning play, written by Yasmina Reza on Broadway, I found myself howling with uncontrollable laughter. The movie was somewhat somber and alarmingly unfunny.

Briefly, the plot goes something like this. Two eleven year old boys get into a fight resulting in one of them being injured. The parents of the injured boy invite the parents of the alleged perpetrator to their apartment to discuss how best to reconcile the boys.

The boys are mostly offstage, after a long shot bit of miming their battle at the film's beginning, but the parents interact in ways that start out reasonably, by what appears to be well-meaning adults determined to do the right thing as parents of warring children. As they converse and get deeper into the reconciliation process they begin to unravel emotionally and reveal all the fault lines in both marriage relationships which are considerable.

Although the movie stars four experienced actors, Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Riley and was directed by Roman Polanski, the characterizations are cramped by the film process and what is lost is the concept of interaction and timing that made the play so funny and memorable.

Perhaps it is this live interaction that makes the transfer of stage to screen so tricky. Another handicap for the process is how to come up with a scenario that can magnify a play with few characters, meaning "opening it up" by widening the focus with action and inventing additional scenes.

There was a casting flaw in Carnage as well concerning Christopher Waltz who played the male of the visiting couple. He is a fine actor and was brilliant as the Nazi in Inglourious Basterds, but trying to disguise his Austrian accent seemed to interfere with the character's authenticity.

In the case of Carnage, it was as if the characters were doing set pieces, isolated from the others. If I sound dismissive, I fear that most audiences will feel the same way. Laughs were few and far between in the performance I attended.

There have been many movies made that originated on stage and did not lose their power in film. In the straight play category what comes to mind is Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, plays so powerful with characters so well conceived and adapted by superb actors that most of the impact of the stage performances have been replicated on the screen.

Others will have different favorites and opinions and disagree with my assertion that, in general, a movie rarely fully captures the emotional impact of a live performance.

Of course there are exceptions, perhaps many, to such a sweeping pronouncement. One notable personal exception is the black and white movie Brief Encounter written by Noel Coward, a "small" play in terms of cast adapted from an even smaller short play by Coward, but, in my opinion, one of the great transfers from stage to screen. This story of a traditional suburban housewife and a doctor, married to others, suddenly confronted with an unplanned attraction with characters played by Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson is extraordinary in its adaptation.

Indeed, some of our most renowned playwrights have had their work "transferred" to film with very uneven results, Eugene O'Neil, for example. I exempt Shakespeare from all criticism. His magnificent prose covers all faults even in the worst adaptations of his work to the screen, of which there have been many.

In the musical category, transfers from stage to screen have had somewhat more success than the straight play. The music, I suppose, has a lot to do with it although there seems to be a decline in the number of musical stage transfers than there were in decades past. Perhaps the decline is more a symptom of the fact that the era of the great stage musicals were created by a certain burst of incandescent talent that is no longer available, or as yet undiscovered, or waiting in the wings until that are called upon by public demand.

In another case of personal privilege, I thought the movie version of My Fair Lady equaled if not exceeded the power of the stage play, which was pretty marvelous in itself. I'm sure there have been many others, but this musical version of Shaw's Pygmalion is my all time favorite with brilliant lyrics by Allen Jay Lerner that I have found unequaled in most musicals.

But aside from morphing into a reflection on the ability of film to adapt the full power of a live stage presentation, the bottom line impression of Carnage is that its movie version does disservice to the original.

The Artist, the Pinnacle of the Movie Maker's Art

There is a subtle subtext in the movie, The Artist, which powerfully grabs your imagination in ways that define the essence of storytelling and the manner in which movies can reach into the emotional truth of the human condition.

Something stunningly clever is at work in the minds of the French filmmakers who have created this exquisite original that not only grabs your total attention but also encompasses the many reasons why movies have had such an enormous impact on our lives.

On its glossy surface, it is the story of a silent film star of enormous popularity and charm who, after reaching the heights of fame, becomes shipwrecked on the shoals of the new technology of talking pictures, which he refuses to acknowledge. At the pinnacle of his fame and by sheer coincidence, he interacts with an ambitious young woman fan who burns to be a star of the first magnitude.

There are, of course, echoes of other movies, of which A Star is Born and Sunset Boulevard are the exemplars. A star falls, a star rises. The once famous star goes into deep decline while the younger ingénue rises to the top. In fact, if you take the time to analyze this movie, you will note that nearly every emotional cliché and melodramatic artifice you have ever seen in the movies, and in life, is cast your way.

There is decline and fall, greed and stupidity, unrequited and fulfilled love, loyalty and disloyalty, great joy, deep depression and sadness, victory and defeat, the miraculous bonding between dog and master, the hollowness and transiency of fame and fortune, and the always reliable, just-in-the-nick-of-time redemption. The old standby of illustrating decline by excessive drinking and showing the pistol as a potential suicide or murder weapon is blatantly illustrated.

Every hot button of manipulation used in movie storytelling from the very beginnings of the film industry is employed. Indeed, this 100 minute movie is the existential history of the movies and why it has survived and prospered not only as trivial entertainment but as a powerful life changing medium.

The story unfolds as a black and white silent movie with dialogue as subtitles, which illustrate how only the most meaningful dialogue is chosen, eliminating all the sounds and cacophony of the bloated communication, noise, and nonsense with which we are assaulted with in today's film storytelling. Everything is pared down to its essentials. And the old adage "less is more" is exquisitely affirmed.

In every category, the movie makers were not only authentic but inspired. The director, Michel Hazanavicius, has assembled a remarkable collection of talent. Jean Dujardin as the male lead is impeccable in his brilliant rendition of the silent star. His charm is infectious right down to his incredibly winning smile, albeit with slightly disarranged eyeteeth, an imperfection that humanizes and enhances the truth of his character. Bérénice Bejo as the female up and coming actress is every bit the potential star with incredibly beautiful legs and figure and a style that can fill a large screen with awesome female fidelity.

One of the exceptional actors in this ensemble is a Jack Russell who plays Uggi with great verve and intelligence showing amazingly human traits that make Lassie look like a bit player.

But it is the research and craftsmanship of the set designers and the skillful photography of Guillaume Schiffman that recreate the sense of historical authenticity and provides the environment for the actors to operate within the director's imaginative vision. Bear in mind that most of those associated with this venture are French and the director is of Lithuanian ancestry, which makes their perspective that of outside observers, which speaks volumes for universal insight and the movie medium as a global language.

Resurrecting the details of the late nineteen twenties and early thirties Hollywood is a masterpiece of set and costume design that should make the Brits envious. One must pay more than casual attention to the architecture of the homes, the furnishings, the appliances, the plates and glassware, the decorative touches, the knick knacks and wall coverings, the period cars, the manner of the crowds, the hair and makeup styles and most important of all, the wonderfully tailored costumes and the way they have been fitted to the bodies of the actors and extras.

This was a recreated time when men and women wore hats and beautiful clothes and took pride in their appearance, when the rules of dress and conduct emphasized self-regard and courtesy and when glamour and allure was integral to the possibility of high aspirations.

Of course, the real world of hard times, inequality, poverty and despair for many people was just outside of the dark auditorium in those days but, for a few cents, people were allowed into the dream factory for a brief time to nourish their hopes and immerse themselves in romantic reveries.

Obviously, I am in thrall to the moviemakers of The Artist for refreshing my optimism in these dark days of cynicism and despair and providing some hope for getting in touch again with civility, joy and spiritual buoyancy.

If this movie doesn't deserve Academy Awards for everyone involved, I'll eat my father's fedora (figuratively, of course).

Leaving Well Enough Alone: A Review of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I have always enjoyed the books of John le Carré and greatly admired the elegant prose, the subtle nuanced plot constructions and robust characterizations of people engaged in conspiratorial endeavors.

He was clearly a master of the narrative of the behind-the-scenes battles between the intelligence bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, the latter under whose aegis he was gainfully employed for a time before being bitten by the novelist's bug.

With that sense of admiration, I approached the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy hoping that it would reinforce my respect for this author and the undoubtedly sincere attempt to resurrect his work in an environment that no longer sees the struggle against communism and the Soviet Union as a flash point in today's global struggles.

It is, in effect, a remake of the much-revered adaptation starring the late great Alec Guinness. The moviemakers should have left well enough alone.

Sad to say, I found the movie static, narratively flawed and turgid, and came away wondering why so many talented people had come together to make a movie whose story-telling was so listless, lacking in what-happens-next tension and largely incomprehensible, doubly so to those in the audience who were not familiar with John Le Carré's spy novels.

Of course, I knew in advance that the story was about "moles" in the highest ranks of British Intelligence and the attempt by the George Smiley character, played by Gary Oldman, to uncover the conspiracy for his own personal ambitious ends and what we presume is his underlying loyalty to the cause of Western values.

We know, too, from the actual historical knowledge of British defectors in high places that the reason for their traitorous conduct is a profound disillusionment with corrupt Western values, as opposed to their high-minded view of the communist future, a premise that lost all credence since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early nineties proved it wrong-headed.

And yet, even armed with this knowledge and the expectation of understanding the narrative thrust of the movie, I confess I could not follow the story line presented in this film. The heavy-handed flashbacks and editing choices left me totally confused about who was who and what was what.

Please understand that my personal movie meter is based upon believability of the characters, authenticity of the environment, plot tension, the suspense of storytelling, and the emotional impact of the experience of the parallel world created by the movie craftsmen. I take the position of the average, educated moviegoer who seeks both insight and pleasure from observing a parallel world created for our engagement.

Filmmakers have long mastered the technical ability to create all the necessary props to create the reality of their vision with imagination and authenticity. In this movie, the environment is artfully contrived to represent the world one believes is London and the office environment of British Intelligence and other countries central to the story at the height of the cold war. The background music is, by far, the most compelling element of this film, and would have enhanced the impact the film had on me if I could truly understand what was going on.

Unfortunately, the actual events in this story seemed like watching a chess game play out, but without having any knowledge of the game. You saw the tension in the players' concentration and in their facial language, but couldn't understand any of the moves they made on the chessboard.

I am a stickler for narrative clarity. There was little in this movie. Nevertheless, there is a certain type of moviegoer who believes he or she has broken the code of the filmmaker's alleged profundity while others of lesser insight or intelligence have not the capacity to "get it." This is also an affliction of many movie reviewers, some who have given this movie glowing reviews.

Interpreting the mass reaction of audiences is something you begin to understand after many years of observing movies in dark auditoriums surrounded by other people. There is a kind of silent exultation when a great movie ends and you must reluctantly exit the world created by the filmmaker and his or her large team of colleagues who have constructed the events and environment of this imaginary world. Oddly, some moviegoers will burst out in applause, a baffling but obviously sincere effort to register their admiration and delight in what they have just witnessed.

I am sorry that my conclusion about this movie is so negative, but aside from my personal critique of what I perceive as its flaws, perhaps it is the timing that is the worst enemy of this film's appreciation. The risk of devastating confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union is largely over and all the backroom conspiratorial maneuvering, once so vital and intriguing, is now less compelling as story fodder to engage us emotionally.

Or is it that I am more protective of my time and resent wasting it watching something that induces boredom?

A Smorgasbord of Kinky Sex

Having read all three of Stieg Larsson's novel trilogy featuring his super heroine Lisbeth Salander, and having seen all three of the Swedish movies adapted from those books as well as the American version, I have arrived at one conclusion.

The Swedes win, at least when it comes to the first film adaptation of the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Larsson's narratively compelling, bizarre revenge fantasy of a badly abused young woman with a very compromised persona, which comes alarmingly close to a diagnoses of Asperger Syndrome, was a one in a million super world-wide best seller hit. Its provenance is equally bizarre since the talented Larsson died before the first book was published and his vast inheritance is muddied by Swedish law, which gives the rights and inheritance to his blood relatives instead of the common law wife who was his helpmate throughout the composition of his books.

The plots of his three books, a smorgasbord of kinky sex and incredibly evil doings, are an object lesson in narrative drive, and his observing eye and knowledge of technological and financial detail is nothing short of astonishing. Indeed, the mesmerizing plot of Larsson's three novels are so compelling and complicated as to make its adaptation to the screen an extraordinary challenge.

Above all, the filmmakers who apparently were dedicated to sticking with the spider web-like plot turns and keeping true to the weird and shockingly perverse aberrations of all the principle characters, had to compromise action with exposition to supply some understanding to those in the audience who had not read the books.

For an American audience, the Swedes had the advantage since they could provide subtitles so that English speakers could follow the twists and turns in the plot and deliberately shrink the exposition to make it more marketable to a worldwide audience not fluent in Swedish. Also, the chances were that most dedicated novel readers in Sweden, which is a highly literate nation, were far more familiar with the characters and plot than those in other countries who were served up the text of the novels in translation.

In the Hollywood version, one has to have read the book to have some understanding of what was going on. The scriptwriter Steven Zaillian and director David Fincher chose a murkier course and made it maddenly difficult to follow the plot line and apparently thought that long exposition passages would suffice to keep the narrative moving along. They didn't.

Worse, the most fatal flaw in the production, which is rich in production values and in portraying the scenic wonders of the snow clad landscape of northern Sweden, is almost incoherent in making its dialogue understood. The sound design is a disaster. Characters talk but are difficult to hear and understand, especially with the incessant background noise provided to needlessly hype the authenticity of reality and the constant iteration of a musical background designed to needlessly punch up the sense of menace.

Even the great Christopher Plummer, who plays a key character in the film, whose voice is one of extraordinary resonance, was, in parts, difficult to understand. I am not judging this on the basis of my own hearing, which is faulty, but on the absolute fidelity of my wife, who left the theatre complaining of deep gaps in understanding the dialogue, which is crucial to the understanding of the plot.

Daniel Craig provided a workmanlike Mikael Blomkvist a crusading journalist having an affair with his colleague editor at their muckraking magazine Millenium with the consent of her husband. Apparently sex in all its forms is like mother's milk to the Swedes. In this movie alone we have rather descriptive scenes of sadism, lesbian sex, anal penetration by an object, murder as a sexual turn on and the usual straight sex in various modes.

Frankly, to understand the plot of this movie one should read the book first or seek help on various book report sites as an aid to comprehension.

Both Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress, and Rooney Mara, the American actress who played the super heroine Lisbeth Salander, were outstanding in conveying the character's strange behavioral tics and lack of empathy, although the American version portrays her character as softening at the end, a jarring turnabout and, in my opinion, another adaptation mistake.

I don't know how this movie will be received by English-speaking audiences, but I am hopeful that the director of the second and third installment and the script writer will learn by their mistakes and make the plot of the second two in the series a lot easier to understand.

Warren Adler is the author of 32 novels and short story collections published in numerous languages. Films adapted from his books include 'The War of the Roses,'Random Hearts' and the PBS trilogy 'The Sunset Gang'. He is a pioneer in digital publishing. For more information visit Warren's website atwww.warrenadler.com.