Warren Adler's Blog, page 56

So Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

I have written often about the three questions invariably asked of authors. The first two engender simple and straightforward answers: "When do you write?" A simple answer suffices marking the time of day; the second question is "How do you write?"

Perhaps a bit of embellishment is needed on that one, although many of the writers I have talked with reveal their preference for the computer, with some still hacking away on old manual or electric typewriters or writing by hand. Not that it really matters in terms of quality. I use a computer.

The third and last question is "Where do you get your ideas?"

I have often answered vaguely and politely offering a kind of generic explanation like "I get my ideas from engaging with people like yourself."

Somehow, I sense that I have never done justice to that answer, although I do have a very specific recall of how I got the idea for each of my many novels, short stories, plays and poems. Still, the most accurate answer is so deeply self-involved and opinionated that it might be severely off-putting and baffling to the questioner. Nevertheless, now that I am at a safe distance from the questioner, I'll give it a try.

In general, the most powerful ideas come from interaction with people, perhaps a word, a sentence, a gesture, a reminder of an event deep in my past that ignites a spark in the imagination and suggests a narrative, an environment, or a cast of characters. Remember that smell of a cake that set off Proust's majestic series of novels.

Another path is through information that enters the mind through the vast tsunami of information that confront us at every turn through books, newspapers, magazines, a steady unstoppable stream that washes over us relentlessly. Tolstoy got his idea for Anna Karenina from a newspaper item.

Rarely do these ideas spring whole into the mind. Often, they arrive through the subconscious network of tunnels configured as a spider web in one's personal zeitgeist. The writer of the imagination climbs the web foothold by handhold, cautiously finding his or her way into a conscious and orderly narrative that deals with the ultimate story question: what happens next?

Getting confused? Let's plod ahead.

To make the explanation more complicated, my intuition tells me there is even more to it than that. There is an act of will involved. I have learned that a serious full-time career writer of works of the imagination, a category in which I humbly include myself, has in his or her imaginary DNA, or through force of habit, a kind of built-in antenna that is forever whirling around in mind space looking for story ideas.

Because I believe this implicitly, I have deliberately fashioned my life to give me maximum exposure to engage with people and information with aggressive intent. I explore through my personal involvement with other people meaningful conversation that might open doors in the subconscious mind. I tell myself I am listening carefully, perhaps wondering instead what the speaker is really thinking. I tell myself I am observing movement, facial expressions, intonation, hardly knowing if my conscious will is realizing my intent.

In this deliberate hunt for story ideas, I belong to small groups that provide clashing ideas through conversation, argument and insight. For example I am enlisted in a group considering religion, The Bible and the Talmud, a group that deals with innovation, a group that deals with the great thinkers of philosophy and literature, and a small group of Irishmen who meet every month, a rare race of miraculous storytellers. I devour books and newspapers like a hungry lioness searching for prey to feed the pride.

Habit has made this search an addiction which I freely acknowledge, knowing that it is impossible to truly explain the artistic urge and the mysteries of creation. There are those that say that there is a limited number of story ideas available and all stories are just reworkings of these ideas, clichés painted in ever different colors. Perhaps they are correct.

Other fiction authors surely have different explanations on how they get their ideas. Some may require solitude and prefer exploring the sole implications of their own biographies and family histories rather than engaging with strangers and look to the natural world alone for their inspiration. After all, I can only speak for myself.

So, there is my latest attempt to answer that third question. Now you know why most authors and I take the easy way out.

Sex and Other Political Matters

Above all, running for the office of President of the United States in today's climate requires a massive ego, a "skin" impervious to criticism, a quick response tongue, a willingness to be intellectually stripped down to total transparency in today's sliced and diced universe of information, and a fearless and courageous inner core. A partial affliction of madness helps.

Watching the Republican candidates submit themselves to the withering and excruciating debate process seems an exercise in self-flagellation. Indeed, it is easy to offer an unkind assessment of these people willing to take the plunge and expose themselves to this process, but then, nobody is twisting their arm and they should know what to expect.

Considering all the details of the process, the fund raising, the debates and press conferences, the travel, the debilitating effect on their energy and health, the requirement of absorbing information on foreign and domestic policy where the slightest slipup of memory becomes instant evidence of incompetence or worse, the candidates are easy targets for ridicule and satire, some deserved, some mean-minded.

Worse, the life history of the candidates, the real skinny on their peccadilloes, their mistakes, their family backgrounds, their sexual conduct, their youthful improprieties, their school marks, their lifetime psychological profiles and most of their inner secrets are all subjected to public scrutiny. Nothing can be hidden in our contemporary technologically drenched culture. Any blemish is sure to be revealed.

It is as if someone who wants to run for President must make up his or her mind at the very dawn of his or her ambition and live a life that can withstand the transparency and revelations of intensive investigative zeal, not only by opponents but by an increasingly sadistic media and anyone else with a computer at hand.

Before the Internet, we knew only the obvious and background checks were limited to what could be known through a determined media investigation or perhaps through the all-knowing eye of J. Edgar Hoover's intelligence machine, the details of which were often deliberately withheld.  Considering Hoover's vast power, one can speculate that he knew everything about everybody who participated in the political system during his reign. One wonders if such a situation continues to exist under the present leadership.

Of course, no one can escape from the revelations of "tell all" published memoirs of various eyewitness participants that reveal all the juicy details of the sexual improprieties and other questionable activities of our lawmakers and power elite. Often, they occur long after the death of the principal but sometimes they arrive in the midst of an active career and can be devastating to that hapless person's ambitions.

Ironically, in the past, certain aspects of behavior in the personal history of politicians were off limits for public revelation by a kind of gentlemen's agreement with the press. Sexual activity in all its forms, straight, gay, adulterous, or whatever was considered a private matter unless, as Wilbur Mills, the former head of the House Ways and Means Committee found out, it became blatant and unavoidably an issue for public consumption.

Everyone in the know knew of these sexual peccadilloes of the political class. Nothing was really secret in the political and media community, and it was rare that such a bond of silence was broken. John Kennedy, for example, a serial adulterer, managed his affairs via a network of secret keepers. He was, of course, not the only President with an overactive libido who stepped over that line, but then I suppose such information is under perpetual seal by the Secret Service.

Only Bill Clinton, who had apparently frequently exercised the venery out of wedlock during his time as Governor of Arkansas, did not get the message of the break in the old custom, fell victim to his propensity, and was ultimately impeached, although he has now been resurrected and forgiven by an adoring public and his wife and daughter.

Sex was not the only thing that was kept hidden by gentlemen's agreement. Alcohol abuse was overlooked and certain members of congress often reeled onto the floor to vote. Health and disablement, too, was an issue very carefully manipulated.

Having lived through all three terms of FDR and part of his fourth, I can honestly admit that I was unaware of the extent of his disability and how many of us knew that President Kennedy suffered from Addison's disease.  Historians have recorded the fact that Mrs. Woodrow Wilson ran the White House while her husband was incapacitated by a stroke.

As for money matters, except for egregious crimes, the use of money for campaign purposes was also swept under the rug. The Watergate scandals were supposed to put that one to rest but the old adage "money talks" continues to haunt and corrupt the political process. Everyone knows that large contributions, a euphemism for a form of bribery, offer substantial political rewards, as any lobbyist knows and expects. There is no free lunch in Washington. Most get what they pay for.

Oddly, the use of debates to weed out the unworthy in primary campaigns is now the operative norm for exposing candidates and their views to wide audiences.  Unfortunately, it does become an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and public exposure for people clearly unqualified for the job. That comes with the territory.

Inevitably, it will sort itself out and party choices will emerge to expose themselves to one-on-one debates where participants will verbally duke it out.

We experience political campaigns as entertainment and debates have become something of a reality show. Unfortunately, the stakes are high since the person who wins the grand prize of the presidency wields great power over our lives. It is certainly true that few have the guts and courage to enter the fray, which has become little more than a kind of shooting gallery for a massive contingent of well-armed public snipers.

Nevertheless, I marvel at the mad courage of these self-appointed candidates. They perpetuate the embedded myth that any American born in this country who meets the age qualifications can become President of the United States. History, recent and past, tells us that as a people, we have not always been wise in our choices but we have blundered along and some of those who seemed the least qualified by background and education turned out to have been our greatest leaders, while those who had the best resumes and the most talent for making speeches turned out to be duds.

The Smart Phone Addiction

A number of my friends have returned from their Thanksgiving holidays with their families with a general complaint. It goes something like this:

There was a complete lack of face-to-face communication. Family members seemed far more interested in communicating with their electronic devices and the teenagers, especially, spent their time texting, poring over their apps, watching TV shows or playing computer games. There was little or no face-to-face communication. We began to feel as if we, in person, were completely irrelevant to the lives of some of our family members, especially the younger folks; and had the distinct feeling that we were drifting away from them on a sea of indifference. All in all, it was a very discouraging family gathering.

I do understand that from the perspective of a teenager, older people might appear boring and clueless. Admittedly, many of us of mature years do not understand their music, their cultural world, their figures of speech, their morals, or their worldview. Most teenagers are immersed in a celebrity culture, which has neither interest nor relevance to many of us and their zeitgeist is tethered to their machines. My instinct is to give them a pass, at least for now.

But my anecdotal observations go beyond the teenage generation into people perhaps one or two generations beyond, who are becoming increasingly addicted to these machines. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see people of mature years pull out their smart phones to review their current e-mails or texts or phone calls as if present company was irrelevant to the moment.

I keep wondering if the sense of urgency has been upgraded to an emergency level. It indicates to me that present company, especially at the dinner table or in what is passing for conversation, is less relevant to what is currently being communicated to them via smart phone babble. Aside from the sheer rudeness of the act, it describes the one who cannot resist consulting his or her device as a personality with a severe addiction. One such friend of mine consults his smart phone every 10 minutes as if he were waiting for the latest report on what time the world is slated to implode.

I am beginning to notice other odd phenomena. In restaurants, two people, presumably on a date, will place their phones next to their silverware as if it were part of the regular display of utensils poised for immediate use. Another baffling oddity is what I observe going up and down the elevator to my apartment on the 20th floor, a trip to ground floor of about 10 seconds. Invariably, an entering tenant will consult his or her phone immediately and for the entire ride, barely a blink in time. People who have misplaced their phones tell me that without them in hand they feel naked, deprived and increasingly anxious.

I am well aware that children are tethered to these machines from the age of two and, for them, the machine becomes their principal tool of communication for a lifetime. Soon, as the non-computer generation passes on, the machine will dominate, if it does not already, every phase of our lives from the cradle to the grave.

Researchers on the brain have begun to imagine theories that postulate that the brain, the organism itself, is somehow becoming dependent on the machine as if it were an auxiliary attachment becoming essential to its functioning. Frankly, it sounds bizarre, although my own observations have indicated a dependency that appears deeply embedded in many of the people I encounter in my daily life.

There are many places I inhabit in that have a strict rule about no cell phones. Most are clubs and organizations devoted to conversation, requiring face-to-face communication. Auditoriums presenting movies and other theatrical events ban the use of phones. Even in these places, I see patrons sneaking a peak at the cell phones during performances, akin to what I observed years ago in Madison Square Garden as people lit up their cigarettes, an addiction that is still in the process of being eradicated.

I acknowledge that these devices are indeed amazing and enormously useful to most of us, a communication miracle. I am hardly a Luddite on the subject.

I am merely suggesting that like all good things, there is a hidden downside. Will they inhibit the development of conversational skills? Will they result in a vulgarization of language? Will something be lost between the fading older generation and the younger one, something of historical importance that can only be gleaned from face-to-face social discourse? Will we have to re-imagine the rules of courtesy and politeness and redefine the difference between emergency and urgency? Will the loss of these machines by some man-made breakdown have psychological implications that profoundly affect our sense of anxiety and cause depression?

Will there be rehab centers devoted to smart phone addiction? Perhaps they are functioning as I write.

As for the complaints of my Thanksgiving family reunion-attending friends, I can offer only what was once called tea and sympathy. As they say, it is what it is.

J. Edgar, the Bad and the Good

After seeing Clint Eastwood's excellent biopic, J.Edgar, I was reminded of Mark Anthony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

With excellent reproductions of the era and the magnificent acting of Leonardo DiCaprio and a wonderful cast, Eastwood tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover, a sexually conflicted, complex, and single-minded man who was both extravagantly reviled and praised for founding, building and operating, with dictatorial efficiency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forging it into a powerful arm of the Federal Government.

DiCaprio portrays J. Edgar from a superb script by Dustin Lance Black, which encapsulates the man's life from childhood to death. He is portrayed with pitch-perfect, warts-and-all exactitude as someone obsessed with fervent and often bigoted patriotic zeal, driven to heroic fantasies, often deliberately fictionalized to enhance his image and spur recruitment of a coterie of educated and motivated men, who walked in cult-like lock step to Hoover's institutional and personal commands.

Sometimes painful to watch as DiCaprio peels away the man's reserve and humanizes him in ways smalls and large, we see unfolding the maturing of a man who grows progressively more paranoid and powerful as he grows older. We see the influence of a dominant, much loved mother and a relationship between two men, Hoover and his longtime companion and assistant, Clyde Tolson, that is tender, loving and affectionate, long before such relationships became acceptable in the popular culture. The relationship avoids the question of sexual consummation, although it is without question a sincerely loving one, beyond even the traditional elements of strong male bonding.

Eastwood, whose right-of-center credentials and reputed total command and control over story and every other detail of movie making, does not spare Hoover in assessing his willingness to sacrifice ethics and morality to the cause of building his beloved FBI.

He does not avoid accusations of Hoover using blackmail tactics to retain his power over presidents and others in the power structure, especially in sexual matters. He illustrates Hoover's propensity to fictionalize his personal exploits, glorifying service to the FBI and projecting and often exaggerating the image of G-men, a euphemism for his band of agents, as upright, brave, courageous and heroic, fighting for God and country. Young boys were recruited to think of themselves as junior G-men and working for the FBI was portrayed as one of the great careers open to educated and dedicated young men.

He takes us through the early days of crime fighting before and during the Depression and wrecking havoc on gangsters during prohibition. He is shown obsessed by the communists and radicals who are attempting what he believes is a takeover of the United States, a very real threat during and after World War II, and does not shy away from Hoover's wariness of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. who he believed had radical motives, a position that did not win him many friends outside of the bureau and has, to some degree, diminished his reputation.

Still, the movie goes out of its way to make clear that he was not a racial bigot by using the device of having a black agent work with him on writing his memoirs, and the script calls for him to dub Senator McCarthy an "opportunist."

I lived in Washington for many years during Hoover's heyday. Seeing him and Tolson (a familiar pair) around town, and having met and befriended numerous FBI and ex-FBI men, my view about Hoover and the FBI he created is more or less the bottom line that I believe Eastwood intended when he created this movie. Having called Hoover to account for "the bad" with eagle-eyed accuracy, he weaves into the story what can only be counted as "the good."

Hoover was a motivational genius, a brilliant organizer who inspired loyalty and dedication from his underlings who worshiped him. Talk to any ex-FBI agent who worked on his watch and you will invariably get the same opinion. He established an FBI checking system that was as foolproof as possible to keep questionable people from serving in government, a system that, with some exceptions, was as thorough as possible and is still in operation today.

He established an FBI forensic capability second to none, and a fingerprinting system that is a crime fighting wonder. Yes, he was rigid, intolerant; often thin-skinned and egocentric. In his later years, the media pounded him with regularity, inspiring not only sharp criticism but outright hatred.

Some say he overstayed his office by years largely because he had the goods on those who made the decisions to keep him there. Maybe so.

But J.Edgar, the movie, is more than just a mere contrived biopic. There is something transcendent about it, something that can enhance our understanding about America and the people who wield power over our lives. It is worth the time to see it and ponder its lessons. Eastwood and his great cast have added some special insight into how a democracy blunders ahead, often with imperfect leaders who somehow rise above their flaws for the greater good of all of us.

The Plight of the Mainstream Novelist

Lost in the conversation of the impact of eBooks is the plight of the mainstream novelist, who writes books that fit no genre category but nevertheless represent the crown jewels of the authorial world, the lynchpin of the trade publishing business.

It is these long form fictional compositions that will eventually be lost in the shuffle during the giant tsunami of material in this non-genre category that is now engulfing the Internet.

The slicing and dicing effect of the Internet and, as a consequence, all of the book venues on the Net, favors books that can comfortably fit into categories. A mainstream novel that defies genre is like an orphan in that environment and must depend primarily on authorial branding, which is especially difficult for novelists just beginning their careers.

For currently well-known and best-selling authors, the advantages are still in their favor, but time and volume could eventually dim their financial prospects as more and more authors of mainstream novels enter the fray through both traditional and self-publishing. There will, of course, be exceptions, but they will be rare.

The old-style branding process of favorable reviews, academia recognition, advertising, interviews, speeches, book tours and other promotional opportunities will, of course, continue for a time, but sooner or later such methods will lose steam to the bookstores on the Net.

The old filtering processes where book sections and professional book critics held sway are slowly losing their power to influence, while the Net has opened a vast, undisciplined, self-proclaimed array of reviewers who offer opinions about the quality of mainstream books that could be sincere and authoritative but can also be suspect and self-serving. None have the power and prestige once wielded by big city newspapers and magazines.

Indeed, the various bookstores on the Web offer a free-for-all of opinion by readers, a forum for anyone to review the merits of a book. In such a forum, there is always the possibility of author or publisher-motivated favorable reviews by friends, relatives or hired guns hoping to promote sales. On the other hand, the possibility of negative reviews by readers can have the opposite effect.

Perhaps I am being too pessimistic, but the fact is that the old rules of the game have changed and the day is fast approaching when the traditional publishers can no longer rely on the old filters and the big box bookstores to promote and sell their wares in large quantities. They will have to find creative ways to promote their star writers on the Net, but considering the volume of competition, it will be a tough slog to make a serious breakthrough.

Some mainstream novels could gain traction in certain circles of interest, but it is doubtful that, as time goes on, they will attract those large reading audiences at a price point that guarantees big advances. I hold open the hope that the creative instincts of the traditional publishers and individual authors can overcome such a financial calamity.

I continue to believe that quality writing and great, beautifully written, compelling stories will find their readers, but then, I come from a different era where I was able to find wonderful and inspiring works through the old style filters. I often wonder how Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Roth and many, many others would have gained traction in the world in which we now live.

Still, we cannot discount college professors in the vanishing liberal arts for steering us in the direction of the great writers and I am hopeful that they will continue to do so. But, I am afraid there will be a slow decline in their ability to make choices among the millions of books that will be available. Indeed, we might well miss the extraordinary writers of coming decades who somehow drown in the vast deep sea of oncoming mainstream novels.

Whatever the future will hold, dedicated novelists will continue to ply their art, many believing, like all artists, that they are enriching the zeitgeist by their insight and story telling, whether or not they will be awarded by money or fame. The self-expression of the true artist is unstoppable and profound.

And many will continue to hope that their work, whatever its worth and quality, will reach a wide and adoring readership and perhaps secretly fantasize that they will enter the cathedral of immortality.

The Mystery of Love

Through the composing and imaginings of thirty volumes of novels, numerous short stories, plays, and poems, I have been wrestling with the mystery of attraction. It has been the dominant theme of my work. You know the kind I mean, the obsessive, magnetizing emotional fixation that goes under the name of love.

Why does one person motivate the kind of heart palpitating enormity of overwhelming powerful, all consuming, possessive emotion we call love and not another person?

Celebrated in history and literature from the beginning of human communication, powerful affinities have been recorded, mythologized and analyzed ad infinitum. Still, no one has been able to explain its cause scientifically, philosophically, or psychologically, at least not with enough empirical evidence to prove what causes this state beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Sexual attraction alone and what we describe as lust, passion or other less mysterious motivations do not answer the question. I'm talking about love, true love, the-go-for- keeps love, the finding-the-other-half-of-myself  love, the Romeo and Juliet, Abelard and Heloise, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde brand of love.

Call it "romantic love" if you wish. Huge industries have been built around the concept in the public culture, recorded in books, movies, and grand opera. It is the lynchpin of most popular stories. It is an ubiquitous and dominant theme in all human history.

Even in the situational aspect, proximity does not explain it fully. Remember the lyric from the musical, South Pacific, "you may see a stranger across a crowded room and somehow you know." Why her? Why him?

The emotion has not escaped the notice of scientists determined to find some biological cause for this phenomenon. Numerous experiments have been mounted to find some chemical phenomena that act on the senses to create such a magnetic effect. Others have tried to relate it to the reclamation of early child or parental memories, even prenatal causes. There are many theories, none conclusive.

Some have explored biblical clues, the most obvious being Eve's eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. One assumes that Adam's bite of the proffered fruit began the natural mating instincts that populated the human race, a semi-mechanical rather than an emotional experience and, therefore, not the love of which I speak. Another biblical example from the Old Testament is when Jacob has to work another seven years for his true love, Rachel, which illustrates the kind of love I mean.

Jacob had fallen in love with Rachel instantly while she was watering her lamb and was at first willing to work seven years for her father before he would allow her to marry him. When the seven years were up, the father married him to another daughter, veiled to disguise her. Despite the betrayal, he was willing to serve yet another seven years to wed his beloved.

As far as I know, nothing beyond the theoretical to explain this phenomena has emerged, no proofs have been established to satisfy explorers of this realm although it continues to occur, like some mysterious affliction in humans and, for all we know, in everything alive. Indeed, it goes beyond the birds and the bees. We do know that among other species, Swans mate for life. Is that an example of true love? Here, again, is the eternal question. Why one swan and not another?

Those of us who have experienced the love emotion will testify to its ecstasy-provoking power, its magic and majesty. The kind of love I am talking about has been idealized and commercialized. It has been crowned since the beginning of time as the pinnacle of feeling, the ultimate melding experience, although it continues to be illusive and, even if it arrives and settles on two people, is often transitory. Perhaps it loses steam because it is not the real thing.

It is the holy grail of emotion, sought after and coveted beyond reason or logic. Many, perhaps most, of the greatest stories ever told are about this kind of love. Without this ideal to chase and describe, many films and novels would be bland and uninteresting.

Indeed, love is one the most recurring themes in life and in fiction and goes back to my original premise. Why him? Why her? Or better yet. How come not him? How come not her? Nor is it gender bound. It happens between men and men and women and women. It is beyond mere propagation.

As the lyric says "somehow you know."

Martha Marcy May Marlene: a Brave Movie

I recently saw the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene, which bravely took up the question of the insidious influence of bizarre cults on unsuspecting young people.

Having lived through the era when such cults were media fodder and a number of friends and relatives had lost adult children to this phenomenon, and having written the well-received novel, Cult, I was interested in how the filmmakers approached the subject.

Those, like myself, who were around in the sixties and seventies when cults were portrayed as actively recruiting and brainwashing their unsuspecting victims into walking zombies for profit and control, who saw families destroyed and worse, have been lulled into believing that that era is over. Far from it. There are thousands of cults operating in this country and many more abroad. Some are quite prosperous and upcoming generations should be forewarned.

Of course, we were shocked by the mass suicide of Jonestown and the brutality and violence of Manson and his so-called "family" and other weird manifestations of mind control, which brought into the popular culture terms such as "deprogramming" and images of dull-eyed young people selling flowers at airports.

The media once feasted on such stories, although they never quite delved deeply enough into the phenomenon to increase the public's understanding of the subtle ways cynical and power-hungry people use phony spiritualism, alienation, and communes run by guru pretenders for power and profit. All of them purveyed what seemed like idealistic causes but their real agenda was, and still is, designed to capture the minds of innocent people and, through devious mind control means, corral them into doing their bidding.

From time to time, cults have been exposed and media excitement ensues when their destructive methods are exposed. Remember David Koresh and his Branch Davidians? He was one of many. And there is no greater example than those sad fools who blow themselves up, convinced that heaven offers them the proverbial 72 virgins or some such contrived reward in the afterlife.

Since the subject of brainwashing is so difficult for most of us to understand, it reaches us as distortions and confuses those who have never been exposed to its capacity to break down one's personality with swift and efficient force and enslave the will of an innocent victim. All we see is the resulting ruined lives, minds devastated, and a personalities destroyed.

I give the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene, "A" for effort, but "B" for execution, although I do not wish to detract from its sincere and largely successful effort. Obviously, the filmmakers wanted to make the point that it's easy to slip into a cult, in this case a Manson like "family," but a terrible chore to get out of it.

It was this latter manifestation that was illustrated in my novel. Once the victim's mind had "snapped" into cult mode, the unsnapping requires a massive assault on the victim's mind to untangle the coded messages injected into it by the sinister forces of the cult leader.

I am indebted to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman who wrote the definitive explanation of this process and gave us the term "Snapping" which is the title of their excellent book on the subject, Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change.

While most of the acting is excellent, and the movie does depict the terrible dilemma of a victim's dealing with the separation from the cult, it could have added another dimension by showing the process of deprogramming which can be difficult and, in some cases, brutal. Nevertheless, the filmmakers did capture the victim's agony, paranoia and the inevitable "floating" of her mind back into the magnetizing memories of the cult experience.

The filmmakers chose to show how well-meaning relatives tried valiantly to help the victim through her difficulty with separation, but failed in their efforts because of their ignorance of what had been done to the victim's mind. Perhaps this lack of knowledge influenced a less than satisfying and confusing ending.

This could have been an important movie at a moment in history when this growing and powerful phenomenon is largely ignored. It suffers from good intentions and weird editing that makes it impossible for the viewer to fully understand the plotting. In addition to a tongue twisting title that largely defies memory, the ending is, perhaps deliberately, confounding and unresolved.

I understood the premise and waited patiently to learn what triggered the unwitting victim's need to escape the cult, which was never clear from her point of view. In fact there were so many holes in the motivation of the characters that it became difficult to see how this woman victim was ever going to adjust to a normal life.

I hate to be nitpicking what I consider a movie that, despite it flaws, should be seen by everyone as a cautionary tale of what could happen to an unsuspecting victim by a sinister cult leader bent on recruiting followers for whatever nefarious purposes he or she has in mind. Think of it as a cautionary tale.

The fact is that the cult phenomenon is out there still recruiting more and more victims for its insatiable maws.

Why I Still Love the New York Times

Yes, I still love the New York Times. I have been reading it since I was twelve years old when I subscribed at a discount as a freshman at Brooklyn Technical High School.

I probably read parts of it earlier, since my father was an ardent reader and was an expert in knowing exactly how to fold its broadsheet for reading when he stood up in the packed subways that brought him daily from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

In those days, the Old Grey Lady reminded me of a diplomat with striped pants and a derby. It seemed formidable in its solemn uniformed columns and muted headlines. Its look and content seemed conservative by today's definitions, but I was not yet politically savvy to notice.

I assumed that only wealthy people read it since the ads hawked products that my parents nor I could not possibly afford, and there were pages and pages of financial news about which I knew nothing.  I did read their extensive reviews of movies and theater, their sports section and tried to keep abreast of world events assuming that if they appeared in the New York Times they were worthy of my attention.

I suppose I read the headlines and felt that I was keeping myself informed and was certain that I was reading what they promised in their slogan "all the news that's fit to print."

Our family newspaper ritual also included the bulldog editions of the New York Daily News and Daily Mirror, which hit the New York street after dinner hour the prior day and both were avidly read by the vast majority of New Yorkers.

I read the Times daily through college and after. I suppose I was evolving politically and I began to read the editorials and columns and still had the impression it was conservative which was confirmed in my consciousness when it went for Dewey, the Republican candidate for President in 1948.

I can't remember when I began to appreciate the writing skills its reporters exhibited, but the story that Meyer Berger wrote about the killer, Howard Unruh, who murdered 13 people in Camden, New Jersey was and still is the most mesmerizing story I have ever read in any newspaper.

I distinctly remember being so absorbed in it that I missed my subway stop that morning. Mr. Berger was awarded a Pulitzer for that most brilliant piece of reporting.

Through the years, even when I left New York for decades, I continued to read the Times on Sundays, then every day when technology made it possible. Its coverage of the arts is incomparable, and its features are the best written of any newspaper I've ever read.

As I became more politically aware and my own leftish politics drifted somewhat rightward, I began to notice that the paper's editorial policy began to swing leftward at a rapid pace.

It seemed strange that the Old Grey Lady was moving so far off her perch and supporting leftist causes especially since its advertising catered to those who could afford the extravagant goods offered on their pages. One look at their coveted page two and three ads will confirm that.

It has, as we write, evolved into a kind of house organ for the Democratic party and mostly leftward causes, which we moderates can spot in a New York minute. This bias often invades its news stories, its headlines and its choice of stories to cover. It has invaded its Book Review section, its Sunday magazine and can be spotted in more esoteric and out-of-the-way sections. I don't quarrel with it. I'm just in a slightly different pew and I hope this admission won't inhibit my readers. Leave me to my illusion that I am the voice of sanity in a topsy-turvy world of extremes. Above all, I am not an ideologue and a practicing curmudgeon when it comes to beating the drum for self-reliance and personal responsibility.

But because I have so much affection and nostalgia for the paper, I continue to subscribe and enjoy it. I have learned how to read it using a kind of self-censoring technique, which I fantasize that I have perfected.  I don't ignore their columnists or editorial sections but nine times out of ten, I can spot the bias. It baffles me why they have gone so far to the left, since their ads are pointedly aimed at the affluent.

I assume they have relied on extensive surveys of their readers, although I suspect that some segment of their decline in circulation may have to do with this bias. Indeed, why I might not agree philosophically or even politically with their viewpoint most of the time, I do respect it and read carefully its various arguments in support of their positions. At times they convince me that their editorials are on the correct side of an issue, but not often.

If I gave up reading the Times daily I would have to cope with serious withdrawal symptoms, especially having to give up the obits which I read religiously every day as a kind ringside seat observing my generation fade into oblivion. I eagerly read the movie, theater and performance reviews, and the various gossipy stuff about showbiz personalities. I do love their essays on offbeat local coverage and can be totally absorbed in their long stories about chicanery, criminality, conniving, and deception in high places. I read their social notes with great curiosity and their neighborhood stories with great interest.

And I marvel how they can put such a vast panorama of the living world on my doorstep every day.

Contact Made, Message Delivered

I think it's time for the Occupy Wall Street people to declare victory and go home. They have illustrated their anger and their passionate desire for a more equitable America. I would not insult their integrity by asking any of them what they want to change, although it is hard to get a sense of specifics from their signs and snippets of interviews reported in newspapers, television and offered on the social networking sites.

Their anger undoubtedly reflects a general frustration with inequities, real and perceived, the uncertainty of our economic future, the absence of talented political leadership, and a sense of being overwhelmed by man-made and natural impediments.

Some are angry because they are unemployed and can't get jobs. Some are angry because people who have jobs are making too much money and others aren't making enough. Others are angry over the high cost of tuition and the fact that they must borrow money to get an education and be strapped to pay it back just when they're starting their careers.

Still, others are angry because they can't pay their mortgages and have to go into foreclosure or personal bankruptcy. Many are angry over what they observe as a trashing of our environment or racial inequity or capital punishment. Many are against war, hunger, profit, conglomerates and corruption in general. They want the rich to pay more taxes, which they call "their fair share."

Note that I am not challenging the things they are angry about. I am angry about some of them myself. But I do think it's time for a bit of reflection, time perhaps, to get off the soapbox and reflect about all the possibilities that might in some way temper their anger with a bit of wisdom.

Most of what they are angry about is the result of good intentions gone awry or were distorted by what is best described as unintended consequences. Those who are, for example, angry about school loans should understand that Congress in 1965, out of a desire to give everyone a chance to go to college, passed a student loan law whereby students could borrow money to pay tuition and pay it back when they began to earn their own money.

What they did not foresee was all that money going into private colleges encouraged some of them to expand into giant enterprises that required more and more tuition money to feed the maws of their ambition. After all, the burden of payback was on the student not on the educational institutions and the banks got the interest.

And what of the mortgage debacle? It has always been cited as the American dream to own your own home and all politicians encouraged programs to make it easy for Americans to buy homes. They set up Fannie and Freddie to help Americans do just that. After all, it was an act of faith that real estate would continue to go up, up and up.

In fact, they made it so easy to get a mortgage that people following the good intentions of the political class rushed to buy homes. They couldn't build them fast enough and many bought homes they could not afford.

What they did not understand was that the real estate market, like all markets, has financial bumps. But the good intentions of the politicians opened the doors to mortgages that were so easy to obtain that everybody who could took advantage of the programs and, as was inevitable, there was a comeuppance. Can one blame the politicians for their good intentions? And who was the greedier, the buyers or the lenders?

The irony is that people who are paying their mortgages with their homes worth less than the mortgages, are seeking relief because their homes are "under water." What they should understand is that once the market stabilizes and the laws of supply and demand kick in, the chances are that their homes will eventually rise and be worth considerably more than they are today.

Then there is health care, which politicians told us, with good intentions, that everyone is "entitled" to health care from the cradle to the grave. Did they realize that the cost of exotic diagnosis machines and the effect on the income of doctors, the cost of medical malpractice insurance, the temptation to defraud, the cost of regulating and policing and the demand for more and more services in a rising population would make it impossible to fund forever? Good intentions certainly, but where were their adding machines?

I do think the protesters should think twice about their definition of corporate greed. I believe they mean profit which, when all is said and done, is the ultimate objective of a private corporation and determines how much their shares are worth. Wall Street is merely a marketplace for these shares and a mechanism to fund corporations to create and expand businesses.

When the brave kids of "Occupy" pound their computer keyboards or text their messages, they should understand that these devices were created and funded by Wall Street firms. I wonder how far Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and hundreds of others with ideas to create products useful to all of us would fare if they did not have the mechanism of Wall Street.

Indeed, it is ironic that the Occupiers call to arms has been carried out on the backs of Wall Street funded corporations, their alleged enemy.

I could go on and on. Yes, some people have not played by the rules, both in the private and public sector. Nor is it a secret that government programs are often wasteful, too bureaucratic and often temptations for corruption and overspending.

Democracy, after all, has its blind spots and the desire of politicians to help as many of their constituents as possible is essential to the process. But blanket generosity often gets the recipient used to dependency, hence the misnomer "entitlements," which eventually morphs into either "giveaway" or "broken promises."

Yes there are unnatural inequities, government programs that need to be tweaked and corrected, politicians who overpromise and can't envision things beyond their own need to be re-elected.

No, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds and greed is only one of our numerous deadly flaws. Nevertheless, we Americans, do exist in a world of possibilities created by a governmental experiment that has managed to survive for more than a couple hundred years and has opened up channels of opportunities that have resulted in the realization of hopes and dreams for millions. As they say, we can't throw out the baby with the bath water.

The worst thing that could happen is for us to lose the sense of optimism which has sustained us since our founding. We are, indeed, like all humans, imperfect and vastly flawed. We are also remarkably self-corrective and resilient.

Let's call the Wall Street protests a wake up call, a point well taken and an expression of anger worth our ardent and immediate attention. It is time, too, to heed the danger signals spawned by the gathering clouds of violence and aimless disruption.

Contact made. Message delivered. It's time for those on the protest line to go on home, get on with productive lives and take their anger to the ballot box.

I Found it at the Movies

Pauline Kael, who reviewed movies for the The New Yorker for many years, was considered by many to be the goddess of film critics. Her comments on movies were both insightful and controversial. Once again, a compendium of her reviews is coming out in  a newly published book.

Her writings were distinguished by her sharp opinions. When she was negative about the quality of a film, she was downright lethal. When she was positive, she was ecstatic. But whatever her thoughts were about films, her enduring view was that movies were transformative, important, and, in some cases, life changing.

On the surface, such a conclusion might seem, to say the least, exaggerated and over expansive. Indeed, how many times have I heard it said: "It's only a movie."

Years ago, I might have dismissed her opinion, but after a very long, personal retrospective on the impact of movies on my own life, I'm inclined to see her point.

The effect that movies have had on my life, psyche, worldview, relationship with people, knowledge of the human condition, hopes and fears, emulations and aspirations, romanticism, speech, general appearance, taste in clothing, courting, sex, travel, yearnings and ambitions has been profound. There is no denying it.

Note: I am talking of the overall effect of movies, not individual movies, per se. This is not to say that individual movies have not affected my life, but the cumulative, overall, dominant effect has been transformative in deep ways and in some that I can barely imagine or explain.

How could it not? Historically speaking, I have been attending movies regularly since the middle thirties, which marked the rich golden years of Hollywood. At that time, studios owned the theaters. They churned out hundreds of films a year, creating the stars, sets and stories that captured our imagination and drove us into darkened auditoriums to peer through a window into a world beyond our own existence.

For a child growing up in that era, the Saturday matinee was almost an obligatory rite of passage. Movie theaters were easily accessible and showed movies created for all ages, reflective of our times and times past. For ten cents, we would spend about three hours mesmerized and immersed in the film's skillfully imagined activities.

My senses are in total recall of those moments spent in the movie palaces of those years. The sweet smell of candy from the vending machine (in the days before popcorn became the profitable staple of movie going), the baroque design of the movie houses, the uniformed usher with his ubiquitous flashlight, the iconic beginning of the News of the Week and the sonorous voice of Lowell Thomas and the coming attractions of new movies changed twice or sometimes thrice weekly.

I recall the cartoons of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other animated favorites and the shouts of joy when they appeared on the screen, the "chapters" of Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and others and the antics of Charlie Chaplin, the three stooges, W.C. Fields and the Ritz Brothers.

Who can forget the cowboys of that era with indelible names that have never faded from memory, such as Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, Johnny Mack Brown, Hoot Gibson, the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and numerous others along with the names of their horses?  I spent many days riding make-believe horses (which were my grandparents' porch railings), imagining myself as a hard-riding, quick-on-the-draw cowboy hero.

At times, the Saturday movies for kids were hybrids of what adults might be seeing that same evening. At those movies, when the action stopped and the mild love scenes would come on, the kids in the audience would erupt with restlessness and throw spitballs, shout and tussle until the action scenes started again.

The moviegoing habits of those years have continued throughout my life, although my ritual of moviegoing has changed with the nature of the films being offered, which seem to deeply curtail the adult demographic.

As for Pauline Kael's sense of the transformative impact of films, it is validated by my own experiences revisiting the films in black and white on contemporary television, especially those run by Turner Classic Films. These old films have rejuvenated and enriched a world whose images can be recalled from their etched vaults in my mind and memory.

I need no further proof of the transformative nature of their impact than my almost total recall of the cast names of movies well before the crawls of identification. Not only can I name all the featured actors and secondary players in my favorite films, but I find myself obsessed with the familiar backgrounds, the clothes, the furniture, the gadgets, the kitchen appliances, the lighting, the ubiquitous smoking, the dialogue, especially those slang remarks that have gone out of fashion and the general atmosphere and environment of the world of my past. Indeed, I often wish I could just walk into these sets and return to the life of my youth with the expectation that my mother has dinner on the table and my Dad has just come home from a day at the office.

At times, these images are competitive with what passes for real life. Perhaps I exaggerate, but they did have the power to make me laugh and cry, worry and hope, yearn and mourn, revel and disappoint. They enriched my imagination and gave me clues to the secrets of suspense and storytelling.

If this is what Pauline Kael meant about being transformative, then she did indeed get it right.  She wrote a book with a winking double entendre entitled "I Lost it at the Movies." If I wrote it I would have changed the title to: "I Found it at the Movies."