Richard S. Wheeler's Blog, page 9
May 10, 2015
Try Another Way
For as long as I've been writing fiction I have tried to dramatize my stories; that is, to make them as much like films as possible. That is what the writing gurus taught and still teach. Show events; don't tell about them. Use live scenes, not narrative. Use narrative simply to bridge the scenes. Make narrative the equivalent of fade-ins or fade-outs on film.
The problem is that such fiction is always pallid compared to films, where the camera catches events far more compellingly than a string of words on a page.
I've come to question the whole idea of dramatized fiction, a hand-me-down from the film business. A lot of dramatized scenes are dull; especially ones full of trivial dialogue. A story could be moved along much faster, but perhaps with less immediacy, employing narrative.
Before novels became imitation films, novelists had far more latitude. The protagonist might well be an observed character. The narrator might be the novelist himself or herself, and that narrator might be full of sharp opinions or cheerful observations about the character under the lens of the author.
I'd love to do a story with myself as the narrator, commenting on the foibles of the protagonists and others. That's similar to the way Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim was written.
I've read in several places that American fiction is pallid and exhausted. If I were a little younger than my eighty years, I would try writing a story that would be largely narrative, full of prejudices, and an entertainment for anyone who might enjoy a good roast. Or maybe just an old narrator honoring the tenderness and courage of a young protagonist, or pointing to the strength of character of someone in the story.
The problem is that such fiction is always pallid compared to films, where the camera catches events far more compellingly than a string of words on a page.
I've come to question the whole idea of dramatized fiction, a hand-me-down from the film business. A lot of dramatized scenes are dull; especially ones full of trivial dialogue. A story could be moved along much faster, but perhaps with less immediacy, employing narrative.
Before novels became imitation films, novelists had far more latitude. The protagonist might well be an observed character. The narrator might be the novelist himself or herself, and that narrator might be full of sharp opinions or cheerful observations about the character under the lens of the author.
I'd love to do a story with myself as the narrator, commenting on the foibles of the protagonists and others. That's similar to the way Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim was written.
I've read in several places that American fiction is pallid and exhausted. If I were a little younger than my eighty years, I would try writing a story that would be largely narrative, full of prejudices, and an entertainment for anyone who might enjoy a good roast. Or maybe just an old narrator honoring the tenderness and courage of a young protagonist, or pointing to the strength of character of someone in the story.
May 8, 2015
Telling My Stories
For a century films have influenced the way we novelists of all sorts tell our stories about people. A feature film, or a TV episode, is so short that only fragments of the lives of characters are shown. And these filmed stories are usually presented in the third person through the observant eye of the camera.
What that means for novelists is that we tell our stories in the same way, usually with live drama linked by brief narrative segments that are the equivalent of cinematic fade-ins or fade-outs. Our written drama is often a pallid imitation of the vividness of live scenes done before a camera, which is why many novels are inherently dull or pale compared to what we see on screens.
The things we used to see in fiction are all but gone. A novel rarely follows a character through life, and rarely includes an epilogue describing how that life turned out. Film-type fiction is too brief and fast for that. Also, the narrator has gone missing, along with his voice and prejudices and affections. In older fiction, such as Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, the narrator is an observer of the title character, enjoying, criticizing, disdaining, admiring the person he is observing. All gone now. That sort of narrator has all but vanished in visual-type fiction.
Narrative fiction moves faster but gives up immediacy. Dramatized fiction can be slowed to death by endless dialogue, or paralyzed by trivia, while narrative fiction can leap through years or lifetimes. Earlier fiction often portrayed whole lives, and often had epilogues to tell readers how it all worked out. Modern visual fiction lacks those embellishments.
I have come, over a long writing life, to the point of preferring the older forms, in which novelists depict a life, or several lives, rather than brief episodes. I have more and more included epilogues in my historical novels, and in one, An Obituary for Major Reno, the epilogue became the story itself. It begins with the death of Major Reno, and is an assessment of his life.
So, I've entirely drifted from the visual drama that is employed by novelists now. That's where all these decades of writing have taken me.
What that means for novelists is that we tell our stories in the same way, usually with live drama linked by brief narrative segments that are the equivalent of cinematic fade-ins or fade-outs. Our written drama is often a pallid imitation of the vividness of live scenes done before a camera, which is why many novels are inherently dull or pale compared to what we see on screens.
The things we used to see in fiction are all but gone. A novel rarely follows a character through life, and rarely includes an epilogue describing how that life turned out. Film-type fiction is too brief and fast for that. Also, the narrator has gone missing, along with his voice and prejudices and affections. In older fiction, such as Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, the narrator is an observer of the title character, enjoying, criticizing, disdaining, admiring the person he is observing. All gone now. That sort of narrator has all but vanished in visual-type fiction.
Narrative fiction moves faster but gives up immediacy. Dramatized fiction can be slowed to death by endless dialogue, or paralyzed by trivia, while narrative fiction can leap through years or lifetimes. Earlier fiction often portrayed whole lives, and often had epilogues to tell readers how it all worked out. Modern visual fiction lacks those embellishments.
I have come, over a long writing life, to the point of preferring the older forms, in which novelists depict a life, or several lives, rather than brief episodes. I have more and more included epilogues in my historical novels, and in one, An Obituary for Major Reno, the epilogue became the story itself. It begins with the death of Major Reno, and is an assessment of his life.
So, I've entirely drifted from the visual drama that is employed by novelists now. That's where all these decades of writing have taken me.
May 5, 2015
Epilogues
I love epilogues, and may be one of the last American authors to make frequent use of them. Few, if any, novelists employ them now. They bring closure to my historical novels. Here are the final pages of the epilogue of my next novel, Anything Goes, which follows a vaudeville company as it tours Montana and Idaho in 1896. It will be published by Forge in December. My only intent here is to show how an epilogue can bring a story to a conclusion, provide an ending to the characters' lives.
August scraped together enough to get to Butte, where Mrs. McGivers immediately gave him shelter. He discovered Ethel Wildroot there, also, waiting tables in exchange for shelter. August didn’t have a nickel. He had divided the last of his loose change with the acts and musicians. But in time, he scraped together enough to ride coach to New York, where he soon found work doing what he did best, introducing acts at Tony Pastor’s Rialto Opera House, which was doing vaudeville nonstop. It wasn’t much, but it afforded him a room, and he gradually paid off his debts to Boise printers and restaurants, sending a few dollars from each paycheck.
But the failure, the collapse of his Follies, and the new, ruthless world of competing vaudeville circuits, had taken their toll on him. He was frequently ill, and developed a tumor on the stomach, and less than three years after he returned to his home town, he lay dying in Bellevue Hospital, his life dwindling as he lay on a narrow cot in a charity ward under an army surplus blanket.
Charles and Ginger found him there, staring upward into emptiness.
“August, we just found out you’re here,” Charles said, reaching for a cold hand.
“Good of you,” August said.
“Are they treating you well?” Ginger asked.
“The one, the only Bellevue,” August whispered.
“August, thanks to you, my dreams came true. I just want you to know.”
“Same here, August. I took what you taught me and made a life,” Charles said.
For a long moment, August didn’t respond. Then, quietly, “The business. The business gives us life. It’s a refuge.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Ginger said. “But yes, it puts its arm around us; it put it arm around me, and after that...”
August smiled thinly. “Vaudeville’s like this hospital. It’s for the outcasts.”
He closed his eyes, and his visitors wondered if he had slipped away, but they stayed, and clung to his hand. The person who had transformed their lives was adrift.
Ethel Wildroot found him then, noted his closed eyes, and her face formed a question.
“Ethel, I’m glad,” August said, mysteriously fathoming her presence.
“Oh, August,” she said.
“You were my reliable,” he said. “Always ready with an act. I’m glad you came for the curtain.”
“Oh, August, oh, baby.”
The Profile showed up too, his visage ravaged by age and spirits, but still somehow noble.
“I’m going to talk about showmen tonight,” he said. “Is there any showman in the audience I can honor this evening? Raise your hand.”
“Never made the grade, and flunked at Boise,” August mumbled.
“Never made the grade? You’re one of the great ones. You cleaned cash out of a thousand towns. You bankrupted whole cities.”
August laughed gently, and then faded into blessed memory.
August scraped together enough to get to Butte, where Mrs. McGivers immediately gave him shelter. He discovered Ethel Wildroot there, also, waiting tables in exchange for shelter. August didn’t have a nickel. He had divided the last of his loose change with the acts and musicians. But in time, he scraped together enough to ride coach to New York, where he soon found work doing what he did best, introducing acts at Tony Pastor’s Rialto Opera House, which was doing vaudeville nonstop. It wasn’t much, but it afforded him a room, and he gradually paid off his debts to Boise printers and restaurants, sending a few dollars from each paycheck.
But the failure, the collapse of his Follies, and the new, ruthless world of competing vaudeville circuits, had taken their toll on him. He was frequently ill, and developed a tumor on the stomach, and less than three years after he returned to his home town, he lay dying in Bellevue Hospital, his life dwindling as he lay on a narrow cot in a charity ward under an army surplus blanket.
Charles and Ginger found him there, staring upward into emptiness.
“August, we just found out you’re here,” Charles said, reaching for a cold hand.
“Good of you,” August said.
“Are they treating you well?” Ginger asked.
“The one, the only Bellevue,” August whispered.
“August, thanks to you, my dreams came true. I just want you to know.”
“Same here, August. I took what you taught me and made a life,” Charles said.
For a long moment, August didn’t respond. Then, quietly, “The business. The business gives us life. It’s a refuge.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Ginger said. “But yes, it puts its arm around us; it put it arm around me, and after that...”
August smiled thinly. “Vaudeville’s like this hospital. It’s for the outcasts.”
He closed his eyes, and his visitors wondered if he had slipped away, but they stayed, and clung to his hand. The person who had transformed their lives was adrift.
Ethel Wildroot found him then, noted his closed eyes, and her face formed a question.
“Ethel, I’m glad,” August said, mysteriously fathoming her presence.
“Oh, August,” she said.
“You were my reliable,” he said. “Always ready with an act. I’m glad you came for the curtain.”
“Oh, August, oh, baby.”
The Profile showed up too, his visage ravaged by age and spirits, but still somehow noble.
“I’m going to talk about showmen tonight,” he said. “Is there any showman in the audience I can honor this evening? Raise your hand.”
“Never made the grade, and flunked at Boise,” August mumbled.
“Never made the grade? You’re one of the great ones. You cleaned cash out of a thousand towns. You bankrupted whole cities.”
August laughed gently, and then faded into blessed memory.
Editorial Work
I received word from my publisher, Forge, that the copyedited manuscript of Anything Goes is on its way for me to look over. Forge, an imprint of Macmillan through its subsidiary Tom Doherty Associates, maintains the traditional discipline of New York's print publishers. The manuscript will have been carefully gone over for style, punctuation, spelling, clarity, brevity, consistency, and all the rest. It will have an appropriate typeface and format. I will have a few days to approve or disapprove of the changes and get it all back to the Flatiron Building. I have been very fortunate to have a publishing company that maintains the rigorous disciplines that make for a polished book.
Anything Goes is the last of my big historical novels. It follows an early vaudeville company touring through Montana and Idaho in 1896. Those were not easy times for touring shows in the West, and the operators often had to improvise. I put together a story about a dozen or so performers and managers and a few musicians, and start them on a journey where things deteriorate almost daily. People get sick. Singers grow hoarse. Suppliers jack up prices. Local businessman connive to hurt the company and keep the box office cash in town. Papers don't run the ads for the shows. Acrobats get hurt. Rooms in hotels lack comforts. Trains break down. People in one act sabotage another act. And sometimes the talent is lousy and the show bombs.
As is true of many of my historical novels, this one ends with an epilogue. I must be the last American author writing commercial or literary fiction who still uses epilogues. I simply like to let readers know how the lives of my characters turned out, long after my story closes. I don't know why epilogues have been abandoned by novelists, but I have always enjoyed them, and they often give me closure. Sometimes the epilogues take a character to his last breath. It gives his story a sense of completeness.
I have no plans to write any more historical novels, and am looking forward to the publication of this one early in December. I hope it will be a soaring conclusion to my life as an historical novelist, but who knows?
Anything Goes is the last of my big historical novels. It follows an early vaudeville company touring through Montana and Idaho in 1896. Those were not easy times for touring shows in the West, and the operators often had to improvise. I put together a story about a dozen or so performers and managers and a few musicians, and start them on a journey where things deteriorate almost daily. People get sick. Singers grow hoarse. Suppliers jack up prices. Local businessman connive to hurt the company and keep the box office cash in town. Papers don't run the ads for the shows. Acrobats get hurt. Rooms in hotels lack comforts. Trains break down. People in one act sabotage another act. And sometimes the talent is lousy and the show bombs.
As is true of many of my historical novels, this one ends with an epilogue. I must be the last American author writing commercial or literary fiction who still uses epilogues. I simply like to let readers know how the lives of my characters turned out, long after my story closes. I don't know why epilogues have been abandoned by novelists, but I have always enjoyed them, and they often give me closure. Sometimes the epilogues take a character to his last breath. It gives his story a sense of completeness.
I have no plans to write any more historical novels, and am looking forward to the publication of this one early in December. I hope it will be a soaring conclusion to my life as an historical novelist, but who knows?
May 1, 2015
Show or Tell?
From the beginning of my writing life I was taught at workshops, by colleagues, by learned books about writing, to dramatize events in fiction, rather than telling about them. In other words, it was up to me to abandon my journalism and become a dramatist, or playwright. Don't talk about it; show it happening. A good novel is nothing but a series of dramatized scenes connected by brief links of narrative. And that held true for literary as well as popular fiction.
It was explained that this was the result of exposure to motion pictures, where everything is dramatized, there is no first-person narrative, and live scenes are how modern people absorb stories.
But I'm questioning all that now. Endless dialogue that goes nowhere set me to wondering about it. Many authors think that endless dialogue is drama, but it often seems just dull to me, something that could be handled in a paragraph of narrative, to keep the story rolling along. I've occasionally gone into classic fiction, where very little was dramatized, and have discovered that narrative has the advantage of moving a story swiftly, and also gives the author a chance at perspective. A narrator can observe events, comment on them, which is an advantage over live scenes. There are fine novels by fine novelists, such as Somerset Maugham and Jack London, which are largely told, and not dramatized, the drama being limited strictly to very important moments when things are profitably slowed down for a close look.
The problem with so much dramatized modern fiction is that it is slowed down, and little happens because drama eats up time and space. I'm going to experiment with told stories, narrated stories, and cut back on the dramatization which is paralyzing modern fiction.
It was explained that this was the result of exposure to motion pictures, where everything is dramatized, there is no first-person narrative, and live scenes are how modern people absorb stories.
But I'm questioning all that now. Endless dialogue that goes nowhere set me to wondering about it. Many authors think that endless dialogue is drama, but it often seems just dull to me, something that could be handled in a paragraph of narrative, to keep the story rolling along. I've occasionally gone into classic fiction, where very little was dramatized, and have discovered that narrative has the advantage of moving a story swiftly, and also gives the author a chance at perspective. A narrator can observe events, comment on them, which is an advantage over live scenes. There are fine novels by fine novelists, such as Somerset Maugham and Jack London, which are largely told, and not dramatized, the drama being limited strictly to very important moments when things are profitably slowed down for a close look.
The problem with so much dramatized modern fiction is that it is slowed down, and little happens because drama eats up time and space. I'm going to experiment with told stories, narrated stories, and cut back on the dramatization which is paralyzing modern fiction.
April 24, 2015
Remembering Jim Crumley
Jim Crumley was one of the best mystery writers of our times. He came to Livingston occasionally to sit at his usual seat at the old Bar and Grille. I spent some memorable time with him and his wife, Martha Elizabeth, there. Here is a memorial put together by the Missoula Independent some years ago.
http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/m...
http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/m...
April 18, 2015
A New Title
I am pleased to report the Kindle publication of a new title, The Homicidal Saint, a mystery written under my pseudonym Axel Brand. This is the first I've written in a long while, and my first since turning eighty a few weeks ago. It is heartening to me that I am able to write a story that I think is competent and marketable. Following some medical disasters last year, I doubted that this day would ever come again.
The Axel Brand stories are set in mid-century Milwaukee, and feature Lieutenant Joe Sonntag, who heads the police investigations bureau. The first two of these were published as Five Star mysteries, and got good reviews.
I have chosen Milwaukee because of its ethnic ambiance, and because I grew up there. It was an industrial town, filled with work-weary first and second-generation Americans. In my stories, it is a place where people used public transportation, a place where weary men gave up their streetcar seats to weary women, and hung onto the straps that allowed them to stand safely as the orange streetcars toiled along their routes.
This story begins shockingly, when a man kills his wife at a church potluck supper, and claims he did it because she had destroyed the family's children. It becomes Sonntag's task to check all that out, and what he finds is disconcerting.
You will find The Homicidal Saint on Amazon, as a Kindle e-book. It sells for one buck, along with all the Axel Brand mysteries, because I want to increase readership of the series.
The Axel Brand stories are set in mid-century Milwaukee, and feature Lieutenant Joe Sonntag, who heads the police investigations bureau. The first two of these were published as Five Star mysteries, and got good reviews.
I have chosen Milwaukee because of its ethnic ambiance, and because I grew up there. It was an industrial town, filled with work-weary first and second-generation Americans. In my stories, it is a place where people used public transportation, a place where weary men gave up their streetcar seats to weary women, and hung onto the straps that allowed them to stand safely as the orange streetcars toiled along their routes.
This story begins shockingly, when a man kills his wife at a church potluck supper, and claims he did it because she had destroyed the family's children. It becomes Sonntag's task to check all that out, and what he finds is disconcerting.
You will find The Homicidal Saint on Amazon, as a Kindle e-book. It sells for one buck, along with all the Axel Brand mysteries, because I want to increase readership of the series.
April 12, 2015
Ron Scheer
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Ron Scheer, the retired academic who devoted the last years of his life to a blog and reference books dealing with the literature of the West, is dead. I faithfully read his superb web log, Buddies in the Saddle, and learned much from it.
His primary interest was early western literature, and much of his blog was devoted to unearthing long-forgotten novelists who wrote of the West and helped shape our understanding of it. These reviews were unique, because they dealt with numerous attributes, such as plot and characterization and treatment of non-Anglo characters, that he studied systematically. They have been gathered into two fine volumes that belong in the library of anyone seriously interested in the literature of the West.
He also reviewed contemporary western writers, offering shrewd and generous insights into modern western literature. He preferred the literature of the real West, rather than the mythological one, and for that reason he largely ignored the high body-count gunfighter stories that choke the mass market racks. His careful avoidance of those dismaying books is one of the reasons I so admired him, and awaited each blog entry with eagerness.
His researches comprise an amazing legacy. I feel far more informed and enlightened about the formative books that influenced the American Western novel. His lively interests led him to create a glossary of western terms, alongside his reviews of early novels. Among the things I learned from him was that many early western writers were women. In later years, western fiction was largely a male enterprise.
He struggled with a brain tumor for the last year or so, with grace and dignity and courage. He added immeasurably to my life, and I count it a privilege to have met him, if only briefly, and to call him a friend and colleague. He called these changes portals, and now he has passed through the last one.
Rest in peace, Ron.
Ron Scheer, the retired academic who devoted the last years of his life to a blog and reference books dealing with the literature of the West, is dead. I faithfully read his superb web log, Buddies in the Saddle, and learned much from it.
His primary interest was early western literature, and much of his blog was devoted to unearthing long-forgotten novelists who wrote of the West and helped shape our understanding of it. These reviews were unique, because they dealt with numerous attributes, such as plot and characterization and treatment of non-Anglo characters, that he studied systematically. They have been gathered into two fine volumes that belong in the library of anyone seriously interested in the literature of the West.
He also reviewed contemporary western writers, offering shrewd and generous insights into modern western literature. He preferred the literature of the real West, rather than the mythological one, and for that reason he largely ignored the high body-count gunfighter stories that choke the mass market racks. His careful avoidance of those dismaying books is one of the reasons I so admired him, and awaited each blog entry with eagerness.
His researches comprise an amazing legacy. I feel far more informed and enlightened about the formative books that influenced the American Western novel. His lively interests led him to create a glossary of western terms, alongside his reviews of early novels. Among the things I learned from him was that many early western writers were women. In later years, western fiction was largely a male enterprise.
He struggled with a brain tumor for the last year or so, with grace and dignity and courage. He added immeasurably to my life, and I count it a privilege to have met him, if only briefly, and to call him a friend and colleague. He called these changes portals, and now he has passed through the last one.
Rest in peace, Ron.
April 4, 2015
New Book
In a fortnight or so, I plan to introduce a new book in Kindle electronic format. It is the first I have written in about a year. For a while, last summer and fall, I doubted that I could ever write again because of health difficulties. I am eighty, and my writing is distinctly different now, for better or worse. I don't know whether it is a good novel or not; what counts is that I wrote it after a siege of troubles that reduced my cognitive powers, something that lifts my spirits more than I can say.
It is one of my Joe Sonntag mysteries, set in midcentury Milwaukee, an industrial city largely populated by eastern European first and second-generation Americans. Most of my Sonntag mysteries involve deeply proletarian and humble people struggling to make a living, usually through hard factory labor. My series hero, Lieutenant Joe Sonntag, heads the Milwaukee police investigations bureau.
I write these mysteries under a pseudonym, Axel Brand, to distinguish the work from what I do as an historical novelist, largely in another genre. I have tentatively chosen a title for this one, Best Forgotten. It gets off to a shocking start: at a church potluck social, a man suddenly shoots his wife in front of a crowd of witnesses, just after the pastor offers a grace and people are digging in for a bountiful meal. The story is about what happens afterward, and why.
To celebrate this event, the book will be offered free for a month, and I may also offer some of my other Axel Brand mysteries as well, also free. I hope eventually to have all my Axel Brand mysteries available in print as well as electronic form. The first two, The Hotel Dick, and The Dead Genius, were published by Five Star some years ago, and got fine reviews.
It is one of my Joe Sonntag mysteries, set in midcentury Milwaukee, an industrial city largely populated by eastern European first and second-generation Americans. Most of my Sonntag mysteries involve deeply proletarian and humble people struggling to make a living, usually through hard factory labor. My series hero, Lieutenant Joe Sonntag, heads the Milwaukee police investigations bureau.
I write these mysteries under a pseudonym, Axel Brand, to distinguish the work from what I do as an historical novelist, largely in another genre. I have tentatively chosen a title for this one, Best Forgotten. It gets off to a shocking start: at a church potluck social, a man suddenly shoots his wife in front of a crowd of witnesses, just after the pastor offers a grace and people are digging in for a bountiful meal. The story is about what happens afterward, and why.
To celebrate this event, the book will be offered free for a month, and I may also offer some of my other Axel Brand mysteries as well, also free. I hope eventually to have all my Axel Brand mysteries available in print as well as electronic form. The first two, The Hotel Dick, and The Dead Genius, were published by Five Star some years ago, and got fine reviews.
March 13, 2015
Growing
About 1956 I heard for the first time Harry Belafonte sing the banana boat song. The music was strange to these bourgeois midwestern ears. Calypso. Something out of the deep southern world somewhere. But it was the message that caught me.
Come mister tally man, tally me banana, daylight come and I wanna go home.
The man had wrestled his bunches of bananas to the pier, and wanted his labor tallied, so he could go home before dawn, and fall into a numb sleep. It was a sort of toil that wore the body down, along with soul and heart.
It was my first glimpse of the hard world that traps most of the human race in endless toil, the labor barely repaid, exhausted men and women carrying their staggering loads, so the rest of the world can live in comfort. That has not changed much since 1956. Quietly, invisibly, millions of mortals, children, adults, women, old men, carry their loads. Technology has not changed that. They sew for pennies an hour in Bangladesh, carry bananas into the holds of great vessels, grow yams in the grudging soil of Africa, and we consume these things that show up on the grocery shelves, and in the market aisles, wrought by grueling and dull labor.
In a way, Harry Belafonte introduced me to the real world. It took me a long time to grasp the meaning; to learn to empathize with these nameless workers whose lives spool out on plantations and factories and ports and ship bellies. They are anonymous, and but for some calypso music that fell upon alien ears in 1956, I would never have thought about them. Now, generations later, I have come to understand that it affected my writing, and gradually changed the way I perceive the world and its sadnesses.
Come mister tally man, tally me banana, daylight come and I wanna go home.
The man had wrestled his bunches of bananas to the pier, and wanted his labor tallied, so he could go home before dawn, and fall into a numb sleep. It was a sort of toil that wore the body down, along with soul and heart.
It was my first glimpse of the hard world that traps most of the human race in endless toil, the labor barely repaid, exhausted men and women carrying their staggering loads, so the rest of the world can live in comfort. That has not changed much since 1956. Quietly, invisibly, millions of mortals, children, adults, women, old men, carry their loads. Technology has not changed that. They sew for pennies an hour in Bangladesh, carry bananas into the holds of great vessels, grow yams in the grudging soil of Africa, and we consume these things that show up on the grocery shelves, and in the market aisles, wrought by grueling and dull labor.
In a way, Harry Belafonte introduced me to the real world. It took me a long time to grasp the meaning; to learn to empathize with these nameless workers whose lives spool out on plantations and factories and ports and ship bellies. They are anonymous, and but for some calypso music that fell upon alien ears in 1956, I would never have thought about them. Now, generations later, I have come to understand that it affected my writing, and gradually changed the way I perceive the world and its sadnesses.
