Lev Raphael's Blog, page 71
October 10, 2010
Don't Be an Amateur: 5 Ways Authors Can Be Better Performers
Next week I'll be going on tour in Germany to do readings from my 19th book, a memoir called My Germany. While practicing the book's prologue in English and in German this past month, I've been thinking a lot about author readings.
Why are so many of them awful? What do many authors do wrong, and what do they need to know?
T.C. Boyle once said that "Most writers are writers because they are introverts who have chosen a profession in which they don't have to deal with anyone." While it may be painful for them to be out in the public eye, it shouldn't be painful for people to hear them. Here are five things authors should do to become skilled at this very demanding and essential side of the profession.
Get directors notes from someone tough but fair. A reading is a performance. Don't ever forget that you're entertaining an audience and interacting with it. You need to see yourself as onstage, and that means getting somebody you trust to give you honest feedback from more than one reading. What's your pacing like? Are you stopping at the right points? Is your voice under control? Are you pushing too hard or holding back? Does the reading flow naturally or does it seem staged and forced? How's your diction? Do you project enough? Every detail counts.
Have yourself filmed, then watch and listen for physical and verbal tics. It can be awkward or even distressing to study yourself, but it's vital. You need to discover whether you touch your hair too much or scratch or gesture too broadly or smile at the wrong times, or look grim, or keep saying "umm" or if there's anything you do that might distract or bore an audience. A voice recording will also help you immensely, and be prepared to dislike the sound of your own voice and feel self-conscious at first. Most people do. You'll get over it, just as you can eliminate your tics.
Be completely familiar with your work. Eye contact is a major part of a reading -- you do not want to keep your eyes down on the text too much. What's duller than an author who mumbles and doesn't look at the audience? I had a friend who read the same short story from her first book at every reading for more than a year and had basically memorized it. She could do it differently each time because she had it down cold and could work each of her audiences, interacting with them and feeding off the particular energy of that evening. She was terrific.
Time your reading. This is especially crucial if you're on with one or two other writers. Don't be a hog! You risk annoying your audience and the other writers if you exceed your allotted time, and you'll make listeners squirm. Even when you're on your own, less is always more. If someone gives you half an hour, don't plan material that lasts that long, go for twenty instead. That gives you more room to maneuver within your text and slow down. Reading a shorter selection also allows more time for Q&A where you get to share the stage and give the audience a different way of getting to know you.
Never apologize. That's a sign of weakness as Gibbs says on NCIS. Don't be overly deferential or self-deprecating. Don't say anything about the difficulties you had choosing what to read, or say what you're reading may be hard to follow, or that you're new at this, or you're not as good as the previous reader, or do anything else to undermine your own authority as the focus of people's attention. If you're not comfortable doing the reading, your audience won't be, either. Confidence is not the same as arrogance.
I was lucky going on my first tour, because I started with some basic advantages. I was an extrovert. I had acted in college and was comfortable with an audience. I also had years of teaching experience and every teacher knows that's like doing a one-man show each class.
But despite all that, I had never read my own work to an audience, and it demanded a total reorientation. I had to learn new skills while honing old ones. And even though I've done hundreds of invited readings on three different continents since then, I know I can still keep perfecting my craft.
A recent here.
Why are so many of them awful? What do many authors do wrong, and what do they need to know?
T.C. Boyle once said that "Most writers are writers because they are introverts who have chosen a profession in which they don't have to deal with anyone." While it may be painful for them to be out in the public eye, it shouldn't be painful for people to hear them. Here are five things authors should do to become skilled at this very demanding and essential side of the profession.
Get directors notes from someone tough but fair. A reading is a performance. Don't ever forget that you're entertaining an audience and interacting with it. You need to see yourself as onstage, and that means getting somebody you trust to give you honest feedback from more than one reading. What's your pacing like? Are you stopping at the right points? Is your voice under control? Are you pushing too hard or holding back? Does the reading flow naturally or does it seem staged and forced? How's your diction? Do you project enough? Every detail counts.
Have yourself filmed, then watch and listen for physical and verbal tics. It can be awkward or even distressing to study yourself, but it's vital. You need to discover whether you touch your hair too much or scratch or gesture too broadly or smile at the wrong times, or look grim, or keep saying "umm" or if there's anything you do that might distract or bore an audience. A voice recording will also help you immensely, and be prepared to dislike the sound of your own voice and feel self-conscious at first. Most people do. You'll get over it, just as you can eliminate your tics.
Be completely familiar with your work. Eye contact is a major part of a reading -- you do not want to keep your eyes down on the text too much. What's duller than an author who mumbles and doesn't look at the audience? I had a friend who read the same short story from her first book at every reading for more than a year and had basically memorized it. She could do it differently each time because she had it down cold and could work each of her audiences, interacting with them and feeding off the particular energy of that evening. She was terrific.
Time your reading. This is especially crucial if you're on with one or two other writers. Don't be a hog! You risk annoying your audience and the other writers if you exceed your allotted time, and you'll make listeners squirm. Even when you're on your own, less is always more. If someone gives you half an hour, don't plan material that lasts that long, go for twenty instead. That gives you more room to maneuver within your text and slow down. Reading a shorter selection also allows more time for Q&A where you get to share the stage and give the audience a different way of getting to know you.
Never apologize. That's a sign of weakness as Gibbs says on NCIS. Don't be overly deferential or self-deprecating. Don't say anything about the difficulties you had choosing what to read, or say what you're reading may be hard to follow, or that you're new at this, or you're not as good as the previous reader, or do anything else to undermine your own authority as the focus of people's attention. If you're not comfortable doing the reading, your audience won't be, either. Confidence is not the same as arrogance.
I was lucky going on my first tour, because I started with some basic advantages. I was an extrovert. I had acted in college and was comfortable with an audience. I also had years of teaching experience and every teacher knows that's like doing a one-man show each class.
But despite all that, I had never read my own work to an audience, and it demanded a total reorientation. I had to learn new skills while honing old ones. And even though I've done hundreds of invited readings on three different continents since then, I know I can still keep perfecting my craft.
A recent here.
October 6, 2010
The Story Behind Tony Curtis' Sweet Smell of Success
Even before he died last week, any mention Tony Curtis made most people think of Billy Wilder's classic Some Like it Hot. But for me, it was and will always be Sweet Smell of Success. There's never been New York noir as blistering and beautiful. And there's never been a performance like his as the scheming press agent, Sidney Falco.
Curtis plays the quintessential fast-talking New Yorker: sarcastic, brash, grasping, sharp-elbowed, success-crazed, womanizing, egocentric, quick-thinking. He's as fake as a senatorial comb-over.
The movie is anchored by another native New Yorker, the feral Burt Lancaster playing Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker. Lancaster broods like a bulldog and snarls like a thug, his vicious, beady-eyed character modeled after Walter Winchell, but it's Curtis who gives the movie its electricity.
Curtis dances frantically around Lancaster, trying to place items in his nationally syndicated gossip column. He grovels, he courts Lancaster, does him favors, anything so that he can stop living a dog-eat-dog life. What does he want? To live.
Pursuing this crass American dream, reputations are shredded and lives are destroyed.
The movie attacked McCarthyism and grew out of the blacklist, as lovingly detailed by James Naremore in his terrific study of the film. But even though it's become a classic over time, most of its fans probably haven't read the story it was based on, Ernest Lehman's novella of the same name.
Nominated for six Oscars, Lehman had stellar film credits including North by Northwest, Sabrina, The Sound of Music, and Executive Suite, but before he got to Hollywood, he was writing fiction for some of the biggest magazines of the 1950s like Cosmopolitan. That's where the novella originally appeared with the title "Tell Me About it Tomorrow!" The editor apparently chose that phrase from the novella because the word "smell" in a title was objectionable -- Hemingway and John Hersey had fiction in the same issue of Cosmopolitan and you have to wonder if their titles were messed with, too.
At just under sixty pages, the novella is told in Sidney's voice and focuses from the very opening on J.J. Hunsecker's desire to break up his sister Susan's romance with a young crooner. Hunsecker's smothering care for her isn't just incestuous, it's pathologically violent.
Sidney ricochets from one tight corner to another, deeply ashamed of his own machinations, and stunned by Hunsecker's obsession with his fame and with his sister, who is a much stronger, more defiant figure in the novella than on film.
Taking place over a few sweaty August days, the novella is profoundly claustrophobic because we're trapped in Sidney's vision and his desperation. It's a story of interiors -- offices, bedrooms, night clubs -- that was brilliantly opened up by the Clifford Odets rewrite of Lehman's screenplay to show us one New York street after another, the city both gleaming and dangerous. Odets scraped away any trace of Sidney's family, which looks down on his job and considers the money he earns filthy. That makes the press agent seem more isolated, giving his manipulative "boss" Hunsecker even more power over him that he has in the novella.
You can feel some pity for Sidney in the Lehman novella, which was carved out of an unfinished novel along with two much shorter stories. Sidney understands the tawdriness of his dreams, though he can't free himself of their power over him. And he has a real conscience, though its activity is fitful. His role in the "young and growing empire" of PR disgusts him -- what's the point of it all?
Now we have 24/7 PR and gossip in the never-fading glare of the Internet that's even brighter than the new, improved Times Square. The trash cans have become a Delete key.
Curtis plays the quintessential fast-talking New Yorker: sarcastic, brash, grasping, sharp-elbowed, success-crazed, womanizing, egocentric, quick-thinking. He's as fake as a senatorial comb-over.
The movie is anchored by another native New Yorker, the feral Burt Lancaster playing Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker. Lancaster broods like a bulldog and snarls like a thug, his vicious, beady-eyed character modeled after Walter Winchell, but it's Curtis who gives the movie its electricity.
Curtis dances frantically around Lancaster, trying to place items in his nationally syndicated gossip column. He grovels, he courts Lancaster, does him favors, anything so that he can stop living a dog-eat-dog life. What does he want? To live.
"Where it's always balmy. Where no one snaps his fingers and says, 'Hey, Shrimp, rack the balls!' Or, 'Hey, mouse, mouse, go out and buy me a pack of butts.' I don't want tips from the kitty. I'm in the big game with the big players."
Pursuing this crass American dream, reputations are shredded and lives are destroyed.
The movie attacked McCarthyism and grew out of the blacklist, as lovingly detailed by James Naremore in his terrific study of the film. But even though it's become a classic over time, most of its fans probably haven't read the story it was based on, Ernest Lehman's novella of the same name.
Nominated for six Oscars, Lehman had stellar film credits including North by Northwest, Sabrina, The Sound of Music, and Executive Suite, but before he got to Hollywood, he was writing fiction for some of the biggest magazines of the 1950s like Cosmopolitan. That's where the novella originally appeared with the title "Tell Me About it Tomorrow!" The editor apparently chose that phrase from the novella because the word "smell" in a title was objectionable -- Hemingway and John Hersey had fiction in the same issue of Cosmopolitan and you have to wonder if their titles were messed with, too.
At just under sixty pages, the novella is told in Sidney's voice and focuses from the very opening on J.J. Hunsecker's desire to break up his sister Susan's romance with a young crooner. Hunsecker's smothering care for her isn't just incestuous, it's pathologically violent.
Sidney ricochets from one tight corner to another, deeply ashamed of his own machinations, and stunned by Hunsecker's obsession with his fame and with his sister, who is a much stronger, more defiant figure in the novella than on film.
Taking place over a few sweaty August days, the novella is profoundly claustrophobic because we're trapped in Sidney's vision and his desperation. It's a story of interiors -- offices, bedrooms, night clubs -- that was brilliantly opened up by the Clifford Odets rewrite of Lehman's screenplay to show us one New York street after another, the city both gleaming and dangerous. Odets scraped away any trace of Sidney's family, which looks down on his job and considers the money he earns filthy. That makes the press agent seem more isolated, giving his manipulative "boss" Hunsecker even more power over him that he has in the novella.
You can feel some pity for Sidney in the Lehman novella, which was carved out of an unfinished novel along with two much shorter stories. Sidney understands the tawdriness of his dreams, though he can't free himself of their power over him. And he has a real conscience, though its activity is fitful. His role in the "young and growing empire" of PR disgusts him -- what's the point of it all?
"Broadway is one of those streets where it's light enough to read the morning papers in the miracle of the night before, and there's a trash can on every corner to remind you to do so. As I walked uptown I kept seeing the trash can on the corners. I kept seeing the newspapers in this trash cans and the Broadway columns in those newspapers and the lives that revolved around those columns. As I walked uptown, I kept seeing trash cans filled with people. And it didn't make me feel any better to know that I had filled more trash cans than any other press agent in town."
Now we have 24/7 PR and gossip in the never-fading glare of the Internet that's even brighter than the new, improved Times Square. The trash cans have become a Delete key.
September 28, 2010
Stephen King Is Wrong: Books Do More Than Tell a Story
Stephen King just said on CNN Money that books themselves aren't important since they're basically just a delivery system for a story. But they're much more than that: they're a canvas. I know. I've been painting on mine for years.
It started in college when I first bought books that weren't required reading. I'd already been highlighting textbook passages with yellow marker, and scrawling my name inside, so of course I wrote my name on the first page of these books, too. But I also put down the date of the purchase, the book store, a recent event, and who I was with at the time.
These scrawls sometimes proved amusingly opaque years later. Like: Great news on Wednesday. What about? Or: Argued with N. Who was N? And why were we arguing? Was it before I bought the book, after, was the book connected in some way? I've tried going back and comparing my journal at the time, but the cryptic notes don't open up their secret to me. But more often the inscription refers to a lunch with a lover or friend, and the scene opens up for me in a whole new way.
Having known for a long time that I wanted to be a writer, once I started buying books as a matter of course, anything I read was also a subject of study. I underlined passages, circled words I didn't know or wanted to use, bracketed or starred phrases worth remembering and quoting. Sometimes arrows would point to another page so I made sure I remembered a connection for later.
Great lines got the full treatment, and I'd note their pages in the front or back of the book, along with an identifying word or two, sometimes the whole phrase if it was memorable.
The more dedicated I became to writing as a career, the more the books I owned became a repository of ideas, notes, questions, descriptions of dreams inspired by the book, even short journal entries. It usually felt more immediate to keep the source of my inspiration and the idea closely connected. Some books have story titles, metaphors, character descriptions, opening lines written in the back or front -- and even in-between. More than a few have whole scenes worked out.
My books are also unexpected time capsules. I'm always running out of bookmarks, so many older books have had receipts, notes, to-do list and even letters tucked into them.
Once I started reviewing for The Detroit Free Press and other newspapers and magazines in the early 1990s, the intensity of my entrance into each book deepened. Though I wrote drafts on my pc, I usually started the review somewhere inside the book unless I wanted to pass it on to a friend or relative later. Then I'd have to restrain myself, keep pencils and pens away from the book at hand. It wasn't easy.
Biographies are a passion of mine, and whether I'm reviewing the book or not, they still seem to call out running commentary as I compare my life to the one I'm reading about. But I don't tend to write much snark no matter what the genre, because if as book pisses me off that much, I'm not likely to finish it. I do correct typos now and then. I can't resist.
Occasionally a book feels so much like a freight train car covered with graffiti that if I want to reread it, I just buy a new copy of the book. There it is, virginal, unmarked, waiting for me to dive right/write in. But I also keep the previous copy or copies because they form a small diary of my relationship to that text. I've just started reading books on my iPad, and while I enjoy the convenience and speed of downloading, I miss the physical interaction. Every book tells its own story, but the books in my library tell my stories as well.
It started in college when I first bought books that weren't required reading. I'd already been highlighting textbook passages with yellow marker, and scrawling my name inside, so of course I wrote my name on the first page of these books, too. But I also put down the date of the purchase, the book store, a recent event, and who I was with at the time.
These scrawls sometimes proved amusingly opaque years later. Like: Great news on Wednesday. What about? Or: Argued with N. Who was N? And why were we arguing? Was it before I bought the book, after, was the book connected in some way? I've tried going back and comparing my journal at the time, but the cryptic notes don't open up their secret to me. But more often the inscription refers to a lunch with a lover or friend, and the scene opens up for me in a whole new way.
Having known for a long time that I wanted to be a writer, once I started buying books as a matter of course, anything I read was also a subject of study. I underlined passages, circled words I didn't know or wanted to use, bracketed or starred phrases worth remembering and quoting. Sometimes arrows would point to another page so I made sure I remembered a connection for later.
Great lines got the full treatment, and I'd note their pages in the front or back of the book, along with an identifying word or two, sometimes the whole phrase if it was memorable.
The more dedicated I became to writing as a career, the more the books I owned became a repository of ideas, notes, questions, descriptions of dreams inspired by the book, even short journal entries. It usually felt more immediate to keep the source of my inspiration and the idea closely connected. Some books have story titles, metaphors, character descriptions, opening lines written in the back or front -- and even in-between. More than a few have whole scenes worked out.
My books are also unexpected time capsules. I'm always running out of bookmarks, so many older books have had receipts, notes, to-do list and even letters tucked into them.
Once I started reviewing for The Detroit Free Press and other newspapers and magazines in the early 1990s, the intensity of my entrance into each book deepened. Though I wrote drafts on my pc, I usually started the review somewhere inside the book unless I wanted to pass it on to a friend or relative later. Then I'd have to restrain myself, keep pencils and pens away from the book at hand. It wasn't easy.
Biographies are a passion of mine, and whether I'm reviewing the book or not, they still seem to call out running commentary as I compare my life to the one I'm reading about. But I don't tend to write much snark no matter what the genre, because if as book pisses me off that much, I'm not likely to finish it. I do correct typos now and then. I can't resist.
Occasionally a book feels so much like a freight train car covered with graffiti that if I want to reread it, I just buy a new copy of the book. There it is, virginal, unmarked, waiting for me to dive right/write in. But I also keep the previous copy or copies because they form a small diary of my relationship to that text. I've just started reading books on my iPad, and while I enjoy the convenience and speed of downloading, I miss the physical interaction. Every book tells its own story, but the books in my library tell my stories as well.
September 24, 2010
Did You Ever See Hitler?
I'm always on the lookout for terrific books by authors I don't know and I recently hit the jackpot. I was having coffee with a German Studies professor just back from research in Berlin. We were talking about Günter Grass and she said, "But everyone here knows him. You should read Kempowksi.
"Who?"
"He's the real deal," she said. "He's the one we'll be reading years from now, not Grass."
Well I wasn't going to wait after that kind of sales pitch, so I picked up the book she said I should st...
"Who?"
"He's the real deal," she said. "He's the one we'll be reading years from now, not Grass."
Well I wasn't going to wait after that kind of sales pitch, so I picked up the book she said I should st...
September 17, 2010
Is Oprah Sexist? Should Authors Say Less and Write More?
So Oprah picked Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom for her Book Club, despite the hullabaloo raised by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner about the amount of "sexist" press coverage his new novel was getting. Does that make Oprah sexist? And what will those highly successful commercial writers say now?
It makes me think back to 1988, when I made the leap from being published in magazines and newspapers to being anthologized. This was a whole new level of exposure, and very exciting. Sudden...
It makes me think back to 1988, when I made the leap from being published in magazines and newspapers to being anthologized. This was a whole new level of exposure, and very exciting. Sudden...
September 13, 2010
They Tortured Me for My Health -- Don't Let It Happen to You
From Prague to D.C. the new rage in tourist attractions is torture museums. Is that thanks to the Bush administration?
The closest I had ever come to torture was seeing it on "24," reading about it at Abu Ghraib, in the news, or in Arthur Koestler's classic about the Stalinist purges, "Darkness at Noon". So a story like the one about torture museums would have stayed at arm's length until recently, when I experienced torture myself.
Trying to track down a persistent throat problem I'd been ha...
The closest I had ever come to torture was seeing it on "24," reading about it at Abu Ghraib, in the news, or in Arthur Koestler's classic about the Stalinist purges, "Darkness at Noon". So a story like the one about torture museums would have stayed at arm's length until recently, when I experienced torture myself.
Trying to track down a persistent throat problem I'd been ha...
They Tortured Me for My Health
From Prague to D.C. the new rage in tourist attractions is torture museums. Is that thanks to the Bush administration?
The closest I had ever come to torture was seeing it on "24," reading about it at Abu Ghraib, in the news, or in Arthur Koestler's classic about the Stalinist purges, "Darkness at Noon". So a story like the one about torture museums would have stayed at arm's length until recently, when I experienced torture myself.
Trying to track down a persistent throat problem I'd been ha...
The closest I had ever come to torture was seeing it on "24," reading about it at Abu Ghraib, in the news, or in Arthur Koestler's classic about the Stalinist purges, "Darkness at Noon". So a story like the one about torture museums would have stayed at arm's length until recently, when I experienced torture myself.
Trying to track down a persistent throat problem I'd been ha...
September 7, 2010
Who Says Jane Austen Was a Popular Novelist?
Jane Austen has conquered the world, as the author of
Jane's Fame
puts it well. Austen is now a brand.
There's been no end of hit films and miniseries of her work and she's so much a part of our popular culture that we've gone light years beyond books featuring Jane as a detective to mash-ups with vampires and zombies. The sequel to Terminator Salvation is going to be subtitled Revenge of the Regency and Christian Bale goes back to save Jane and her novels from destruction. Could there be a...
There's been no end of hit films and miniseries of her work and she's so much a part of our popular culture that we've gone light years beyond books featuring Jane as a detective to mash-ups with vampires and zombies. The sequel to Terminator Salvation is going to be subtitled Revenge of the Regency and Christian Bale goes back to save Jane and her novels from destruction. Could there be a...
August 31, 2010
Filling the Burn Notice Void: What to Read Now That Season 4 Is on Hiatus
Burn Notice has aired the summer finale of its fourth hit season, so you might need a Michael Weston or Fiona fix. Why not try the three books inspired by the show?
I know novel tie-ins aren't dependably good fiction, but mystery writer Tod Goldberg has the show's style down pat.
The End Game , The Fix , and The Giveaway are fun thrillers. They don't just capture the Burn Notice zing, they're well-plotted and deftly written. Like the s...
I know novel tie-ins aren't dependably good fiction, but mystery writer Tod Goldberg has the show's style down pat.
The End Game , The Fix , and The Giveaway are fun thrillers. They don't just capture the Burn Notice zing, they're well-plotted and deftly written. Like the s...
Filling the Burn Notice Void: What to Read Now That Season 4 Is Over
Burn Notice has ended its fourth hit season, so you might need a Michael Weston or Fiona fix. Why not try the three books inspired by the show?
I know novel tie-ins aren't dependably good fiction, but mystery writer Tod Goldberg has the show's style down pat.
The End Game , The Fix , and The Giveaway are fun thrillers. They don't just capture the Burn Notice zing, they're well-plotted and deftly written. Like the show, Goldberg serves ...
I know novel tie-ins aren't dependably good fiction, but mystery writer Tod Goldberg has the show's style down pat.
The End Game , The Fix , and The Giveaway are fun thrillers. They don't just capture the Burn Notice zing, they're well-plotted and deftly written. Like the show, Goldberg serves ...
