Ted Rabinowitz's Blog, page 43

Dang, Sandy Is Loud! Monday, 6:15 PM

The wind really is something up here on the 27th floor.
The water in the toilet is sloshing back and forth a little as the high winds shift the air pressure in the apartment, just a little bit.
I guess the thing that really gets you, if you grew up in New York City, is the unnatural feeling of it all. Hurricanes never happened in the city, in all the years I grew up here. Now, two hurricanes in two years - and big ones.

Sandy Is Here - 3:30 PM Monday

While there is some rain, the real power is in the wind. You can hear it whoosh past the windows. It's when that turns into a whistle that it gets a little scary, because the speed has increased, a lot, and the windows begin to rattle.

If you look out and down, you'll see wet, brown flying leaves. Even though you know the wind is shooting downtown, the leaves themselves are flying in all directions.

The cloud cover isn't that thick. If it weren't for the sound of the wind, it might almost be an ordinary rainy day - until you look more closely out the window and what rain there is being blown sideways along Amsterdam Avenue.

Sandy Is Coming, Pt. 2: 9:00 AM Monday

So far, Sandy's a drizzle in NYC.

I've been tracking the storm's path on Wunderground.com.
I've been tracking the storm's media freakout on Google News.

According to the Weather Underground site, the eye of the storm will hit land south of Philadelphia and loop around the metro area as a Category 1 hurricane, declining to a Tropical Storm by Wednesday.

But according to the TV and newspapers, it will destroy all life as we know it on the East Coast.

Hmm. Cognitive dissonance.

(I hope I'm able to maintain this insouciant attitude, by the way.)

Why Is That So Good, pt. 2: "Too Lazy to Be a Farmer"

As I said here, there are some scenes and passages that just hit that perfect note. Maybe it's awe. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's just pure frikkin' cool. However they succeed, it makes sense for us writers to dissect them and see what makes them tick, no?

So...Robert Heinlein. One of the Greats, with a capital G. In recent years, he's been sorta-kinda associated with militarism, libertarianism, and polyamory. But anyone who's read more than Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress knows that his biggest ideology was anti-ideology. He was always a patriot; he cherished the military values of honor and courage; but he was also a writer who kept asking questions that were political and philosophical as well as scientific. In other words, he had a vision that was far too broad to be hemmed in by musty "isms," and he loved to play with ideas. He certainly believed in self reliance, but he was also a big enough human being to avoid the "I've got mine" selfishness of Objectivism.

Which brings us to my favorite passage. This is from Heinlein's novella Revolt in 2100 (also known as If This Goes On-) another of his spine-chillingly prescient works. Written in 1940, it describes a future in which Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher,

Zeb lay back, smoking, and let me stew. I knew that he smoked and he knew that I disapproved. But it was a minor sin and, when we were rooming together in the Palace barracks, I would never have thought of reporting him. I even knew which room servant was his bootlegger. "Who is sneaking your smokes in now?" I asked, wishing to change the subject.

"Eh? Why, you buy them at the P.X., of course." He held the dirty thing out and looked at it. "These Mexican cigarettes are stronger than I like. I suspect that they use real tobacco in them, instead of the bridge sweepings I'm used to. Want one?"

"Huh? Oh, no, thanks!"

He grinned wryly. "Go ahead, give me your usual lecture. It'll make you feel better."

"Now look here, Zeb, I wasn't criticizing. I suppose it's just one of the many things I've been wrong about."

"Oh, no. It's a dirty, filthy habit that ruins my wind and stains my teeth and may eventually kill me off with lung cancer." He took a deep inhalation, let the smoke trickle out of the corners of his mouth, and looked profoundly contented. "But it just happens that I like dirty, filthy habits."

He took another puff. "But it's not a sin and my punishment for it is here and now, in the way my mouth tastes each morning. The Great Architect doesn't give a shout in Sheol about it. Catch on, old son? He isn't even watching."

"There is no need to be sacrilegious."

"I wasn't being so."

"You weren't, eh? You were scoffing at one of the most fundamental - perhaps the one fundamental - proposition in religion: the certainty that God is watching!"

"Who told you?"

For a moment all I could do was to sputter. "Why, it isn't necessary. It's an axiomatic certainty. It's -"

"I repeat, who told you? See here, I retract what I said. Perhaps the Almighty is watching me smoke. Perhaps it is a mortal sin and I will burn for it for eons. Perhaps. But who told you? Johnnie, you've reached the point where you are willing to kick the Prophet out and hang him to a tall, tall tree. Yet you are willing to assert your own religious convictions and to use them as a touchstone to judge my conduct. So I repeat: Who told you? What hill were you standing on when the lightning came down from Heaven and illuminated you? Which archangel carried the message?"

I did not answer at once. I could not. When I did it was with a feeling of shock and cold loneliness. "Zeb... I think I understand you at last. You are an- atheist. Aren't you?"

Zeb looked at me bleakly. "Don't call me an atheist," he said slowly, "unless you are really looking for trouble."

"Then you aren't one?" I felt a wave of relief, although I still didn't understand him.

"No, I am not. Not that it is any of your business. My religious faith is a private matter between me and my God. What my inner beliefs are you will have to judge by my actions... for you are not invited to question me about them. I decline to explain them nor to justify them to you. Nor to anyone... not the Lodge Master... nor the Grand Inquisitor, if it comes to that."

"But you do believe in God?"

"I told you so, didn't I? Not that you had any business asking me."

"Then you must believe in other things?"

"Of course I do! I believe that a man has an obligation to be merciful to the weak…patient with the stupid... generous with the poor. I think he is obliged to lay down his life for his brothers, should it be required of him. But I don't propose to prove any of those things; they are beyond proof. And I don't demand that you believe as I do."

I let out my breath. "I'm satisfied, Zeb."

Instead of looking pleased he answered, "That's mighty kind of you, brother, mighty kind! Sorry-I shouldn't be sarcastic. But I had no intention of asking for your approval. You goaded me - accidentally, I'm sure - into discussing matters that I never intend to discuss." He stopped to light up another of those stinking cigarettes and went on more quietly. "John, I suppose that I am, in my own cantankerous way, a very narrow man myself. I believe very strongly in freedom of religion - but I think that that freedom is best expressed as freedom to keep quiet. From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit."

"Huh?"

"Not every case – I've known the good and the humble and the devout. But how about the man who claims to know what the Great Architect is thinking? The man who claims to be privy to His Inner Plans? It strikes me as sacrilegious conceit of the worst sort - this character probably has never been any closer to His Trestle Board than you or I. But it makes him feel good to claim to be on chummy terms with the Almighty, it builds his ego, and lets him lay down the law to you and me. Pfui! Along comes a knothead with a loud voice, an I.Q. around 90, hair in his ears, dirty underwear, and a lot of ambition. He's too lazy to be a farmer, too stupid to be an engineer, too unreliable to be a banker- but, brother, can he pray! After a while he has gathered around him other knotheads who don't have his vivid imagination and self-assurance but like the idea of having a direct line to Omnipotence. Then this character is no longer Nehemiah Scudder, but the First Prophet."

There's more, of course. And admittedly, one of the reasons I like this passage is that - as a Jew - I've been the target of missionaries myself, and I consider the imposition of one's religious viewpoint on others (especially when it's called "sharing our beliefs"!) to be the height of bad manners. That said, let's take a look at what's going on.

First of all, don't let the seemingly simple language fool you. Heinlein is working on at least three different levels. Architecturally, he had a chunk of philosophy he wanted to get out there - so he embedded it in a conflict between his protagonist, John Lyle, and John's biggest source of spiritual support - Zeb. The emotional stakes are therefore automatically high. Embedding non-plot exposition in a conflict or argument is one of the oldest tricks in the book - because it's so darned effective.

Next, check out the language. Look at that specificity! Every point Zeb makes has some concrete image attached to it; but every proposition of John Lyle's is vague and abstract. John Lyle uses words like "axiomatic certainty," "sacrilegious," and "atheist." He's talking about ideas. Zeb, on the other hand, talks about people: the Grand Inquisitor; the First Prophet; the obligations he feels toward his fellow man. And while John gears up for a philosophical debate, Zeb specifically forswears any argument: "I don't propose to prove any of those things. They are beyond proof." Heinlein the author has loaded the dice and stacked the deck. How could you *not* agree with Zeb?

Then there's the rhythm. Zeb speaks more than John - having been "goaded" into it - and that gives Heinlein the opportunity to work patterns and rhythms into what he's saying - especially rhythmic parallelisms: "He's too lazy to be a farmer, too stupid to be an engineer, too unreliable to be a banker..." "I believe that a man has an obligation to be merciful to the weak...patient with the stupid...generous with the poor..." The phrase that then breaks the pattern has added impact.

It's also a treat in a work of science fiction to find old Americanisms on the cusp of quaintness: "Cantankerous," "knothead,""character." With the exception of a few works like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein usually doesn't try to make his characters' dialogue sound futuristic. (When it does, it's often because the characters are specifically referring to items that Heinlein has created for them.) This makes his stories more, not less believable. In this instance, it's a brilliant way to "ground" the discussion - talking about the biggest and most important of intellectual concepts in a deliberately down-home, but accurate, way.

(As a side note, did you notice the inclusiveness of the religious references? Zeb doesn't just talk about "standing on a hill" - a clear reference to Mt. Sinai and the Beatitudes; he also mentions an "archangel carrying the message," which is how Mohammed receives the Koran from Gabriel, and "the Great Architect" and the "Trestle Table," which are Masonic metaphors.)

It's also telling that the entire discussion, which deals with the central ideas of the book and threatens the friendship of the two main characters, is started by something as trivial (certainly to 1940s readers) as smoking a cigarette. It also shows how familiar Heinlein was with the tenets of Baptist and Evangelical congregations of the time, which frowned on smoking, along with drinking, dancing, and so on.

But in the end, what really holds the passage together is contempt - Heinlein's righteous contempt for all the Jimmy Swaggarts, Ralph Reeds, and James Dobsons of the world. And wouldn't that be enough, all by itself?

Hmm. Apocalyptic Storm? End of the World?

Time to get cracking on Chapter Eight!

Yep, this is my writing time.

Sandy Is Coming

2:30 PM. Want to buy batteries at the Duane Reade? In and out in five minutes. Want to buy delicious crostini at the Trader Joes? The line is around the block.

Heh-heh-heh.

Make sure you get your pesto and your olive tapenade, my beautiful, impractical neighbors.

Why Is That So Good?

Every now and then there's a passage that just works. It makes you grin, or raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Some of them are so good that they enter into fan history. (That's not just true of speculative fiction, by the way; ask any English lit enthusiast about the "Disgusting English Candy Drill" in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.)


I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of the goodies in science fiction and fantasy, starting with the "White Tiger" scene from Barry Hughart's Eight Skilled Gentlemen. Master Li, an ancient, cunning, and somewhat alcoholic Chinese Sherlock Holmes, is administering a faith healing to the Weasel, a local ne'er-do-well who is dying of the plague. Li knows that the Weasel is going to die, and the ceremony is really for the benefit of the Weasel's wife, but Li's invocation (possibly inspired by a genuine Chinese ceremony - it feels authentic) still sends chills down the spine:

That meant cutting a tiger shape from a piece of paper and writing on it, "The Unicorn Is Here!" This invokes the auspicious star that neutralizes baneful influences, and I cut the sick man's arm to draw enough blood to stain the tiger red. The Weasel's wife had brought the other things, and the two of us knelt in prayer while Master Li spread his arms above the patient.

"Weasel, having fallen ill on a jen-hsu day you have collided in the north with the Divine Killer with Hair Unbound Who Flies in the Heavens," the old man intoned as a priestly chant. "In the south you have encountered the Vermilion Bird, and in the east you have met the Five Specters, but it is in the west where danger lies, for there you have angered the Tiger who is the End of Autumn, the Edge of Metal, the White of Mourning, and the End of the Great Mystery."

Master Li spread water and incense around and lifted his eyes and arms to the west.

"O Divine White Tiger of the Despoiling Demons of the Five Directions, of the Talismans of Sickness and Ruin of the Year, of the Gate of Mourning and the Funeral Guest and the Spirits of the Dead, of the Celestial Departments and Terrestrial Forests, of the Earth and of Heaven, of the Seventy-two Hou and the Eight Trigrams and the Nine Palaces and the Central Palace Thunder, O Great Lord Tiger who enters houses and carries out great massacres, O Tiger who lies in wait beside the road and behind the well, O Tiger who lurks behind the stove and in the hall, O Tiger who stands beside the bed and behind the door of each dwelling, O Tiger who must enter into all fates, O White Tiger, Great White Tiger, your humble servant the Weasel has grossly insulted you, and we bring you his food! We bring you his wine! We bring you his money! We bring you his blood!"

Master Li signaled for the wife to rise and make offerings of food, wine, and money after touching each item to the bloodstained paper tiger.

"O Tiger, eat of the Weasel's food, and take away with his food the Divine Killer of Ascents and Descents and the Beginning and Ending of All Roads! O Tiger, drink of the Weasel's wine, and take away with his wine the Large Dead King and the Small Dead King Who Pull Out the Intestines and Drain the Stomach! O Tiger, take away the Weasel's money as you take away the Divine Killer One Meets as One Moves the Bed and Replaces the Matting, and the Killer Who Drives In Stakes and Puts Up Enclosures! O Tiger, Great White Tiger, eat of the blood upon this talisman of your sacred image, for it is the blood of your offending servant, and if your anger still demands his death, we offer his body in sacrifice."

Master Li pulled straw from the patient's pallet and swiftly twisted it into a man-shaped doll. He touched the doll all over with the bloodstained tiger image.

"You that are nothing but a body of straw have been touched by White Tiger Great-Killer-Thunder, and lo! you have become the body of the Weasel," Master Li chanted.

He signaled, and the Weasel's young wife connected twelve red threads to the straw doll and touched the other ends to her husband's body, and Master Li made hieratic passes as he coaxed the last sickness demons to cross the bridges of the threads from the Weasel into the doll. Then Master Li removed the threads, symbolically cutting each one. He passed the doll three times over the Weasel's stomach and four times over his back, and finally he raised the doll on high and plunged his knife through it.

"Behold, Ye Who Are the Beginning of all Endings and the Ending of all Beginnings, he who has offended you is dead! Great White Tiger, Lord of the Universe, your triumph is now complete!" the sage cried.

The Weasel had been in delirium throughout all this, but the mind is a strange creature. Somehow something got through, and he calmed and breathed much easier, and his fever had almost vanished when we left. Nonetheless, Master Li immediately proceeded to the neighbors to make sure help was ready and waiting when the worst happened. He has great respect for faith healing, but there are limits.

For students of anthropology and psychology, this scene is an example of sympathetic magic straight out of The Golden Bough. The Law of Similarity turns the straw doll into the body of the sick man; the paper cutout is the stand-in for the White Tiger; the threads help establish the Law of Contagion.
For writers, it's just terrific prose. The chills start with the phrase "The Tiger who is the End of Autumn, the Edge of Metal, the White of Mourning, and the End of the Great Mystery." They continue through the descriptions of the Tiger's domains: "...the Talismans of Sickness and the Ruin of the Year, the Gate of Mourning and the Funeral Guests and the Spirits of the Dead..." 
In the entire description of the White Tiger - whom Westerners would probably call the Angel of Death - there are virtually NO adjectives. The tiger is never "deadly" or "vicious" or "terrifying." All of the descriptions are either noun-based ("of the Celestial Departments and the Terrestrial Forests") or verb-based ("O Tiger who lurks behind the stove and in the hall...") This makes the description profoundly concrete.
Parallelism does a lot of work, too:
...O Great Lord Tiger who enters houses and carries out great massacres, O Tiger who lies in wait beside the road and behind the well, O Tiger who lurks behind the stove and in the hall, O Tiger who stands beside the bed and behind the door of each dwelling, O Tiger who must enter into all fates...

Any speechwriter will tell you that repeating phrase structure will give punch to your message.
Then there's the specificity of the images. The "divine killer one meets when one moves the bed and replaces the matting" was obviously written by someone who had seen dangerous vermin in bedding. (I have a couple of friends from New Mexico who shouted "scorpions!" as soon as they read it.) The "Celestial departments and the Terrestrial forests" tells you that the Tiger goes everywhere, is a part of the order of things, and not even heavenly beings are safe from it.
And finally, there's the implication the White Tiger isn't just Death, but is the King of Death who controls other Deaths - the Killer Who Drives In Stakes and Puts Up Enclosures; the Divine Killer of Ascents and Descents; etc.
Add up those four techniques, and you've got an invocation any fantasy writer would be proud of.
Next Up: Robert Heinlein's straight-up Missouri apologia for religious tolerance.

Why's That So Good?

Every now and then there's a passage that just works. It makes you grin, or raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Some of them are so good that they enter into fan history. (That's not just true of speculative fiction, by the way; ask any English lit enthusiast about the "Disgusting English Candy Drill" in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.)


I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of the goodies in science fiction and fantasy, starting with a paragraph from Barry Hughart's Eight Skilled Gentlemen. Master Li, an ancient, cunning, and somewhat alcoholic Chinese Sherlock Holmes, is administering a faith healing to the Weasel, a local ne'er-do-well who is dying of the plague. Li knows that the Weasel is going to die, and the invocation is really for the benefit of the Weasel's wife, but Li's invocation (possibly inspired by a genuine Chinese ceremony - I can't be certain, but damn, it feels authentic) still sends chills down the spine:

Then Master Li shook himself like a dog shedding water, and added, "Hell, I'm probably imagining things. Let's do what we can." 
That meant cutting a tiger shape from a piece of paper and writing on it, "The Unicorn Is Here!" This invokes the auspicious star that neutralizes baneful influences, and I cut the sick man's arm to draw enough blood to stain the tiger red. The Weasel's wife had brought the other things, and the two of us knelt in prayer while Master Li spread his arms above the patient.

"Weasel, having fallen ill on a jen-hsu day you have collided in the north with the Divine Killer with Hair Unbound Who Flies in the Heavens," the old man intoned as a priestly chant. "In the south you have encountered the Vermilion Bird, and in the east you have met the Five Specters, but it is in the west where danger lies, for there you have angered the Tiger who is the End of Autumn, the Edge of Metal, the White of Mourning, and the End of the Great Mystery."

Master Li spread water and incense around and lifted his eyes and arms to the west.

"O Divine White Tiger of the Despoiling Demons of the Five Directions, of the Talismans of Sickness and Ruin of the Year, of the Gate of Mourning and the Funeral Guest and the Spirits of the Dead, of the Celestial Departments and Terrestrial Forests, of the Earth and of Heaven, of the Seventy-two Hou and the Eight Trigrams and the Nine Palaces and the Central Palace Thunder, O Great Lord Tiger who enters houses and carries out great massacres, O Tiger who lies in wait beside the road and behind the well, O Tiger who lurks behind the stove and in the hall, O Tiger who stands beside the bed and behind the door of each dwelling, O Tiger who must enter into all fates, O White Tiger, Great White Tiger, your humble servant the Weasel has grossly insulted you, and we bring you his food! We bring you his wine! We bring you his money! We bring you his blood!"

Master Li signaled for the wife to rise and make offerings of food, wine, and money after touching each item to the bloodstained paper tiger.

"O Tiger, eat of the Weasel's food, and take away with his food the Divine Killer of Ascents and Descents and the Beginning and Ending of All Roads! O Tiger, drink of the Weasel's wine, and take away with his wine the Large Dead King and the Small Dead King Who Pull Out the Intestines and Drain the Stomach! O Tiger, take away the Weasel's money as you take away the Divine Killer One Meets as One Moves the Bed and Replaces the Matting, and the Killer Who Drives In Stakes and Puts Up Enclosures! O Tiger, Great White Tiger, eat of the blood upon this talisman of your sacred image, for it is the blood of your offending servant, and if your anger still demands his death, we offer his body in sacrifice."

Master Li pulled straw from the patient's pallet and swiftly twisted it into a man-shaped doll. He touched the doll all over with the bloodstained tiger image.

"You that are nothing but a body of straw have been touched by White Tiger Great-Killer-Thunder, and lo! you have become the body of the Weasel," Master Li chanted.

He signaled, and the Weasel's young wife connected twelve red threads to the straw doll and touched the other ends to her husband's body, and Master Li made hieratic passes as he coaxed the last sickness demons to cross the bridges of the threads from the Weasel into the doll. Then Master Li removed the threads, symbolically cutting each one. He passed the doll three times over the Weasel's stomach and four times over his back, and finally he raised the doll on high and plunged his knife through it.

"Behold, Ye Who Are the Beginning of all Endings and the Ending of all Beginnings, he who has offended you is dead! Great White Tiger, Lord of the Universe, your triumph is now complete!" the sage cried.

The Weasel had been in delirium throughout all this, but the mind is a strange creature. Somehow something got through, and he calmed and breathed much easier, and his fever had almost vanished when we left. Nonetheless, Master Li immediately proceeded to the neighbors to make sure help was ready and waiting when the worst happened. He has great respect for faith healing, but there are limits.

For students of anthropology and psychology, this scene is an example of sympathetic magic straight out of The Golden Bough. The Law of Similarity turns the straw doll into the body of the sick man; the paper cutout is the stand-in for the White Tiger; the threads help establish the Law of Contagion.
For writers, it's just terrific prose. The chills start with the phrase "The Tiger who is the End of Autumn, the Edge of Metal, the White of Mourning, and the End of the Great Mystery." They continue through the descriptions of the Tiger's domains: "...the Talismans of Sickness and the Ruin of the Year, the Gate of Mourning and the Funeral Guests and the Spirits of the Dead..." 
In the entire description of the White Tiger - whom Westerners would probably call the Angel of Death - there are virtually NO adjectives. The tiger is never "deadly" or "vicious" or "terrifying." All of the descriptions are either noun-based ("of the Celestial Departments and the Terrestrial Forests") or verb-based ("O Tiger who lurks behind the stove and in the hall...") This makes the description profoundly concrete.
Parallelism does a lot of work, too:
...O Great Lord Tiger who enters houses and carries out great massacres, O Tiger who lies in wait beside the road and behind the well, O Tiger who lurks behind the stove and in the hall, O Tiger who stands beside the bed and behind the door of each dwelling, O Tiger who must enter into all fates...

Any speechwriter will tell you that repeating phrase structure will give punch to your message.
Then there's the specificity of the images. The "divine killer one meets when one moves the bed and replaces the matting" was obviously written by someone who had seen dangerous vermin in bedding. (I have a couple of friends from New Mexico who shouted "scorpions!" as soon as they read it.) The "Celestial departments and the Terrestrial forests" tells you that the Tiger goes everywhere, is a part of the order of things, and not even heavenly beings are safe from it.
And finally, there's the implication the White Tiger isn't just Death, but is the King of Death who controls other Deaths - the Killer Who Drives In Stakes and Puts Up Enclosures; the Divine Killer of Ascents and Descents; etc.
Add up those four techniques, and you've got an invocation any fantasy writer would be proud of.
Next Up: Robert Heinlein's straight-up Missouri apologia for religious tolerance.

I Met Tippi Hedren

For reals.

HBO's doing this docudrama about Hitchcock's abuse of her. Having met Ms. Hedren briefly, I'm on her side.

I was working as an electrician on a low-budget indie film (I never saw the finished product in theaters, but years later, in Vienna, I saw it running on a hotel TV under the title "Der Labyrinthen Der Leydenschaft"). Tippi was one of the supporting players. She still looked great, and she was gracious to everyone.

And that's it. Nothing more to say - although it was admittedly great for a recent film-school grad to be on the same set.

Stanford Ovshinsky, RIP

Stan Ovshinsky passed away today. His bio sounds like that of a late 20th Century Tesla.

He never went to college. He worked as a machinist, and got his first patent at the age of 24.
His company was called Energy Conversion Devices, and he achieved breakthroughs in the technologies we'll need to break free of fossil fuels: Solar cells. Hydrogen fuel cells. Semiconductors. He invented the amorphous semiconductor technology that allowed the creation of rewritable CDs and DVDs. He invented the rechargeable nickel-hydride battery technology in cordless drills and the Toyota Prius.
He also burned through millions of dollars of his own and investors' money. American industrialists didn't take him seriously until the Japanese took an interest in the '80s.
“I don’t relish the role of being a prophet in the wilderness," he said. "But I recognize that we’re agents of change and change is difficult.”