Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 668

iPhone 7 unveiling features James Corden, “Carpool Karaoke” and a plumber named “Mario”

FILE - In this April 30, 2015 file photo, Apple CEO Tim Cook responds to a question during a news conference at IBM Watson headquarters, in New York. The dispute over whether Apple must help the FBI hack into a terror suspect's iPhone is about to play out in a Southern California courtroom. The hearing Tuesday, March 22, in U.S. District Court in Riverside is the first in the battle that has seen Cook and FBI Director James Comey spar over issues of privacy and national security. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) (Credit: AP)

Apple kicked off its unveiling of the iPhone 7 in the customary fashion — by having CEO Tim Cook hitch a ride to the proceedings with James Corden and sing a OneRepublic song “Carpool Karaoke”-style.

In addition to picking up Pharrell along the way, Corden asked a pointed question— “What are you gonna wear on stage? I’d wear a suit made of apples, a cane with an Apple on top. I’d walk out and be like, ‘This is it, bitches’”— but the entire sketch had a more obvious function, i.e. to serve as an advertisement for Apple Music’s exclusive “Carpool Karaoke” series, which will premiere in 2017.

After boasting about the number of total App Store downloads, Cook welcomed onstage a figure whose signature work is bound to add a few billion more to that total: Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo. Miyamoto announced that Apple and Nintendo were partnering to create “Super Mario Run.”

“The magic of Mario is that anyone can pick up the game and start playing; and now we’ve made it even simple,” Miyamoto said through a translator.

“The goal reminds the same: Collect coins, get to the flag at the end,” he added. “But now you can play it one-handed. You can play while standing on the subway or eating a Hamburger or eating an Apple.”

Hillary’s Humphrey-Gore problem: Stop finding excuses for defeat in advance, Democrats

Hubert Humphrey, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore (Credit: AP/Reuters/Rainier Ehrhardt/Steve Pope/Photo montage by Salon)

At least when Hubert Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election, nobody tried to pretend that the Democratic Party didn’t have a problem. Humphrey’s defeat came at the end of perhaps the most disastrous campaign season experienced by any political party in the modern era. (We will have to wait a bit longer before measuring it against this year’s Republican primary campaign.) Under the circumstances, it’s remarkable that election was as close as it was: Richard Nixon beat Humphrey by barely 500,000 votes nationwide, although the Electoral College was far more one-sided.

It was only in hindsight, when political scientists and party apparatchiks began to pick at the skeleton of that history-shaping year, that the election of Richard Nixon became Someone Else’s Fault. It was the fractious and irresponsible antiwar left; it was the racist white South. It was Pat Buchanan and George Wallace; it was the “white ethnic” working class, voting against its own interests in order to vote against hippies and dope and free love. It was hoity-toity liberals who couldn’t be bothered. I can’t find any evidence that anyone tried to blame the mainstream media for inflicting Nixon on the country, or not precisely in those terms. (Journalists generally hated Nixon’s guts, and the feeling was mutual.) But anything’s possible.

In other words, 1968 became the first opportunity to blame left-wing dissent and other marginal factors for the Democratic Party’s failings. It was an early draft of blaming Ralph Nader in 2000, or blaming Bernie Sanders now. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that neither of them voted for Humphrey in ‘68.) This tendency to shift responsibility for one’s own political incoherence onto nonconformists or internal opposition or unfriendly outside factors established an unfortunate template that is still used to bash the left for the so-called election of George W. Bush, as if the fact that the Democrats nominated an awkward candidate who ran a dreadful campaign had nothing to do with that outcome.

That template is being readied again this year. We got out of bed after the Labor Day holiday — the traditional beginning of the general-election campaign in the vanished era before the 24/7 news cycle — to learn that a new CNN poll puts Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump dead even. (Actually, it has Trump ahead, but who’s counting?) Nate Silver’s customary assurance that Clinton is roughly 85 percent to 90 percent likely to win the election was curiously lacking from Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times.

Instead, Times readers got a Paul Krugman column (published on Monday before the CNN poll) proclaiming that Clinton was being “Gored” by the media, meaning that she is consistently portrayed in unflattering terms and slimed with innuendo, as Krugman claims Al Gore was in 2000. Tuesday’s Times also featured a reported article from a campaign appearance by Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, whose headline and subhead suggested that “many” former Sanders supporters were “diehards,” likely to “resist” Clinton and vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein instead. In fact, reporter Yamiche Alcindor interviewed only two such voters; as the article ultimately made clear, polls have suggested that a large majority of Sanders’ former supporters will vote for Clinton, as the Vermont senator has forcefully urged them to.

Anyone who reads political tea leaves according to the customary rules would conclude, momentary poll panic aside, that Clinton still has numerous structural advantages and leads in the most important swing states and is likely to win the election. But even as I wrote that sentence, I lost count of all the weasel words and conditional phrases it contains. If we could pile up all the planks of conventional wisdom proved false this year, we’d have a pile of delusional teeter-totters reaching to the moon. Winter has come a few weeks early for the chattering classes of the Beltway; that’s their teeth you hear.

Should Clinton manage to steal defeat from the jaws of victory, as she nearly did in her race against Sanders, the excuses are being lined up. According to the institutional Demo boosters, it will not mean — and could not mean — that the Democrats are members of  a deeply flawed party with no coherent message who nominated a candidate that hardly anyone likes. Oh, and the fact that the party has been virtually wiped off the map in most of the non-coastal states and is at or near an all-time low in voter identification — none of that matters either. Stuff happens, in the immortal words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Stupid people are stupid and racist people are racist. The Democrats have done the best they possibly could or at least their message has been a lot more palatable than the other guys’. Isn’t that the same thing pretty much?

Hillary Clinton came of age as a Wellesley undergrad during the 1968 campaign and often speaks about ringing doorbells for Eugene McCarthy in the proverbial snows of New Hampshire. No doubt she has wonky private theories about what went wrong for Humphrey in the fall race and what might have been done differently.

To this point, Clinton has run a vastly more passive and cautious presidential campaign than Humphrey did, which may be part of her problem but may also be a function of historical circumstance. After the street riots outside the Chicago convention, Humphrey was perceived as a fatally tainted candidate who was far behind in the polls and he had little choice but to go for broke.

As Time magazine put it in an election postmortem later that year, “The old Democratic coalition was disintegrating, with untold numbers of blue-collar workers responding to [George] Wallace’s blandishments, Negroes [sic] threatening to sit out the election, liberals disaffected over the Vietnam War, the South lost. The war chest was almost empty, and the party’s machinery, neglected by Lyndon Johnson, creaked in disrepair.” Some of that, at least, sounds strikingly familiar. (One thing you can’t say about the Clinton campaign is that it’s short of money, and I don’t think a significant number of African-Americans are “threatening” to sit this one out.)

Humphrey trailed by double digits after Labor Day and very nearly won it all back by promising tax-and-spend policies on a scale that now seems unimaginable. He vowed to expand Johnson’s Great Society programs and pursue the “War on Poverty.” He promised to push for greater civil rights and civil liberties for black people and other members of minority groups. (LGBT rights weren’t on the menu in 1968, but I honestly believe HHH would have been a mensch about that.) He mobilized the labor unions, then a powerful force in American life, to combat Wallace’s appeal to white workers.

Humphrey backed away from Johnson’s war policies at last and called for a halt in the bombing of Vietnam, which convinced McCarthy to endorse him just before the election. (Compare and contrast, grumpy Bernie bashers: McCarthy endorsed Humphrey in late October. In 1992, Jerry Brown never endorsed Bill Clinton at all. Sanders is stumping for Hillary right now.)

Consider everything that went wrong that momentous year: The incumbent running for re-election, Lyndon B. Johnson, who had won a historic landslide four years earlier, was so unpopular that he was forced from the race after the New Hampshire primary. The Democratic front-runner and likely nominee, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated after winning the California primary. Humphrey had not even been a primary candidate but emerged from the chaotic Chicago convention as a compromise choice embraced by the pro-war Democratic establishment. Given his long record on social justice, labor and civil rights, it wasn’t and isn’t fair to paint Humphrey as a right-winger. The “Happy Warrior” was a classic Cold War liberal, a brand that turned suddenly and unexpectedly toxic in 1968.

Over the course of the past year or so, various commentators (myself included) have explored the imperfect parallels between Humphrey and Hillary Clinton, who is about as close to being a Cold War liberal as anyone can become in 2016. Both had been well-known public figures with long records who had forged strong alliances within the Democratic coalition and both found themselves in awkward heir apparent roles, winning the nomination in a year when they appeared out of step with their party’s most activist members and the electorate as a whole. I would say their opponents are more different than similar: Whatever else he was, Nixon was a career politician and a reasonably well-informed adult human. But both Humphrey and Clinton ran against right-wing law-and-order candidates who appealed none too subtly to white racism and were viewed as hateful ogres by the left.

It’s legitimate to argue that Humphrey might have beaten Nixon in 1968 if some unknown number of disgruntled leftists hadn’t stayed home, just as it may be true that Al Gore would have been elected in 2000 if Nader hadn’t been on the Florida ballot. But we don’t know those things with certainty and never will. Arguing in advance that some similar microscopic fringe factor — the meanness of the media and the immaturity of the Bernie bros — might cause Clinton to lose to the most evil candidate ever is the worst kind of political cowardice.

What we know about the defeats of 1968 and 2000 is that the left-liberal coalition that generally supports the Democrats in presidential elections was badly divided in both those years and the Democratic nominee did not do enough to heal the rift. Humphrey simply couldn’t do enough, although he fought like hell, against impossible odds. Gore coasted along with an apparent lead, hoping that nothing would go wrong, and created the conditions for the ugliest defeat in political history. Which of those examples will Hillary Clinton emulate?

“Bad Moms” need good movies: This sleeper hit teaches Hollywood a lesson in what women want

Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn in "Bad Moms" (Credit: STX Entertainment)

“Bad Moms” is the biggest — and most seemingly unlikely — R-rated comedy smash of the summer.

The film, starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn, crossed the century mark its sixth weekend in theaters, with $103 million in the bank (and counting). Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (who wrote “The Hangover” series), the sleeper hit has registered increasingly minuscule declines from week to week: 41 percent, 18 percent, 30 percent, 29 percent, and 14 percent. As Scott Mendelsohn points out in Forbes, its 4.35x opening-to-total-gross ratio is the strongest multiplier since last year’s bear-mauling revenge saga “The Revenant.”

“Bad Moms” was boosted by better-than-expected reviews (a decent 60 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and strong word of mouth, including an A Cinemascore. That positive buzz kept the film in the top 10 for weeks during a year that’s been extremely unkind to its R-rated competitors. “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” the Zac Efron-Adam Devine comedy in the vein of “Wedding Crashers,” crashed and burned with just $46 million, and “Neighbors: Sorority Rising” chugged down about a third of what its predecessor made in theatres. “The Boss” was the normally unflappable Melissa McCarthy’s lowest grosser to date.

Those were some of the better results. “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” a well-reviewed “Spinal Tap”-style satire of the music industry featuring The Lonely Island, utterly bombed in June. The film twerked its way to less than $10 million during its brief, three-week run. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” a dark Iraq war satire designed to announce Tina Fey as a serious actress, was DOA with $23 million.

Why did “Bad Moms” succeed where so many others failed? It’s because the movie did what so many others this year did not — gave women a story they were hungry for.

The film is a bawdy send-up of the absurdity of modern parenting that’s much funnier than it needs to be. Amy (Kunis) strives to be perfect. While working part-time at a hip coffee brewery, she’s the kind of hands-on parent who always makes time to drive her daughter to soccer practice and help her son make a papier-mâché Richard Nixon for a school project. Kiki (Bell) is a stay-at-home parent with four screaming toddlers, who is too busy ironing her son’s underwear (he likes them extra stiff) to wash her hair. Carla (Hahn), on the other hand, throws caution to the wind — swearing, smoking, and drunkenly making out with other women with abandon.

The impossible expectations of parenthood make each of these women miserable in their own ways. Amy, whose husband is cheating on her with a dairy farmer he met on the Internet, longs for quiet time. Her biggest fantasy is to take herself to brunch and read the New York Times in peace. Kiki has a control-freak husband who expects her to do everything. Carla, while thumbing her nose at the conventions of parenthood, longs to be closer to her dim-witted son.

As a critic, I’m of two minds about “Bad Moms.” On one hand, the film puts the “duh” in derivative — a studied hybrid of better, sharper movies. If you don’t recognize bits of “Mean Girls” and “Bridesmaids,” you aren’t trying.

That said, it’s also a knowing and rare reflection of the real struggles that parents face as unsung heroes who are expected to do everything and have no time left for themselves. When developing the project, Moore and Lucas interviewed their own wives and women they knew about the double-edged sword of motherhood, in which doing something as seemingly simple as whipping up cookies for the bake sale becomes a labyrinthine saga of navigating the myriad allergens of the sixth-grade class. When instructed to make cookies with no soy, no dairy, no gluten, no wheat, and no MSG, Kiki astutely asks: “What do I have left?”

In the age of Tiger Moms and Helicopter Parenting, “Bad Moms” offers mothers everywhere a much-needed message: “Do less.” You don’t have to be a wife, a cook, a tutor, a chauffeur, and a part-time therapist. You’re allowed to sleep in, stay up late, and party like you didn’t miss out on your 20s.

That theme clearly resonated with the audience of mostly middle-aged women I saw “Bad Moms” with on Monday evening. They loved it, erupting into a burst of applause as soon as the credits began to roll. There’s a lot to like. Hahn, who you might know as the no-nonsense campaign advisor from “Parks and Recreation” or Rabbi Raquel on Amazon’s “Transparent,” gives a star-making performance. The 43-year-old has never been more delightfully unhinged. The film, a wish-fulfillment fantasy about getting revenge on the Mean Moms of the PTA, also caters to the needs and inner longings of women with children that few films outside of the “Magic Mike” series do.

That quality leads to the film’s most eye-rolling moments, in which “Bad Moms” gets very speech-heavy for a frothy studio comedy, but how many movies this year even bothered to pander to the same demographic? There was the atrocious “Mothers’ Day,” whose generic greeting card quality can be summed up in a Meghan Trainor tune that graces the closing credits: “You might have a mom / She might be the bomb.” Mothers might want to see their stories represented on screen, but they don’t want to be treated like post-op lobotomy patients.

“Bad Moms,” while no means a classic, speaks to the concerns of some contemporary women at a time when most movies view the middle-aged as if they had recently been raptured. As a study from USC Annenberg found, just 35 percent of characters from movies and TV shows are over 40 — and very few of those characters are women. “Bridget Jones’s Baby,” which will debut in two weeks, has been the object of intense scrutiny for months just because its star, Renee Zellweger, dared to age in a medium where women are rarely allowed to grow older onscreen.

The success of “Bad Moms,” while extraordinary, shouldn’t be a surprise. It represents an audience that remains ignored and underserved, often cast aside for yet another interchangeable superhero orgy starring talking Ken dolls. But following a summer where everything flopped, “Bad Moms” resonated because it had the marketplace all to itself. For weeks, there has been nothing else like it. That should be a lesson to studios: Instead of making a buffet of options that all taste the same, it’s time to serve up something a little different.

“Bad Moms” is correct in suggesting that all of us who struggle to be perfect parents, spouses, and friends could do just a little bit less. But would it be too much to ask for Hollywood to do more?

Are we good girls yet? My adventures in “modern dog parenting”

Nora Charles, the best dog on Earth

My dog and I take the same walk through our neighborhood every morning. Dogs like routine, I heard when we adopted her — a young-adult Boston terrier we named Nora Charles — and I do my best. Like her namesake from “The Thin Man” films, she’s beautiful, clever and the life of every party. The part of our morning walk when Ron waves to us after his morning run, and then we stop to chat with Susan on her stoop — that’s what I imagined having a dog would be like. Finally, a reason to make occasional eye contact with the strangers around me. Look at me being a competent, trustworthy adult —  some days out of bed before sunrise even.

Nora has never met a two-legged stranger, but when it comes to other dogs, she has the temper of a junkyard Rottweiler. The local small fry rarely earn a second glance — Bagel the Chiweenie with her “redrum” bark, for example. But larger, dopier dogs set her off. I think she thinks she’s protecting me. When Weimaraner Pulling a Jogging Girl approaches — eight long limbs flailing, a haunted look in both sets of eyes — Nora transforms from kissy-face social butterfly into snarling hellbeast, like an adorable pixie girlfriend who has to be dragged kicking and spitting from the bar because some guy looked at her wrong and now we’re all about to get arrested or stabbed. Walking Cocaine Katie in public every morning is not what I thought having a dog would be like.

***

Ten years ago I decided I would not have children. That decision destroyed an ill-advised early marriage that needed to be blown up anyway. Not long after moving out, I adopted a cat, because I finally could. A few years later, a second cat — a present for my new husband Drew, to whom I had blurted a no-kids warning early in our relationship.

I grew up with cats, and I understand them. People say cats are fickle with their affections and perhaps are incapable of loving us, while dogs love their people unconditionally. That’s not only a gross misunderstanding of cats; it’s a gross misunderstanding of love.

On your most pitiful day, your dog can make you feel like an asshole for wallowing in your failure. I trusted you, her big eyes telegraph. She will sigh as you burrow deeper under the blanket on your couch to avoid her gaze. And we did not play ball today as promised. A dog’s love does not waver. The dog still loves you — broken, undeserving mess that you are. But the dog would feel better if you got your shit together. You will vow to do better tomorrow, for her sake.

On the same day, a cat will hop up on the couch next to you or even onto your lap with no comment. If the cat could talk, he would only say, Netflix. You pick the show. The cat accepts you as you are in any given moment. The cat doesn’t care if you’re a functioning, healthy person committed to your group exercise goals. The cat sees you and does not judge. That, too, is love.

I needed that style of steady, unconditional love as I struggled to establish myself as a writer — a capricious, rejection-riddled profession — and as a woman and partner who wondered if the charges of selfish, immature, incomplete she had rejected from that previous life might on some level be true. Our cats, those ridiculous beasts steadied me as I put in the work, the one thing I know how to do. I built the career I wanted. I got better at marriage. We bought a home. The cats thrived. We were ready to add one more body into the mix.

I knew it would be a big leap from cats to dog — and not just in terms of daily care. A dog’s love is more potent than a cat’s; it packs higher highs and lower lows. A dog’s love is trickier. It is an active love. You have to prove yourself worthy of it.

***

Three years into our relationship Nora’s coping skills with other dogs are improved but not perfect. Maybe she was taken from her mother and litter-mates as soon as she was old enough to be sold and never learned how to be around other dogs. We all have childhood traumas. So we take it slow. We have yet to visit a dog park, but she can do overnights with my mother-in-law’s impressively well-mannered Shelties. They earn ribbons in obedience and agility competitions. Nora figured out how to exploit their eagerness to follow directions and made them her minions, her own little girl gang. You say bossy; I say leadership skills.

In the neighborhood while other dogs pass us on the sidewalk, I work on teaching her to sit, stuffing her face full of training treats until they are a safe distance away. It works about half the time — she has a Gwyneth Paltrow-like ability to resist snacks — but everyone’s in a hurry in the morning so the snarling hellbeast outbursts pass quickly, with an occasional side-eye thrown our way. “We’re working on it!” I offer, with an unconvincing smile. I have no plan, no answers. Every encounter is an improvisation.

Things got rougher when the Mean Girls started showing up every Tuesday — two ladies of retirement age who walk their dogs together so they can chat. One has a Lhasa apso with an expensive haircut, a walking wig of no consequence to Nora. But the sidekick has a big dumb-looking golden retriever, a real Mr. Peanutbutter of a dog, just the kind of dog that Nora despises. What’s more, the lady lets her dog run off-leash through the small park we pass through on our route. Which makes her not only a petty criminal but quite dumb herself.

The first time Nora freaked out at them, I tried explaining because most dog owners are sympathetic. Not these two. They think it’s hilarious that I have to pick up my little Cocaine Katie and carry her as she abuses their dogs from the safety of my arms.

“I see you’re walking the dog today!” the matron of the walking wig trills, and boy do they bust a gut. “She doesn’t like other doggies!” they singsong to their doggies, and one howls in response.

I have a pretty thick skin — I work on the internet — but these women who are older than my mother are mocking my clever, adorable, loyal little girl, and I am filled with impotent anger. They suck. But don’t I suck, too, for not working harder to teach her how not to flip her lid at strange dogs? Even the ones whose owners obviously deserve it?

***

I get a lot of packages. I know this because the postal carrier once caught me outside and told me, “You get a lot of packages.” UPS stops by so frequently I’m starting to think that one of the drivers has his own packages delivered here, too. And I hear every delivery, because Nora Charles goes apeshit bonkers, barking like she’s stopping a home invasion. I’ve tried shush-ing, I’ve tried the command “quiet.” She barks over me. I’ve learned to tune it out and wait it out, which I realize is not good, but I am busy and distracted.

Many of these packages contain books from publishing houses. When I opened Sarah Hodgson’s “Modern Dog Parenting: Raising Your Dog or Puppy to Be a Loving Member of Your Family,” I laughed — modern dog parenting? — and then I tore into it.

Hodgson’s first page drops a bombshell on me. “Dogs, as researchers now insist, act more like young, preverbal kids than they do wolves.” The better we understand their signals, she claims, the better we can communicate with them. “To transform your relationship into something beautiful and long lasting, you’ll need to set aside the myth that your dog is closely related to the wolf and thus needs to be controlled, manhandled, or dominated.”

Oh, thank God: Commands and control are a real drag. But since when am I parenting a preverbal child? You can’t leave a toddler in a crate while you go out to dinner if you want your relationship to be “something beautiful and long lasting,” so obviously there are differences. But I’d be lying if I didn’t find some of these comparisons to kids at least a little comforting. I prefer kindness to domination, understanding to control. With actual kids, those ideals would be tested daily. For a little dog utterly lacking in guile, I have an infinite capacity for tenderness. As a result I’ve been accused of “spoiling” Nora. From parent friends, I’ve learned a polite rejoinder to comments like that: “This is what works for our family.” I think it means go fuck yourself.

Overall, Hodgson’s methods, which are rooted in communication, empathy and fun, seem to be aligned with my instincts. This line jumps out at me: “All dogs (and puppies) need to know two things in life: where they should go and what they should do when stuff happens.”

I look at Nora, who’s sitting next to me on the couch, blissfully shredding her stuffed chicken. Oh, little girl. Me, too. 

***

I take a quiz to learn my dog’s personality type. Apparently, Nora is equal parts Type A and Party Animal. I feel closer to her than ever.

Then I take a self-assessment. I am a “comic person.” People like this are “generally uncomfortable in the control seat,” according to Hodgson. “They recognize good habits but don’t always reinforce them.” It’s true; in my downtime, I can be lazy. And Nora’s seriously adorable, so I can’t help laughing at her antics, “even when [the] dog’s behavior demonstrates emotional stress.”

“Someone needs to play the grown-up!” The assessment warns. Ouch.

***

OK, but one thing first. My husband and I are not “dog parents.” We’re more like . . . legal guardians. (I have learned that if you want to start a real ruckus, you should tell people who do feel like parents to their, um, fur babies that they are not. So far be it from me to speak for anyone but myself.)

When my mother, perhaps worried that I would feel left out as the sole sibling without kids, called to wish me a straight-faced “happy Mother’s Day” on behalf of the cats and the dog, I appreciated the sentiment. But you know, it’s a little silly.

And yet I have researched the perfect diets for our picky eaters. We co-sleep. I shell out for American Apparel dog hoodies: Its cropped cut just fits her barrel chest better than the generics do, OK? And once, to keep the peace between my dog and my sister’s dachshund, I wore Nora in an actual baby sling for an entire afternoon to keep her from getting in a fight.

But I am not her mother. Drew is Daddy, I regret to report. Once, I cheered “Daddy’s home!” — ironically — when I saw him walking up to the house, and Nora went into full celebration mode before she even saw him. Shit. I suppose in her former life, that’s what He was called, and she remembered the association. It stuck.

We all bring baggage into a new home.

Nora’s behavior reflects on us, though — both the good and the bad. It can be embarrassing, like when UPS delivers during a phone meeting or when a friend wants us to have a playdate. But before I started reading Hodgson’s book, I hadn’t much considered how our behavior affects her.

***

“Dogs taught with encouragement show greater long-term memory and express creativity in their thinking and problem-solving skills,” Hodgson advises.

“Encourage more than you discourage,” she writes. “If your dog’s a barker, encourage quiet.”

Encouragement, I can do. I spend most days working on a laptop with Nora snoring, sometimes sleep barking, next to me. Several times a day I look over at her little body and coo, You’re a good girl; you’re such a good girl! — as if I am trying to convince her subliminally as she sleeps. It strikes me one day that maybe, depending on how my week has been going, those affirmations are really directed at myself.

Hodgson’s process for training includes five steps to teach your dog a variety of common lessons. She also advises, instead of dwelling on bad behavior, to “obsess” over the opposite behavior instead: “Obsessively reward silence, obsessively reward not digging or digging in the right place.”

I am reminded of an obnoxious meme I have seen online: Don’t reward yourself with food; you’re not a dog. Like most fitness memes, it is astoundingly rude with an undercurrent of uncomfortable truth. But unlike me, my dog will actually turn down food when she’s stressed. She has probably internalized a parallel dog meme: You are not a human; don’t eat your feelings. Persuading Nora with training treats to be quiet while the postal carrier is dropping off packages has not worked, historically. The barking, it seems, is its own reward. 

Hodgson suggests for those with hardwired barkers to turn it into a game of “Speak and Hush.” When Nora starts barking, say, “speak” and bark along with her for about five seconds. Then say “hush” and proffer the treat. Reward when she stops. Rinse and repeat.

The UPS guy is not impressed with our new routine.

***

Two weeks into my adopting the book’s suggestions, I think it’s going well. She’s getting faster at responding to requests. I lavish praise; I reward with treats. She’s Type A, after all. She wants to do a good job.

And then it’s Tuesday morning, and we steel ourselves for the Mean Lady gauntlet.

There they are: One smug little wig on the ground, one Mr. Peanutbutter running in circles like a big fat show-off, their ladies’ heads swiveling in our direction.

I hear Hodgson’s words in my brain: Where should I go now? What should I do when stuff happens?

I can’t have Nora sit still because it’ll turn into a standoff. The ladies and their dogs are dawdling over their spot, not interested in diffusing the tension. I can’t turn around because that would teach Nora that when scary stuff happens, running is the right option.

I make a decision. I take a deep breath, and I walk Nora straight toward them. The Lhasa apso’s lady starts talking to me — it’s obvious to me now that we are part of the day’s entertainment — but I am not reacting. I am not even looking at her. I am acting like she and her walking wig and her sidekick and Mr. Peanutbutter aren’t even there, much less trash-talking me and my dog. No hesitation. Head high, eyes forward, steps brisk and regular, with Nora on the leash at my side. And she’s not pulling. She’s not snarling and barking. She’s not reacting at all because with my entire body, I am telling Nora that where she should go is straight ahead with me through our neighborhood where we will accomplish everything we need to do this morning at our own pace, and what she should do is disregard the undermining distractions and ugly voices around her telling her to feel inadequate, unprepared, ashamed of herself because they don’t count.

She’s a good girl, such a good girl, such a very good girl, I tell her after we’ve crossed the park and are safely on the other side and I pass her treats without breaking our stride to reward her, so yeah, maybe she’s eating her feelings on this one, but she’s earned it, and don’t let anyone, ever, make you feel otherwise.

I will never be Modern Dog Parent of the Year — nor, truthfully, do I want to be, although I would accept a ribbon for Most Improved Legal Guardian — but I think we won this round.

One neighborhood victory notwithstanding, I know we have long-term work ahead of us. We’re both caught between a drive to get it right and a willingness to indulge ourselves when the work feels too daunting. But I am learning slowly how to play the grown-up — for her, if not for myself. And I am getting very, very good at barking along with her for exactly five seconds. Nora, for her part, remains shaky on the “hush.” We are both works in progress.

House GOPers return from recess, immediately push to punish Democrats for gun control sit-in

Fresh off a seven-week summer recess, House Republicans returned to Congress on Tuesday ready to pounce on their Democratic colleagues for the political stunt they had pulled off months before.

In a surprise move following the Orlando terror attack in June, House Democrats had occupied the House floor in a 25-hour-long sit-in to demand a vote on a host of gun-curbing efforts.

My colleagues & I have had enough. We are sitting-in on the House Floor until we get a vote to address gun violence. https://t.co/rTqrPifuUz

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) June 22, 2016

House Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed the protest as “nothing more than a publicity stunt” before rushing the House into recess a day early. The Democrats continued to occupy the House floor for a while longer.

“We’re reviewing everything right now as to what happened and how to make sure we can bring order to this chaos,” Ryan said at the time. “This is the people’s House. This is Congress, the House of Representatives, oldest democracy in the world, and they’re descending it into chaos. I don’t think this should be a very proud moment for democracy or for the people who staged these stunts.”

Even while on recess, the House GOP leadership continued to signal their intent to hold Democrats accountable for their unprecedented show of opposition. According to Politico, the GOP leaders were eager to make clear that such actions were “not acceptable” and won’t be tolerated.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters in July that he had received complaints from House staff members who claimed that Democrats were bullying floor employees who attempted to break up the protest. McCarthy said members of his staff had talked to multiple witnesses and were seeking video footage to verify the account.

On Tuesday, Congress’ first day back from the recess, McCarthy verified to reporters that GOP leaders were indeed seeking to punish the Democrats who participated in the sit-in.

“You will see appropriate measures taken in the very near future,” McCarthy said.

 

Look Again: The day’s most compelling images from around the globe

LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 06: Designer Maria Levene, who is representing Spain, poses for photographs in her installation entitled 'VRPolis, Driving into the Future' at the London Design Biennale at Somerset House on September 6, 2016 in London, England. The first London Design Biennale runs from 7-27 September at Somerset House and features over 30 countries and territories. Nations from six continents will present newly commissioned works that explore the theme Utopia by Design. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) (Credit: Getty Images)

 

Dubai, United Arab Emirates   Karim Sahib/Getty

Visitors gather near a model at the annual Cityscape show

No one understands the true nature of the relationship between the oil-rich Gulf states and the violent discord affecting so much of the Arab and Muslim world. There’s the stuff we can see, the stuff we can almost see and, way down below that, the unknown unknowns. Here’s one known, although parts of it are mysterious: After a crippling economic double-whammy between the 2008 financial crisis and the crash in oil prices, the inexplicable real-estate fever dream that is Dubai has come back. No nation on earth more resembles an imaginary colony in outer space, and none more clearly acts out the late science-fiction pioneer J.G. Ballard’s pronouncement that Earth was becoming an alien planet.

–Andrew O’Hehir, senior editor

 

Canfield County Fair, Canfield, Ohio   Mike Segar/Reuters

Donald Trump speaks to supporters through a bullhorn during a campaign stop

This Trump pic from Ohio rally on Sunday is compelling for what it leaves to the imagination. What is he yelling about here? Is he directing traffic? Throwing out a pesky liberal protester? Maybe he’s kicking off a pig race. My guess is he’s yelling at reporters for being mean to him.

–Pete Catapano, executive editor

 

London, England   Carl Court/Getty

Designer Maria Levene in her installation entitled ‘VRPolis, Driving into the Future’ at the London Design Biennale

If I’m being honest, I don’t really understand this photo, the installation or the purpose. I could look it up, but why spoil the mystery? Even though I don’t “get” the photo, I love it because it reminds me of my favorite scene from the incredible Academy Award-nominated drama “Casper Meets Wendy” starring the immensely talented Hilary Duff. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know exactly which scene I’m referring to. If you haven’t, then go watch it. You can pick it up at your local VHS rental store, which definitely still exists.

–Tatiana Baez, social media coordinator

 

London, England   Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

“War Horse” puppet Joey is walked along New Bond Street near Bonhams auction rooms

A puppet from the production “War Horse” is prancing today around London streets in an effort to drum up participation for a Sept. 13 Bonhams fundraiser, where it will face its changing fortunes on the action block. No Trojan horse, this puppet lays plain the fact what’s artifice and what’s real in a transparent (albeit humorous) display of the very legwork that provides its horsepower. The two human operators inside this endearing puppet could stand for all of us dutifully working this Tuesday after Labor Day, embodying our wishes to be “seen” while contributing our tasks, which are hopefully creative in some way. The upcoming auction will benefit the Handspring Trust, a South African theater group.

–Marjorie Backman, copy editor

Bruce Springsteen opens up about clinical depression: “You don’t know the illness’ parameters”

Bruce Springsteen (Credit: Getty/Larry Busacca)

Musician Bruce Springsteen opens up about his years-long battle with depression in a cover-story profile in this month’s Vanity Fair.

“There is his clinical depression itself,” explained Vanity Fair writer David Kamp, “and then a compounding fear that he is doomed to suffer as his father did. ‘You don’t know the illness’s parameters,’ he said. ‘Can I get sick enough to where I become a lot more like my father than I thought I might?'”

Springsteen’s father, Doug, suffered “bouts of paranoia and tears” later in life. Kamp cited a passage in Springsteen’s forthcoming memoir, “Born to Run”:

In the privacy of home, [Springsteen] writes, when the blues descend, “Patti [Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife] will observe a freight train bearing down, loaded with nitroglycerin and running quickly out of track.” Whereupon “she gets me to the doctors and says, ‘This man needs a pill.”’

And Scialfa told Kamp, “If I’m being honest, I’m not completely comfortable with that part of the book, but that’s O.K.” She added, “That’s Bruce. He approached the book the way he would approach writing a song, and a lot of times, you solve something that you’re trying to figure out through the process of writing — you bring something home to yourself. So in that regard, I think it’s great for him to write about depression. A lot of his work comes from him trying to overcome that part of himself.”

Read the full story at Vanity Fair.

Women: Stop apologizing for eating

(Credit: esolla via Shutterstock)

I was sitting at a chic restaurant favored by busy media power brokers for their power lunches, across from a successful female executive. “Usually I just get salad but I think I’m going to get the entrée,” she declared as she perused the menu, adding, “I didn’t have breakfast today.” Then she looked at me expectantly, as if it was now my turn to make a similarly explanatory remark. I suddenly had second thoughts about the sandwich I’d had my eye on. And ever since that day, there’s been something I’ve been wanting to say.

Women, please, just order the entrée. You don’t need to explain it. You don’t need to apologize for it.

I wanted to say this when I recently met up for drinks and a bite with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and the first thing she said was that she really shouldn’t order anything because she’d “gained so much weight” since the last time we’d been together. It broke my heart because I had just been happy to see my friend and because gaining a few pounds does not mean a woman is no longer entitled to consume food and beverages in public.

I wanted to say it to the family member who spent an entire summer weekend prefacing every single meal with a caloric assessment of its relation to the ones that had preceded and would follow it, who scoldingly remarked that we’d “all” have to lose weight after our time together. The “all” by the way, clearly included my daughters.

I wanted to say it to the woman who condescendingly remarked, “Not diet? Good for you!” when I popped open a regular Coke at a birthday party. And I want to say it to the fellow mom who I’ve yet to hear speak of a dessert or an appetizer without conspiratorially suggesting we be “bad” together. It’s like Amy Schumer is writing our lives, ladies.

I get that women have been expected to apologize for their food choices ever since Eve got busted for that ill-chosen apple. (Did God not understand that fresh fruit has zero Weight Watchers points?) But lately — no doubt in no small part because I am trying to raise two adolescent daughters to not be neurotic — I’ve reached my limit of listening to fellow women subject everybody within earshot to their magical-thinking rituals about everything they put in their mouths. I’m tired of feeling roped into other people’s dysfunctional relationships with food, tired of the default conversation around the joyful experiences of cooking and eating being so fraught with anxiety.

I don’t remember when it first occurred to me that my mother didn’t eat like a normal person — or talk about eating like a normal person — probably because abnormality is such deeply engrained, standard-grade contemporary American female behavior. Her strict diets, her skipped meals, her binge eating and her near constant discussion of the same — they were all just part of being a woman, I thought. It was only when I was a young adult myself, dating a handsome man who talked about food in much the same obsessive, angsty way that my girlfriends and I had discussed it for years, that it crossed my mind that this was an incredibly boring — and ultimately profoundly messed-up — topic of conversation. So I began the slow, ongoing process of trying to untether from the habit.

I often fail at this endeavor. It’s challenging because I love to talk about food in general but also because I’ve been conditioned to believe that self-loathing is a female social-bonding exercise. So I still sometimes feel the confessional need to comment on whether all those nachos were a cry for help; I say, “I shouldn’t” before I damn well do. But I swear to God you will never hear me provide a litany of everything I’ve already eaten today as a prelude to what I’m eating now. Nor will I regale you with my reasoning for putting a lot of butter on my roll. And yeah, I’m eating the roll. Deal with it!

I aspire to be more — in attitude anyway — like national treasure Chrissy Teigen, who’s honest about how hard she works to maintain her supermodel physique while remaining authentically enthusiastic about ranch dressing. And I’m so grateful for those friends and relations who can share a meal without turning it into a shame circle.

We’re all working through our lifetimes of baggage, as well as the incessant barrage of messages that a female has failed if she “doesn’t look like this anymore” — i.e., a 20-year-old photograph. Our bodies are scrutinized and judged from toddlerhood until we die. Last year I went to a beautiful restaurant in Palm Beach and watched an entire table full of elderly socialites panic over how to proceed when the waiter brought over a slice of birthday cake for one of the “girls.” They all split it — and didn’t finish it. This is what we’re up against.

But I want to work toward normalizing the simple act of eating and enjoying food. I want my kids to make smart choices without assigning a moral value to the things they consume. I want them to avoid the twisted path of orthorexic thinking, in which  the “cleanest” thing is the constant goal, where nobly suffering through a juice cleanse is to be congratulated and noshing on tater tots is grounds for a walk of shame.

And I want to say that when women are weird in public around food, they put other women in an awkward position. So I’m not playing. I’m not here to give you permission to order fries and I’m not going to co-sign on how fat we’re all going to get after eating this cheesecake. When you exclaim dramatically that you couldn’t possibly eat that whole entrée, I am not going to applaud your restraint. I. Don’t. Care. I am grown-up lady who can make decisions about what to cook and what to order and I’d like to assume you are, too. And being at a table together with other women shouldn’t ever be anything to say you’re sorry about.

It’s the future, everyone’s famous: From the A-List to the “Z-List,” fame isn’t what it used to be

(Credit: Tidal)

The word “fame” is a noun derived from the Latin term “fama,” which describes the condition of being known or talked about by many people, based especially on notable achievements. Fame used to be attributed to athletes, musicians and actors who made career-defining waves within their industries for their accomplishments. The word fame evokes an image of being blinded by a larger-than-life figure whose accomplished something to aspire to.

Today, however, fame has become a grotesque version of itself as people are becoming famous for what can be considered basic human behavior. Kim Kardashian West is the obvious example here because she’s created an empire after a leaked sex tape went viral. Her husband, Kanye West, explored the issue of fame in his song “Famous” where he boasts about making Taylor Swift famous and brags about the many women he’s had sex with who are mad they’re still nameless, the suggestion being that public knowledge of having sex with someone is enough to gain — to earn — fame in our culture. Unfortunately, people are gaining fame for far worse and much less impressive behavior.

The New York Times ran a story last week on Z-list celebrities and the media machines that perpetuate their quest for… what exactly? Fame? Attention? Social media following? These figures are often vaguely familiar: reality tv contestants, Instagram models, the criminal with the hot mug shot. Their actions have yet to merit anything resembling an accolade, like Rihanna’s well-deserved Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, or Michael Phelps earning the most gold medals in Olympic history. Rather, these celebrities become situated in the periphery of our collective consciousness for things we’d rather avoid doing like being cuckoo enough to compete for “love” on a dating show or get caught committing a criminal offense.

According to Amanda Hess, who wrote the Times’ piece:

“It used to be that the only way a non-recognizable person could land in the pages of the glossy celebrity magazines was to lose 100 pounds, serve as some heartwarming testimony to good-old-fashioned American values, or be murdered. But in the early aughts, the magazines started diversifying their coverage of Hollywood’s leading Jens and Bens with stories on the romantic dupes and plastic surgery nightmares of reality television. Now, as the rise of social media demolishes the leverage that celebrity tabloids once had over their most famous subjects, the gossip industry keeps defining celebrity downward. (After all, no magazine can match the reach of Taylor Swift’s more than 90 million Instagram fans or Kim Kardashian West’s 47 million Twitter followers.)”

It’s silly, really. Take the Who? Weekly podcast, for example. The bi-weekly show promises “Everything you need to know about people you don’t,” in a deliciously addicting and voyeuristic way. A quick exploration of the Tumblr-style site allows people to jump down the rabbit hole of people who haven’t gained fame, per se, but notoriety for ridiculous behavior. The absurdity of it all is hard to resist. Why not watch a clip of someone make an ass of themselves and gossip about it? It’s an extension of the meanest facet of high school, public ridicule that leads to temporary infamy.

Kanye West commented on fame (again) at the VMAs, noting the chutzpah it took to make the music video to accompany “Famous.”

“It was an expression of our now, our fame right now, us on the inside of the TV. You know, just to put… the audacity to put Anna Wintour right next to Donald Trump. I mean, like, I put Ray J in it, bro. This is fame, bro! Like, I see you Amber. My wife is a G. Not a lot of peoples’ wives would let them say that right there. We came over in the same boat. Now we all in the same bed. Well, maybe different boats, but uh,” he said.

For West, and others like him, the route, method and drama encountered on the way to fame don’t matter. The figures who make it to the top tier of fame all make it to the same gossip-filled finish lines fueled by microscopic attention to a person’s every move. It hasn’t taken long for artists and the public to realize these moves rarely ever signify anything of meaning or influence.

Rapper Vince Staples released a short film for “Prima Donna” in the form of a 10-minute commentary on the absurdity of fame. The video opens on the set of a hip hop video shoot for Staples’ track “Big Time.” Nearly naked women, a cacophony of bass and synth all limned by strobe lights of many different colors showcasing him as the greatest rapper ever and every other superlative — yada, yada, yada. The director calls “cut” and Staples steps off set to grab food from craft services, and proceeds to his real life, presumably outside the construction of the facade the video is supposed to suggest is reality. It’s all very meta.

Staples catches a cab and ends up at a strange hotel after an even stranger elevator ride. Crowds of fans swarm him, and for a moment we’re lost in the din of noise, chaos and fear that are associated with that level of fame. Oftentimes we overlook the power of the fans who make a person famous. Figures resembling Tupac Shakur and Amy Winehouse serve as haunting reminders of the darker side of fame, before taking a deadly turn. The video concludes with Staples shooting a mirror and ends with him in a pool of blood.

The video presents an anti-glamourous perspective of fame. One thing about fame is its ability to beguile based on a sense of pseudo-intimacy with the outside world. Rather than connecting, it seems only to attract more people into a celebrity’s orbit, which can cause them to be all the more isolated. Videos like Staples’ deserve the acclaim they receive because it touches on something that hasn’t been previously explored in this context. Rather than maintain the played out tropes, Staples questions the methods used to achieve fame and influences a change in thought. Maybe that’s something we should all get in bed with.

“I am looking forward to my downfall”: Herman Koch on life as a bestselling author

Herman Koch (Credit: Mark Kohn)

What does it feel like to write a bestselling novel? While reaching a clearly defined goal might be satisfying for most, I’ve met many authors who remain restless. When I consider the personality type it makes more sense as they tend to be a critical and questioning bunch. And for those who are often prone to disillusionment, the writing life offers a sort of let-down buffet; the bestselling book didn’t also win a coveted prize, a similar book was the one picked by Oprah, the novel did well in Italy but tanked in France, a critic singled it out for a special round of scorn.

In his forthcoming book, “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,” Yuval Noah Harari talks about the problem of achieving happiness and how we tend to feel satisfied when reality matches our expectations. But most people hit a “glass ceiling of happiness.” As our conditions improve, expectations balloon.

My experience of meeting authors with unmatched expectations was part of the reason why I was so pleasantly surprised to meet Herman Koch, author of the international bestseller “The Dinner.” Having sold more than 1 million copies internationally, “The Dinner” won the most prestigious Dutch literary award, was made into a Dutch film and is being adapted for a 2017 film in English starring Chloë Sevigny, Steve Coogan, and others. Koch’s next novel, “Summer House with Swimming Pool,” was published to wide acclaim and his newest, “Dear Mr. M,” comes out today, having already been an instant runaway success in the Netherlands.

All this success, and yet Koch seemed to be a rare thing, an author who was something close to happy. He talked about his love of writing, peppered the conversation with his wry humor (“I can’t smoke anymore, but my characters do so that I can enjoy a cigarette vicariously.”), and described his daily writing routine with a firm affection. The more we talked, the more I became convinced: This was a writer who had achieved critical and commercial success and managed to keep his expectations in check.

So I laughed when I read the plot description of Koch’s new novel, “Dear Mr. M,” about an author with expectations that no longer match his reality. Years before, a teacher had an affair with a young student. The a teacher went missing and the student and her boyfriend, Herman, were suspects, but charges were never laid. Years later an author, Mr. M, wrote a fictionalized account of this true crime and the book became a huge bestseller. As the novel opens, Mr. M is promoting a new book, but his career is fading and his best days are clearly over. When a man moves into the apartment beneath Mr. M., the man starts watching the older writer, peaking at his mail, approaching his wife and child, and obsessively critiquing his writing. When the mysterious man finally approaches Mr. M, it’s as a journalist. He wants to do an interview that will restore the author’s reputation and give him a rightful place in the literary cannon—or so this man wants Mr. M to think.

“Dear Mr. M” is a gripping read with an elegantly layered plot that asks questions about the process of writing, where does an author gets his ideas, how does reality become fiction, what it is like to do an author tour, and how it feels when a reader has his own interpretation of your work?

After reading the novel, I wanted to know how much was drawn from Koch’s experience and where he drew the line between fact and fiction. Putting ourselves into the plot, I played the role of journalist, while Koch pretended to be a famous author doing yet another interview. Among other things, talked by email about how it feels to write a bestseller, whether Koch has peaked and how his downfall might feel.

“The Dinner” was such a huge success. Have you peaked?



I am not sure. Maybe we will be able to tell in 25-years time? With every new novel I hand over to my publisher I tell him: “This is the book that will make readers stop talking about ‘The Dinner.'”

I sometimes think: Let’s hope this one will make them forget about “The Dinner” altogether.

Is that an uncomfortable question, to be asked if you have peaked?

I really felt I peaked when I saw my first novel in print.

Your novels often make me uncomfortable, like the feeling I get when a comedian says something so true that it hurts, but I still laugh. Is causing discomfort in your readers something you purposefully do?

It is something I can’t avoid.

At the same time I make myself uncomfortable and that is my first goal: Do I still identify with this or that character or has he lost me? I try to stretch this feeling as far out as possible.

For the reader the experience is different. One will make his distance in an early stage of the book, another will stay with the character who produces uncomfortable feelings until the last page.

There is an exchange in “Dear. Mr. M” where two characters lament that the Dutch used to be known around the world for their liberal attitudes, but now people only pay attention to the increasingly visible right-wing extremism. In this conversation, the novel questions the meaning tolerance — something that is often upheld as a virtue. Here I go feeling uncomfortable again, why?

Maybe it is because tolerance always had such a nice ring to it.

Up until now we were congratulating ourselves on our tolerance, but from a position of luxury in a free world where the few immigrants from poor and funny countries only had to be tolerated to make us feel better about ourselves. This came from a feeling of superiority. Maybe it makes you (and me) feel uncomfortable because we would never want to be labeled with the opposite classification: Intolerance. But I am quite sure that we all are far more intolerant than we would like to admit. You don’t have to be right-wing to have these feelings.

I think of a political figure like Trump. Do you think that his rise is connected to this liberal idea of tolerance?

In a way it is, but I think tolerance is only a small part of the picture. You could even accuse Donald Trump of being too tolerant on a lot of issues, among them Vladimir Putin. I think his rise is far more connected to the once silent-majority and now quite loud minority. People are angry. Very angry about a lot of things, most of all of not being taken seriously by the more liberal (tolerant) part of the population.

Mr. M, the author, often digresses at a moment of suspense to tell a story within the story. One character points this out, as you, the author of the book, are also digressing in a moment of suspense. Are you, your own toughest critic?

Yes, I am. But this is also a small joke. I like characters who explain their theories about writing (or about life or almost anything) and then act in the opposite way. This is what I do myself most of the time.

Under the dark suspense of your novels runs a strong current of humor. In Dear Mr. M, it often comes from the author poking fun at himself and his life as a well-known writer. What role does humor play for you as a writer?

For me humor is the salt in the meal, it has to be there, anyway for me it comes quite natural, I simply can’t avoid it. I don’t want to write ‘funny’ books where we all have to laugh our heads of all the time. The humor should come from behind, where we don’t expect it. And the life of a well-known writer is something you can laugh about quite easily.

“Dear Mr M”  is astonishing because of how, unlike life, it all comes together. By the end, the reader realizes the extent of its intricate construction. Did you plan the plot in advance of writing the book?

No, not at all. I went from chapter to chapter, part to part. I can’t work in any other way, I have to feel the suspense myself, if not I get bored. I would be very bored if I were just following a scheme.

But of course in the end I have to check if everything fits in the way I hope: How old was this person in 1971, can he/she be married thirty years later and have children? This is extra work, but it is fun to do.

The novel has multiple narrators who see one event through very different perspectives. How did you pull it all together?

Instead of an omniscient narrator I prefer these personal voices of one narrator at a time. It makes it possible to view the characters in a different light. Herman sees his neighbor-writer differently as to how we see him when we come to know him better, from his own point of view.

Isn’t it a big risk to start a complex book like this when you don’t know the end?

Yes, in a way it is. For example when I started the book I knew that a high school teacher went missing in the seventies. During the writing of about ninety percent of the book I had not the slightest [idea] what had happened to him. Sometimes this made me nervous. But the advantage is that the reader can’t have a clue either, as I didn’t.

Does taking this kind of risk feed the suspense in your writing in some way?

Yes, the not knowing makes the writing more interesting from day to day, and I believe it is exactly this that makes the reader want to read on.

Have you ever started a book that didn’t work?

Maybe about four or five. I have written about forty or eighty pages and then I wanted to get rid of the idea as soon as possible. So I start something else.

“Dear Mr M ,” your eight novel, is out now. Is it still a thrill?

Yes, it is. But not the same thrill as thirty years ago. As with the first kiss, the first love, the first time, something wears off.

Do you worry that this book won’t do well? Maybe you have peaked? 

No, as I said before: “peaking” doesn’t enter in my vocabulary that much. In a rather morbid way I am looking forward to my downfall (“He had completely lost it, read this (…)”. At least this would be a new experience, maybe even something to write a book about.