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Flannery O’Connor: Cartoonist

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Having crossed and recrossed Flannery O’Connor’s enduring literary wake a number of times in my life, I was intrigued when I ran across a book that detailed her more-than-passing interest in cartooning. (You can see a few of the cartoons here.)

It’s of course hard not to read O’Connor’s cartoons through the lens of her later success as an author, but as I worked my way through the book I became convinced that she had the eye and ear for cartooning, if perhaps not the signature flair. This in turn made it all too easy to suspect that what she first explored in cartoons she later explored in her evocative stories, but as soon as that thought formed in my mind I recognized it as belonging to the domain of the critic and slowly backed away.

What I was left with, then, was an appreciation for what she had created at a certain point in her life, and how that aspect of her creative life informed rather than confirmed anything else I knew about her, which was admittedly not much. That in turn reminded me once again that so much of what we think we know about anyone is only a facet, and what a horrible, self-aggrandizing conceit it is to think otherwise.

Flannery O’Connor’s pursuit of cartooning was as sincere as anything she is widely known for, and that sincerity shone through by the time I finished the book. She wasn’t interested in throwing off a few cartoons to widen or monetize her brand — which had yet to be defined — but was driven to do so internally, as part of who she was. If that reality collides with the conception of who O’Connor was as an artist, let alone as a person, that only confirms such conceptions are inherently flawed.

If you’ve ever enjoyed an O’Connor short story I encourage you to give the book a read. We are, all of us, more dimensional than our successes and failures, by which I do not mean to imply that O’Connor was a failed cartoonist. She wasn’t.

— Mark Barrett

The Importance of Technique

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This is acrylic paint on a canvas:

While that aggregation of paint probably meets the definition of art in some way, and by virtue of its constituent parts is perhaps also a painting in some sense, relative to my intent it is neither. Rather, what that canvas represents is a variety of painting techniques I have tried over the past few months as a byproduct of exploring that medium.

Each time I work on a painting, which I tend to do in small pulses rather than sustained pushes, I take any paint I have left over and the brushes I’ve been using and I apply the paint to that canvas in various ways. Sometimes I work in a directed fashion, trying out a technique I’ve read about in a book or learned about online, sometimes I act impulsively or instinctively, but the goal in all cases is to explore and learn. And I’m learning.

Because a canvas can be apprehended at a single glance it’s much easier to see how individual techniques add up to both a whole and to an arsenal that can be used in future works, but the same applies to writing. The more you explore what you can do with words, and the more you learn how you yourself approach language and writing, the more likely it becomes that you will be able to realize the works you envision.

It may seem problematic to compare images and ideas because words are more logically connected than paint, but I mean the above image to be a direct analogy. That canvas is to painting what a notebook is — or should be — to writing. You are not obligated to practice techniques in the context of a coherent whole when you write any more than when you paint. Write a sentence fragment if that’s where your head’s at. Note an interesting detail, then express that detail in different ways. Write a single sentence that appeals to you, then rewrite it twenty times by adding or removing a single word and changing the order of the other words. What works? What’s muddy and dull, what’s clear and sharp?

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, comedy or drama, the power of your work comes not from conception but from the techniques you employ. If you can be funny or incisive or searing in fifty words then it probably won’t be hard to write five hundred in the same vein, but the reverse is not true. That’s the importance of technique in any medium.

— Mark Barrett

The Gatekeepers Are Dead

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It has long been sanctimoniously asserted by the mainstream publishing industry that it alone can be counted on to ensure the quality of writing and discourse in society. While I have previously reduced that assertion to rubble on multiple occasions, it’s worth nothing today that the industry itself has thrown in the towel at the highest levels, openly trading its tattered reputation for cash from sources whose stated intent is to deceive, then abetting those same funding sources in that fraud.

That this is happening in journalism in companies that purport to hold themselves to the highest ethical standards tells you that the game is over in every other corner of publishing. This realization came to me, ironically, from news stories about PBS and the New York Times. The PBS story, which I happened across a few weeks ago, concerned the funding of a new series by its news division:

On December 18th, the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station WNET issued a press release announcing the launch of a new two-year news series entitled “The Pension Peril.” The series, promoting cuts to public employee pensions, is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation. It has been presented as objective news on major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour.

However, neither the WNET press release nor the broadcasted segments explicitly disclosed who is financing the series. Pando has exclusively confirmed that “The Pension Peril” is secretly funded by former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering.

I can’t say I was surprised that PBS sold its soul for money, but I was disappointed. I was surprised, however, when I read today that the New York Times is planning to use what are euphemistically called native ads in its new paid app, NYT Now:

The new, paid mobile app for iPhone and iPod, debuting April 2, will cost $8 per month, and will focus on aggregation and curation, with editors selecting stories from the NYT and the wider Internet for a “fast and engaging news experience.” It also marks the NYT’s biggest move away yet from regular display advertising, with all ads on NYT Now in the form of “Paid Posts,” NYT’s term for native advertising — or advertorial, as it used to be called.

If you’re not familiar with native ads, advertorials, sponsored content or paid posts, they are essentially the same thing: attempts to deceive an audience that what’s being presented comes from the editorial or content side of a business when it’s really coming from marketing weasels inside and outside the organization. As always, there are plenty of good people working in publishing who don’t support such tactics and who really do believe in standards — at least until their own paychecks are threatened.

Which is to say that if you still think you need to wait for or even ask for someone’s permission to write whatever you want, you don’t. So get to it. Because even if you write the worst thing that’s ever been written, you won’t be a fraud.

— Mark Barrett

Apple Maintains Innocence Despite Guilt

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While I was away from Ditchwalk last year the legal system meted out punishment regarding Apple’s conspiratorial efforts to fix the price of e-books on an industry-wide basis:

As punishment for engaging in an e-book price-fixing conspiracy, Apple will be forced to abide by new restrictions on its agreements with publishers and be evaluated by an external “compliance officer” for two years, a federal judge has ruled.

Though the punishment is comically light, Apple remains determined to clear its tainted name:

Cupertino is not pleased, for example, to have an antitrust monitor who is responsible for making sure it does not violate antitrust rules going forward. Attorney Michael R. Bromwich was selected to serve as monitor, and Apple asked that his tenure be delayed pending appeal, but Judge Denise Cote denied that request last week.

Now, in filings with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Apple is arguing that it had no idea that publishers were colluding about e-book prices, according to Reuters. Any discussions it had with publishers were simply to boost competition “in a highly concentrated market.”

So on one hand Apple is a shining light of innovation, forward thinking and marketing brilliance, while on the other it’s a company run by dolts too stupid to realize that the relationships Apple entered into with multiple publishers at the exact same time and under the exact same terms constituted a federal crime. Good to know.

— Mark Barrett

Pono Kickstarter

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As regular readers know I have serious issues with Kickstarter, in large part because the site/service can so easily be exploited for nefarious purposes. As RPS finally (and to my mind belatedly) made clear after flogging the site endlessly, when you’re giving money to a Kickstarter project you’re not buying anything. Instead, you’re investing in something that may or may not happen, which means the people you’re investing in need to have a great reputation to go along with their great idea.

I’m genuinely glad there’s a way for independent artists and creators to bypass gatekeepers and raise money for small projects, and from time to time I’ve considered the possible utility of the site myself. That I’ve never backed a Kickstarter project before is less a sign of where my heart is than where my brain is, because I know my brain would be angry with me if I put scarce personal equity into something that never materialized. (I do that enough on my own.) Having said that, today I backed my first project on Kickstarter for reasons that have nothing to do with Kickstarter, and I think the project I’m helping to fund is something you might want to consider as well.

For years Neil Young has been griping about the quality of music in the digital age. It’s a complaint I’m not only sympathetic to, at some point in the recent past I noticed that I had simply stopped listening to music for enjoyment for close to a decade. When I tried to figure out why it became obvious that my enjoyment of music ceased when the MP3 file became the playback standard. To bring music back into my life I tried using iTunes, but that proved to be just as bad, in large part because (unbeknownst to me at the time) Apple’s default sampling rate for ripped CD’s was less than lossless. Only when I discovered FLAC and Foobar2000 and was able to get CD sound out of my digital library did I once again start hearing sounds that had gone missing.

I want to stress here that I’m not an audiophile or a purist. I don’t need an oscilloscope to know what I’m hearing. Instead, I feel it, and all I can tell you is that digital music has generally left me cold. Not cold enough to go back to the hisses and pops and turntable maintenance of vinyl, but cold nonetheless. So when I first heard that Neil Young was pushing for a new standard for digital music I was all for it. Unfortunately, if memory serves, that was also a decade ago. (Or at least it seems like it.)

Well, that day is here. Sort of. As I understand it the PonoPlayer is ready to go and Kickstarter is being used as much to sell/reserve initial/limited copies of the device as it is to raise money for future development of the accompanying service. Still, if you believe in high-quality music and supporting the artists who make it, I think it’s worth considering what Pono is about and whether you want to chip in. At the very least you can help demonstrate demand is there which might encourage the big-money people to get off their stuffed wallets and buy in as well.

As for the risks involved, I’m confident that Neil Young isn’t going to take my contribution and blow it on a new couch, or something worse. Although he might be tempted to sink it into an all-electric Lincoln Continental. (I jest.) Currently, on day one, the campaign is halfway to its initial $800,000 goal. Given that it looks like the 30-day campaign will be fully funded in a day or two, and that it’s backed by people who have reputations to protect, I think the risk of the project falling apart are pretty low. Not zero, but close enough for me.

— Mark Barrett

Online Education and the Commitment Problem

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There’s no question that the internet is a boon to learning. It’s a rare day when I do not pop open a browser and look up information that helps me solve a problem or move a project along. Compared with life before so much knowledge was available there’s also no question about which reality I prefer, even allowing for the inevitable costs and tech headaches that accompany such momentous change.

Given that others seem to share that preference it’s not surprising that there are widespread efforts underway to turn the internet toward education in a more directed fashion. From online courses that can be taken for continuing-education credit to the explosion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s) and even the appearance of online-only ‘universities’ offering full degrees, there seems to be a genuine hunger for virtual academics, and why wouldn’t there be? Instead of having to alter or uproot your life to go where the knowledge is you can now simply log on and learn.

It’s probably also not surprising that some of the jazziest online schools and programs are for-profit. While making an honest living is a laudable goal in life, some of these for-profit online schools — like their for-profit brick-and-mortarboard kin — are nothing more than a skimming operation aimed at federal student-loan dollars. Couple premeditated leeching with administrative efforts to heap for-profit debt onto students at abusive interest rates and the worst of these schools are little more than a gussied-up Craigslist scam looking for student suckers.

Standing in opposition to the for-profit paradigm are fully accredited non-profit and governmental schools offering free MOOC’s. While academically laudable, it’s also true that some of these staid institutions are getting into MOOC’s for branding and marketing reasons, some are using MOOC’s to up-sell students on fee-based courses, and a few are acting as incubators in order to spin off for-profit start-ups that will eventually help enrich already bulging endowment coffers. Still, cynicism aside, a free course is a free course, and if a MOOC gives far-flung students a chance to learn at a distance I think that’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, even if we narrow our attention to free MOOC’s and impute only golden motives to institutions hosting them, there’s a problem with this most benevolent form of online education. And as a recent New Yorker article points out, it’s a big problem:

An average of only four per cent of registered users finished their MOOCs in a recent University of Pennsylvania study, and half of those enrolled did not view even a single lecture. EdX, a MOOC collaboration between Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has shown results that are a little more encouraging, but not much. And a celebrated partnership between San Jose State and Udacity, the company co-founded by Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor turned MOOC magnate, also failed, when students in the online pilot courses consistently fared worse than their counterparts in the equivalent courses on campus.

[ Read more ]

2 Literary University of Iowa MOOC’s 4U

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Like many institutions of higher learning, the University of Iowa (my alma mater) has begun offering Massive Open Online Courses. Given that Iowa is home to both the Iowa Writers Workshop and the International Writing Program it’s not surprising that the initial offerings play to those strengths.

The first course, which began in mid-February but is still open for registration, features an in-depth look at Whitman’s A Song of Myself. If you’re interested in poetry, the roots of modern poetry, American history, the roots of American individualism, or Whitman himself, you can’t go wrong here.

The second course, which begins in June, is called here, or run this search. The original site/pages seem to have been relocated at least once, making them hard to find.

— Mark Barrett

On Being a Successful Writer

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If you have an interest in writing, and at some point you feel you’ve become a writer, is being a writer success in itself? If not, why not?

How should writers measure success? How should non-writers measure the success of writers? Should writers pay attention to what non-writers think about success? Should writers pay attention to how other writers define success?

Can the success of a writer be measured objectively? In judging your own success are there specific metrics that matter to you? The number of fans you have? The amount of money you make? The number of awards you receive? The nature of the awards you receive?

Are all award-winning writers successful? Can a writer be successful without winning awards?

If you make money as a writer are you successful? Is your measure of success tied to how much money you make? Can you be successful as a writer if you don’t make money writing?

If you never win an award and you never make any money but you have devoted fans are you successful? If you don’t think you’re successful does that make your fans wrong?

Are subjective measures of success more or less valid than objective measures? Is that true for all writers?

Is your definition of a successful writer fixed or does it change over time? Is your sense of your own success fixed or does it change over time?

Do you measure success relative to your writing or how your writing is received? Both? If you write something you don’t respect and it makes a lot of money or wins a lot of awards or pleases the public, have you been successful? What if you write something that garners no interest but you believe to be your best work? Is that success? Failure?

Is it possible to objectively prove some writers are good and some writers are bad? Do you believe good writers eventually succeed and bad writers inevitably fail?

Is there such thing as a failed writer? Is that something writers decide about themselves or something non-writers say about writers? Is a failed writer someone who failed at the craft of writing? Someone who failed to make money writing? Someone who failed to turn writing into a career?

Does writing itself sustain you, or do you need feedback from others? Are you driven by the process of writing or the outcome? Both? If you could choose only one, which would you choose?

When it comes to defining success as a writer you get to choose what success means to you. Choose carefully.

— Mark Barrett

On Being A Writer

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If you have an interest in writing, what will it take for you to think of yourself as a writer? If you already think of yourself as a writer, what convinced you? If you write but don’t think of yourself as a writer, why not?

What does it mean to be a writer? Is being a writer like being a plumber? A doctor? A cleric? A singer?

What does it mean to be anything? Does it mean that label is your whole life, or what you’re doing at the moment, or what you’re doing at the moment for money?

Who gets to decide if you’re a writer? You? Somebody else? If somebody else, who? Your friends? Your family? An authority who knows nothing about you except what you’ve written?

What if there’s a difference of opinion? What if some people think you’re a writer and others don’t? Does it matter who thinks what? If your friends think you are and your family thinks you aren’t, are you a writer? What if your family thinks you are but your friends think you aren’t? What if an authority thinks you are or aren’t?

What if nobody thinks you’re a writer but you? Can you still be a writer? Can you be a writer by yourself? Can you be a writer if no one ever reads what you’ve written? What if you write in the woods and nobody reads your work until you die? Were you a writer while you were writing? Or are you a writer only after your work is discovered?

Can you be a writer if you make a living doing something other than writing? If you’re being paid to write are you a writer? Always? Is writing a profession? A career? If you work as a writer and you stop working as a writer does that mean you’re no longer a writer?

Do you think of some writers as real writers? Are writers who make money real writers? Are writers who don’t care about money real writers? Are writers who make money better or worse than writers who make no money?

There are a lot of questions in life. There are forty-one in this post alone. Some questions can only be answered with experience. If you think of experience as making mistakes you will always be in pain. If you think of experience as learning you will never know your limits.

When does your interest in writing turn you into a writer? You get to choose.

— Mark Barrett