the Scott Stein

I picked up a couple of Subway sandwiches the other day. The napkins touted Subway's nutritious, low-fat fare--the franchise chain has been marketing itself as the healthy fast food choice for a few years now. At the top corner of the napkin is a graphic that says, "6 grams of fat or less*"

Below this napkin graphic is a list of a few Subway sandwiches with corresponding calories, fat(g), and saturated fat(g). For examples, the Veggie Delite has 230 calories, 3 grams of fat, and 1 gram of saturated fat; the Turkey Breast has 280 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, and 1.5 grams of saturated fat; and the Roast Beef has 290 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 2 grams of saturated fat.

On the napkin, below a red "Versus," is nutritional information for a McDonald's Big Mac and a Burger King Whopper. A Big Mac has 560 calories, 30 grams of fat, and 10 grams of saturated fat, and a Whopper has 670 calories, 39 grams of fat, and 11 grams of saturated fat.

Subway is hoping that you see "670 calories" and all those grams of fat next to its own listing of 280 calories and not too much fat and say, "Holy crap! I better eat at Subway instead of Burger King or McDonald's." Subway is also hoping that you neglect to factor in at least two important pieces of information.

The first thing is that the Subway nutritional information on the napkin is based on the 6-inch sandwich, not the foot-long. Now, I imagine that if you are the sort of person who would even consider eating an entire Whopper, you aren't going to be satisfied by a 6-inch sandwich that only has 280 calories. That isn't a meal. It's an appetizer. It obviously doesn't make sense to compare a 560-calorie meal (Big Mac) with a 280-calorie meal (6-inch Subway Turkey Breast). We might as well compare total alcohol content in a bottle of vodka and a shot of wine. When we compare the 6-inch Turkey Breast sandwich to a popular item with a comparable number of calories, Subway still comes out looking healthier--a regular McDonald's hamburger has 260 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 3.5 grams of saturated fat. A more honest napkin would be comparing these two items, which makes Subway's Turkey Breast look good fat-wise (it has half the fat of the burger), but which doesn't distort Subway's health advantage by comparing unlike items in terms of calories.

The second thing is the asterisk. The calorie and fat content for the Subway sandwich does not include condiments or cheese. The napkin says that 2 cheese triangles (the portion you would get on a 6-inch sandwich) is 40 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, and 2 grams of saturated fat. Mustard adds only 5 calories with no fat. The napkin has wisely chosen not to list mayonnaise.

Let's make the comparison more accurate, doing the math Subway hopes we won't do. A foot-long turkey with cheese is 640 calories, 16 grams of fat, and 7 grams of saturated fat. This is not including mayonnaise. Compare this to the Big Mac's 560/30/10 or the Whopper's 670/39/11, and Subway's Turkey Breast sandwich still comes out as the lower fat choice by far, but not by quite the exceptional margin it at first appeared.

Let's be more fair, and not compare the most fattening meal at Burger King (the Whopper) with a Subway Turkey Breast sandwich. Instead, let's look at Subway's BMT sandwich, which conveniently is not mentioned on the napkin (since it does not have 6 grams or less of fat). The 6-inch BMT has 450 calories, 21 grams of fat, and 8 grams of saturated fat. That's not including cheese. The Meatball Marinara has 560 calories, 24 grams of fat, and 11 grams of saturated fat. Add cheese and make either of these sandwiches foot-longs, and a Whopper or a Big Mac is looking pretty healthy by comparison. The foot-long BMT with cheese is 980 calories, 49 grams of fat, and 20 grams of saturated fat. The totals for the Meatball Marinara foot-long might crash my computer.

It would be dishonest to compare these Subway behemoths to the less fattening McDonald's offerings, like grilled chicken, but that is exactly what Subway does on its napkin by comparing half a turkey sandwich to a Whopper and a Big Mac.

The least fattening sandwich as a proportion of calories on the McDonald's menu is the Premium Grilled Chicken sandwich, which has 420 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 2 grams of saturated fat. As a ratio, that's not far off from the Subway Turkey Breast's (without cheese) totals of either (6-inch) 280/4.5/1.5 or (foot-long) 560/9/3, though the Turkey Breast still has less fat per calorie. Add cheese and mayonnaise, and this might not be true.

When I was in college and could eat anything I wanted without gaining weight, I would sometimes have a Subway foot-long BMT with cheese and mayo as well as chips and a Coke. I didn't eat McDonald's as often, but when I did, I'd have a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke (sometimes a 6-piece chicken nuggets on top of it all). Same at Burger King, substituting a Whopper with cheese for the Big Mac. I think that's pretty close to what a lot of people order at these places (maybe without the nuggets thrown in). In any case, if you are going to eat any of these, you'll be taking in plenty of calories and fat. And if you eat a small turkey sandwich with nothing on it, or a grilled chicken sandwich, you won't be taking in plenty of calories and fat. But the first category--BMT, Big Mac, or Whopper--should not be compared to the second category--turkey sandwich, grilled chicken sandwich--as a way of proving that one restaurant is good for you and the other one is not.

Maybe Subway has more low-fat options than Burger King or McDonald's does (it seems to, though I haven't included salads or devoted my life to comparing menus), and maybe people who choose Subway tend to make healthier choices (perhaps because people go to the burger places specifically to get a Whopper or Big Mac, and people who are interested in more low-fat options choose Subway for that reason). I don't have any objections to Subway pushing the low-fat angle in its marketing. But fair is fair, and consumers should not be taken in by misleading comparisons.

Of course, it isn't anyone's damn business what we choose to eat. Subway has jumped on the obesity-obsessed bandwagon, and if customers looking for weight-loss options find some there, good for them. But since we know that some people would like to limit our choices either by suing fast food companies or passing laws outright, and are targeting the same companies Subway targets on its napkins, let's be sure to direct a bit of our skepticism and critical thought towards healthier-than-thou marketing campaigns that seek to portray their competition as purveyors of nutritional evil in the form of two all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun.


Sources: Subway napkin, subway.com, mcdonalds.com

I found this via Books, Inq. I'm from Queens, New York, and for a pretentious while was a bit self-conscious about having an "uneducated-sounding accent" (though mine was never that strong). I also spent a few (six, not in a row) years in Miami, have lived in Manhattan, and now live near Philadelphia. So, really, it's a wonder I can speak at all. Here are my results (which curiously totals 95%. It seems that I'm an enigma):

Your Linguistic Profile:

50% General American English

30% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Photo credit: Mrs. the Scott Stein
If this picture makes you hungry, that's because it should. I don't mess around.

“I’m thinking of becoming an expatriate. I swear the other day I almost got on a plane to France.” My friend was only half-serious. She wasn’t going anywhere. But the disgust she felt for her own country was real.

“Why?” I asked.

“Smothered-covered.”

Apparently, she had recently seen a television commercial advertising a “smothered-covered” burger at a chain restaurant.

I wondered what topping could be offensive enough to send a person fleeing from the land of her birth. “Smothered-covered with what?”

It didn’t matter what. Cheese. Sauce. Whatever the case, the sad truth was that we lived in a society that wanted its food smothered-covered. It was enough to drive some people to live in France. Almost.

I was then treated to the familiar litany of objections to American consumer culture: Americans were materialistic, greedy, cruel, crass, tasteless, gluttonous pigs who lived only for the next chance to stuff themselves with burgers dripping with cheese. (Or was it sauce? I never did learn what exactly was doing the smothering-covering.)

My friend was sickened at the “excesses of a nation” where so many people were “living in poverty.” She was tired of seeing bad movies at the top of the box office and bad books in windows of bookstores. She’d had it with grotesque daytime talk shows and the popularity of professional wrestling.

Why couldn’t Americans be more sophisticated? Why couldn’t they watch smart television shows and read good books and ignore Britney Spears? In other words, why couldn’t they be more like my friend?

I suppose she figured I would commiserate and add my own snappy remarks about the horrible sensibilities of the American middle class and the debased state of our consumer culture. It would have been easy enough to rip into reality television and the latest self-help book flying off the shelves, and I reserve the right to critique these and more in the future. Today, however, I write not to bury consumer culture, but to praise it.

My recent experience with a chain steak restaurant was different from my friend’s. Sitting at the next table was a family of three: a man in a mechanic’s jumpsuit with his name stitched on the pocket, his wife, and their son. I am sure there was something on the menu that was smothered, or at least covered, but that isn’t the point. This mechanic was a “working man,” as my friend would say, yet there he was enjoying a moderately priced steak with his family on a Friday night. And he and his family were not the exception but the rule.

Look around the local mall or discount store. People, who only a generation or two earlier would have been poor and unable to enjoy a meal out, are now consumers, purchasing services and products that they need or want. Fewer and fewer Americans live in anything like real poverty, judged by any reasonable standard. In our consumer society, the majority of people “living in poverty” are also living with a car, a microwave, a VCR, a color television, a washing machine, and air conditioning. Not only are poor people living better than ever before, but we are fortunate to live in an exceptionally mobile society. Although some politicians like to talk about the “top one percent” and Americans “trapped in poverty,” many of the people categorized as rich were in fact poor at one time, and, overwhelmingly, most of the people considered to be poor today will not be poor in the not-too-distant future.

Many incorrectly blame consumer culture for poverty. The reverse is true--consumer culture is responsible for prosperity. People, after all, have to make, sell, and deliver all those products that others want to consume, which increases employment and material wealth for all (including people in other countries). And it is that very prosperity that leads to a more assertive consumer culture. The lack of a permanent underclass, the continual escape from poverty, is actually the cause of what some would call “our debased consumer culture.”

In The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega y Gasset saw the coming reality of culture being determined by the mass man. Empowering the masses economically and politically would naturally have cultural implications. No longer would there be an elite with the proper breeding and education to direct the culture. Because of the ever-improving standard of living our capitalist system creates, even laborers now have disposable income and time to spend it. Many whose parents had been laborers find themselves able to acquire an education and a white-collar career. Many have become wealthy. A college degree has been transformed from a rare achievement to a common stepping stone. Everything my friend would want for the “poor uneducated masses” is becoming reality. They earn more money, live longer and better, and refuse to have their tastes dictated from above.

But that empowerment also means that Americans enjoy their Danielle Steele novels and soap operas and don’t care who knows it. They’re loud and sure of themselves, and the power of their dollars affects us all. The people want smothered-covered burgers, and the people, in a consumer culture, always get what they want. It is not my purpose to sing the praises of the smothered-covered burger. There is plenty to be critical of in our society. Consumer culture has allowed public opinion to be determined by sound bites and catch phrases (because, of course, countries with other kinds of economic cultures never elect bumbling bureaucrats or enact stupid policies). It has led to millions of conversations over the details of Tom Cruise’s love life (though as long as I’m not forced to participate in such conversations, it isn’t really my problem). It has given birth to television shows and books and songs that--in some people’s opinions, which means, the absolute truth that everyone should agree with--cater to the lowest common denominator, because in entertainment that is often where the money is (fortunately, televisions, books, and radios do not yet have the power to demand my attention. I have figured out how to use the off switch).

However, aside from the material benefits it provides, recent consumer culture has also produced brilliant movies, inventive pop songs, and satire in the form of television shows like The Simpsons and South Park, which are hardly less sophisticated in their humor than The Canterbury Tales or a Shakespearean comedy, based on the number of bathroom and sex jokes alone. It is true that popular consumer culture often elevates the simplistic and the crude, but it can produce the clever and even the profound as well. And our consumer culture has also made room for a thriving high-art community, with some of the world’s finest orchestras, writers, and museums finding their own audiences.

Those who want to denounce consumer culture wholesale must be confronted with its benefits and its cause. Improved material living standards for millions of people, self-confidence, political freedom, more leisure time, greater health, and longer lives are the direct results of a society that is built on a consumer economy. They are, in turn, the direct cause of the popularity of James Patterson novels, People magazine, smothered-covered burgers, fad fashions, and primetime game shows that are painful to watch. The two cannot be separated. If the snobs among us would wish away our consumer culture, they would also have to do away with its genesis--a greater improvement in living standards than any of our grandparents could have conceived.

The popularity of trashy books was inevitable with the invention of the printing press. We would not condemn the printing press and ignore all of the good it has fostered, would we? Of course not. And for the same reason, we shouldn’t condemn consumer culture. It would be nice if Americans, many only a generation or two removed from poverty, would throw aside trite entertainment, at least once in a while. It would be a true joy if movie stars weren’t fawned over by journalists. But that’s wishful thinking. What exactly should the people be doing with their time and money? Millions have been economically empowered in the last few generations; could anyone really expect that they would all be reading sonnets and studying Latin and attending symphonies? Is this the standard they are failing to meet when we look down on their tastes? We need to evaluate consumer culture honestly and in a more historical context.

People, who in earlier times would be illiterate, now choose to read romance novels and self-help books. Should we blame consumer culture for their bad taste, or recognize how lucky they and we are to be living in a society where so many can and do read? People, who in earlier times would be blocked by poverty from attending the opera, now relax by watching the latest action movie or television hospital melodrama. Should we blame consumer culture for their lowly interests, or recognize how lucky they and we are to be living in a society that has given them the time and technology for such entertainment? People, who in earlier times would be unable to afford a steak dinner, now drive around the corner, still in their work clothes, and get filet mignon for an hour’s wages. Should we blame consumer culture for their lack of formality, or be thankful that in this society a working-class family can have a meal brought to them with dignity, cooked to order?

Those claiming to care about the working class should be consumer culture’s loudest cheerleaders. Of course, it is only natural for artists and writers to challenge the status quo and be critical of what they think is the worst in their society (though in some "artistic" circles, loathing American capitalism is the status quo). My comments above do not mean I don’t have critiques of my own. But any honest critique of American consumer culture should be tempered by the reality that it has resulted in more improved lives than any other kind of economic culture in the history of the world.

It might indeed be a case of either-or. Either people are poor and not free, or they have money and freedom and as a consequence the rest of us can’t avoid the new Britney Spears song on the radio. As one who, a generation or two earlier, might not have attended college or been in a position to look down on the literary tastes of the masses, I gladly praise the consumer culture that creates freedom and prosperity and opportunity. And if Britney Spears truly cannot be avoided, I will be happy to turn off my radio and television and read a good book. After I’ve had my smothered-covered burger, of course.


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This essay was first published on the Drexel Online Journal in 2002. A few cultural references have since been updated and other minor changes have been made.

When I was working on my M.F.A. degree at the University of Miami, I remember my mentor, author Lester Goran (Tales from the Irish Club, The Bright Streets of Surfside, others) asking me whether, for my thesis project, I would be writing a collection of short stories or a novel. A "book-length work of literary value and publishable quality" was required for graduation (a statement that deserves a blog entry of its own at some point). Choosing the short stories was considered a cop-out. Having time to write a novel is part of why people go for the M.F.A., but some students are intimidated by the prospect and opt to throw together the stories they've been writing for the past couple of years in workshops and call it a collection.

I wanted to write a novel and told Goran so, but also said, "I've never written a novel before. I don't know how to."

He said, "Everyone who's ever written a first novel has never written one before. And when you write your second novel, it'll be the first time you've ever written that one, too."

Writing novels is hard work, and each novel is like the first novel we've ever written. Writing my first novel Lost for my M.F.A. degree taught me how to write that novel. It didn't teach me how to write the second one, as I discovered while writing Mean Martin Manning. The books posed different problems that required their own solutions. The only thing that maybe made writing the second one a bit less frightening was that I'd finished writing a novel once before, so at least I knew (or suspected) it was possible to do it, sort of how meeting impossible deadlines consistently in any field gives you some confidence that you'll meet the next impossible deadline, even though you don't know how you're going to do it at the time. This is how I view writing the second novel now, with it written already. My perspective was probably not the same back when I didn't know if I would be able to write the second novel. Maybe approaching the second novel was more frightening than the first. What if I don't have anything left to say? What if I only have one novel in me? All that.

I wrote the bulk of Lost in 1997 and published it in 2000. I wrote the bulk of Mean Martin Manning in 2004 and it will be published late in 2006. Though I will spend the coming months promoting Mean Martin Manning, I know that it's time to begin thinking about writing a new novel. I don't have a hint of a premise yet. Every new novel brings with it the question, Where do these things come from?

Lost came from a single sentence: "It was the truth and there was no denying it." I wrote the sentence and liked it. What was the truth? Why was there no denying it? I had no idea. So I wrote lots of sentences, deleted them, and finally came up with: "Jeremy Keller was being followed." More questions. Why was he being followed? Who would follow him? The novel's first two paragraphs made it clear that the answer would not be conventional:

It was the truth and there was no denying it. Jeremy Keller was being followed. At first he didn't quite believe it. Who gets followed in real life?

In the movies and on TV and even in books people are followed all the time--usually private detectives, who manage to spot the blue sedan in the rearview mirror the instant it begins to tail them and who always escape after the requisite high-speed car chase. But this was life. Jeremy wasn't a private detective and had, to the best of his knowledge, never been followed before. It isn't as easy as it seems on TV. He didn't know if he should look at the man, or talk to him, or ignore him. As with everything else, there is a real if undefined etiquette to being followed.

These paragraphs and the first two chapters, totaling less than 10 manuscript pages, paralyzed me. In them, not only is Jeremy being followed by a mysterious man, but he receives a mysterious envelope. The only problem was that I didn't know why he was being followed or what was in the envelope, so I didn't write another word for five months. Only when I realized that it didn't matter what was in the envelope, that my novel wasn't about that, was I able to go forward, and then, as they say, Lost wrote itself (though I did all the work). The premise is that Jeremy is being followed, but unlike a normal person, who might be angry or frightened at discovering that he's being followed, Jeremy is delighted, because he has always believed that he was destined for something great and is sure that being followed is a sign of important revelations to come. The character and premise grew together, but clearly the premise came first. I asked, Why would a person be happy to be followed? A character with this peculiar take on things, wandering around Manhattan trying to discover why he's being followed, provided plenty of satirical opportunities.

Mean Martin Manning started as a paragraph:

His mother would sing to her baby in his crib with the voice of an angel. But when the angel sang Martin wept, because Martin was a mean baby. Some might say that babies are neither mean nor nice, that babies simply are--like moldable clay or blank slates. But Martin was mean all right. A mean baby. Later, he was a mean boy, still later, a mean adult, and his meanness, like a garden well-tended, grew with age. He was, at 83 years, meaner than in his youth, not the result of a hard childhood or bitterness at old age, but the predictable culmination of a life steeped in cruelty and uncaring.

I had this paragraph for more than a year, ended up writing another two pages or so, and then at least another year (maybe three) went by. I didn't spend all of the time staring at a computer monitor--there were reasons (or excuses) for not making progress on the novel. Little things, like getting married, having a son, buying a house, building a teaching career, running an online magazine. But the truth is that if I knew how to write the second novel, I would have been writing it no matter what else was going on in my life. I didn't know how to write it. I had no plot, no other characters, not much of a premise beyond what the first paragraph suggested, though the two-page chapter did mention that Martin hadn't left his apartment in more than 20 years. When I tried to write it, it was all wrong. So mostly I didn't try to write it.

Then I decided to throw out what I'd written--which was too stiff--and write the novel in first person, from Martin's point of view. I wrote the below, originally the novel's preface. It is not going to be in the published book, but does appear on Mean Martin Manning's home page:

All I wanted was to be left alone. It wasn’t that much to ask. I didn’t want sympathy or help or your free cheese. Just to be left alone. If you had let me be, none of it would have happened. Don’t blame the sleeping dog if you go and poke it with a stick. Dogs are dogs. They don’t appreciate being poked. If you get your ass bit off, good for the dog.

Dogs are dogs. You can’t change them. Sure, the young ones can be trained. Throw a bone and watch them roll over. Big deal. They’ll also hump a chair leg, geniuses. The young ones don’t know the difference. But don’t try it with the old ones. There’s nothing like a true cliché. It isn’t that the old ones aren’t smart enough to learn anything new. It’s just that they know a chair leg when they see one.

If I had been a dog you can bet I wouldn’t be fetching anyone’s shoes, either. If some prick tried getting me to fetch his shoes, I might piss in them. No, I’d definitely piss in them. Actually, now that it’s come up, I don’t think shoe-pissing ought to be the exclusive province of canines. There are some people whose shoes I’d like to piss in right now.

Not that I’ve actually done such a thing. For the record--because posterity deserves a full, accurate account of my experience, and outlandish accusations are probably already being thrown about--I never pissed in anyone’s shoes. There’s no need for exaggeration--I stick to the facts. I’m a little ashamed to admit that this is the first time pissing in a shoe occurred to me. There were some very deserving people, and all of them owned equally deserving footwear of one kind or another.

The novel's premise grew out of the tone of this preface. What would happen if Martin Manning, who hasn't left his apartment in 30 years, were confronted by the outside world? This led to the question, Who would confront him and why? Exploring the question led to lots of satirical possibilities.

I haven't yet hit the I'll-never-have-an-idea-for-another-novel-again morass, but I expect it will come soon enough, in the spring as the academic year winds down and I realize that summer will soon be here, with time to write. It'll be depressing. There will be anxiety. I'll be unpleasant to live with. Which is all good, because for me that's part of writing novels, too, a necessary step that means I'm on the way to pushing myself toward novel number three. When the struggles come and I don't know what to do next, I will try not to panic. After all, I'll tell myself, it's the first time I've ever written my third novel.


Scott Stein is the author of the novels Mean Martin Manning and Lost.

A few weeks back I wrote about my wife's difficulty buying me Sudafed, because the stuff is guarded by rattlesnakes and fire-breathing scorpions at the local CVS. Well, yesterday I went to CVS because I needed some Sudafed (the generic equivalent). But the pharmacy was closed--not the store, which was open, but the pharmacy. And you can't get Sudafed over the counter even though it's an over-the-counter medication. So I left CVS without my medication and was generally miserable the rest of the night. I didn't have any left. I probably should stock up on the stuff, but they won't sell you much of it at one time. Plus, stockpiling Sudafed is the sort of thing that might get you in trouble these days. I went back to CVS today and bought a package of decongestants, after showing my license, having my address and name recorded, and signing a federal registry. It's a good thing these measures have ended drug use by all children and restored America to her former glory, or I might be annoyed.

I wrote “The Stacker” when I was 23. It’s the first real story I ever wrote. (It’s also the first story I had accepted for publication, though not the first to be published, but I’ll talk about that later.) I’d written other stuff as an undergraduate at the University of Miami, where I majored in creative writing, but nothing I would call a story. As an undergrad fiction writer, mainly I flopped around, like a fish on a boat.

When I graduated I took a job with a small advertising agency in New York City. I answered phones when I started there, but pretty soon was writing copy for ads and brochures for toys and dog toys and wine--including Louis Jadot and Taittinger Champagne.

I was going to New York University at night, after writing the dog toy copy all day. In my final term at NYU, I was working on my master’s thesis on Kafka. For a couple of months I think I thought I was Kafka.

That same semester I decided to apply for M.F.A. programs. I hadn’t written a word of fiction since getting my B.A., nearly two years earlier. But M.F.A. applications required creative writing submissions. Besides, if I was going to be a fiction writer, at some point it figured that I’d have to write some fiction.

I wrote “The Stacker” over a couple of nights. With some distance now from its creation, I see three influences on this story.

One was my job, where I didn’t love what I was doing, but where I worked with people who did, who, viewed through my generic idealism at the time, took dog toys, and writing about dog toys, and photographing dog toys, a bit too seriously. The angry, perpetually hungover graphic designer I worked for talked about his work--which wasn't particularly impressive--the way writers and artists talk about their craft. I was thinking about what art is and how people delude themselves about the importance of what they're doing.

One was Kafka.

One were the questions I had about my own skill as a writer, the value of what I was doing, why I was doing it, whether I was fooling myself, you know, little things, like the meaning of life.

After I wrote “The Stacker,” I felt pretty good about it and for the first time chose to submit a story to literary journals. I was totally naïve about the whole process, did all the wrong things--I sent it out blind, without having read any of the journals I was submitting it to. I didn't read literary journals. Still don't. I just looked through a guidebook and picked the most prestigious literary journals I could find that allowed simultaneous submissions.

A couple of months later I got a letter from The Quarterly. Inside was my ten-page manuscript. The first six pages had giant X’s covering the entire pages. On the seventh page it said, “Start here.”

There was a handwritten note on a card clipped to the manuscript. I no longer have the note, but it said something like, “If you’ll make these changes, we’ll publish this.”

It was signed G. Lish.

At the time, I didn’t know who Gordon Lish was. I didn’t know that he’d been the fiction editor at Esquire. I didn’t know that some people thought he deserved as much credit as Carver for Raymond Carver’s early stories. I didn’t know that The Quarterly was a big deal.

Anyway, I cut the first six pages and awaited my first publication, in a national literary journal edited by Gordon Lish. When I started the M.F.A. program at Miami, a fellow student who had heard that I had a story coming out in an upcoming issue of The Quarterly, told me he’d push his own grandmother down a flight of stairs to get published there (which he stole from someone, Faulkner maybe?). Obviously, I avoided this kid as much as possible, but it was apparent that this publication was a big deal.

Soon enough I saw the galleys, my name in print for the first time. I was to be in the next issue. It was a magical day. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Weeks turned to months. Finally a letter came, explaining that The Quarterly had run out of money. The issue might have been printed already, if I remember correctly, but there was no money left to distribute the copies. The Quarterly went out of business.

I mourned for a day, then out the story went, this time with a cover letter explaining that Gordon Lish had edited it, and within a couple of weeks The G.W. Review accepted it, and “The Stacker” was finally published, about two years after I first wrote it. It turned out to be the second story I published even though it was the first I’d had accepted for publication.

The most important thing is what I learned from my one encounter with Gordon Lish, when he cut 60% of my story. It was a great lesson. I think it’s saved me 60% of the work of being a fiction writer. Ever since then I cut out 60% of the story before I start writing it.

Below is the final, published version of “The Stacker.”
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The Stacker
by Scott Stein

The stack was developing as a sort of snowflake, with a symmetry as unconventional as it was unconditional. The columns at the snowflake’s outer tips consisted of the rectangular crates, which grew larger as they neared the ceiling, and the crates with still more sides also grew progressively larger throughout the stack. The stack was sorted by code in a diagonal pattern, both alphabetically and numerically, and a chessboard arrangement had also emerged, with the alternation of light and dark wood crates throughout.

Had the Stacker intended all of it? Any of it? He didn’t understand how it had worked out to such perfection. The pieces had just fallen into place. He couldn’t believe the beauty he had brought into the world, and stood for a moment, still and silent and wondering how it had all happened. Finally, he had a stack that he wanted people to see, that people were capable of seeing. The other stackers would never tell him they liked it, he knew that. They would resent his accomplishment; their blind jealousy wouldn’t allow them to acknowledge the greatness of his art. He didn’t need them anyway. A stack as important as this one could not be long ignored.

With a synthesized chime and a flashing red light, the freight elevator’s doors parted. For a full minute, the automated treadmill churned loudly as it steadily spewed more crates into the room. The Stacker laughed for a second. This was clearly a joke. There was never more than one delivery per day. Someone was having fun at his expense. Who could be playing games like this? No one. It was no joke. He had no friends, no one who would trouble with such childishness. And tampering with crates was a serious offense. No, this was a real shipment, and he would have to assimilate it into the rest of the stack. How could they do this to him? He looked at the perfection of the stack he had constructed, marveled at its purity, and was afraid to disturb it, to introduce new crates that might upset the harmony it embodied.

But looking upon it made him know that he had nothing to fear. He was now one of the Masters. The finest stack in history stood before him, fashioned by his own hands, and this new challenge could only result in further greatness. He strapped a crate and maneuvered it into position, and another, and another. The stack reached nearly to the ceiling. He worked even more frantically than he had the first time, and the stack grew in size and beauty. The symmetry continued, and the top half of the stack mirrored the lower, with the new crates now getting smaller as they approached more glorious heights. Certainly it would be the subject of numerous papers and articles. Probably the University would offer research grants to study it at length. The Stacker was sure to be made a supervisor. He would likely tour the country, speak to panels, and help with important decisions and policies.

He swung and hooked and strapped until his hands burned and his back ached. He ran and leapt and nearly danced as he became one with the stack, until he understood each crate as if he had built it himself, until his clothes were wet and his arms were heavy. Then, still sweating and panting, he realized that it was done. The stack was complete. Its giant shadow drowned out the light, and he stood, shivering in awe. He wished it weren’t so dark. He couldn’t get a good look at the stack, and turned toward the wall to brighten the light, but bumped into a crate instead. He was inside the stack, in the center of the immense snowflake, which was everywhere flush with the ceiling. The Stacker had walled himself in. He couldn’t get out and couldn’t see the stack from the outside, as it was meant to be seen. He had to find a way out. The collators would be by soon, there would be transfer requests, and he couldn’t be found in this ridiculous position, trapped by his own creation. The greatness of his stack would be lost if it got out that he had imprisoned himself. The first thing one learned as a stacker was to leave a way out. The fundamentals had eluded him.

Just then there was a knocking from the hall. He didn’t answer. A banging. He held his breath and was motionless. More banging, and the Stacker heard a sheet of paper being slipped under the door and then withdrawing footfalls. He was saved. He had bolted the door, and no one would be able to enter until he unlocked it himself.

The Stacker grabbed a crate and slowly began shimmying it loose. He had designed the stack so that he could remove crates when called upon without disturbing the integrity of the overall structure. True, he had intended to remove them only from the outside (after he’d shown the stack to the proper persons and had it photographed), but that shouldn’t make any difference. He slid the crate from side to side before finally pulling it through.

There was a distant creak and a rumble, and the giant shadow wavered. The columns swayed slightly, and the Stacker ran to one and tried to hold it in place. There was a perfectly square hole where he’d pulled the crate loose, large enough for him to escape from the deteriorating stack, but he made no move toward it. He ran from one column to another, but the rumble grew louder and the wavering more severe. As the crates toppled from their height, he made no effort to evade them but struggled to brace the stack, still pitifully leaning into a trembling column when the first crate came down on his head. The entire stack followed. A deafening crash of wood sprayed throughout the room as the Stacker was crushed to death and buried beneath tons of plain, ordinary crates. On the floor next to the steel door, half-covered with dust and shards of wood, was a sheet of paper. It read: Crates sent in error. Do not stack.

----

Scott Stein is the author of the novels Mean Martin Manning and Lost.

At my nephew's bris a couple of weeks ago, my son asked me to hold him up so he could see what the doctor/mohel was doing. I tried to explain. "Why do they cut his penis?" my son asked. It was a good question. I wasn't going to get into the whole covenant with God thing, especially given my religious views. My son was circumcised, but did not have a bris. I kept my answer appropriate for a four-year-old: "Because it helps to keep the baby healthy." I don't know if it's true, and male circumcision does have some passionate opponents. But according to the headline in today's Independent Online (via Drudge), "Male circumcision 'lowers risk of HIV infection by 60%'." We'll see whether this increases the procedure's popularity, and whether the study stands up to scrutiny.

In any case, some will continue to oppose male circumcision. One of the arguments I've heard is that it decreases sensitivity and sexual enjoyment for the man. If this is at all true, I have trouble believing that there is a major difference. As a circumcised man myself, I can't imagine sex being much more enjoyable than it already is. But if it is true, it leads me to a conspiracy theory, which I had fun making up today after reading the Independent Online piece and Michael Medved's column, "Why the world hates the Jews," (whatever you might make of it), in succession.

Some people argue that the Jews have a genetic intelligence advantage, which accounts for their disproportionate representation in medicine and law and their achievements in business. Some argue that they have a culture shaped by history that emphasizes success and education, which accounts for their disproportionate representation in medicine and law and their achievements in business. And of course, there are all sorts of sinister conspiracy theories that try to account for their disproportionate representation in medicine and law and their achievements in business.

I would like to propose the Circumcision Jewish Conspiracy Theory to account for their disproportionate representation in medicine and law and their achievements in business. It's simple, really. Circumcision leads to decreased enjoyment of sex, though not decreased enough to prevent the propagation of the genetic lines of those circumcised. But it does decrease sexual pleasure just enough to allow men to focus on something other than getting laid, at least part of the time. Its effect is probably most pronounced in the hormone-saturated teen years, which explains why Jews excel in school in comparison to their circumcision-deprived peers, and why so many end up going to medical school. Achievement during these years has lifelong ramifications. Over the generations this slight edge in ability to think of something other than sex has been the cause of the Jewish cultural valuing of education and the achievements of the Jews as a people, a slow, cumulative consequence of thousands of years of cut penises and slightly decreased sexual pleasure.

If the theory is correct, then we should see increased rates of achievement from nations and ethnic groups that reflects their percentage of circumcised men and the percentage of male circumcision for past generations.

One objection could be that male circumcision leaves out half the population--women. But it doesn't. For one, less voracious sexual appetites among men would also leave women with more time and energy to focus on concerns other than sex. Also, to the extent that patriarchal societies were guided in intellectual and economic achievement by men, because women were excluded from these activities, we would expect male circumcision to have a disproportionate overall impact on the group's achievement levels as a whole. Even in societies where women are no longer excluded, the cultural pattern would have been established long ago, when women were excluded. Thus, we see that the effects of male circumcision reaches down through the centuries. This poses challenges for other groups, who might wish to emulate the Jewish success that was caused by male circumcision. Even if these groups begin to approach the near 100% circumcision rate of Jews, it would be many generations before the groups reaped the circumcision windfall.

If you think it's a stupid theory, you're right. I don't know that it's much stupider than some of the stuff people say on the subject. Anyway, if you'd like to add to the silliness, feel free to post a comment to rebut or support the Circumcision Jewish Conspiracy Theory.

(Note: Whether this attempt at humor is in good taste or not, and whether there is anything funny here or not, is for the reader to determine, but I won't provide a forum for bigotry, and will remove comments as needed. I don't want real conspiracy theories. Just the mock ones.)

Novelist Graham Greene obliterates the distinction between “literary fiction” and “entertainment.” Some serious, literary authors trade in obscurity and pretension that almost no one wants to read and few enjoy. Some popular authors get readers to buy books and turn pages, providing a diversion, but have nothing to say and leave no impression. Ignore these literary bores and popular formula factories and read something by Graham Greene, who wrote page-turner after page-turner, creating intensely dramatic situations and memorable characters and shining light on human nature and society as only he could. No writer builds such tension in his quiet way, in so little space, the narrative always seeming to take the reader by surprise with its power. His short stories are strong, but the novels are what make Greene a major author. My readers can make their own suggestions, but I’ll recommend A Burnt-Out Case, Brighton Rock, and The Quiet American.


Note: From time to time I'll be highlighting a "featured author," to introduce students, and anyone else interested, to a variety of writers. I hope to have some balance between fiction and nonfiction, political and nonpolitical, living and deceased, famous and somewhat less well-known (but deserving of attention). You can find past featured authors here. Of course, many of my readers will be familar with these authors, and are welcome to comment or recommend different works.

“Don’t give us that cock-and-bull story,” the prosecutor said. “We can wait till the cows come home. Let’s talk turkey.”

“You’re trying to throw me to the lions,” the accused said.

“You’re in the doghouse all right, but I’m giving you a chance to keep the wolf from your door.”

“It’s a fine kettle of fish I’m in.”

The prosecutor was impatient. “Just grab the bull by the horns.”

The accused had to tell the truth. “That night it was raining cats and dogs, so I stopped in for some Wild Turkey—”

“You were at that bar at 6:15 p.m.,” the prosecutor interrupted, “but I guess the early bird catches the worm.”

The accused continued. “I ruled the roost … I was the cat’s meow, and there were plenty of fish in the sea. Besides, though my wife watched me like a hawk, when the cat’s away, the mice will play.

“But I guess birds of a feather flock together, because my wife was there too, with him. And that was a horse of a different color. Though he was strong as an ox, I didn’t play possum. He was a bee in my bonnet, and she had really gotten my goat. Maybe it was like closing the barn door after the horse had run away, but I’d have been a monkey’s uncle if I had let sleeping dogs lie. So, like a bat out of hell and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail I was next to them.

“‘Every dog has his day,’ I said to him. I waited for her to eat crow.

“But she said, ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’ And then, adding insult, ‘Monkey see, monkey do.’

“He waved his hand at my breath and offered, ‘Hair of the dog that bit you?’

“‘It’s for the birds!’ I told him. Right then I’d quit cold turkey.

“‘Get off your high horse,’ my wife said.

“But he assured her, ‘His bark is worse than his bite. Besides, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,’ and he hugged her.

“He had been my best friend, but I guess only a dog is man’s best friend. I saw that he was really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So was she. He’d been to my home countless times, like a fox in a henhouse.

“I wanted another chance, but my wife said, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and a leopard can’t change its spots.’

“So I flipped them the bird and left the bar.”

The prosecutor was silent as a mouse, but then he asked, “Like water off a duck’s back, is that what you’re saying?”

The accused nodded. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I’m giving you a chance to feather your own nest.”

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink … but I miss my wife and wish she were alive. Him too.”

“Spare me the crocodile tears. You know what I think? I think you felt like a black sheep, that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And I also think your wife was a white elephant, that you wanted the lion’s share of what you’d squirreled away for yourself. It’s sad, because she was a real warhorse, the goose that laid the golden egg. But to you she was just a fly in the ointment, wasn’t she?”

The accused cleared the frog from his throat, and asked, “You really think that I would kill her?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“But my marriage was a sacred cow.”

“What kind of snake oil are you trying to sell? You knew that there was more than one way to skin a cat, didn’t you? You decided to kill two birds with one stone, didn’t you? Didn’t you? We want to know.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” the accused answered.

“That might be, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

“Don’t put the cart before the horse—I don’t see any witnesses. They’re both food for worms, sleeping with the fishes, gone the way of the Dodo.”

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The chickens sure have come home to roost. And an elephant never forgets.”

The accused shifted uneasily. “I thought I smelled a rat. What stool pigeon turned me in? Where’s the snake in the grass?”

“You’re a sitting duck,” the prosecutor said.

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. I believe you like I trust the boy who cried wolf. Your threats are a paper tiger.”

“This is more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” the prosecutor said, laughing like a hyena. “Let me introduce to you a canary that can sing, a woman with more lives than a cat—your wife.”

She walked into the courtroom and sat in the back row.

The accused said nothing.

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” the prosecutor asked.

The accused was a deer caught in the headlights, and decided to cooperate. “You’ve been a busy beaver, and I see that my goose is cooked. I guess there’s no choice but to fish or cut bait.”

But the judge had heard enough, and said to the prosecutor, “It looks like you have all your ducks in a row.”

And the accused howled in horror and was taken away in chains, to spend the dog days of every summer after in a cage not fit for an animal.

-----

"Kangaroo Court" was first published in When Falls the Coliseum: a journal of American culture (or lack thereof). Scott Stein is the author of the novels Mean Martin Manning and Lost.

Frank Wilson led me to Amy Nelson Mile's link to Franz Kafka's Trivia Challenge. I'm happy to report that, though while in graduate school (the first time around) I might have attained a perfect score, at this stage of my life I was unable to earn any points (relative mental health is a wonderful thing). I did laugh, though, and I think Kafka would have. Even if you haven't read any Kafka, it's worth a look.

I am pleased to announce that my new novel Mean Martin Manning can now be pre-ordered from the publisher, ENC Press. Go here. The book's tentative, listed publication date is February, 2007, though I think that's a conservative estimate and hope it will be out before the end of the year. If you pre-order, you'll be among the first to get your copy when it's published. In a couple of weeks I'll be announcing the completion of four interactive websites to promote the book and the beginning of the grassroots book-promotion campaign to end all ... well, not to end anything, but it should be pretty cool. If you're not a pre-order kind of person, you can still visit the site and find out about Mean Martin Manning.

In the fall I'll be teaching a new course I'm creating for the University of Pennsylvania called "What's So Funny?" It's a critical writing course that focuses on understanding humorous writing. Students will be reading essays, articles, reviews, plays, stories, maybe a couple of novels, Internet sites, whatever else I can find, and then discussing the use of humor and writing papers analyzing the whole thing. Maybe we'll also view a couple of good standup routines or sitcoms. Toward the end of the semester I might give students a chance to do a little creative writing and construct their own short humor pieces (which is what we do for the entire term in the Writing Humor and Comedy course I started at Drexel University, named one of the "Ten Best Things about Drexel" in the book Drexel University Off the Record).

I mention all of this because I am working on the "What's So Funny?" syllabus and wouldn't mind help from millions of strangers. I'm in that stage of developing the course that might lead a weaker man to panic. Fifteen weeks to fill and some of the nation's most intellectually aggressive students expecting to be challenged and enlightened every second could intimidate some people. But compared to the pressure of waiting to have a new novel released in a few months and not knowing what to write my next novel about, this is cake. Really moist cake, with icing, probably chocolate.

Cake aside, I would welcome suggestions about what to include on the reading list. Feel free to comment on this blog entry with as many suggestions as you have of funny poems, stories, novels, sites, essays or essay collections, anything that might fit what I describe above. Any kind of humor could work for the course, from the most sophisticated, meaningful satire to the silliest just-for-laughs comedy sketch. No choice is too obvious. After all, somehow I never got around to reading P.G. Wodehouse until this year.

Although the course will not focus on partisan political humor that is mostly only funny to people who share the source's perspective, including some of it is probably inevitable. Given that, I hope to have some balance in that aspect of the course, since it is not my goal to indoctrinate students in any one view. Other included humor might have political implications even if it isn't specific or partisan, and I hope for some balance there as well. Still, my main goal is not balance in all things, but to have the students look at the best and most interesting material I can find. And, as I said, political humor isn't going to dominate the course.

If I use your suggestion, I will give you absolutely no credit, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you have added in your own special way to some Ivy Leaguers' educations. I know, payment enough. And used or not, your suggestion will add to the list that might be a good resource for my blog's visitors looking for a funny read, so consider it public service. The really important kind. I'll be busy researching this for the next few weeks and will probably end up having to photocopy excerpts and essays from a bunch of different sources and make one of those wirecomb books to use as a text since, despite my offer to edit one for a hefty fee and substantial royalties, no textbook publisher has yet produced an appropriate anthology.

Finally, if you are a blogger, please consider posting a link to this post so more people will be able to make suggestions.

Check out Commerce Not Good For Children at Atlas Blogged about a recent NPR article. I agree that it isn't a tragedy that my son recognizes logos and brands. It means he's discovering and understanding the world around him. And I don't worry that he will become a slave to the marketing departments of cereal and toy companies. As Wulf says:

I don’t really care if my children are watching commercials. I am one of those parents who are capable of saying "no" to my children. And my kids don’t have money, and they don’t have cars, so they won’t be making any purchases for themselves for quite some time. In the meantime, they learn by example. I do not feed them crap, and I do not buy them whatever they ask for. My shopping habits are shockingly similar to those of my parents when I was a child, and shockingly dissimilar to what I was asking for when I was five years old. Despite all of the Smurf-watching I did as a kid, I turned out okay. And that wasn't nearly as educational as Dora, or my personal favorite, Little Einsteins.

The generic, predictable stance of too many in academia and public advocacy (you know, those groups always telling us how terrible things are) seems to be that we are powerless before the lure of commercials and marketing campaigns, or our children are, and we are, as an extension of our children, since our children tell us what to do. (I don't remember ever telling my parents what to do when I was a kid--or, more correctly, I don't remember them listening when I did.)

Corporations and advertising agencies wish that they had the power the experts say they do. Most of the time they're deperately trying to identify whatever is popular and get in on the action. There are so many failed movies, books, products of every sort, that had massive marketing budgets and experts pushing them. When the public doesn't want a product, there isn't much companies can do. Of course, a good ad campaign certainly can bring a product the notice it needs to catch on, and can be the reason one product becomes popular while another fails to win any customers. If advertising didn't work, companies wouldn't spend so much on it. But in the Internet age, what is in is usually the result of word-of-mouth and decentralized customer-to-customer marketing (maybe this has always been the case). The best most companies can do is continue to create products they hope will become the next big thing, or, more often, hope that they've jumped on the emerging bandwagon in time, and hope their advertising helps.

People are far more media savvy than the experts claim. The experts, of course, don't usually think the media has undue influence on themselves. But that's because of the experts' superior educations and sophistication. Unfortunately for the experts, years of college and especially graduate school don't usually make people immune to bullshit; they usually just convince them of a particular brand of it.

I am speaking above about my general sense of the experts' attitudes toward media and marketing and the malleability of the masses. To be fair, the NPR article focuses on children, and it is true that we shouldn't expect them to be as savvy as adults are. Which is why they have parents. The NPR expert, Susan Linn, author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, acknowledges this when she writes, "I don't absolve parents of responsibility for their children's well being in a commercially driven world..." Even in that sentence she backs away from the acknowledgement, by continuing, "...but most of the parents I talk to are doing their best in what often feels like an unending and overwhelming struggle. In the face of well-funded, brilliantly strategized, and relentless commercial assaults on their children, parents are expected to be unyielding gatekeepers and their children's sole protectors." I don't know what parents Linn has talked to. I have a four-year-old and know lots of other parents who have young children. We talk about parenting challenges all of the time. Marketing is never one of them. I have addressed the "brilliantly strategized" claim above, and if you think "assaults" is hyperbolic, Linn also writes:

As I listen to parents and think about my own experiences, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a colleague of mine who works with families in a neighborhood saturated with gangs. He talked about the anguish of parents who find that -- despite their best efforts -- they can't compete with the seductive offerings of a toxic street culture. The culture of marketing that pervades all our communities, from the poorest to the richest, is similar in that it competes with parental values for children's hearts, minds, and souls.

And:

After years of exploring advertising and advertising practices as they affect children, I've come to the conclusion that telling parents to "just say no" to every marketing-related request that they feel is unsafe, unaffordable, unreasonable, or contrary to family values is about as simplistic as telling a drug addict to "just say no" to drugs.

These quotes read like a parody of NPR, but they're real. If NPR listeners agree with them, I suggest that over the years they've been exposed to a bit too much reporting, umm, advertising, umm, manipulation, umm, propaganda, not from corporations or advertisers, but from experts like Linn and NPR. Gangs? Drug addiction? Really? Only people whose children are not facing these challenges would make the comparison.

My son has probably never seen a television commercial for ice cream, but he has eaten ice cream because we sometimes buy it for him. Guess what? He sometimes whines for ice cream. It's what kids do. If I thought whining would get me ice cream, I'd whine for it, too. (It doesn't work for my son and in fact ice cream has been a useful tool in getting him to whine less--but don't tell the obesity police). My son had never seen the cartoon Scooby Doo, but his older cousin had, and last Halloween my son wanted to be Scooby Doo. He had to be something--why I should I care if it's Scooby Doo? My son does sometimes ask for products that have characters on them. Sometimes he gets them, sometimes he doesn't. I like books with certain authors' names on them and CDs with certain musicians' names on them. Sometimes I get them, sometimes I don't.

If liking his Tigger toothbrush makes my son more eager to brush his own teeth (it did) and if liking his Thomas underwear makes him more eager to use the potty and give up diapers (it did), I consider it money well spent, and the good people who made these products available deserve my heartfelt thanks. Other products are less appealing, and as a parent I sometimes have to say "no," which is not only simplistic, as Linn writes, but leaves a burning hole in my heart that might never heal. Still, one thing I'd never do is compare the marketing department selling Tigger toothbrushes to gangs and heroin dealers. But I guess that's why I'm not on NPR.

I picked up Skinny Dip a few months back because I was curious what all the fuss was about. Carl Hiaasen has a successful newspaper column and movie deals and is a bestselling novelist. The blurbs on the back were effusive in their praise of his comedic writing talent (though I have discussed blurbs here) and I thought I ought to be keeping up with at least some popular authors. So I read it. Skinny Dip is easy to read, no question--I finished in a couple of days. It reminded me of the one Elmore Leonard novel I read, Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty, which I know only from the movie (which I did enjoy--the movie, that is). In both cases the villains are so painfully dumb, the heroes so painfully cool, the events largely predictable in their unpredictability, the prose not particularly interesting, the humor lost on me entirely. I felt when reading both of them that the authors were trying really hard to be clever and weren't succeeding nearly as often as they seemed to think they had. And, though these are clearly genre books and perhaps are intended as pure entertainment, they were so devoid of any point or substance, I just couldn't have cared less if any of the characters lived or died.

I also read Big Trouble, by Dave Barry, which was sort of an homage to or a parody of Leonard's style. At first, Barry's novel seemed almost the same as Leonard's. A closer read revealed sentences that were funny in and of themselves as prose, but in terms of story, none of the books mentioned really did anything for me. Maybe I'm not a fan of hardboiled comic detective novels. Maybe someone will point out that these authors have sold millions of books and I haven't. Maybe fans of Leonard and Hiaasen will assure me that the books above are not their best works. I'll have to take their words for it, since I don't plan on reading any more of them. I guess I just don't get it. I do like comic novels (and write them) and have been joyfully discovering P.G. Wodehouse this summer (see here) and enjoy a good hardboiled detective story like those by Dashiell Hammett, though I'm not an avid reader of the latter genre and could certainly be enlightened by some of you about what authors to try. Unlike the Hiaasen and Leonard characters, I was invested in the adventures of Wodehouse's and Hammett's characters and wanted things to work out for them, even though no one would claim that the latter authors (especially Wodehouse) were striving to write anything but an entertaining book.

Note: Book Notes is a regular feature of the Scott Stein, appearing every Wednesday and Friday (I hope) and covering recent and old reads in fiction and nonfiction. They can be found on the main page when new and are archived on the Book Notes page.

9/15/2006 Update: Forget about every Wednesday and Friday. I'll still be posting book notes when the mood strikes, but not on a schedule.


Support this site by using the below links to buy Skinny Dip, Be Cool, or Big Touble. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

It was a good week for links. It was so hot on Wednesday, we had to do something indoors with our son, so we visited Barnes & Noble (because there is a Thomas train table and we had a couple of gift cards left over from birthdays). While browsing, I found an anthology called This Is Not Chick Lit. I blogged about it here. Since then, it has prompted links by Reason magazine's Hit and Run blog; Frank Wilson's Books, Inq.; the Grumpy Old Bookman (the link's under "Deconstructing glorious Gloria," down the page); Karin Gillespie (a chick lit writer?); and an aspiring novelist named Julia Buckley. The editor of Per Contra, my colleague Miriam N. Kotzin, e-mailed me to tell me that one of the authors in the anthology (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) writes for them and is a former Drexel student. A couple of successful novelists (women) I'm friends with e-mailed me with their views, though I'm not at liberty to discuss the details. It was a busy couple of blog days. I'm glad people found the post interesting. Now scroll down and read "The Last Peanut," (which Frank Wilson was gracious enough to link to here). I won't keep mentioning every single person who ever links to me (unless it's a big one), but I've been blogging for a couple of months now without much traffic, so it's nice to be finding readers.

The first story I ever published, in 1996, is a satire called "The Last Peanut." It appeared in Art Times, a New York arts newspaper. It's pretty short for a story at only about 1400 words, which still makes it a long blog entry. The complete piece is posted below. At some point since original publication I made a couple of minor changes.

The Last Peanut
by Scott Stein

It occurred to little Jimmy Peter one August morning, after the electricity went and video games with it, that he hadn’t even opened the chemistry set he’d received from his parents for Christmas.

In the backyard Jimmy tested the Bunsen burner’s flame on the chemistry set’s instruction book. He smiled with satisfaction as the fifty-five pages of red warnings in 11 languages burned away. No sooner had Jimmy mixed a clear liquid with a thick blue, added just a dash of salt, and heated the concoction, than a monstrous orange cloud wafted from his test tube and was picked up by the wind and carried away. The cloud continued to expand as it departed. He stared at it for a second, but the whole thing rather bored Jimmy, and he went inside to play with the dog.

The cloud soon covered the west coast of the United States, reached the east coast within hours, and had crossed the Atlantic by dark. Air raid sirens and emergency broadcast systems around the world were dusted off as people taped their windows and fought over bread and bottled water at the supermarkets. Lines for gas backed traffic up for miles and the price for a gallon nearly doubled. Industry insiders blamed increased demand, but Democrats pointed to a corrupt capitalist economy and decreased support for school lunch programs. Senior Republicans noted that this could all have been avoided if only kids prayed in school and we supported our troops.

No one claimed responsibility for the cloud, but by morning there were theories. It was a new strike in a holy war against the West, or sex, or poorly written sitcoms. This was clearly the work of the religious right, who would never be satisfied until the Ten Commandments were tattooed on the back of every infant’s hand at birth. Or it was the Democrats, who were using scare tactics to take money from the nation’s struggling corporate executives in order to give poor children the same chance as rich kids to view pornography. The militias warned of UN troops amassing on our northern border--the orange cloud could just be a diversion. Maybe it was a message from outer space, or an unexpected result of greenhouse gases. Some said the Day of Judgment was upon us, others were confirmed in their belief of a Jewish conspiracy, and more than a few were sure the earth was fighting back after years of abuse and that all the endangered species would soon rise up and take control of the world’s nuclear arsenals. A woman in Idaho who saw the Virgin Mary in her frozen waffles every other Thursday knew from a reliable source that the orange cloud was Satan’s work.

Everyone prepared for the end. Did it matter if this catastrophe was the result of affirmative action, which certainly put unqualified people in charge of dangerous chemicals? And why hold a grudge against wealthy, industrialized nations, just because of their obsession with progress and their disregard for its consequences? None of this would have happened if only everyone spoke English, but now wasn’t the time to start problems. So what if the Arabs blamed the Israelis, and fat people blamed thin people, and all of this could be traced, if one looked hard enough, to a dirty joke told by a man to another man in the presence of a woman on the floor of an automobile assembly line? The orange cloud was coming for them all. The cloud penetrated every home, every bomb and emergency shelter, every office, every school. But no one died. No one even got sick. The cloud dissipated, and blue once again dominated the sky. There was wild celebration in the streets, world peace, random acts of kindness, and alternate side of the street parking was suspended.

Then the cloud’s evil was realized. Calls came in from farmers all over the world. There were no peanuts. They were gone, melted away. The cloud had left the humans unharmed. The peanuts weren’t as lucky. Peanut farmers and peanut manufacturers were ruined, stocks plummeted, brokers threw themselves from office windows or else were gunned down by disgruntled clients. The medical community was outraged--how could the peanut’s untapped medicinal potential be recovered? Hadn’t anyone heard of the peanut’s ability to cure cancer? And what about the poor? the Democrats asked. Didn’t anyone know that peanuts were their main source of protein? Wasn’t this just an attempt to keep down developing nations, who depended on the money produced from peanuts for military power? And let’s not even mention elephants. How would they survive?

Answers. The nation, the world, demanded an explanation. Satellite spy photography, the FBI, a well-trained German shepherd, a three-minute call to the Psychic Hotline, and a spot on America’s Most Wanted soon traced the orange cloud to little Jimmy Peter’s backyard, and he was immediately arrested along with his parents. Accusations of treachery, of treason, soon fell away, and it became clear that Jimmy had acted alone. Daytime talk shows and respected nightly news programs interviewed his teacher, his doctor, the ice cream man in Jimmy’s neighborhood, examined the comb his barber used a week earlier on Jimmy’s head, checked for radical literature in his school’s library. Standardized tests revealed nothing, though a fight he had in the school cafeteria in the first grade indicated hostility and aggressiveness, if not proving the intent to destroy the world’s peanut crop.

Parents, they were the problem. Not enough love, or they didn’t read to him when he was in the womb, or they neglected to buy him a pony even though he really wanted one and promised to look after it. Jimmy Peter’s perversity had to be connected with having two first names. If not that, at least his mother was at fault for trying marijuana once before she met Jimmy’s father. Not that good old Dad was off the hook. Wasn’t it Mr. Peter who made Jimmy wash behind his ears before going to bed? How could such people be allowed to have children?

What kind of parents bought their kid a chemistry set, anyway? What was wrong with television and computer games? Environmentalists demanded that chemistry sets be outlawed, or at least a five-day waiting period be established, so a background check and mental stability test could be performed before purchases. The National Chemistry Association called the demand political grandstanding, noting that chemicals don’t kill peanuts--people do. Besides, they said, when chemistry sets are outlawed, only outlaws will have chemistry sets.

Just when it seemed that all was lost, it was announced that a peanut had survived the orange cloud. There was one peanut left, and it was apparently immune to the effects of little Jimmy Peter’s experiment. The world held its breath. The last peanut was immediately transported by ground, escorted by helicopters, army jeeps, and a New York City cab driver, to Washington, D.C., where it was presented to the assembled leaders of the world. Scientists explained how they could engineer peanuts from the lone survivor. The new peanuts would have the same immunity. In almost no time, they assured the many presidents, prime ministers, kings, evil dictators, and military strong men in attendance, the world’s peanut supply would be replaced.

The investigation had uncovered no malice, no intent, on Jimmy’s part, and had concluded that it was just an accident born from the natural curiosity of an eight-year-old boy. What a learning experience, the President thought, to allow the boy to acknowledge his mistake to all the world. There would be photo opportunities, and the President would be portrayed as a forgiving, sensitive man. It was an election year, and Congress agreed. Both parties were sure they had decided to forgive Jimmy first. There were protests from the peanut industry, claims of exploitation from child welfare groups, movie offers from four major studios. Jimmy and his parents were brought into the great hall.

They were led to the podium, where the last peanut sat on a plate beneath a crystal cover. Cameras were trained on Jimmy, who had to stand on a chair to reach the podium’s microphone. Before the apology, the President asked everyone to close their eyes and bow their heads in silent prayer, to give thanks to whomever they thanked when great tragedy is averted. The room was still, the universe at peace, leaders from every nation in the world prayed together.

Just then, as he quietly removed the crystal cover from the plate, it occurred to little Jimmy Peter that he’d never even tasted a peanut.

-----


Scott Stein is the author of the novels Mean Martin Manning and Lost.

In a blurb on the back of This Is Not Chick Lit, an anthology by "America's Best Women Writers," Gloria Steinem writes:

This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.

Where to begin? Women are hardly oppressed by the publishing industry, the critics, or the literary establishment. Women publish serious books and are taken seriously; they are reviewed in major publications and taught in university courses; they write bestsellers in every genre; they hold many major positions as editors and literary agents; one of them (Oprah) owns the most powerful promotional vehicle for books that has ever existed; their most commercially successful author, J.K. Rowling, could probably buy and sell a dozen Dan Browns and still afford a few John Grishams to mow the lawn.

Women are also certainly not oppressed by the reading public, since women are the ones who buy most of the fiction, which is why publishers cater to women by publishing chick lit. Gloria Steinem's problem is that women don't make the choices that she wants them to. Not enough women are buying the right kinds of books. Too many of them want to be entertained by something light and amusing and not substantial enough. Too many women--writers--are making too much money by giving other women--readers--exactly what they want to spend their money on. There are men involved in the industry, too, but I would guess that the majority of editors and agents involved in publishing chick lit are women.

Calling a collection of serious stories This Is Not Chick Lit isn't an act of rebellion or a political statement. It's a marketing strategy. "Hey, over here," it says to serious readers, "be seen reading this book. You'll feel better about yourself and will impress people." Or, less cynically, "Hey, if you don't like chick lit, try some literature written by women."

Steinem's final sentence couldn't be more confused.

"I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing."

No, I'm not aware of a book featuring male writers that has chosen to market itself as anti-manly lit, but then I'm not aware of any publisher foolish enough to publish a collection of stories that by design would include only male writers. That's just the sort of thing that might get you protested by, you guessed it, Gloria Steinem.

Besides, publishers and authors--male and female--use the equivalent of "This is not chick lit" on their covers all of the time. Just look at the typography, graphics, blurbs on the back cover, and every aspect of how a book is marketed, and you'll see that the literary books are clearly distinguished from the nonliterary books. John Grisham has been known to complain that reviewers don't take him seriously because his books are too popular. One glance at his books' covers lets the reader know that they are intended to be popular books, not literary, serious ones. Whether these categories and distinctions are right or good is another issue, as is whether popular genres (including chick lit but also suspense, horror, romance, and science fiction) deserve more or less respect. But it isn't a gender thing. To Steinem, though, maybe everything is.

This is an example of women making war on other women. Men who read "manly" books aren't routinely judged and criticized by male activists. Women who read and write chick lit are looked down upon with contempt by activists like Gloria Steinem and made to feel that their desire for a diversion is an act of treason against the gender. As if women were not under enough pressure already, they have to worry about what the movement will think when all they want to do is find an entertaining read. It's a good thing that most women are liberated enough to not really care. That's how I know "we're getting somewhere."

Thanks to Frank Wilson, I read this story in the Guardian Unlimited about people judging in a romantic way and even flirting with people based on the books they are reading in bookstores and elsewhere. I'm sure lots of us judge people by the books on display in their homes (or the lack thereof), by the books they tell us they're currently reading, or even by the music they listen to or movies they like. Maybe judge isn't the right word. It could just be curiosity. If you're like me, when you see someone reading a book, you want to know what it is. Maybe the curiosity has an element of judgment in it, or for some is a pathetic sort of self-esteem boosting, or is just a search for kindred souls. The Guardian Unlimited article focused on the flirting aspect. That I don't do. I am not trying to find a date based on reading preferences. There was a time, though...

I was going on a first date with a woman who lived near Philadelphia. I lived in Manhattan, and we shared a couple of phone calls before the date, though we had briefly met in person, so it wasn't blind. We knew little about each other. The person who gave me her number had told this woman that I was a writer (at the time I had a couple of published stories, an unpublished novel, and an MFA degree). During our first phone conversation, she asked me, innocently enough, if I'd read any Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I liked Marquez (still do), but what mattered was that she didn't ask me if I'd read any James Patterson. I was more militant about my literature back then--if she'd wanted to know if I shared her appreciation for a hack, I would have looked forward to the first date with less enthusiasm. I don't know if I would have canceled it, but that she enjoyed a good book was definitely a plus. I wasn't that big a literary snob--if she wasn't kind, didn't look good or have a sense of humor, or couldn't hold up her end of a witty conversation, we wouldn't be approaching our seventh wedding anniversary, no matter what she liked to read.

I’m less a literary snob now, have been cured to some extent of the MFA affliction. That someone enjoys a fluffy book here and there doesn’t mean anything to me. Some of the people I’m closest to in the world wouldn’t know a good book if it fell on them. Some of them have a better chance of having a book--any book--fall on them than actually reading one. Plenty of people read nothing but good books and are miserable ignoramuses. And plenty of books that are anointed good, by people in a position to be anointing things, suck. Anyway, I don’t object to a good thriller or a beach read. My wife enjoys a diversionary novel as much as anyone. Still, as a writer, I’m glad that I married someone who read The Life of Pi and, despite really liking it, was concerned about the ending enough to make me read it to see if I would have the same problem she did. (I did.) She isn’t a writer (she’s a teacher), but delights in finding the one false note, a skill I have come to value. Not that I was hoping to marry an editor, but when so much of your life is devoted to writing novels, it’s nice to share that life with someone who knows when one is good.

This is my second Jeeves novel, set after the first one I read, Code of the Woosters. How Right You Are, Jeeves is certainly entertaining, a breezy read, though I didn't laugh as much this time. This might be partly because the freshness of the narrator's tone was not as striking now that I was expecting it. But I think the bigger factor is that Code of the Woosters is stronger, with more manic invention and more absurd timing. Still, How Right You Are, Jeeves was more enjoyable and funnier than nearly all contemporary so-called "comic" novels, and I look forward to the next go at it with Bertie and Jeeves.

Support this site by using the below link to buy How Right You Are, Jeeves. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

Whatever they are, this is pretty funny. Maria Bergan handed the waitress's stolen license to the waitress in an effort to prove that she was 21. You might be wondering, how come she didn't look at the photo on the license and realize she was handing it to the same person? But that's not what impresses me. This is: Maria Bergan is 23. If all she was trying to do was prove she was old enough to drink, she could have used her own license. As bad as identity theft is, Bergan should be locked up for stupidity.